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Lesson Info

Strike a Balance Between Entertainment & Sales

So let's talk about striking a balance between entertainment and sales pitch. You probably have seen this on some promos before. "Buy now, 40% off. "Limited time offer, miss out and you will perish." Maybe not the last line, but that's essentially what they want you to feel so we don't want to do that. I don't think any of you want to do that because that's really ridiculous so what you do want to do so that you can strike a better balance during your promotional periods is you want to entertain, you want to inspire, and you want to teach. Let's talk about some ways that you could entertain. By the way, you don't have to do all of these as promos, you can pick one but also feel free to do them all if they feel aligned for you. So entertaining is really just a great way to sell without feeling like you're being sold to, right? You can do some really fun, entertaining things that use humor or parody. This would be particularly great for our example that we just did with Nicki because she...

's quite into humor. Actually, I think I saw one of her videos for a workout challenge and she was wearing hysterical Christmas socks and it was just really fun and just totally her. Again, it's like entertaining. It's like, how can I make someone laugh or smile or just feel something, feel entertained, feel like they're watching a movie? Another real easy way to do this is just to show some bloopers from your behind the scenes. We actually have in my class that I have running right now, my own business class, Obsessed, we this running thing where everyone just posts a blooper every week and usually it's when they're trying to go make a video for their business and then they just all fumble their words and then they post them in the group and it's hysterical. I started encouraging them to share them and at first, everyone was like, "whoa, I don't want anyone to see this. "It's a blooper, that's the point is I screwed up." I'm like, "no no, you don't have to do it constantly." But it's really fun during promos when you're making something and you screw it up because we all do and then you're like, "this would be a really funny thing to share." Particularly if it's on video and you've fumbled something or you fell over or whatever, all of that stuff is really silly and fun particularly if your business and your brand is about fun and adventure and laughter, it's really gonna work there. If that's not your business brand then you need to think of another way to entertain or skip the entertaining, right? You don't always have to do an entertaining promo. Alright, couple ideas for inspiring. Inspiring, this means facts tell, stories sell. When I talk about inspiring, I'm not saying share some weird fact or some kind of customer story where they're like, "I went from five clients to 10,000." Sometimes that can be okay, but usually it doesn't really land and to be honest it sounds like a lie so you don't want to, even if it is true. It's probably not the story you want to share, so instead think about stories. Think about your own stories and your life and your business stories. How can you inspire people that way? Like I said, use your own stories and when you're using your own stories, the question I get a lot is "my stories have nothing to do with my business" and that's not true. They're all moments in our life, valuable lessons that we learn from every tiny moment, from getting frustrated in your commute when you're stuck in traffic. We all feel that way but it's how you deal with something like that and that's going to apply to everybody, right? If you're someone that helps people to calm down or be stress free or have a more soothing lifestyle, those little moments and stories are perfect for promos. It's something you could even easily post on Instagram. You can post a photo of yourself in traffic just of the traffic and then just say, "I was stuck today and found myself all heated up "and rage was bubbling and I just wanted to "blow my horn and just lay on it, not that "that's going to move anyone but that's how I felt "but I stopped myself and I thought about it and I said "you know what, this quote spoke to me or "I did this strategy" whatever it is that you did to not be so rage-y in the car, "and that's how I got over it." Everyone can relate to that story, even if they're not angry in traffic, they can still relate to feeling that way about something in their life. Something is making them rage-y and want to blow on a horn. The little stories like that are so fun for promos because everybody can get excited about that. Spotlighting customer stories, so I used the example earlier of don't just put this crazy numbers-based promo because that's not really gonna connect with anyone. You want to tell a story so talk to your customers, don't just say give me a testimony. I'll have conversations with them, interview them. You craft the story about them. You write up a story about them and share that and that's inspiring. Talk about their journey, make sure you include how they were when they came to you and where they ended up at the end, right? Don't skip that beginning part of where they were and how they felt and especially if they objected to working with you, that's even better. We often take away that and don't put that in our promos because we're like, "I don't want anybody to think "that they didn't want me at some point "or didn't want to hire me" but really, that's very powerful because if they were on the fence, something took them off that fence, right? Then had them say yes to you and that's really powerful so if other people have those same objections, they'll be like, "oh okay, at first I kinda wanted "to go to the photographer that was two hours "because I'm thinking it's gonna be too much "to have somebody in my house for half the day, "but as soon as she showed up, "we instantly felt like she was family "and I never wanted her to leave, in fact "I had her stay for dinner." That's a way powerful testimonial if you start with the fact that they were thinking of trying to boot you out the door after an hour and in fact, they were begging you to stay and sleep over. (laughing) That probably happens to you sometimes, or will soon. Alright so for teaching, you can give off things like warning flares, like warning, don't let this happen to you. This applies to so many of our businesses, when we teach or provide a service or workshops or classes or books or things like that. This can be a fun one just to be like, "don't let this happen to you" whatever that is, plug in whatever is not gonna happen to them, right? Warning, don't let your whole entire business system crash. Warning, don't show up in a photo looking the same exact way as all your other family members. There can be so many ways that you can incorporate this. Warning, don't take on another spiritual energy drink. All these little warnings of what you can say and you can leave it sometimes at that and use that as a little promo, where you're just like, "warning" and then they're like, "wait, what do you mean?" And it's like a cliffhanger or you could simply create a bigger promo of a video or a piece of content as far as a blog post, an article, piece of audio content, and then really go into that like why is this a warning for them. If Lauren was gonna go more into that and be like, "stop grabbing spiritual energy drinks," she might dig into what that spiritual energy drink is and then they're all gonna be like, "oh right, I do that too" and then that's when you can lead into your call to action to talk about creating this other space where you don't need those quick hits. You never need them again. This is also a great time where you can provide an appetizer sized portion to a class, workshop, retreat, et cetera so much like we talked about a couple times up here, if that works for your business it's always a great idea to do that as a promo before you launch something into the world. Is there any way people can sample your experience? There's a reason why people try to squirt you in the face with perfume when you walk through a department store, right? I don't like it, but enough people do that they keep doing it and they've been doing it for like 30 years, probably longer than 30 years in fact. That kind of feeling also applies to all of our businesses if we can make it happen. I know it's not possible for every single one of us, but if there is any way you can give them that little appetizer, just a tiny taste of what it's like to work with you, do it because that will make your selling way easier. Your promo is just gonna kill it for you. When you think of teaching promos, they can be long form or short form so lots of people use long form promos like webinars or they'll use things like free classes, like I do a five day class so that's obviously a longer form. Some people just do like a one sentence social media post that teaches something. Like the example we did with the spiritual energy drinks, that alone could be a teachable promo just because it gets people to stop and if they're in that space, they're gonna know as her ideal client, what that is and they're gonna go, "oh no." Are you binging on spirituality? There's so many ways that you can phrase that that still teaches because it gets them to think. They're like, "oh uh oh, uh oh, woops." That's not working for me so again, there is no rhyme or reason necessarily or a specific thing I can say, do this, do that. There's lots of ways we can teach and do promotions so you can still make the ask, but just make sure you're doing it after you entertain, you inspire them or teach, so whatever promotion that you're doing, do that first and then you can make the ask after so just make sure the promo comes first and not that you're asking, asking, asking, barrage, barrage, sale, sale, sale, and then here's a promo because it's just gonna be flipped. That happens a lot where people will put something into the universe and try to sell it and then they're like, "okay nothing is selling," so now they're backing, they're backtracking and they're like, "promo, promo, uh oh, uh oh." Right? And then it doesn't work so you have to make sure you stack all of the promo first, that they're being entertained, inspired, and taught something, any one of those or a combo of those, and then it'll make your ask much stronger.