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Episode 95: 3 Favorite Tools for Selling Online
174 Plays5 years ago
In today's episode, Vanessa Kynes and I riff about a few of our favorite tools for selling online. We cover quite a bit of related material in this episode as well, such as related tools and considerations for choosing the right tool. And by the end of the episode, we decided that we really do need an episode on how to string together these tools into a working funnel. So be on the lookout for that sometime in the future.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-episode-95/
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Transcript
Frustration with Paying for Disliked Products
00:00:05
Speaker
And so it was frustrating. I was paying for a product that I didn't even like, but I felt like kind of jailed into it because I'd already put so much effort into it.
Introduction to 'Brands at Book Show'
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:29
Speaker
In today's episode, Vanessa Kynes and I riff about a few of our favorite tools for selling online.
Favorite Tools for Selling Online
00:00:35
Speaker
We cover quite a bit of related material in this episode as well, such as related tools and considerations for choosing the right tool. And by the end of the episode, we decided that we really do need an episode on how to string together these tools into a working funnel. So be on the lookout for that sometime in the future.
00:00:52
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at DavyandChrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode, and I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands that Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, head on over to the DavyandChrista Facebook page and send us a message, or you can send us a DM on Instagram, at DavyandChrista.
Exploring Digital Marketing Tools
00:01:10
Speaker
Now, onto the episode.
00:01:15
Speaker
All right, so we are back for another episode of the Brands at Book Podcast, back with Vanessa Kynes. We are chatting about specifically three of our favorite digital marketing tools, but I think that there's larger conversations that we want to have around each of these tools and their purpose, so we'll dive into that.
Coping with Distractions: Lessons from 'Deep Work'
00:01:32
Speaker
Hey, thanks for having me again, Davey. I enjoy being here.
00:01:35
Speaker
We were just talking about how, for me this week especially, and what it's like the second to last or last week of April about, it's been really difficult to get into a, as you just put it, deep work mind space.
00:01:49
Speaker
Well, and to reference deep work now, see, I can't even access. So I've been saying to Davy having a hard time accessing my brain, like the deeper work in my brain. What's what's the author of that book again? Do you call Newport? I think he wrote this book about like, you know, being able to do the work without distraction and focus.
00:02:08
Speaker
I'm looking around and I'm seeing distractions like surrounding me in pitter patter of feet and kids wanting snacks and my husband who's in and out of his office. Just everything has just been really distracting during this time.
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just to the noise in the world right now. And to a certain extent, kind of a for me this week has felt a little overwhelming at times. And I think it takes effort to shut all that out. And after a while, it just sort of creeps in for me, especially if I'm not intentional about trying to shut it out. So that's
Blog Post on Digital Marketing Tools
00:02:38
Speaker
been hard for me is, you know, just kind of reaching for my phone and scrolling and yeah, so I'm right there with you. Well, and I want to encourage the audience like it's okay if you're in that space, because
00:02:50
Speaker
This is just a really unique time in history and it is really really hard so don't beat yourself up and try to find like for me I'm doing well on the activities that are very repeatable and I have systems and workflows for and I'm keeping those going. So it's like I'm moving forward just not in like some intense ways but moving forward with the daily rhythms.
00:03:09
Speaker
Well, so if those are easy for you, then keep moving forward with those.
Top Three Online Business Tools
00:03:13
Speaker
We're talking about digital marketing tools. There is a corresponding blog post for those of you who want to check out the written version of this or maybe you're driving or running right now and you want to see some notes. The blog post is probably the best place to get some notes from this episode in particular. And I'm not really sure how to start this conversation off. I guess how I start the blog post off is basically if I were to answer the question, if I were stranded on a desert island,
00:03:36
Speaker
and could only use three online tools in my business, what would they be? And these are the three that I would choose. That's a great question. I have a lot of other things I probably would request first if I was on a desert island. I mean, three online business tools. Of course, if I had to choose three things, these would be three pretty silly things to choose, but they are. And we'll just kind of get them out of the way and then we can kind of go through each of them. ConvertKit, Thrivecart, and Deadline Funnels.
00:04:05
Speaker
Okay, so my initial reaction is I think two of the three would be probably on my list. So we'll get into what they are because I think ConvertKit we all know is an email marketing platform. Just email marketing in general is just so valuable for your business. So this would definitely be an essential for an online business.
00:04:23
Speaker
So if you were selling products online, you know, hopefully this will be helpful for you just learning about some tools specifically. But we also want to talk about these tools generally too, and some of the alternatives maybe to each
Why Choose ConvertKit for Email Marketing?
00:04:35
Speaker
of them. Because while these are the tools I prefer, there are definitely other tools out there that that can do the job and are great tools maybe to get started with as well. So should we start with ConvertKit? Yep. So what is ConvertKit?
00:04:46
Speaker
ConvertKit email marketing platform. I don't think we have to spend a ton of time on this because we've talked about email marketing on other episodes. But I think the clear value of having some sort of email marketing platform is that it's one of the best ways to nurture people, right? So to have people sign up for your list and then to move them from maybe not being super familiar with you
00:05:08
Speaker
to educating them about what it is that you do, what problem it is that you solve and why you're the best solution and then hopefully pushing them to purchase.
00:05:17
Speaker
So from my perspective, there are cheaper, obviously, and free, although ConvertKit now has a free trial. Do they have something? They went freemium. So what that means is that you can sign up for a free plan. So it's not a trial. It's just a free plan. It has limits, though. So typically, once you hit a certain subscriber limit or you send a certain amount of emails, you'll have to upgrade to one of their paid plans.
00:05:41
Speaker
Okay, yeah, so there's a difference from my perspective in needing ConvertKit versus Mailchimp, which is I think free up to 2000. I know you've talked a lot with people about Flowdesk, which is what I'm using right now. But I feel like where ConvertKit is really unique in this conversation is the e-commerce power. Because unlike those other platforms, I'm sure Mailchimp is possible. It's just super confusing. They have all these ways of tagging people. So for example, if I bought your inquiry course,
00:06:10
Speaker
You can tag me now as a inquiry purchaser so that when you do sales or do more promotions on it, I'm not going to be sent all those emails all the time because I've already purchased and moved into a different area. So from ConvertKit, from my perspective, is super skilled in this area where the other ones kind of lack.
00:06:26
Speaker
For sure. And so when choosing an email platform, and I think the broader conversation too of this episode is basically choosing tools that are going to scale with you. You know, for Facebook ads, for instance, we had one client who she was kind of to a certain extent handcuffed by the tools that she was using.
00:06:44
Speaker
So while a few small tweaks to what she was doing could probably get her better results, she wasn't able to make those tweaks because by the time she started working with us even, she had already outgrown those tools. And moving off of one platform onto another platform,
00:06:59
Speaker
It's super time consuming. It's something that you won't be able to avoid to a certain extent. Like in general, we're all going to occasionally have to move systems off of one platform to another platform. But as much as we can, if we can choose tools that we can grow into, I think that's the better route to go.
00:07:15
Speaker
So one thing that I like about ConvertKit and Flowdesk for that matter is that it's pretty simple to get started with. So if you want to just start sending weekly emails, let's say, super easy to do that. However, once you need some advanced functionality like tagging and creating automated sequences, so if someone purchases product X, they get thrown into an automated sequence that starts pitching them product Y.
00:07:38
Speaker
That's when tools like ConvertKit and Flowdesk are going to be really beneficial to have. Mailchimp, for instance, I know Krista spent all this time on support trying to help somebody in bed and get set up their Mailchimp form on their website. And Krista's telling them like, hey, I know that Flowdesk costs money, but if you switch, it's going to be so much easier. And so finally, this business owner that she was working with switched and we got an email back within like 20 minutes like, oh my gosh,
00:08:06
Speaker
what took me hours what is trying to do with mail champ i was able to do easily with flow desk thank you so much for pushing me in this direction so that kind of stuff i mean that's an important consideration if you're gonna tie up all this time you know trying to figure out something on a real champ when it can be easily done with another platform even if that platform cost a little bit of money each month i think that's a worthwhile switch.
00:08:27
Speaker
Well, in $19 a month, not that this is a commercial for Flowdesk, it's really cheap because with MailChimp, I was paying for MailChimp at some point because like you said, I started on free and I had outgrown the 2,000 subscribers. I was launching a course and I was stuck. I couldn't do some of these things I wanted to do. I forget what they were. They were related to sending my webinar and my email sales list, but not the people who had purchased in the past. It was super difficult to figure out.
00:08:54
Speaker
which would have been easy on ConvertKit or Flowdesk. And so it was frustrating. I was paying for a product that I didn't even like, but I felt like kind of jailed into it because I'd already put so much effort into it. And Krista wants to switch us to Flowdesk. There's one or two features that are missing on Flowdesk that we would need in order to switch. We're on a yearly plan with ConvertKit. So that doesn't renew until the end of the year. So we have some time to sort that out. So Flowdesk is a great option. ConvertKit is a great option.
00:09:21
Speaker
Both of them, I think, are more affordable options. Flowdesk, I think, being the best value of any of the options that I can think of, especially with some of the deals that they have going on right now, if you use somebody's link to sign up, that sort of thing. So definitely worth checking out Flowdesk if you're looking for that. But one of the reasons that I wanted to talk about email platforms in general is because most people are not going to purchase from you the first time they've heard of you, right? And so instead of waiting for that person to come back to your website or hoping that that person follows you on social media,
00:09:51
Speaker
email is a great way to actively follow up with people to again, hopefully move them from being generally unaware of you to purchasing from you. So that's why it's on my list. Yep. Email marketing is huge. I mean, I always feel scared to send that one extra email
00:10:08
Speaker
to people during a sales launch. But in the end, it always works. They always respond. And inevitably, too, I always get a few emails the following day saying, hey, I missed your emails. Can I still have the deal? So if you're ever feeling uncomfortable, just send one more email. Push yourself outside of that comfort level.
00:10:26
Speaker
It's not like they're in email jail with you, right? If they hit unsubscribe, people can be unsubscribed.
Thrivecart's Role in Sales Conversions
00:10:31
Speaker
So if somebody signs up for your email list, they're raising their hand and saying, hey, I want emails from you. One of the reasons that I mentioned ConvertKit in particular is because ConvertKit is a pretty popular tool. And one of the benefits of that is that a lot of other tools and software we use has tight integrations with ConvertKit. So it makes it easy to set up ConvertKit within the greater system that we're using.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, I actually had that jotted down as a note because as we get to talking about the other two tools, which I don't want to reveal quite yet, they are easy to integrate with ConvertKit, but I do wonder with some of these other platforms. So I'll be looking forward to hearing about that. Well, let's move to what I think is going to be the controversial tool. Maybe I'm wrong, but Thrivecart. No, that's not the controversial one for me.
00:11:15
Speaker
Let's jump into Thrivecart then. Thrivecart is a cart platform. Basically, you can use Thrivecart to collect payment from people. That's basically what it does. And I stumbled upon Thrivecart a few years ago when I was looking for alternatives to Samcart.
00:11:32
Speaker
Now, there's a distinction that I want to make here in cart setups. For instance, if you go to DavyandChrista.com and you add something to your cart, you can add other things to that cart. That kind of cart setup is a little bit different than the kind of cart setup that Thrivecart is. What we use on our website to sell multiple products is WooCommerce. That's more of a shopping-like experience. That's important for a website like DavyandChrista because you might buy a website, but you might also buy a few add-on pages as well.
00:12:02
Speaker
So it's important that people can check out multiple products at once. If you're selling a course though, you don't want people to be distracted by necessarily other products, right? I'm excluding downsells and upsells, right? You want people to focus on purchasing that course. So at the end of a long sales page, you would embed something like Thrivecart in order to collect payment for your course, but you're not able to add multiple things to a cart and then check out. Does that make sense?
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, this is really interesting because I know that a lot of digital marketers use Thrivecart and other ones like Samcart and things like that. But I've noticed, though, I have my course on Thinkethic and it has the lamest checkout page ever. It barely looks like a checkout page, although I think they recently are AB testing a better checkout page. So I'm a little bit excited about that.
00:12:48
Speaker
But I was frustrated by the concept of purchasing another tool to just basically guide the people through the checkout process. But the truth is I know, and you probably could confirm this, I know I've lost sales by having a lame checkout page versus one like Thrive Court, which it allows you to have testimonials on the side. It makes it super easy to put your PayPal or your credit card. Everything is like right there in front of you and it has a higher converting ratio for sales.
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the thing, just going back to our larger conversation about being careful about what tools you choose, right? Because I think you hit the nail on the head, we actually used to use Thinkific and we ended up switching to Kajabi, but we still use Thrivecart as our cart. And even with Kajabi, which is slightly better than Thinkific's checkout, but with Thinkific's checkout, we realized really quick, like at the time, this has been years now, but they had a two-step checkout. So you had to create an account and then you had to pay. And what we noticed is a bunch of people were falling off
00:13:45
Speaker
After they created an account we see the notification that somebody create an account but they would never actually go to check out the product and with thrive card you can create a two step check out like that if you want to do to check out or you could just have a simple one step check out as well but there's a lot of customization in the kind of check out that you can have.
00:14:02
Speaker
Even with Kajabi, and we run some ads for clients who use Kajabi, one of the frustrations with Kajabi is just limited functionality in upsells and downsells. For those of you listening, an upsell would be an offer that you get after you purchase. So you've purchased something and then you land on a screen and it's offering you something else that would upsell you.
00:14:22
Speaker
Now, a downsell is a little different in that, let's say you're selling a course and somebody decides not to purchase the course, a downsell would be like, you know, after the cart closes for your course, sending them an email and say, hey, you weren't interested in, you know, my course on taking better photos, but what about this mini course on taking better photos with your iPhone? That's, you know, let's say $29 instead of $99. That would be an example of a downsell.
00:14:50
Speaker
Point being is that cart setups like thrive cart make upsells and downsells and things like that easier bump offers So now that we're getting into a lot of different details here But I don't know for those who are interested in getting into selling online a bump offer would be an offer that you see before You check out
00:15:07
Speaker
So for instance, like a bump offer, like let's say if you were buying one of our website templates, we could create a bump offer that might include our SEO course. So you go to the checkout page, you're getting ready to check out and you see a little checkbox and you say, take advantage of this bump offer where for $1.99 for $2.50, you can also get this course and it would usually be $400 if it was bought separately. Does that make sense?
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's like getting a supersize me at McDonald's. I never go to McDonald's. I hear you're a McDonald's fan, but like you could supersize your fries.
00:15:41
Speaker
It used to be where we went after shooting a wedding. But point being is, I mean, that's a good example of a bump offer is, you know, before you pay that question of like, do you want the meal or just a sandwich? The meal would be the bump offer. But anyways, Thrivecart is going to give you control over that. Thrivecart, what's interesting about Thrivecart is at least right now at the time of recording this, it's a one-time cost for Thrivecart. So it's expensive. It's like $500 to purchase Thrivecart. But at the time, when I was looking at different solutions,
00:16:09
Speaker
Samcart was the other solution that I was considering, and Samcart was $99 a month. I think they have a lower tier plan now, but at the time, I was thinking to myself, well, in about five months, I would have paid for this. Our business model, we were dedicated towards figuring this out, so that made sense for us at the time.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, I want to throw out one other option because even before we hopped on this call, I've looked at Thrivecart before, but I'm kind of hesitant to invest a lot of money. Same with Webinar Jam. It's like $500. You need to pay for the whole year, right? So I started looking around. Is that true of Webinar Jam right now? I thought Webinar Jam used to be like $29 a month or something like that.
00:16:50
Speaker
I think you have to pay a full year. You can't do a monthly plan. Yeah. I mean, I might be like many of you listening. We're like, oh, $500. I don't even have an upsell. I don't have a down seller bump offer all these different cells, right?
00:17:03
Speaker
And I just want to see if my digital product can work. Like it's sold in the past. Maybe I did a pre-sell. I want to validate it more. So one other option I've been looking at is send out. It's kind of similar and it does have some cheaper options. I think there's like a 20 or 30. It says it has upsells. I'm sure that Thrivecart has more integrations, but there are other options too. And if you're willing to test out a cheaper one and see if it works and as your products grow into bumps and upsells and downsells and switch to Thrivecart,
00:17:33
Speaker
that could be an option too. But I think you did the math right because after five months of Thrivecart, you paid, you're done. You flat out paid in cash for what Samcart was offering monthly. This was back in 2018, maybe late 2017, but it's been, I think, a few years now that we've had Thrivecart. I'm actually kind of proud of it because I've recommended Thrivecart to a bunch of people now who have since recommended to others. So I feel like I was one of the original users. Actually, it had been around for a while by the time I got to it, but still, it is a good tool.
00:18:03
Speaker
And one of the things I like about it is if you're selling a subscription product, if you're selling something that has a recurring payment, that subscription is created inside your payment processor. So it's created inside of Stripe or inside of PayPal. And that's important because other cart solutions
00:18:19
Speaker
We'll create the subscription, which means that if you wanted to switch off of that cart solution, you can't. You'd have to at least pay for it as long as you're still running subscriptions through it. Whereas we could switch to whatever we wanted and that subscription is still going to have been created in Stripe or PayPal. Does that make sense?
00:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, it totally makes sense. So like if you were running a membership, I'm just going to click through real quick because you were wondering on the blog post if the lifetime offer is still available. And it looks like it is, but it is $690. No, $495. You can do it still. So that's good.
00:18:54
Speaker
And honestly, since the time I signed up, they've been saying they're gonna go to a monthly option. I gotta imagine that that's just their marketing tactic, you know? From a business perspective, it does make a lot of sense when you think about the lifetime value of people who use subscription products and all of that. That's a whole conversation for another day. With that said, whether that's a marketing ploy or not, as somebody who has used Thrivecart for the last couple of years, I mean, I feel like it's more than paid for itself, so I've been happy with that solution.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, I'm kind of laughing right now because it has been like that a long time and they make it seem like it's a one-time offer, but I think you just have to go like log in again to the website. So it's really always available. Again, they keep on saying it's going to switch, but who knows? One of the things that weird about Thrivecart for people who are interested in signing up for that though, it's not easy to find a checkout page. Like if you go to their website, it looks like it's not open to the public. It is. You just have to either find one of their special offers or you have to get a link from somebody who's already signed up.
00:19:51
Speaker
What do you think about that as a sales technique? I don't know. When I first learned about it, I thought it was in beta because I couldn't sign up, but I saw a Google ad actually run by them for it. And it was this special offer, you know, one time payment sort of thing. And that's when I signed up. But I know I'd recommend it to somebody and they're like, Oh, it doesn't look like it's open to the public. So it looks like, you know, you still have to use somebody else's link to sign up. But again, it must be working for them because they're not in a rush to change to a monthly subscription.
Creating Urgency with Deadline Funnels
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's true. Looking at it, it has almost like a signup page. I want to point out that it has a ton of integrations. Have we talked a lot about that?
00:20:29
Speaker
about their integrations in particular? No. But like we said with ConvertKit, it is helpful because it allows you to tie in easily to other systems that you might be using. If this is something you know you're going to be doing, I think that this is a good system. Again, you don't have that monthly cost over and over again. It is a lot up front though. And my guess is they've probably decided, okay, our average lifetime value would be let's say around $500. And so that's just what they charge people up front instead of charging $45 a month or something like that.
00:20:57
Speaker
I guess I don't love the fact that literally for years now, they've been saying they're going to switch to that monthly because I'm sure, you know, people then rush out and say, hey, they're going to switch, they're going to switch, and that gets them more customers, you know? So I don't love that. I don't think it's necessarily wrong. I don't know.
00:21:12
Speaker
I think it really folds in well to the third tool a little bit. And the psychology of it, which is why I think it's a little bit my least favorite of the options, it's still a good tool. Well, we can talk about it. But just the whole idea of genuine urgency. And so I would say it's a little iffy on the genuine urgency, but it's true. At some point, they might switch to monthly payments.
00:21:31
Speaker
If I would have signed up and not felt like I got value out of the tool, then maybe it would have rubbed me more the wrong way. And I think they have a money-back guarantee within a certain amount of time, but I still think that this tool was a steal for $500 because if I was paying a monthly subscription, I mean, even if that monthly subscription was well less than the $99 a month that I would have paid for a Sam cart, I probably still would have paid for that tool by now.
00:21:55
Speaker
But anyways, the last tool that we're talking about is Deadline Funnels. It's on my list because it helps create urgency. So the email tool when it came to email marketing, the reason that something like that's on the list because I think it's the best way to nurture people. I mentioned Thrivecart for the practical reason of actually collecting payment, but I think it's a great example of a tool that you can just use it for that basic function.
00:22:17
Speaker
or you can get pretty advanced with it with upsells and downsells and bump offers and you can run an affiliate program from Thrivecart as well. So there's a lot that can be done with that tool. And then we move to deadline funnels because of the urgency it creates. And so basically deadline funnels allows you to create funnels that after a certain amount of time expires, typically how it works, people are pushed to a new sales page with less bonuses or it's a higher price at that point.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah. And the specific thing about deadline funnels is that it is a unique funnel for each individual. So you can slap up a timeline. Like if I had an open cart period on my course and I was going to close it a certain day, I could just put on a general timer on my sales page. But this is for people joining your list at that point. And then they get their unique time, whether it's like 24 hours or 48 hours. And then when it expires, it expires.
00:23:10
Speaker
Deadline Funnels is actually so flexible that you can set it up as an evergreen offer. So what you're talking about, you could also just set it up as a specific time and date offer. So for instance, if we wanted to run a special offer on a course that we were selling, we could set it up so that it's evergreen so that if somebody opts in today, they see the offer for seven days. If someone opts in three days from now, the timer starts from the time they opt in. So that same person would still see the offer for seven days, right?
00:23:35
Speaker
you could just set a specific date for everyone and it can act as a timeline or a timer just as it does for everybody else. You can do different hybrid timers. It's pretty advanced in what it can do, but the point being is that it gives people a sense of urgency.
00:23:51
Speaker
Going to the previous idea, you could hack that with free tools, but the unique deadline funnel for each person joining at their point and getting seven days to decide would be so hard to recreate on your own. I mean, it would just be too much work. And so that's where I think deadline funnels is super unique and super powerful because you could probably hack the other way. I know that I've done it in the past, but the way of people joining at this certain time, there's just no way you could do it. I think it would just be too complicated.
00:24:18
Speaker
I think it's the most advanced deadline tool out there for sure. It can track when people get, you know, when you visit a site and then cookie you so that it knows when you come back, you know, where you are within the funnel. Yeah, the biggest question for me on this one, like we all need an email marketing tool, regardless of whether you choose ConvertKit, Flotist, whatever. When do you know you're ready for something like deadline funnels?
00:24:41
Speaker
just basic psychology, people need a reason to purchase. And so timelines and deadlines and give people that chance. You know, I mean, I think a popular funnel is to or a popular strategy is to give people who are willing to make a commitment sooner than later access to more bonuses, you know, and so after a certain amount of time, those bonuses disappear.
00:25:02
Speaker
I would say that with all the clients that we run Facebook ads for, most of them utilize some sort of sense of urgency. A lot of them are utilizing a countdown timer, whether it be from deadline funnels or another tool. And when they utilize those tools, their sales are higher. It's just as simple as that.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's just the psychology of people feeling like they're going to miss out on the deal if they don't act now makes them feel special. Do you think there's ever times where people like me who look at those in a way where it seems like too much pressure and so they back off and then what do you do then? Do you hit them with another subscriber sequence to kind of warm them up more? How does that work?
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are so many different ways that you can go about this, right? And I wouldn't say that there's necessarily a right answer. Like I said with Thrivecart, like it's been two years probably plus since I purchased. I don't feel like I was duped into purchasing.
00:25:57
Speaker
You know, like, yes, I was given a timer. And so I bought before that timer expired because I wanted to make sure that I took advantage of the deal. I was delivered exactly what I was promised I was going to be delivered. And so I think at the end of the day, if you're delivering a course or a service, a product or a service that is exactly what you said it was going to be, you know, and it's worth what you paid for it. I mean, I guess I don't see the issue in that. But I guess what I'm asking is there are people who are slower purchasers who aren't like, I'm not an impulse buyer.
00:26:26
Speaker
I'm just a very controlled purchaser. I can go to Target and walk out with empty hands. I'm just that type of individual, which I know is a little bit unique for my gender. But what do you do with the people who go through the deadline funnel, but then get to the end, don't get to the timeline? What strategies would you have for following up with those people afterwards?
00:26:45
Speaker
That's a great question. I think number one, a downsell is a great option. If you have a downsell, maybe that's a piece of your course. If you're selling a course, maybe you can split off a part of it that you see as sort of the quote unquote essential part of it. And so, carts closed, you send them an email the next day and say, hey, listen, I understand this investment might have been too much at this time. If you still want a piece of what I've been offering, try this.
00:27:09
Speaker
you know so a downsell is a great option if someone is willing to take advantage of the downsell and then they get into the downsell and by going through that smaller piece of the course realize the value that's there it's not gonna be any surprise when they upgrade let's say to access the rest of the course.
00:27:24
Speaker
Again, I think that having them purchase something, especially if they're a first-time purchaser from you, is super important even if they're only spending a dollar on a downsell because it changes the relationship from lead to customer. A downsell, I think, is a great option. Giving that person another option at that offer is not a bad thing either. This is going to differ depending on what kind of business you're running.
00:27:49
Speaker
So, for instance, one business that I'm thinking of, the timeframe in which that product would be relevant to the person purchasing is a very narrow timeframe. So, it's better for them to put that offer back in front of somebody sooner than later. For other people, maybe the offer isn't as time sensitive like that. So, maybe that offer could still be relevant to that person a year from now. So, you can find other places to put that offer back in front of them.
00:28:19
Speaker
I have a question for you with Thrivecart specifically. I'm sure you have a lot of different examples of this, but when you purchase through Thrivecart, how does it deliver the product? So let's say it's a digital product or it's a course, like what's going to happen next on the other end of Thrivecart when they put their credit card in?
00:28:39
Speaker
It depends on what kind of product that you are delivering because you're acting practically like what happens on the other end. You can sell physical products through Thrivecart so it can integrate with a dropshipping company so that that information sent straight to the dropshipping company and then the dropshipping company sends out the product, a digital product.
00:28:58
Speaker
It doesn't do a great job of delivering digital products because I think that there's file size limits. So if the file is small enough, you might be able to do it. But when we were delivering digital products through Thrivecart, we would typically have our email service provider or email marketing platform, which is ConvertKit, deliver whatever the digital product is. And if, for example, you're using a tool that doesn't integrate, like right now we talked about, I don't think Flowdesk integrates with these two, does it? Or have you found a hack around that?
00:29:25
Speaker
Flowdesk integrates with Zapier. And I recorded a podcast recently that goes into Zapier somewhat, but Zapier is a tool that just makes integrations between products that don't have an integration easy. If you sign up for a tool that integrates with Zapier, that's typically a good thing because that's going to open you up to being able to integrate with a bunch of other tools that might not have a direct integration. Yeah. So literally what it does just for the audience
00:29:49
Speaker
is it's like it fires off a trigger between two tools. So it kind of like is the pigeon between the tools so that if you purchase a course on Thrivecart and it's coming from Kajabi, it's gonna trigger Kajabi just to send you a login and how to get your details started there.
00:30:04
Speaker
And that's still actually with WooCommerce and Kajabi. There's not a great integration between the two. So we use Zapier to help when people purchase a website from us, we give them access to a setup course. But depending on what kind of website they purchase, they get access to different courses.
Planning and Organizing Sales Funnels
00:30:21
Speaker
So we have to use Zapier to set that up so that when somebody purchases a product that they get set up with the right course.
00:30:27
Speaker
So these are all great funnel tools, whether they're for sales funnels or email funnels. But I really want to specifically ask you, because I took a piece of paper to kind of plan out my funnel. I'm working on a little digital product. What is your favorite way to like kind of plan, like literally draw out and map out all the triggers and the zaps and kind of the workflow? How do you do that?
00:30:47
Speaker
pen and paper is my favorite way. We should have had Jesse Marcheccio on for this because he uses some sort of mapping tool that gets super fancy. And there's a ton of tools out there. If you just type in funnel mapping tool, Google will give you a thousand different solutions. Maybe not a thousand, but a lot.
00:31:05
Speaker
I think pen paper is really helpful at this stage though because there are all these little things like going off on the side and little notes to make and it's a convoluted process like creating a sales funnel and sales page. It's probably going to require something like Sana I use.
00:31:18
Speaker
or click up to kind of help plan for so you know you can do each part of the step. But it is a really beautiful choreography when it all comes together. Just on that topic, you know, I think we get questions a lot about what tools we use. And I think people over complicate the entire process. I mean, you don't really need a lot of different tools in order to execute this.
00:31:37
Speaker
I mean, very minimally, like Kajabi, for instance, you could use just Kajabi's tool and that would give you access to email. You can build landing pages with it. It has a built-in cart that you could use. So with Kajabi, you could do all of that. But I think where people get confused is they try to piece a bunch of different tools together. And again, these are my favorite, but
00:31:55
Speaker
So, not counting your website, which you would obviously need in order to build, let's say, a sales page, right? You know, you build your sales page. That sales page at the end of it has a cart. You need an email marketing platform to send emails to people so that they know about the offer that's going on. The great thing about a tool like Deadline Funnels or any sort of timer tool out there, and again, if you're just doing a simple cart opens on one day, cart closes on another, you can use any timer tool.
00:32:19
Speaker
But something like that or deadline funnels is that it creates a sense of urgency, lets people know how long it is left in the offer and hopefully encourages them to purchase. So many great tools and it is really fun when it comes together. You brought up one thing that I think, I don't know if it's a tool, but landing pages specifically for sales pages because
00:32:41
Speaker
landing pages are really, really different from your about page and your blog page and things like that. And I know you guys do and you sell landing pages, but I think this is a worthwhile investment because it lives on your website. The transition from going from a blog post to your landing page can be really smooth and it's on brand. So even though I wouldn't call it like a tool, so to speak, I do think it's something that people should invest in some kind of template where they can create sales pages and you can change it like
00:33:08
Speaker
adjust them to become an upsell, downsell, you're literally just changing the graphics and a copy on the page. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's so many tools out there that make it easy that there's no reason that you should start from scratch
Building Effective Landing Pages
00:33:19
Speaker
with them. And of course, there's landing page tools, which I think are becoming largely superfluous, like lead pages and things like that. Most of us can use our website tools in order to build landing pages or sales pages, and just some clarification around the two.
00:33:33
Speaker
A landing page could technically be any page that somebody lands on, right? Typically when we talk about landing pages, we're talking about lead magnet landing pages. So opt-ins, you know, so somebody lands on a page and they opt-in to download a freebie, let's say. And then when we talk about sales pages, we're talking about longer pages. There's just more content on them that typically you can scroll through that their entire purpose is to sell a product, let's say. I totally agree. I mean, I think most people can use whatever website builder they're using.
00:34:02
Speaker
And there's generally a lot of pre-made templates out there, and we have some of those that you can just plug and play with. And so on the sales page specifically, when they're clicking on the button, like Sid that says, purchase now, like yes, I'm ready, it will take them to a Thrive cart, like hosted cart, or does that live on your website as well? Can it be like a pop-up?
00:34:23
Speaker
Let's just review it from start to finish real quick. And then I think we just need to record another episode. For people who are interested in selling online, this is a podcast for service-based businesses. I think right now, especially within the season that we're in, where a lot of us can't perform services, we're looking to sell online. So I think it'd be a timely episode. But just to review the process, quote unquote, start to finish as if we could do that in five minutes.
00:34:46
Speaker
Typically, you send an email, right? Letting people know of the offer and you're going to send a series of emails over however long the launch is going on. When people click off the email to see your offer, they're going to go to a sales page, wherever that's built. Typically, it's somewhere on your website. Like I said, you can use your website builder to build a sales page. From the sales page, typically, the Buy Now button is going to bring you to your cart. So something like Thrive Cart. So you click Buy Now, go to Thrive Cart.
00:35:14
Speaker
On Thrivecart, when you actually purchase, if Thrivecart directly integrates with whatever tool you're using, then hopefully you can just directly send the product, send the server, you know, whatever it might be. Send the physical product, send the digital product, whatever. If it doesn't, you can use something like Zapier so that automatically when somebody purchases, they get hooked up with whatever the next steps are. Yeah, there's so many different ways that you can do it, right? And you didn't even bring in, which is why it needs to be another episode.
00:35:43
Speaker
the whole concept of Facebook ads, pixels. It does get complicated. I would encourage people who are listening at home that are getting started. There's a lot of tools that you probably already have access to that you can use. And free tools when you can use them are great, but I wouldn't use free tools for certain things, especially if you're going to have to redo that work when you upgrade to a paid tool. So something to just keep in mind.
00:36:08
Speaker
Hopefully just listening to some information about each of these tools. Maybe these are tools that
Conclusion and Future Episodes
00:36:13
Speaker
you want to check out. Maybe in general, it just gave you some thoughts around different tools that you can use. We will have to record another episode on building a funnel for those of you who are interested in taking this a step further. It might take a couple. Yeah, it might be a three-part episode. All right. Well, thank you, Vanessa, for joining me today. Yeah, thank you.
00:36:36
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.