EPISODE 153 Three Ways to Get More Mileage Out of Your ... · AMY PORTERFIELD: Well hello there. Welcome back to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your

EPISODE 153: 3 WAYS TO GET MORE MILEAGE OUT OF YOUR COURSE (ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE A SMALL LIST) www.amyporterfield.com/153

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EPISODE 153

Three Ways to Get More Mileage Out of Your Course(Especially If You Have a Small List)

SEE THE SHOW NOTES AT: http:/ /www.amyporterfield.com/153

AMY PORTERFIELD: Well hello there. Welcome back to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield, and today we’re talking about how to get more mileage out of your online course.

If you listen to this podcast you already know I’m a huge proponent of putting your course out there and sticking with it for a year to 18 months to get the most out of it. I actually talked all about this in Episode #100 (http://www.amyporterfield.com/100) in terms of staying horizontal versus going vertical in your business.

Staying horizontal in your business means focusing on one core program, product, or service and optimizing it, making it better, expanding on it, driving more traffic to it, optimizing your promotions, and ultimately increasing your conversions to boost your profits. That’s staying horizontal, One project, one focus.

Going vertical means adding another product, program, or service to the mix or changing focus to put more effort, time, and money into a new project or program. It’s totally different and, again, I’m a huge fan of staying horizontal as long as you can.

This episode adds a bit of a twist to the idea of staying horizontal because it introduces some new elements to the mix that can help you with your course, especially if you have a small email list and you don’t have a budget to put toward Facebook ads.

I wanted to offer a fresh perspective to this conversation of staying horizontal. To do so, I have decided to bring on an expert to talk about three ways to get more mileage out of your course, especially if you have a small email list.

Before I tell you about my special guest, a quick word from our sponsor.


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So, getting back to it, my expert today is my good friend, Victoria Gibson of victoriagibson.com. She’s an amazing online coach and mentor and a whiz at helping you reach more buyers. I know Victoria because when I was in Marie Forleo’s mastermind, Rich, Happy, and Hot, if you listen to my podcast you’ve heard me talk about this live mastermind I did when I was still in corporate and transitioning out.

Yep, it was called Rich, Happy, and Hot. I didn’t tell anybody that was the name of it because back then I was anything but. But I wanted to be a part of this live mastermind. I mentioned before there were about 20 women entrepreneurs who met four times a year.

Marie was our fearless leader and, again, this was so long ago, I think 2010. Anyway, Victoria was in that live mastermind and that’s how I got to know her. She is so strategic and smart. I love the business model she’s created.

She’ll tell you a little more about her business when we jump in but Victoria is going to give us some ideas on how you can optimize your course to consistently drive better results for your clients and more revenue for your business. So let’s go ahead and dive in.

AMY: Victoria Gibson, thanks so much for being on the show. I’m so excited to have you here.

VICTORIA: I am thrilled to be here. I am super excited to dig in today.

AMY: Me too. But before we get going, I want my audience to hear a little bit about you, your business model, what you’re doing now, how you got there. Give us kind of a glimpse into your business world.


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VICTORIA: Great. I’m an online success mentor to women. People always ask, “Why women?” From what I’ve found in my experience, women need a little bit of an extra boost at times. There’s no other reason. It’s just the way we are. Sometimes we’re not quite as certain and sure of ourselves. But over the last six years of being in online marketing and knowing you for most of them, Amy, after jumping in, I’ve uncovered a great set of strategies that work.

I wanted to be able to work more closely with my client. Rather than having everything automated and passive and everything “my” business, I have more high-end coaching programs where I work with a select group of women to grow their business either from scratch, or perhaps they have been doing a lot of one-on-one and want to get to more scale.

My aim is always to at least double their business but a lot of times we get further than that and we’ve created a couple of seven-figure businesses in that group too. Basically, I’m all about creating success by using the power of online opportunities for women.

AMY: Two of my dear friends are your clients and they absolutely love you. They think you are incredibly strategic and smart so thank you so much for taking care of these women the way you do.

VICTORIA: Oh my pleasure. That’s my passion. That’s what I’m excited about. I know when we met several years ago I was just dipping my toe in the water. That would have been about five or six years ago.

AMY: It feels like a lifetime ago. I’m so happy you’re here because today’s topic is one that comes up so much with my students. I want to get into different ways you can take your online course and really optimize it and maximize it so you can get total mileage out of it.

Here’s my first question. I know you have some ways to grow your revenue by making simple changes to your online course, building on the solid principles of driving traffic with Facebook ads and webinars. The first three principles that you’re going to share relate to how you structure your online course, even if you don’t have a big list.

So many people that are listening right now will appreciate this because they’ve struggled with growing their email list. Tell me, your first principle has to do with offering more with your program, specifically increasing the value of your program. Give me some insights around that one.


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VICTORIA: I’m all about helping people create more value in their course to get ahead. There seems to be a lot more noise in the marketplace, particularly than when we started out. It’s not quite as easy as just putting your online course together, whacking out a couple of ads and making $10,000 a month.

There needs to be some strategy behind that. I know you know that and you share great tips in your podcast about how to do that. But often, I am finding there are people with smaller lists and smaller audiences that want to sort of start creating sales and business and get results.

At the heart of it everybody wants to get their clients great results. Despite some of the reputations out there in the information marketing space, nobody is just thinking how they can get in and make a quick sale. They want to be able to get results.

My philosophy on this one is about creating a hybrid version of their course. I call it a hybrid because a lot of people think creating online training for big results is to just set up a membership site, put videos in there, whack a price tag on it, and sit and forget.

I’m suggesting that may not be the best approach to start with. How can we create more value, which would then lead to being able to increase the price of the online program as well, and allow you to actually start making a decent income even when you don’t have a big audience.

We can still use ads and webinars. I absolutely support that. But often I am finding that until you’re making an income it’s pretty hard to be spending even $100 a day. It can be a bit of a tax while you’re working at getting the conversion on your ads.

How can you get started and work towards $5,000 or $10,000 a month pretty quickly? That’s by increasing the value of your course.

Let’s just go back to this hybrid concept. It’s really about creating the ultimate success solution rather than the ultimate passive income solution. Passive income’s great but I want people to think about leverage. Whenever I say, “Why don’t you add some coaching component,” people automatically think it’s going to be so much more work.

What about if I said that you could have far fewer people in your programs. You could offer personal connection with you and add more coaching and it could still be


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leveraged. You could create the coaching in a group way. You could have group calls. It doesn’t have to be one on one.

This doesn’t have to be hard. I’m sure a lot of people out there, who have sold a lot of online programs, can also testify that there’s also a lot of support that can be required with large volume. I’m suggesting that when you’re starting out, why don’t we go small volume, high value instead? That’s where the hybrid program comes in.

Why I think it’s important is that most people, when they buy a cheaper solution, say a $97 program where they don’t get that support, they rarely complete the program and then that means they rarely get results.

I’m suggesting, particularly if you’re starting out, that we get them to invest at a higher level for something of higher value where they actually get contact with you. They get a higher level of support and they get the momentum that come from an engaged group, not someone who’s just spent $40 on the course and forgotten about it the next day. That’s what I would suggest.

AMY: I love this idea of a hybrid group, especially for my course creators that are just starting out. They’re not going to have hundreds or even thousands in their group the first time out so you’re saying there could be some more high-touch opportunities.

What does a hybrid program look like?

VICTORIA: I’m suggesting you have core content. You still have that online course or program. The membership site and videos and online learning and creating the curriculum, for want of a better word, are still really important.

The easiest way to get clients is to package up your solution, as you know. We want to have the repeatable parts of your process in that online course. Where we have gotten some hybrid concept is that we also want to make it like it’s a really personalized coaching program at the same time so that they get an opportunity to customize the repeatable part of your content.

One size doesn’t always fit all. So, in order to get those results faster, a level of customization can be really good. The things that have moved the needle for me have definitely been when I’ve had a bit more customized support, guidance, and interaction.


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Creating a bit of the real-world connection online definitely inspires you to get bigger results. So, if you’re just starting out, why don’t you go against the crowd and start offering one-on-one coaching calls? That will enable you to start working out where the main pain points are and where the big levers are to get your clients big results.

If you’ve already been going for a while then you don’t probably need to do the one-on-one calls. I would suggest having, perhaps, weekly group calls instead so that you have the opportunity to bring people together.

They can hey ask questions, like office-hours questions and office-hours calls, where you just get Q&As put at you. The beautiful thing in that sort of environment is that people get the opportunity to learn from others’ experience as they are going on the same journey.

Definitely, offering some of those components is good. Yes, a Facebook group is also good but offering a bit more access to you and checking in with the people that have bought into the course may seem like a lot of work.

I want to put out there that the thing that I always recommend, and this may be a bit counterintuitive to some, I don’t do an open and close with this. I’m suggesting you can offer this throughout the year and maybe have some key promotions every quarter.

I know you’ve got some great ideas for setting up promotions and setting up pre-launch content and so on. I’m saying this is almost like the lazy marketer’s guide to getting to $5,000 to $10,000 a month. Yes, you’ve got to work and deliver. I’m not suggesting it’s push button at all.

You can just keep offering this on an evergreen basis and it doesn’t have to make your head spin with all your sales funnels and creating this sequence and that sequence. This is all about personal connection and getting real results for people.

AMY: I love that a lot. You have a really great case story of Jane, I think it was. Is that right?

VICTORIA: Yes. Jane was a career coach to executive women. She was offering a lot of one-day strategy workshops. That was something we developed as well. She loved doing workshops, bringing people into a live workshop, women who were at a crossroads in their career.


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They had probably reached quite big heights in their career but were feeling ultimately dissatisfied. She would be able to take them through a bit of a process in this one-day workshop. That started going really well so I suggested she use Facebook to harvest some people for the workshops.

The workshops were about $800 a day, I believe. That was a nice model in itself. The problem is we didn’t have a program to then move them up to. Really, her heart’s desire was to create a community of these women who would come together, share experiences, and really drive each other to make the changes they needed in their career.

Her heart’s desire really was to create one of these powerful hybrid programs. Some people might call them a group coaching program or a mastermind. People may be more familiar with that sort of level of what these type of programs are called.

We talked about it, mapped it out. She wanted to go six months to start rather than offering a year-long program. I like to go either three months or a year. I think those two lengths go well but sometimes people want to do what they want to do. So, that’s fine. Six months.

It is fine but I do like the three months and then moving people up to a 12-month journey. Anyway, by creating this hybrid program she bolted this offer to her workshop and she was able to sell eight $5,000 programs in just 12 weeks.

I believe her list is still under 2,000 people.

AMY: That’s awesome.

VICTORIA: It’s not about big lists and big sequences, it’s about asking how you can get great results for your clients and use what you already have to get something with more high value.

AMY: What I think is really unique to what you do and what I’ve seen in so many of your students is that you’re able to look at different offers people have out there and you try to look at it differently.

You ask how you can make it more high value, raise the price, and change it around to see some huge success. I know you wouldn’t share this because it’s so random, but one of the friends you helped me with, you looked at her offers, you played around


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with them a little bit, and literally days later she had her first $20,000 client she had never had before.

It’s definitely your skill set and talent to look at that. But I love that you’re on the show saying there is a different way you can look at your courses. You can make them a hybrid of high-value coaching as well as your online course.

Then look what you were able to do with Jane. You had her sell eight programs for $5,000 in just 12 weeks. That’s pretty impressive.

VICTORIA: It is. But the best part I love is just seeing those results for not only them but their clients. She had already said that within a few months of those women doing that program with a live event, weekly touch points, and she hasn’t actually even created her online program yet. She’s going to, so that’s without having the core content that I do recommend.

She’s going to get there but she told me the other day that two of the women in that program have already been tapped on the shoulder for promotions. One had left her job and started her own consultancy and had gotten a really high-profile client.

She’s already got three great results from a small group of people coming in. She’s doing her expertise. She wouldn’t have this without the power of Facebook ads and using online strategies to build her list, growing her content, and all of those things she’s been doing solidly.

Her list isn’t huge but she’s been applying the leverage and principles of online marketing and this is where I love them coming together. I know people have probably heard about going high ticket and all of those kind of things.

It’s not just about high ticket. It’s about using the beautiful leverage of online marketing and being able to jumpstart it for those who, perhaps, aren’t quite as far along or have a lot of expertise in doing one-on-one coaching and consulting and who want to get some more leverage.

It doesn’t mean you have to create a $5,000 program out of the gate either. I’m not about one-size-fits all. Sometimes I have worked with clients and have said, “You want to sell a $2,000 program.”

That’s fine. You’re not Jeff Walker. You’re not Marie Forleo. You’re just going out with a $2,000 program like one of the programs we see like a B-School or something. That’s


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a fabulous program. But people trying to emulate the success of that out of the gate will maybe come against road blocks.

How could we add some great value there when some of the market are needing more of a helping hand. They are needing more support. What about when you get five clients at $2,000? It’s $10,000. That’s probably what you’re aiming for in the beginning.

AMY: That is such a great point. I love that. When I first came out with The Profit Lab the very first time I did it I offered one-on-one Skype calls in the beginning and at the end. You’re right. I didn’t have that many people to serve so I was able to do it that way.

As you mentioned in the very beginning, you learn so much about this group and these people and their needs and how you can serve them when you get on a one-on-one call with them. I love that you said to stand out from the crowd and do something different.

At the time, nobody else was offering one-on-one calls and I would actually look at their marketing plan and review it and give them feedback. I can’t do that now but, definitely, take advantage of it when your audience is smaller.

VICTORIA: I’m sure that brought you so many referrals. I know how much you deliver and I know how much you care about your people. Sure, you’re at a scale now that you can’t do that. We want to get to that level so I’m not saying to everyone, “do this adfinitum.”

You may be more of that kind of person. That’s my style. I do like a lot of interaction. But, would I rather have a more scalable, leveraged business down the track? Absolutely.

It’s not saying you have to kiss it goodbye forever. These are just ways to jumpstart, to think about things a bit differently, to get out of thinking you have to do a big launch and massive sales funnel.

Yes, you need a basic sales funnel. Absolutely. You need to use the power of Facebook ads. I absolutely support using webinars. They have been one of my go-to strategies for me and my clients over the years, for sure.


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But, how could you do it just a little bit differently that’s not going to burn you out? I’m not advocating burning yourself out and having a calendar full of one-on-one coaching calls. That’s not going to support you either.

Just a handful while you are starting out will help you hone your process. It will help you really get in touch with your clients and get some great results. It will establish you as an expert.

AMY: Speaking of this way to engage with your audience, you had mentioned to me there are other ways than just jumping on a call to connect with your clients. Tell me a little bit about that.

VICTORIA: I love the opportunity to create the access to you without giving away the farm. You don’t want your client to call you every day of the week. You don’t want to have to set up endless one-on-one calls.

What if they could access you on Facebook chat if you’re up for that? It is Facebook messenger. You could tell them to “message me anytime.” I guarantee when you say that to the right kind of clients they don’t. They will message you once or twice a month.

If they are going through something it might be a little bit more and you ride through that and create great boundaries. If someone messages you at midnight you don’t respond. You can even set those boundaries from the beginning and I would definitely advise that you said, “During business hours you can hit me up. It may take a little time to get back to you if I’m busy. But I will jump on and you will have full access to me.”

What I love about using something like a chat app, you could do this on WhatsApp as well or Facebook messenger or even just regular text if you wanted to, but I like keeping it in an app because it kind of keeps it separate.

One I do like because it’s even quicker is using something like an app called Voxer voice messaging. You can do this on Facebook messenger as well. It allows you to leave little voice messages. Messaging is better instead of having to type things back to people like you would if you said you were giving them full email access.

Things get lost in my email and that’s just my style because I have too many things in there and something goes missing. There is nothing worse than if a client tells you they sent you an email and asks if you saw it.


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You have to tell them their email got buried in your inbox. But you see Messenger app or WhatsApp pop up on your phone and hopefully quickly, hopefully people won’t send you a long diatribe on a message and most people don’t, they would just be wanting to ask a quick question, you can ping them back.

How special does that make people feel? What about if they can just quickly ask you to leave a voice mail? The Voxer app is a bit like a walkie-talkie in that you might pick it up and say, “Hey, Amy. I’m really struggling to know whether I’m going to use a pink or blue banner on my landing page.” (I just made up that question, it’s pretty inane, but you know what I mean).

You can just ping back, “Hey yeah, I would really rather you keep it aligned to your brand color so why don’t you go pink.”

That’s it. It took one second but it allows you to charge much more for your program and those people are still looked after. You can also outsource that. You may not do that. You may have a community manager who does that.

Whatever it is that you need to create those results, think about that. Rather than wondering how you can make it as passive possible, think about how you could actually create great results and leverage what it takes to do that.

AMY: Yes!

VICTORIA: Use the power of tools and online.

AMY: This is so smart. When I work with high-end coaches I text them whenever I need to. I’ll give them a call and we will have a special call but that’s because I’m paying a high ticket to work with them one on one.

But, I love what you’re saying. If you’re just starting out you’re not going to have, again, a bunch of people in your course at the get go. Why not make them feel extra special? If they could Facebook messenger you or use Voxer I agree. You are creating an experience that nobody else is giving them.

The first principle we talked about is the hybrid and introducing the idea of group coaching or one-on-one coaching or allowing them to message you. But moving into the second principle you talk about, it’s all about pricing for success.


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Right before you get into the details I want to mention, because you are really exciting me with all of these details, I think my students are going to absolutely love these ideas because when I went out with The Profit Lab at one point I broke it up into independent study and VIP.

A lot of my students are playing with that right now. As we talk about pricing I want all of you to think that if you had two different levels for your online course and the VIP was limited to only 25 people, but priced accordingly, you could offer these extra things like Facebook chat and group coaching or one-on-one coaching.

You could do two different price levels for your course and still offer some of these really cool things that Victoria is talking about. I just wanted to plant the seed there.

Let’s talk about the second principle. Again, this is one I get asked all the time around pricing. You have a philosophy to price for success. Talk to me about that one.

VICTORIA: This is where I see so many coaches, experts and consultants go really wrong when they create their online courses. We are all guilty of this. You look around and see what everyone else is doing, see what the big guys are doing, see what everyone’s talking about, and then you want to emulate that.

What we’re not looking at is behind their scenes. We’re not in their shoes. We may not have the size of their audience. We may not have the message they have, or whatever it is. What I see most people doing is a combination of looking at what other people are doing and lack of confidence because they are not experienced at getting huge results or putting online courses out there yet.

You want to charge the least because you think you would sell the most. Surely that makes sense. You make it cheaper and more people will want it, right?

AMY: Yes.

VICTORIA: Unfortunately, when you haven’t gotten the cue off of the bigger name or a big list or established success getting results in a one-on-one way, you will find that people are still trying to get to know you. They see it is $97 and wonder if it’s going to be that good. It’s so cheap.

I am suggesting that building your list and getting results takes time. And so does creating a great course. I don’t want people to get discouraged because they put it together and made the course $97. I have even seen people put it at $47 or $150.


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How many of those courses are you going to need to sell to hit your $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 a month? I’m terrible at math so I couldn’t even pull that number out. I’d love to impress you, Amy, but…

AMY: I couldn’t do it either. I would be impressed with anything because I wouldn’t know.

VICTORIA: Look, I think everyone realizes to sell $15,000 of a $99 course would be a lot. I don’t know. Maybe 1,500. Don’t quote me. Oh my goodness. Anyway, it’s a lot. If you have a list of 200 people, sure you could run some Facebook ads, I advocate that as well.

But calm down. That is an unrealistic expectation for you to think you will get that momentum in the next three to six months. So what about if we make sure we are getting a two-fold benefit out of changing our price.

This isn’t just pricing high for the sake of it. It’s adding value components and making sure it’s solid. I definitely advocate for that. This isn’t just picking a price out of the air. But what I like to see is that there are certain prices that convert better.

Even if you’re coming out with your first online course I would suggest that you make it at least $497, preferably $997. You might have a few bonuses on webinars that bring it down a little bit. But you want to come out with at least that price for any kind of online program.

Even at that price I wouldn’t advocate that you add in all of the extra coaching straight out of the gate. I would suggest you do that when you’ve got something more around a $2,000 to $5,000 offer. But if you just want to go with an online program don’t go with the $97 one.

I have seen people get great success out of it. You, when you started off with your programs, it worked well. Melanie Duncan, with her Pintrest program, went off the hook with the $97 offer. But even speaking to Sean Malarkey, who obviously helped you create FB Influence, the other day, I was asking him this specific question.

He said it really stood out at the time because there were a lot of $2,000 programs and then he pushed the $97 offer to a high-volume audience and he had a lot of partners and a very big list, which you are aware, so you are doing high volume with a small price tag.


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That works in that instance. But when you’ve got a list of 150 people and no partners on board yet because you haven’t proven what you’re doing you are probably going to sell a couple of thousand bucks. Maybe you have done that in one launch. What are you going to do the next three months?

I advocate going higher rather than lower.

AMY: I love this. I totally agree with you, when you do the math it’s a lot harder to hit your goals revenue wise when you have a $97 program. I love the idea of looking at this and asking how you can make a hybrid program and add one-on-one coaching or group coaching and raise the price of your online course.

Sometimes people get frustrated because they have already created a course. Here’s what I want to say to that. If you’ve created a course and you’ve launched it and don’t have a big list or a lot of money to put toward ads and it’s just not selling how you want it to sell, in one of my podcasts (Where Do I Start – http://www.amyporterfield.com/105) I talked about needing an online roadmap for your online business.

I love the idea of starting out with coaching and consulting and getting into the trenches and learning more about your audience and really working with them on this stuff. Sometimes that first online course, because we just don’t know about our audience and what they want and need, isn’t always a huge hit.

But when you start working with people through coaching and consulting all of the bells and whistles go off and you realize you now know what you want your signature online course to be because of all of the time and energy you have put into working, coaching and consulting. I really do believe there is a lot to be said about that.

VICTORIA: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. There are always ways to repurpose what you’ve done. Who’s to say that if you’re already making it $97 you can break it down and make it part of the lead-in series.

When I started my first Sell More With Facebook Ads course I did make it $97, typically. I couldn’t help myself. That’s what I saw everyone doing so I thought I had to do it as well. But I was then able to say, to someone like Laura Roeder, “Would you like the first module of my course to put in your paid program?”

She thought that was great. Anyone who already has a big audience is happy to add something of value if there is a missing piece of the puzzle and put it in their


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program. I think I even offered it to Mari Smith. I think she took my first module as well.

Here I was, a relative nobody, and I could say that social media experts like Mari and even you too…

AMY: I was going to say, I think you did! That is so great.

VICTORIA: Left, right, and center. I think I gave it to you as well.

AMY: I love this idea of repackaging and reusing it in different ways, making it a lead magnet. But only if this speaks to you. I want everyone to really hear us that we’re just throwing out different ideas for you to try on for size to just ask, “Would this work for me right now where I’m at with what I’m struggling with and what I need?”

I love this conversation because I teach very specific things and I like to go beyond what I teach and show a different way to look at it. That’s exactly why I wanted you on the show. I think this is an awesome conversation.

With all that we talked about the hybrid model. We talked about repricing and have now gotten into a great conversation about coaching and consulting and repurposing the program. The third principle I wanted you to talk about is this whole idea of messaging.

I think my students sometimes get tripped up on this. It can impact how they sell their courses. Talk to me about your philosophy around messaging.

VICTORIA: Clarity of message is everything. To me, I feel whenever something isn’t working, and you mentioned before you might have students/clients that are creating their online courses and a putting everything in, it’s just not really flying.

I often find that it’s a matter of clarifying their message to market. That’s where we need to bridge the gap. How do you know that your message isn’t working? Generally some of it might be that you are just starting out. But if it keeps stalling and you keep butting your head against the growth then often your messaging is off.

There is a whole step to get through that. I do have a program where I take people through those components. But the large thing is to ask how clear is it? How easy and quick is it for someone to understand straight away?


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Other people in the market are doing it and catering for that same market. You might think other people are doing it so you can’t do it. It’s actually one of the best proof points that there is a problem and that people would be willing to fix that problem.

Those are a couple of points on the messaging. But the main one I want to say is that once you land on what you’re doing, as long as you’ve got proof that people are buying it, then stay consistent. Tend to go narrow rather than broad. I find that works better.

You talked on a previous podcast episode about relationship stuff. You were saying how they’ve taken the time to talk to people in couples and singles. They have talked to people in a relationship and people looking for a relationship. That’s obviously working well for them and that’s great.

But I find when you are starting out you should go with one or the other. You’re not going to lose anyone in the process. In fact, you’re going to build a stronger community and a community there to support you and feel like they are in the right place the narrower you go.

The more narrow, it’s almost like the better it is, as long as it’s not where you are going to knit scarves for troops in Antarctica as your business model or something ridiculously small like that. It’s got to be enough of a market.

Land on your message and keep consistent with it. What I also find, and I think we talked about this before while we were creating this podcast, one of the problems you see is that people have done one topic.

Therefore, because they have spent all of the time creating a course they see someone else talking about another topic that excites them and then they jump in and want to create another course on a new topic before the first one has really been allowed to breathe and take on a life of its own.

We have been talking about how important it is to go horizontal rather than creating a gazillion different messages. No only making sure your message is hitting the mark and making sure you’ve got the nice message to make it fit, but once you land on your message ask if there is a way to go even deeper with it and get it more specific and narrow for better success?

Once you’ve got success, keep going. Don’t go and create something new before you’ve got the first one working. I think those are the points I wanted to get across.


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AMY: What I love is that you came to the table with a lot of good examples. Give me the example you shared with me earlier about Chantelle.

VICTORIA: This is a great example. When I tell people about Chantelle Duffield from studioexpansion.com, she is basically helping performing arts studios and music /dance studios, people who maybe have ballet lessons or singing academies or whatever it may be. She helps them grow their business.

She is amazing at what she does. But when you say that to someone they say it is kind of specific. Yes, it is. But how great for all of those music/dance studios, of which there are hundreds and thousands across the world. How great for them to see Chantelle say she can help them grow their performing arts studio rather than telling them she is a small-business coach.

That is the difference. Really, she is a small-business coach in many ways. She has some beautiful leverage in big parts of her programs and she has a nice online course and an opportunity to step up to VIP programs and coaching.

She has been able to work through all of those levels since we started working together a few years ago. She has been able to grow that to an absolute empire and have a community of raving, raving fans because they feel like they are in their community. This is a real tribe. It really, really works.

She has stayed on her message. She has never changed her message, “I help performing arts studios grow their business.” That’s all she does. She hasn’t changed it.

Imagine if she started saying, “I am now going to help athletic studios.” She could apply some of the same principles but then it doesn’t feel like so much of a tribe anymore. It’s not quite as compelling as it is when she has stayed on message for all that time and really reaped the rewards of having that momentum.

AMY: That makes sense. Basically, when she started with you she had a $2,000 online program. Now, what has she done to expand that?

VICTORIA: This is an interesting one. This sort of flips from my usual thing. She had actually sold some $2,000 programs on webinar, bless her because she’s fabulous.

AMY: Love her.


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VICTORIA: Yeah, she didn’t have a big community but she had a great message to market. She sold about eight. She was still doing some consulting. She said she had sold eight but really didn’t know what to do with the online course. She had done a big launch. It was closing. Buy it.

She got eight people. That’s not bad out of the gate, $16,000 for your program. That’s awesome. She wasn’t starting from scratch, scratch, but she didn’t have the whole ecosystem where she could be bringing in income all the time and she didn’t have a big list.

I told her we should actually try bringing the price of the program down. We made it a $997 offer and then she had a couple of little online programs, which were more like paid lead generation. They were $97 or $197 for couple of little e-book formula programs.

She had those as a lead in and then she used a launch process to launch her $1k program using Facebook ads and webinars. We went out to a wider market. She had the message nailed and the price point actually fit a whole lot better for a webinar.

On the next one I think she made $36,000 from the webinar for the initial program. But we also build the coaching (she built it, I just told her to go do it and supported her)…With my own hands, Amy, I tell you I was sweating away in the trenches!

Well, I was showing her that this could work and then she was able to get several people into her $12,000 program. She was able to quickly move those $1,000 program purchases up to the $12,000 program.

On her last launch I think she sold to 40 people into the $12,000 program as well as about 100-something into the $1,000 program. She is doing amazingly well just by creating those steps through the system, staying clear on her message, and going quite niche.

A lot of people wonder if she could have a seven-figure business doing that. Well, yes, she could.

AMY: Definitely. So are you saying she has a $1,000 online training program and from there you can buy into a $12,000 coaching program with her?

VICTORIA: Yes, and then she has another elite level for just a tiny handful of people who want to do a $40,000 program.


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AMY: That is so awesome. I love that this whole interview really came to be about opportunities of adding coaching and consulting into your online programs, whether it be before or after or as a hybrid, but I think there are so many different opportunities to raise the price, add more value, and get more longevity out of your program.

VICTORIA: Absolutely.

AMY: That is so fantastic. I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. I love that you’ve offered a totally different perspective than I’ve ever shared. And, I know you personally and know the people you work with so I know you’re legit. You’re getting huge results for the women entrepreneurs you’re working with.

I know there are some ladies who are going to be listening and will say they have to know you. They will need to know how to work with you and where they can find you. Where can people find you online?

VICTORIA: Brilliant. I work in a high interactive way with people so even if people want to come and book a session where we have a chat about that, that’s totally great too.

AMY: Oh cool.

VICTORIA: They can come to my website at VictoriaGibson.com. I also have a little bit of a free PDF guide that goes into a few more of these concepts in detail. I know you will link to it in your show notes. They can access that at www.VictoriaGibson.com/amy for a quick little guide to read through and see they are jamming with my philosophy.

I am always happy to have a chat so, please, reach out and I would be happy to map it out because there are a lot of people out there struggling with this and there can be some easy ways to make some shifts.

AMY: Awesome. I love that. Victoria, thanks so much for being here. I cannot thank you enough.

VICTORIA: My pleasure.

AMY: Take care.


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VICTORIA: You too.

AMY: There you have it. I hope you enjoyed this interview with Victoria Gibson. I know it was a little bit different than the stuff I teach inside my programs and I wanted to give you a different perspective. If you’re working on your program, and you want to add to it and enhance it, I hope you got some ideas from this episode.

If you’ve been struggling with your online program and you might want to pivot a little bit and then come back to it, I also think you got some great ideas from this episode so you can kind of play around with it.

Here’s the greatest thing ever. When you are an online entrepreneur and you are the boss of your business you get to call the shots and make changes and make pivots and experiment to see what will work best for you.

The last thing I’m going to leave you with is that I do not want you to make a big change just because you launched your program one time and it’s not doing well. That is not enough experimentation, enough tweaking, or enough testing things out with your online course to know if it’s going to work or not.

I like the idea of adding one-on-one coaching and letting people message you and enhancing in that way and launching it again. Maybe play around with the price. Do two different levels like I talked about; independent study and VIP. I love all of that.

If you’ve launched it just one time and it hasn’t worked for you, I don’t want you to throw out the course and move all the way to coaching and consulting thinking one day you will come back to the course.

It’s a little too early for that. Be realistic. Do a gut check. Make sure you’re not just jumping to the next thing because one thing didn’t work out as planned. That’s not how you build a profitable business over time. You’ve got to stay the course, pardon the pun.

You have to stay the course a little bit longer to know which way you want to turn. Just be true to yourself. Just know when you’re making a smart pivot versus jumping ship too early. I think we all kind of know in our gut and heart. So be true to yourself and talk to your peers about it.

If you’re in any of my paid Facebook group for Webinars That Convert, Courses That Convert, or List-Builder’s Lab, throw out the idea and let people know where you’re


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struggling. Get some feedback. If you’re not in my groups hopefully you are in some other groups where you can get some peer feedback to make sure you are on the right course.

We are going to wrap up. But first a final word from our sponsor. As I mentioned in the beginning, I agreed to sing the praises of Fresh Books because they help freelancers get paid faster. Not only are they the #1 cloud-accounting software out there, they also help you get paid in just two clicks. That’s a big deal when you’re shuffling paperwork everywhere and you’re trying to get things organized.

To get your 30-day unrestricted free trial, go to http://www.freshbooks.com/amy and in the section where they ask “Where did you hear about us” type in Online Marketing Made Easy. I can’t wait for you to give Fresh Books a try.

There you have it. I cannot wait until next week. Next week we have my go-to Facebook ads guy, Rick Mulready, back on the show. We’re talking about a brand new Facebook ad strategy. It’s brand new and I can’t wait to share it with you.

I’ll see you next week in Episode #154. Until then, have an amazing week! Bye for now.

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EPISODE 153 Three Ways to Get More Mileage Out of Your ... · AMY PORTERFIELD: Well hello there. Welcome back to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your