As you know, we have extensively discussed the problems of two traditional, standard marketing tactics that have proven successful to a limited degree: live launching and evergreen. We point out their significant drawbacks, particularly when it comes to predictability and business planning.
In our post, “The Big Problems With Live Launching & Evergreen,” we look at live launching vs. evergreen selling tactics and dig deep into why these strategies often result in chaos and low conversions.
Are you making these common mistakes when selling your product? Here we dig a little deeper into why those marketing strategies don’t work long term and what will work to sell your product online.
1. Catch Your Customers at Their Peak Excitement
One of the first things that we know works and probably sounds obvious is that selling at peak excitement works. But the problem with that is most people don’t know when that peak excitement is. They think it’s when they launch their product or perhaps it’s a big buildup then a live launch happens or maybe it’s nurturing buyers to get them excited first.
There’s a natural, predictable moment at which everyone who interacts with you is going to be at their peak level of excitement. And that moment is when they first discover you and your solutions. That is where they are most excited about your offerings—your solution to their challenges or their problems. And they’re most excited about getting that solution for themselves.
It’s when they first interact with you that they’re at that moment of highest excitement, highest motivation, highest interest in what you have to offer. And we see this proven again and again. We see it in our email open rates; the highest open rate are the first emails we send to people.
Peak excitement wanes and, with it, the motivation to act. If someone is at that moment of peak excitement and we don’t give them a compelling offer at that moment, we’re burning up that opportunity, using up that excitement and motivation, because it’s going to predictably, invariably decrease.
The Problem With Nurturing and Live Launching
That’s exactly the problem with nurturing and live launching days, weeks, or months after someone first encounters you. Every day that goes by you’re cutting that excitement and motivation in half and half again. Your potiential customers are thinking, “Well, do I really need/want this? I’m not as interested any longer.” They’re not as compelled to make that purchase.
Sell and Nurture at the Same Time
Lots of what we digital marketers believe so deeply isn’t true. (See our post, ““Why Tactics That Work for Digital Marketing Masters Won’t Work for You,” for more information.)
Digital marketers are taught to nurture first. But you can nurture and sell at the same time! You can sell and send them emails that nurture them throughout that whole process. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can do both simultaneously!
Nurturing Without Selling Erects a Barrier to Purchasing
What most digital marketers are taught is to say, “I have a solution, but we’re going to talk about that later. First, we’re going to talk about me and why I got into business and why I’m so passionate about this. Then we’re going to talk about some of my clients’ stories who’ve had success and have the same problem as you. And then the day after that, we’re going to talk about other stories.”
All this nurturing process does is keep our newly acquired follower or subscriber from the solution that they want. They’re coming to you saying, “Hey, I’m interested in this. Tell me more.” And we put up barriers between them and what they want under the guise of nurturing.
So, if we are holding people back from purchasing the solutions that they want, we’re either burning up that motivation and excitement or encouraging them to buy from our competitors.
People will buy something if they want it badly enough, but it’s also not their job to figure out that they want it. It’s our job to explain what makes it so fantastic to get them to want it and to buy it. It’s not about tricking people. We’re talking about simply, effectively helping people understand why this is the best solution for them. And when someone understands why something is the best solution, why it’s so valuable to them, and they want it badly enough, they will purchase.
2. Allow People to Buy When They Want
Here’s the second thing that does work, which is allowing people to buy when they want to buy. If they’re ready to buy and their next opportunity is three months or more in the future, could you build them back up to that peak excitement? Probably not.
Maybe you’ll get them excited again in that launch mode, but you’re then making them adhere to your schedule. You’re not allowing them to buy when they want to buy. You want them to buy when they first encounter you—when they are most excited.
We shouldn’t be putting up barriers. We shouldn’t be making it difficult for them to purchase.
Evergreen Isn’t the Solution
And so, of course, the alternative, to live launches is evergreen—or letting them buy whenever they want. If people can just buy whenever, then they’re not going to. There’s no urgency, no reason to take action, no incentive to act.
It’s the same thing with an evergreen funnel. Potential buyers will experience excitement decay until they get to that offer, and you might have lost them at that point. Again, there’s no urgency. There’s low energy and low excitement.
People don’t take action unless there’s a deadline. There’s a reason why coupons always have a deadline on them. There’s a reason why you have to return your library books by a certain date.
The automated evergreen funnel seems easy, but it’s not the solution. What you’re doing is burning up that excitement. It’s a really effective way to get people on your list and to lose their attention very quickly.
Live launching and evergreen simply don’t allow people to buy at their peak excitement.
3. Don’t Teach—Give Solutions
Everything that we’re told in the digital marketing industry is about teaching, giving away a ton of content. And because you’re teaching so much, prospective buyers are either going to get a small win and then they’re going to want a bigger win or they’re going to be so inspired that they’re going to want to learn more. And there’s a couple fundamental errors here.
You may think, “They’re just going to be amazed and they’re going to want to purchase from me.” It’s not how it works. You’ll hear that teaching will give them a small win, and then they’re going to be inspired and they’re going to want to buy that big win.”
Small Wins Aren’t Winning Sales
That’s not how it works! It usually converts at a very small rate. If people get a small win, often what they’ll either think is, “Well, I’ve got this small win, that’s all I need.” Or they get the small win and they think, “Now I pretty much understand this. I’m pretty sure I can figure out the big win on myself, on my own, so I don’t need to purchase this entire program.” Either way, this teaching gives them the small win but has actually encouraged them not to purchase.
Avoid Burnout
Or the alternative, you have people who are learning all this information and they just feel burned out. You’re probably exhausted from teaching, teaching, teaching, and your audience is probably just as exhausted from saying, “Oh, wow, I learned a lot and now I just need to either sit and process with this.”
Or you start planting seeds of resistance in their minds to say, “If this was the free thing, can I even do the full thing? Do I have the energy? Do I have the bandwidth?” These other objections weren’t there before.”
Lastly, when we think about peak excitement, learning isn’t exciting necessarily. Sometimes if you get the win, you’ll feel a little energy, but it’s tiring. You burn up a lot of energy doing something that was just highly mentally taxing. The process of learning is truly, physiologically, an exhausting experience because your mind is taking in new concepts and that drains energy.
You’re putting a further drain on that excitement and that inspiration and that motivation. And so instead of teaching, what you want to do is to give people breakthroughs to help them understand new concepts without breaking down exactly how to do this and that.
4. Offer Breakthroughs & New Ways of Thinking
Breakthroughs are not only exciting but they’re exciting because there’s hope with them. There’s the feeling of finding out something that they didn’t know was possible—that it’s possible for them to have their own breakthrough in their life and not just, “Okay, I realized that this was possible, but now I could go down this path, and what are the possibilities there?” And how exciting is that to imagine what that could be!
Our Circuit Sales System students know these breakthroughs as paradigm shifts. The concept is that we’re saying to people, “Look, you always thought it was this way. Or maybe you’ve been told it was this way, but guess what? It’s actually not that way at all.” It’s this totally different way or it’s this totally different concept. And then you explain that to them and you make it clear to them.
You tell them: It’s not your fault if you were not successful doing it this other way because this other way is wrong. It gives them that moment of hope and enlightenment and allows them to believe in you and believe in what you’re saying. It’s not sucking energy with teaching and learning. It is infusing energy with breakthroughs.
A lightbulb gets turned on by our CSS students who understand why they haven’t been successful. And our students know that we have a lot of other ways and very specific methods of supporting that breakthrough and making it, even more powerful, get them to take action.
5. Build Trust in Your Expertise
It’s that lightbulb moment that allows them to understand something new but also helps them get buy into you. Once they understand that things are not the way they thought they were, then they start to realize that you have the solution, that you are someone that they can listen to.
Because as you talk them through that breakthrough and it makes sense to them, all of a sudden they understand that you have a level of expertise that they need. And it’s different from all the other people who have been saying this thing to them that didn’t work. And so they’re listening. They’re willing then to listen to you and all the other things that you have to say because now they understand that breakthrough and they believe you because you are the one who turned on that lightbulb for them.
It completely builds trust in what you have to offer because you get them. You’re showing that you understand exactly where they are and what they’re going through, which they probably haven’t experienced until this point.
Go Your Own Way!
There’s a lot of stuff that some of the bigger gurus do or the bigger digital marketing people say you have to do. But they’re not necessarily in the same place that we are. The same tactics aren’t going to work for us that work for the big names in the industry because people will wait six months or a year to buy from the big name.
And if you are one of those big names—awesome! Keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re not, you have to connect with your potential customers in a totally different way, and you have to catch them at their peak excitement and make it easy for them to purchase from you.
And you don’t have the luxury of just teaching what you already know. That’s not marketing your product or offer—that’s teaching, right? And that’s a valuable part of your program or your course or whatever it is that you sell. But you give it only to people who have paid you for it!
Remember: You need to make it easy for your customers to purchase—and don’t give away all your information for free! Our CSS helps you stand out from the competition and take your business to the next level.
Your Turn!
Have you tried selling your online product using evergreen or live launching? What were your results? Tell us in the comments below!