MBA2526 How To Run Ads For Free with Self-liquidating Offers

0:05Hey everyone, welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zinhome and I'm very excited to teach today's lesson where you will learn how to run ads for free using self-liquidating offers. What is self-liquidating offers? It sounds very fancy, but basically it means that you're going to be paying for the money that you spend on ads with small offers that are made to everybody who opts into the ad. I'm going to break it down step by step. I've used this method over and over and over to grow both my business here at the$100 MBA and our software company, Webinar Ninja. Now, the crazy thing is that when I've discovered this strategy, I thought, why didn't anybody talk about this earlier?

0:47Why didn't anybody tell me about this? This is why I wanted to do a lesson about this so badly. Because once you know how to do this, this is like being able to print money. It's being able to get sales on demand because a lot of people worry about, oh my God, I want to know I need to run ads. I know I need to spend on marketing, but I don't have the cash, I don't have the money to invest in marketing. Well, I'm going to show you how you can do it for free, how you can actually pay for all your ad dollars through a simple step-by-step process. The beauty of today's lesson of knowing how to create self-liquidating offers is that you're going to know how to use them not only to pay for your ads, but to generate leads and sales.

1:27This is pretty crazy, so I can't wait to break it down and show exactly how to do it. By the end of today's lesson, at the end of the next 15 minutes, you're going to be able to create ads that pay for themselves and a way for you to get more and more sales over and over and over. You can implement this immediately. When we started using self-liquidating offers at Webinar Ninja, it transformed our marketing strategy because we're able to run ads, not worrying about the cost of the ads because of the way the cost paid for themselves through our offers, through our webinars, which I'll explain in detail in a moment.

2:03But this approach really allowed us to scale our marketing efforts in a way that we couldn't do before. So if you feel constricted, don't worry. This is really going to change the game for you. So let's just start with this first step. Step one. Okay. Step one here is to run ads. Now mind my bad handwriting here, but you're gonna have to live with it. All right. So step one, run ads. Okay. This is very simple. We recommend when you're getting started to use something simple like Facebook, right? Or Instagram, which is basically meta. Now they're one company, as you know, or may know, and you can run both ads in the same interface.

2:46Now, how do you run ads? How do you open up the interface? What do you do? It's actually not that complicated and you can find plenty of videos walking you through how to create an ad, but I'm going to give you some tips. And it's very easy. Creating an ad requires basically three things. One is some sort of media. So this could be, you know, photos. It could be video. It could be a carousel of photos. But if you want to keep things simple, one photo representing what the ad's about. And we'll talk about the ad in a second. Two, you're going to need some copy, right? Some words that describe what you're offering.

3:25And number three is you're going to have a CTA, a call to action or a link to where they're supposed to go. Okay. So this is all part of step one, right? Of how to run ads. You want to make sure that you cover this first. Okay. So first of all, what are you doing in this ad? What are you actually promoting in this ad? Well, this is very important. A lot of people, they run ads to their website or they run ads to their product or service directly. Nobody buys like that. A stranger who just falls upon your ad is not going to buy in a second, not knowing anything about you. We don't buy that. Think about the way you bought anything online.

4:05You've built a relationship with that company. So we want to convert as high as possible, meaning that we want to have as many people that see our ad click the ad. And then when they click the ad, they opt in, give their name and email address so that we can be able to get as many people on our list. And I'll talk about what we're going to do later. But here, the point here is, is that the ad's goal is to get their email. Okay. Because once I have their email, then I can continue to work on this whole process and have the ad pay for itself. Okay. So what do we do? How do I get them to give their name and email address.

4:41Well, what I need to do is I need to give them something super valuable that they will be dying to get by just giving their name and email address. Okay. So you need to think about what's the biggest pain point of your audience. What's their biggest problem? What are they worried about? Right. And create something that solves that worry, or at least a part of that worry so that they can start getting on the journey or start getting on the path of completely solving it. Okay. It doesn't matter what it is. You know, your customer best. Okay. I'm going to go to an example, like say I'm a snowboard instructor.

5:16Okay. And if I'm teaching beginners how to snowboard, okay, what's their biggest fear? Their biggest fear is hurting themselves, right? Not looking like they are an amateur, not knowing how to get their gear, not knowing how to, you know, put on the gear, all this stuff, right? Basically, they're worried about not looking like a fool on day one of their ski trip. So what we want to do here is we want to address this pain point. Okay. Say for example, somebody's going skiing for the first time and you're going to be running this ad maybe during, you know, ski season in the Northern Hemisphere when it's winter and Southern Hemisphere when it's winter there.

5:51The point here is, is that I want to target that pain point. What's the pain point? The first day, how to get down the mountain on on your first day, right? How to have an enjoyable first day on a snowboard, how to prepare and not feel embarrassed as a first time snowboarder, whatever it might be. Okay. This could be in a form of a checklist. This could be a guide. It could be a short video, but the point here is that it needs to be quick, quick for consumption, meaning they don't want to download something that's going to take them hours to consume. You want them to get the win quickly. So this is like maybe a 15 minute video.

6:27It could be a one pager where it gives them a guide or an illustration of what to do, some tips, things to look out for. The point here is, is that you want them to download this thing, consume it immediately, feel like they got a win. So they want to get more from you. They want to really understand what else you can offer and how you can solve other problems and pains they have. Okay. So very simple. You're going to create something like that one pager guide and or checklist or something like that. And you're going to offer it as your opt-in. So what happens here? OK, so let's let's talk about the ad.

7:03So they see the ad. OK, and the ad goes and they see an image about this. You know, let's say this this one page guide on how to master your first day on a snowboard. There's some copy there explaining what it is. And then there's a link. OK, there's a link here. CTA. Right. And it sends them to your website. This is where you're going to have step two, okay?

7:29Website pages. You're going to have two pages on your website that are very important. First page here is the actual opt-in page, right? The page where they give their name and email, right? And it's a pretty standard page. You've seen it a million times. It kind of looks like this, a page that looks like this. And, you know, it has an image or a video and some copy. and then a place for to put their name and email address and a submit button, you know, subscribe, right? Right. And that's basically what it is. And usually this is called a squeeze page as well, because there's no header or footer, meaning there's no way for them to click away and get distracted.

8:09This is just a page for them to basically do what the ad said that they can do, like give your name and address and I'm going to give you this great guide. This could show them all the benefits of the guide. Okay. or the one pager or whatever it is. So this is the first page on the website. The second page, just as important as this page, and this is called your thank you page. But on the thank you page, this is the page you see immediately after you give their name and email address to hit submit. What do they see after that? They're going to see a one time offer. This is a very effective page because you're getting the lead right now at the most hottest, the most interested they're going to be, right?

8:52They saw the ad, they clicked, they put their name and email address. They are keen to learn more about this solution to your problem. Now, the one-time offer is basically exactly what it sounds like. It's an offer for them to buy something from you at a low cost at a great deal. Okay. So let's say this is$49. Okay. $49. And it's basically, let's say, a full set of videos that they can watch and follow to learn how to snowboard on the first couple days of snowboarding. So like crash course, right? A one-on-one course. And it's$49. And you can take me with you on your phone and you can watch this anytime you want, anywhere you are.

9:33Okay. And this goes with the guide, right? It's your first day. Do you want to learn how to be able to snowboard in a couple of days? I'll show you these videos. We have the ad. Okay. This is step one. Then they click on the CTA. They go to your website, right? This is step two, the website. They click on the page. They get the opt-in page, they opt-in, and they have the thank you offer. Okay. Or the one-time offer. Now we're going to do a little math. Don't worry. It's not complicated. It's very, very simple. Okay. But let's just run the numbers here really quick and let's see what would this look like?

10:13Okay, what would this look like? Let's say, for example, I decided to spend$2 ,000 on my credit card for ads. I spent$2 ,000. Okay, and I'll just maybe go a clean page here. Ad spend$2 ,000. Okay, so$2 ,000. Let's say, for example, out of that ad spend, it cost me$5 per lead. These are just rough numbers. Don't worry, we're going to talk about these numbers in a moment and how to adjust some of the levers you could pull. Let's say it cost me$5 to get one lead. That means with$2 ,000, I can get 400 leads. Okay, this is just an example. We're going to play with different numbers later. But let's just see an example.

10:53400 leads. I spent$2 ,000, I got 400 leads. So 400 people went to this page and put their name and email address and saw the one-time offer. Okay, because it's an immediate page to see after. This is not how many people have gone to the page. It's how many people actually gave their name and email address. So 400 people do that. Let's say only 10%, only 10 % of the people that opt in and see the one-time offer take the one-time offer. Okay? So that means that you have 10 % of the people. So let's say we have 40 people that buy this$49 offer, which is this course, remember, on the one-time offer.

11:33So this is$1 ,960. You make$1 ,960 on the one-time offer of only 10 % people, 10 % of the leads by the one-time offer. Okay. So already with this number, I am pretty much covering the cost of my ads that I paid 2004. Okay. Purely because I gave a one-time offer. Okay. Now this is not where it ends. Okay. This is not where it ends. This is what's beautiful about this. I just made all my ad dollars. You just got 400 leads in your email list in this example for free. Okay. You didn't spend a dime. You spent four, in this case,$40. Okay. But we'll talk about how we can make sure we're actually making money on this in a moment.

12:21So now you have all these leads, you have 40 new customers. What's the next step here? How do we make more money out of this whole situation. Okay. The next step we have here in this process is a webinar. Okay. So we have step one, which is the actual ad step two, they go to the website, they have the one-time offer and step three is a webinar. Webinar is very simple. I've been doing webinars since 2012 and I've run over 500 in my career. Webinars are great because you're able to demo your product or service. You're able to show value. You're able to answer questions. You're able to find out what their pains and issues are, and you can show how your product or service solves them on the webinar live.

13:04And they're very, very powerful. I've been using them in my businesses for the last decade because they really generate a lot of sales quickly. So what do we do in this webinar? Again, we build trust with our audience. We show them our product or service, and we're going to invite those 400 leads that we got. Okay. We're going to invite 400 people to this webinar and say, hey, 400 people, I have this webinar. I'm going to be showing you my latest product. It does XYZ or the service. If you have these problems, it solves these problems. I can explain exactly how it does it and how it could do it with ease, all that kind of stuff.

13:41Come to this webinar. I invite them to the webinar. Let's say 400 people, some people are busy. Some people can't make it. Only 100 people go to this webinar, let's say. 25%, only 100 people from your list go from this 400 leads, go and attend this webinar. And from the 100 people, let's say another 10%, just 10%. By the way, this is not that ambitious. I've converted on webinars for sales 30 % and above. Okay. So this is very modest. So 10%, let's say 10 % by your offer. Now this is maybe your flagship product or service, but let's say you have a product or service for 500 or to$1 ,000. you can easily offer that, showing them a great deal, showing them the value of your product on the webinar.

14:29But let's say, for example, you're on the low end and that product of yours is$500 or service is$500. So$500 times how many? 10 customers here, the 10 % of the 100, right? We got an additional, what? $5 ,000 in sales. Gross profit right here because the ads paid for themselves with a one-time offer. Guess what? You have 300 people here that never seen this webinar, never been to the webinar, that you can then pull into the next webinar and do this again and get 10 % of those people if you've got some modest numbers and sell them your flagship product and get another$5 ,000. This is the beauty of this system.

15:11It's absolutely amazing and it's easy to implement. Again, recap, three steps. You're going to run an ad. The ad's going to go to your website. Step two, they opt into your website. You have the one-time offer. They buy the one-time offer. Some people do, some people don't. Don't worry about it. And you get a certain amount of money to cover your ads or cover your ad spend. And then you send an email to your audience, those 400 people that you just got, say, hey, come to my webinar. You do the webinar. You sell on your webinar, 10 % buy, you get an initial$5 ,000 in this example. Now, let's talk about the different levers.

15:47There are different levers in the system that if you play with these levers, you can improve your outcomes, right? Some of these levers are going to have to fine tune in the beginning because you want to make sure that you're breaking even on the one-time offer with your ad spend and then everything else is gravy from there on in. So let's take a look. The first one here is your CAC. This is your CAC. How much does it cost to acquire a customer? Okay. There's also a lever here called cost per lead. Okay. This goes back, and we're going to talk about CAC in a moment. Don't worry. We're going to get back to it.

16:21But cost per lead is the one we talked about is this number here,$5. Let's say it costs you$5 to get a lead, right? And you spend 2000 that gives you 400 people, right? We put the ad spend here, right? So your cost per lead is going to affect a lot of things because the lower your cost per lead, the more leads you can get, the more chances you'll have to get them to buy the one-time offer, the more chances you'll have to get them to buy the webinar. Don't obsess about this too much because you want quality leads. It's better for me to have a hundred quality leads than a thousand lousy leads that, you know, there are a bunch of tire kickers that are not going to buy anything.

17:00I'd rather have a hundred quality customers rather than 500 lousy customers where, you know, the conversion rate is horrible and I only get like one sale out of that 500 people versus, let's say I get 20 sales out of the hundred people. That's a huge difference. So you really want to make sure that you get quality leads. We're looking for the most targeted leads. So even if you have to pay a little bit more per lead, it's better. But you want to get your cost per lead as low as possible. So say, for example, your cost per lead is$5, right? Then you know that if you spend X amount of money, you're going to get X amount of leads.

17:36So in our example, $2 ,000 gets you 400 leads, right? But if my cost per lead is, let's say$10 instead, then I'm going to get half the leads with$2 ,000. I'm going to get 200 leads, okay? Now, that might be okay in the beginning. I want to see the quality of those leads because I might convert a lot of people in the one-time offer. I have to go through the cycle. But as you run this a few times, you will then know how to figure out, okay, I need to lower my cost per lead if I want to get more leads because I want to be able to get more chances at bat at the one-time offer. The next thing is the conversion rate.

18:12Conversion rates on what? One, the one-time offer, and then two, the webinar sales, right? Let's say, for example, I only get 200 leads from my spend, right? But I'm able to convert half of them on the one-time offer. Now I got a hundred one-time offer customers versus if I had 10 % conversion on the one-time offer, okay? And I get 40, okay? So 40 is less than a hundred, right? So we want to make sure that we have a high conversion. So this means we have to modify and edit and make sure that our one-time offer page is high converting the copy, the images, making it simple. We need to test different things to see if it works.

18:56This is where we tweak this page. Same thing with the webinar. We need to test the webinar, our script, our sales offer, how we present, when we present the offer, all that kind of stuff needs to be tested so that we can increase the conversion rate. So back to the CAC. The CAC is the cost per acquisition of customer, right? So this is why we do the one-time offer because I need to get my customers used to buying. If they buy a low ticket offer, they are going to be more likely to buy my higher ticket offer. This is what I've learned. A lot of people don't understand this, but the most valuable customer you have is your customer, right?

19:35Your customers are more likely to buy from you than your actual leads or people that never heard of you. So this is why I want to make sure my cost per customer is as low as possible. So how I figure out my cost per customer? Well, it's easy. How many customers do I get with the ad spend? Okay. So in this example, we had 400 leads and then 40 people bought the one-time offer. So 40 people, I got 40 customers and I paid$2 ,000 for those ads in the beginning, right? So all I got to do is divide$2 ,000, you know, 40 into 2000, and I get a dollar CAC. So this is my cost per acquisition,$50. Very good CAC.

20:18So we want to get this as low as possible, because if I can get more and more people to buy for me, they're going to buy for me again and again and again. So we did a lot of math. We did a lot of kind of step-by-step stuff. But let's quickly recap. Very simple. Three steps. Add. Sends them to the page on your website where they give the name and email address. As soon as they put that name and email address, the next page they see is the one-time offer, right? The one-time offer is a low ticket offer. Let's say$49. Maybe for you, it might be$29. It might be$99. Up to you. But you want to make sure it's kind of a no-brainer, which a good example of it was that snowboarding course.

20:56so they could take it with them on the mountain along with the guide they just downloaded for free. Now I have a one-time offer. Some people will buy, some people won't, but I still have all those leads. Then I can then get those leads into my webinar. I can sell my products and services and I can do that over and over to all my leads have been on my webinar, right? I can continue to rinse and repeat, which is incredible. And the point of the one-time offer is to pay for the ads. The one-time offer pays for the ad. So I want to get as many sales as I can to cover my ad spend. Guess what? I'm going to do this over and over and over.

21:32I take the money that I made from the one-time offer. I reinvest it into ads and do it again. Now, the key here is you want to grow your marketing efforts. So you want to grow your conversion rate on your one-time offer. So instead of getting X amount of customers, you want to get more than X. You want to get 10 % more, 20 % more, 30 % more customers. So you want to increase the conversion rate of your one-time offer page because that way, instead of making$2 ,000 back, you're making$4 ,000 back. And now you're doubling your investment on ads. There you have it guys, super simple. When I learned this, it changed my world.

22:11It changed my whole business. Okay. And it made it so simple for me to be able to continue to run ads over and over and over. Now, the thing is, is that it's going to take you some time to learn how to run a Facebook ad, how to collect these leads, how to nurture them, how to run a great webinar, how to create a great offer, but that's okay. Baby steps. And because you have a kind of solid plan now, you could start with something and start fine tuning until you one, cover your expenses of your ad spend with your one-time offer, than two up the ante and make more money on the one-time offer than the ad spend so you can then reinvest into your marketing thanks for tuning into the hundred dollar mba show i hope you found this episode valuable and you're ready to implement these self-liquidating offers into your marketing strategy if you want more insights you want more business lessons for free just go to our website over at 100mba.net over there you can search by topic and find all our episodes on, let's say, sales, marketing, finance, team, tools, whatever you want.

23:13And you'll find all the episodes there and you can just go ahead and binge. We have over 2 ,500 episodes in our archives, so go ahead and enjoy. There you have it. That's today's episode. We have a new episode three times a week, so make sure you subscribe so you get the next one automatically. I'll see you on the next one. Take care.