As we’re moving into a new year,  it’s a great time to pay closer attention to the marketing trends we’re likely to see more of in 2020 and course correct accordingly!

Now, if you’ve been thinking about selling your products and services for more than a second, then you know that most savvy marketers walk their prospects through a specific path in order to maximize their sales conversation rate.

In majority of cases, that path looks something like this:

Step one: Free Incentive. Offering your prospects a freebie, in exchange to get them on your email list. This could be a free download, free service, webinar, free course, to name a few …

Step two: Nurture and Convert. Once your prospects give you their email address in exchange for that awesome freebie, you have access to their inbox. So now, you can follow up and try to entice them to buy your paid product or service.

But let me ask you this…

Have you ever signed up for a freebie, only to get distracted…and completely forget to see what the freebie was about?

Have you ever signed up for a webinar, with every intention of showing up live, only to never join — or even watch the replay — even after several email notifications?

Have you ever signed up for a free online course, watched a few modules…and then life happened and you never really got around to going back and finishing it?

If you answered yes to any of this, then guess what? Your prospects are doing the same thing. 

Which means “the path” doesn’t really work anymore.

Let’s dig deeper and see why this approach is not working as well as it used to.

First of all, everyone and their mother is using the same approach! Your prospects are bombarded with these free offers, practically every where they look.

And even if they’re information hoarders,  most of them don’t actually have the time to  consume your free incentive, or the emails, due to the sheer volume of all the other stuff that’s competing for their attention and time.

That’s why across the board we’re seeing conversion rates are going down on webinar signups, freebie downloads and email open rates.

Let’s take the case of webinars…  Do you know what’s considered a good show up rate to a webinar? It’s 10%.

That means out of 100 people who registered for your webinar, at best only 10 of them will show up.

But in reality, most people only get 2%-3% show up rate to their webinars.

And that rate is declining. Nobody has time to sit through an-hour long webinar and go through the dog and pony show, taking them through 50 minutes of fluff  & sales pitch and 10 minutes of regurgitated information that can easily be found on Google or YouTube.

Let’s face it, we live in the age of information.

And, majority of it is free, right at our finger tips.

Skilled marketers  have been aware of this and obviously are losing money.

The way they’re combating this can be seen in the new trend that’s just taking root In 2020.

At high level it looks like this (I’ll break it down shortly):

  1. Offer a low priced offer.
  2. Deliver your offer over a span of several days.
  3. Follow up with a high priced product and/or service.

So let me break it down and tell you why it works:

Step one: Offer a low priced offer

instead of  offering a free incentive, offer your audience a low priced offer, as their first interaction with you.

If you’ve been paying close attention lately, you’re already seeing examples of this on your social media feed.

This offer is usually under $50.

Again, remember that people are bombarded with freebies and they’re not working anyways.

But if you’re able to position an offer that has a perceived high value for a low price, then it’s a good chance they’ll take you up on your offer.

To fully capitalize on this approach, it’s best to deliver the content over the span of several days. The main reason? I’ll explain in step two below.


Step two: deliver the content over a span of several days

To make sure this approach works, you should deliver the content over the span of several days.

For example, let’s say your offer is an online course broken into 7 lessons. You can send them one video lesson each day.

Or maybe your offer is an online workshop. You can deliver the workshop daily over the span of several days.

Why not just give them access to the entire thing?

Again it’s based on what we’ve been seeing for years from digital products– majority of these purchased digital products, end up sitting on your customer’s cyber shelves, collecting cyber dust.

Unfortunately the completion rate for majority of digital products is about 10%.

However, if you spread the information over several days,  and show up in their inbox daily, remind them the content is waiting for them, you’re increasing the chances of them actually consuming your content.

And why is it important to make sure that happens?


This brings me to step 3: offer a high priced product and/or service

The real revenue is to be made after your prospects consume your low priced offer.

If you planned it right, your low priced offer got your prospects closer to their ultimate desired outcome, or removed part of that annoying struggle.

Leaving room to offer a higher priced offer, which is going to give them the entire solution to their bigger problem.

Perhaps your low priced offer was creating an entire year of social media content.  And, you delivered this  social media content strategy over the span of 7 days. At the end of that 7 days, you could offer them a service to create their social media content for them. Or offer them a coaching program to help them work through not just their social media content but also their entire content marketing strategy.

The main point is by spreading the content of your low priced offer, you’re making sure they’re actually consuming it — which in turn increases their chances of getting result.

This positions you and your expertise at an advantage place — increases their desire to take you up on your signature, higher price offer.

I know — this is a lot to unpack!

I know what you might be thinking: just when you thought you’d finally gotten a handle on one method, now there’s an entirely new approach to learn and implement!

I get it, honest. But the reality of an ever-changing world of digital marketing is that it’s becoming more and more challenging to connect with prospects. That change is constant. Just when we believe we understand how to connect with our audience, a new tool — or a new behavior —changes everything.

Successful marketing has always been all about relationships, not tools! That’s because in this digital age where we can easily and instantly communicate with anyone anywhere, making a deeper connection has become challenging. For all the modern technology at our disposal, it all feels very impersonal. And we often feel detached and disconnected as a result.

But I’ve got good news: there’s one trend that will never go out of style, that will work no matter what tool or platform you use — and that’s the relationship you build with your prospects.

So you don’t need to produce fancy landing pages.

You don’t need hundreds of pieces of content on every conceivable medium.

What you do need is to connect and engage with your prospects on a real, honest, emotional, meaningful level.

The strength of that connection is and will always be the true key to your success.

Eli Natoli Image 9 Large

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