I recently shared a behind-the-scenes look at what happened at our Accelerator retreat. We all went around and shared what was working in our businesses right now and to tell you the truth, nothing was revolutionary.

It was all of the fundamental business methods that we have heard time and time again. It goes to show that what’s old really is new. When you stick to it, refine as you go, and do what feels good for you and aligns with the audience that you want to help, that’s when things really click.

In this episode of Art of Online Business, I’m sharing three small case study examples of “creative” funnels that a few of my Accelerator members are doing right now that are working really well. 

None of these methods are revolutionary or new. It’s all about staying consistent and doing what aligns with you and how you want to serve your clients.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How one member uses weekly live webinars
• How another member uses monthly paid live workshops
• How a different member offers different membership offers
• How a member filled their offer by knowing their audience
• Why these methods work so well

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

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Transcript:

A couple of episodes ago here on the podcast, I was sharing with you a few details about our accelerator retreat live retreat here in San Diego that took place a few weeks ago at the middle of October. And I talked about this whole concept of what’s old, is new, and gave me the example of at the end of day, two of the retreat, went around the room, asked everybody to share one thing that was working for them in their business right now, and nothing was revolutionary. You know, everyone’s always looking for the latest hack, the advance funnel tactic or whatever. And my friend, it’s the foundational stuff that works. And when you stick to it and refine as you go and do what feels good for you and aligns with the audience that you want to be helping, that’s when things really click. And on today’s episode here of The Art of Online Business podcast, I want to share with you sort of three just small case study examples of some of the I would even I’m going to even put air quotes around creative funnels that a few of our accelerator members are doing in their business with a lot of success. And the first one, this person is doing an evergreen version of their, of their launching, of their webinar launching, but they’re doing evergreen in the form of weekly live webinars. That’s right. They’re doing weekly live webinars. And I know that some of you listening right now are just like, Oh my gosh, I could never do that. 

I did weekly live webinars for about a year back in, I want to say like seven years ago, and it was because I was terrible at webinars. I wanted to get really good at them and so I just did it week in and week out, week in and week out. I did live webinars and ran Facebook ad traffic to the registration and then I would do the webinars and that’s exactly what this member of our accelerator program is doing in their business right now. This is the one way they sell their one program. It’s a 2000 program and they do a weekly live webinar. So the same exact time every single week they show up, deliver the webinar, and then they’re done. Everything else, like all the tech and automation, everything, everything’s already set up. And it’s again, it’s a 2000 program. They’re selling it to cold traffic because they just run Facebook ads, Facebook and Instagram ads to get people to register. And they have a 20% conversion rate, a 20% conversion rate on a 2000 program to cold traffic. So why does this work? Why is that conversion rate so high? Well, they know their audience so well. They are their audience. They have been their audience. They still they still are. And they’ve stuck to a strategy and honed it. It wasn’t always this successful. But the key here is that they saw enough success with it that they’re like, okay, this is working. 

I don’t mind doing this. Each week they’ve created a system where again, the ads are running all the time and all they have to do is go in each week after the after the webinar and just update the dates accordingly on the landing page, no changes to the ads and so forth. And check this out. The ads have been running for a very long time. So they have social proof and they have history with the algorithm. And and they’ve been I mean, this is an anomaly, right? Because the ads fatigue so quickly and they’ve been able to run the same ads for a very long time because they just flat out work. And again, I really believe this works so well because they know their audience so well. And so, yeah, so that is one small case study of how one of our members is just really crushing their launches and their weekly live launches. I’m going to say launches in air quotes here. It’s an evergreen funnel, essentially. And they do the webinar, you know, they do the hey register for the webinar, then they get the the emails to show up live. They’ve got a good show up live, right? I don’t recall what it is. And then afterwards they have this special offer to enroll, and it’s followed by I think it’s like a three day email follow up sequence, and then they turn around and go right into the next getting people to register for the next webinar.

And then they do sort of like a collection, if you will. And I don’t recall the number of days, but I want to say it’s like 90 days. After 90 days, everybody who registered for the webinar like the webinars over the past 90 days but didn’t attend, they get invited to another opportunity to attend live. And so this strategy just flat out works. I mean, they’re selling a 2000 program to cold traffic and converting it 20%. And I really, really think that I actually know that it’s because they they know their audience so well and they have really honed this strategy in, stuck with it, optimized it, and it’s just running along. They really know their numbers as well. So that’s the first sort of bite sized case study here for you. The second, quote unquote creative funnel is we have a member who is doing a live workshop. And they’re doing it monthly and it they charge for it’s $19 and the live workshop is about a is about a particular topic that is related to one of their larger. 2000 programs. Then after that, many of the people who enroll actually me. Let me back up there. So the funnel looks like this invite to a $19 live workshop and a lot of that a lot of that is ads, traffic. It’s coming directly, it’s ad directly to purchase and they’re converting super super well they’re they’re I don’t remember what. And I don’t remember what it cost to acquire a customer, but I know that it’s way lower than $19. 

So the funnel is just flat out working because number one, they’re making money off of that $19 purchase right up front. So again, it’s ad to directly to purchase the $19 live workshop. People show up to the live workshop and then they get also offered the one of the next 2000 programs that this person has. And then the conversion rate on that is really, really high. The people who go from the paid workshop into a $2,000 program and then many of those people who join the one of the 2000 programs move into this person’s certification program, which is a five figure program. And so her lifetime customer value, I don’t remember what the number is, but it’s a huge lifetime customer value. And the cost to acquire a customer is so low. And so again, why does this work? Same thing as the previous previous example. This person knows their target audience so well. This person is an expert in their space and this is they’ve been willing to test different strategies, different funnels to make this work. And when this person joined Accelerator, this person hated funnel, hated the word funnels, They were scared of funnels. They were like, I am not doing funnels. And I said, We’ll see about that. And here they are. And all these months later they’re like, I love funnels because it works. It’s like it’s growing. Her business, which was already a very successful business before they even started inside of Accelerator. 

So just a quick recap their ad to directly to purchase a $19 live workshop off the workshop. Then they offer one of their higher ticket programs. The conversion rate on that is extremely, extremely good. You know, there’s an email follow up sequence and so on. And then many of the people who enroll in one of those two K programs, many of those people move into their this person’s certification program, which is a five figure investment. And so, again, cost to acquire a customer is very low, lifetime, customer value is very high. And this is the key to the key to them scaling, knowing the numbers, playing around with these funnels and honing in again on something that works and really optimizing that as they go forward. All right. The next the third example, third sort of small case study example I want to share with you here on this quick tip episode is and again, what I want to point out to you is, again, none of these are revolutionary, right? These are all things that we’ve all been doing for years and years. It’s just a matter of, hey, doing what aligns with you. And it’s it’s basically them. I said this last time in this sounds terrible, like getting permission to try other things, which nobody needs permission to do that. But a lot of people feel like they do because they were taught sort of like in the beginner with this beginner information that’s very cookie cutter. 

And then there’s a fear of like, All right, well, I want to do this over here. But you know what? I wasn’t taught this way. Is it okay? Heck yeah, it’s okay. It all works, my friend. And it’s just got to align with what you want, what feels good to you and what how you’re going to serve your your potential customers. All right. The third case study here is has to do with memberships, and it is simply testing different membership offers. So, for example, doing 30 days or 14 days or seven days for a dollar, for example, or seven days free or whatever it might be, being willing to test different offers to get people into the membership, to try out the membership. And then and then obviously the hope is to get them to continue being a paid member of the membership. And the the other thing here that’s really, really key is to collect the email address before they do the offer, Right. So they land on a page, for example, explains the membership. And the special offer, and then you click a button and then like you’re collecting an email address right at that point. So why does this work? Number one, tracking everything I should say. How does this work? Tracking everything. You’ve got to know your data, especially what percentage of people convert from trial into paying members beyond the trial. And then that obviously is going to tell you how well each of the offers that you’re that you’re testing out is working. 

And once you find one that works, you hone in on that offer. All roads lead to that offer. And when you request the email, by the way, it lets you do an abandoned cart sequence, if you will, you know, and so if they give you their email and they don’t end up doing the trial, you can follow up with them. And then so that’s the idea. Again, very, very basic. Right? But we have several members who have been testing different offers for their membership and found one that works really, really well and they’re going all in on it because it’s working so well and because the percentage of people who go from trial offer into paying member after the trial is so high. And that says a lot about the about the onboarding process and the wins that they get them within that trial period etc.. And so all roads would lead to that to that offer, right? If you do a lead magnet, for example, you can get that a lead magnet that’s relevant to the membership, for example. All right, collected email address, download Lead Magnet on the Thank you page. You could offer that $1 trial. You could also go directly to a $1 trial from if you’re doing ads. But if you’re just on social media, you could go directly to $1 trial. If you’re marketing to your email list, for example, go directly to $1 trial.

So there’s a lot of different options there. But the key the key point here is testing different offers to see which one works the best. I would say get at least at least a thousand. I’d like to see 1000 people through a test, if you will, to or a funnel to get enough data. Right. You know, getting 100 people through something is not a large enough data set to see what’s working and what’s not. And so anyway, once you hone in on that offer, go in on it. All roads lead to that offer and then you’re continuing to optimize. So that’s working extremely well. And hey, I’m going to give you a bonus one, a fourth one. Now this in this little mini case study episode. So we have a member who launching a brand new membership and they were on the podcast here before and they shared this example here, launching a brand new membership. And the goal was to fill up the first get the first 100 people, first 100 founding members for the membership. They did three monthly live like multiple hour workshops, so 2 to 3 hour workshop on topics that would be cornerstone topics within the membership. And this is again over like a three month time period. So one month they’re doing a 2 to 3 hour workshop, totally free on a specific topic. And that topic is a one of the cornerstone topics of the membership. The next month they do what they would do a different topic, and on each of those workshops they got a ton of people signing up and then they would make the offer to be a founding member into the membership and they actually filled up all founding members. 

I’m not actually, I knew this would happen. They filled up all founding member spots before completing all the workshops and after completing the first couple of workshops, they they were filling the 100 spots, they were using email, they were using their social media. And so why was this so successful? There’s a theme here, my friend, right? They know and understand their target audience, and in their marketing, the marketing is relating to what the paid offer is. They are simply showing up and serving their target, their target audience, and they know them so, so well. And so that’s really the theme. Number one, know your target audience inside and out. I know you hear this time and time again, but it is it is the key to an easier time of growing your business in selling more of whatever your offers is. And the other huge lesson here is none of this is groundbreaking. This is this. It’s again. What’s old is new, my friends, it’s foundational stuff. It is being willing to test different things. It all works, right? And just figuring out what works for you, what feels good to you, and what what you feel is going to serve your customer or potential customers really, really well and in alignment with what you want to do with your values, etc. 

going in and testing it and learning from these tests. And once you find something that works, boom, go in on it. Hone it. All roads lead to that, whatever that is based on we’re talking about here. So hopefully, hopefully this was helpful for you if we made a bunch of changes to Accelerator, which I’m really excited about, one of which I have introduced one on one coaching calls, 30 minute one on one coaching calls with me every two weeks. You have access to one on one coaching with me every single week and dedicated calls. And that’s just one change we’ve made and I’m really excited about it. If you’re an established online course creator coach, or maybe you’ve got a membership and you’d like my help in growing and scaling your business, removing you from the bottleneck, helping you work way fewer hours while still growing your revenue and your profit and your impact would invite you to apply for accelerator. Just go to Rick Mul Radio.com forward slash accelerator or you can just shoot me an email. Rick at Rick walmart.com if you want to let me know a little bit about your business, we can start chatting and see if it might be a good fit for you. Thank you, my friend, as always for tuning in and listening to today’s episode. I appreciate you and I’ll see you right back here for the next episode of The Art of Online Business Podcast.