I recently had an experience that was a brilliant case study in how to turn OFF the people who are most likely to buy from you and pay you really well. đŸ˜¬
I’m going to tell you what happened and then I’m going to also share what I would have done instead if I were this seller.
She was an SEO expert, and our conversation went something like this:
Her: “If I were to offer you my service where I go through your blog posts and adjust all the titles for better SEO, would you be interested?”
Me: “Not necessarily, because I don’t know what specific value that would have for my business. But I’m open to hearing.”
Her: “Oh, okay. You’re probably not my ideal client then. My ideal client would see the value.”
End of discussion.
!
Interesting, right?
The thing is – ideal clients DO see value in the type of high-ticket service you offer – in general. (That’s me!)
But they aren’t magically going to know what SPECIFIC value your services would offer for their business.
I’m going to wager a guess that this person thought I knew nothing about SEO or its benefits.
But I actually do!
I have a basic understanding. I know that you can get more people landing on your site via search engines if different parts of the site have certain keywords and are written in a certain way.
But that doesn’t mean that I automatically think that her “adjust-your-blog-post-titles” service would ultimately increase my business’s bottom line.
Because there are a lot of specifics that I don’t know:
Does she know how to word my blog post titles to get the RIGHT people landing on my site?
I sell a very specific thing: high-ticket consulting services for coaches and experts. The types of people who would buy a high-ticket service need to be spoken to (or written to) differently than others.
How do I know that she understands this? How do I know that she wouldn’t “fix” my blog post titles in a way that would actually start bringing me the wrong people?
(I actually wrote a post last week about a copywriter who keeps emailing me “advice” on how to change the subject lines of my emails. And allllll of his advice is about making them less clear, more hype-y, and – in short – more likely to attract low-ticket buyers and freebie-seekers. He clearly only has a very superficial understanding of copy and doesn’t understand who I’m trying to attract and how copy needs to shift based on that. How do I know that this SEO expert wouldn’t make a similar error?)
Does she know roughly how much (additional) traffic it’s possible to get if my titles are upgraded?
I know no business expert can ever make exact predictions on this kind of thing – but I’m not looking for exact.
I just want to have an IDEA – has she looked at trends for my type of business? Is there a lot of competition for the kinds of keywords that I would be using? What has she seen in terms of traffic results for other people in my specific area (lead gen/client attraction for coaches and experts)?
Any information like that would allow me to get an idea of the potential ROI (return-on-investment) for my business – because I know my sales pathway and I roughly know my numbers, of how many audience members convert to clients.
There’s so much more I would want to know in order to understand the specific value for my business. But those are just a few examples.
Now, some would say that this person just needed to invite me to a conversation to understand my specific situation, then make a custom proposal.
And while that would’ve been better than just dismissing me as “not seeing the value,” I actually don’t think it’s the best path she could have taken.
Saying that she should just understand my situation first and make a custom proposal assumes that she is equally able to help people in all situations.
And that is doubtful. Most experts, by definition, aren’t expert in all situations.
I mean, I’ve spent almost 10 years working on understanding JUST how high-ticket individual coaching clients need to be talked to.
I can’t imagine being an expert in messaging to tons more types of buyers in tons more industries.
Maybe one or two more types – if I spent 10 additional years on each – but I’m not going to have enough years in my life for too many more than that.
So here’s what I actually think this person should have done instead (and of course I’m biased because I’m taking this recommendation from my own method, the Strong Methodâ„¢):
First, narrow her ideal client and outcome to what she’s actually an expert in.
So instead of saying that she can help any business to get “more traffic,” she’d say something like:
“I have an offer for coaches who offer high-ticket services and have already successfully sold them, and would now like to get approximately _____ [range/number] of traffic to their site so that they have a potential audience of _____ to get _____ sales of their offers.”
Now, as I’m not an SEO expert, I’m not sure exactly how these numbers and quantities would best be stated. I would need more of a conversation with the expert to understand better.
Of course, I fully acknowledge that the problem may actually be that she ISN’T an expert in a specific industry or type of client when it comes to SEO, so she may not be able to narrow her offer in this way (at least not in integrity).
Such a person would have to make the decision to niche and become experienced in that niche before I could help them with the proper wording of the niche.
But, at the same time, I also know that many people actually DO have a niche already – yet for some reason they still present themselves as more of a generalist.
With those people, I ESPECIALLY enjoy helping them to uncover the wording for the niche that is already there đŸ˜‰ (they just may not see it).
But let’s move on, assuming that she is a niche-specific expert and that the above description would be accurate for her “ideal client and outcome” statement.
Next, she would craft an offer that is very specific to helping that ideal client to achieve that outcome.
Maybe she could eliminate things she’d do with clients in other industries. Maybe she’d add something that is specific to coaches with high-ticket offers.
I’m not sure exactly without knowing her work better, but I do know that narrowing the ideal client and outcome almost always results in a tighter, more efficient and effective offer, and that’s a very good thing (especially if you want to charge more money for less of your time).
Next, she’d use the Strong Methodâ„¢ 500-word offer post framework to pitch this specific offer regularly on social media (assuming she regularly adds coaches into her profile audience via friending).
The way that works is that she’d start with the outcome we came up with a few paragraphs ago:
“I have an offer for coaches who offer high-ticket services and have already successfully sold them, and would now like to get approximately _____ [range/number] of traffic to their site so that they have a potential audience of _____ to get _____ sales of their offers.”
And then she’d list some bullet points of miniature outcomes of how she does this.
I don’t know what those bullet points should say without talking to her more, but maybe it’s things like:
“Here’s what I’ll do with you:
“1) Upgrade your blog post titles to be wording that your ideal clients are most likely Googling. To do this, I’ll pull from my bank of SEO titles that have already worked well to get high-ticket coaching clients landing on websites, and we’ll tailor them to your unique offer.
“2)” etc.
There’s more to the offer statement, but hope that gives an idea.
Finally, what she’d do is create daily essay-style posts that go more in-depth into her method for helping coaches to get more high-ticket-client-traffic to their sites.
Each post would focus on a problem that her ideal client is trying to solve, paired up with a piece of her method for solving it.
Some of the posts would also juxtapose the “piece of her method” with a contrasting method – like what her ideal clients may have already tried to get more eyeballs on their high-ticket offers, or (even better) what other SEO experts they’ve hired may have tried that doesn’t work as well as her method.
For example:
“One reason you may be getting very few high-ticket enrollments from your website could be that your blog post titles don’t have _____”
(this is where I’m grasping for what the wording should be because I’m not the expert in this area)
Continuing:
“This is something I’ve noticed time and again when I adjust my clients’ blog post titles to help them get more high-ticket buyers visiting their sites.
“Other SEO services will often do _____ [opposite of what she’s recommending] and I want to explain why that doesn’t work.
“[explains why that doesn’t work, in about 300-ish words]
“Let me now give an example of how I adjusted a client’s blog post title just this morning and why that’s likely to work well to get her ideal clients landing on her site.
“[gives the example, explains and unpacks in about 500 words or more]
“Adjusting blog post titles to get _____ [number? quantity?] of traffic to coaches’ sites is part of what I do in my 2-month private intensive. I also do [list other things that she may do in this service that weren’t relevant to this post’s topic].
“Send me a DM if you’re interested in this service. If you want a bit more information, here’s a link: [LINKS TO 500-WORD OFFER POST]”
Phew!
If this SEO expert were posting this kind of stuff every day, you can bet I’d be the one messaging HER saying that the 2-month service sounded like exactly what I needed, and happily paying her high-ticket fee.
Because she’s making it SO EASY for me.
Her content is connecting the dots so masterfully as to why I need exactly what she’s offering and why it’s designed for someone exactly like me.
High-ticket buyers typically won’t make all the effort to ask you all the questions (or do all the research) to connect all those dots for themselves – but they will happily throw money at you if you do it FOR them.
I think of this way of marketing and post-writing as an extension of the white-glove treatment that high-ticket clients get once they’re inside of our programs.
Even before they’re a client, we’re answering all their questions (even ones they didn’t know they had), explaining how the offer will solve their exact issues, as well as what kinds of results can be expected.
Cool, huh?
Making it easy for high-ticket buyers to say “yes” to you is what my entire method (the Strong Methodâ„¢), and my 1-on-1 program, are aimed at.
In fact, saying “yes” typically means DMing you that they want into your program (with no objections, of course) when you’ve never even spoken to them before – they just came to this conclusion from bingeing your content.
When content is posted in the proper frequency (this is an approximately-daily posting method), and the “friend-audience” is continually growing, the right person can easily make 1-6 (or more) high-ticket sales per month with an extremely small amount of time spent on sales conversations (as the wrong people are filtered away by your content, and the right people have few to no questions).
In my 30-day 1:1 intensive, I help you to work through every task that I suggested the SEO expert do in this post (and I give detailed feedback, frameworks, and guidance every step of the way).
That includes: narrowing your ideal client and offer (assuming your narrow niche is actually there and just not being articulated), writing the 500-word offer pitches, writing the essay-style content, handling the super-simple sales conversations, and growing your organic audience if needed.
More information about the program is available here.
The next step is to send me a Facebook DM if you’re interested, and we’ll do a quick Messenger chat to see if it’s a good fit for you and your business.
If you want more information on the full Strong Methodâ„¢ as well as its blueprints for the 500-word offer statements and the essay-style posts, check out this post.
Here are links to a few specific things:
Overview of entire Strong Methodâ„¢: HERE
Training on how to write the 500-word offer statements: HERE
Training on how to write the essay-style posts: HERE
Feel free to DM me on Facebook or tag me in my free Facebook group if you have questions about anything or need help finding something. đŸ™‚