Is the majority of your coaching, speaking, or expert service provider business operating through offline marketing? Or do you primarily use online marketing? A lot of entrepreneurs actually struggle with integrating online and offline marketing in their business.

I believe that these two strategies work hand in hand. And you can actually build a bridge between online and offline marketing. In fact, you will even optimize your marketing strategies when you use both. Let me share with you how you can improve your business with online and offline marketing, and why each is equally important.

Benefits of Online & Offline Marketing for Your Business

Offline Marketing: Don’t Stop Doing It

Try this: two marketing strategies that have earned me millions (plus FREE swipe file): https://t.co/YE7BuuPOOV pic.twitter.com/XR9KMDVuYE

— Ted McGrath (@ted_mcgrath) October 23, 2017

One of the most dangerous things that you can do from a marketing perspective is change something that’s actually working. You might’ve observed that a lot of entrepreneurs are now using online marketing strategies. But if I were you, I’m not going to go online and fully give up everything I’m doing offline that’s working.

So if you’re already utilizing offline marketing — that is, you’re meeting with clients, signing them up, and enrolling them — don’t stop doing that. I think the biggest mistake in marketing is thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. And I’ve also made this mistake before. Online marketing helps you be more efficient, but offline marketing is also a great way to bring in revenue.

Whatever you’re doing that’s working, do more of it. That’s the most important thing I’ve learned in my business.

Identify What You Want to Sell

Now, I want you to isolate one thing that you want to sell. We’re going to talk about selling something that’s substantial in a way that it can bring in revenue for you.

Let’s say you’re an expert service provider, and you pick out a service that people pay you $1,000 a month for. Once you identify what you want to sell and set a goal to sell that, you’re off to a good start.

Now you have marketing strategy options. First is offline marketing, where you can go to networking events, talk to people, and enroll them in your $1,000-a-month service. Second is online marketing, where you can build a funnel online and enroll clients in your $1,000-a-month service.

Online and Offline Marketing Strategies

So let’s say that you chose to go with offline marketing, and you put your efforts in purely doing enrollment, then you sell your thousand-dollar service through that. It’s pretty basic, right? I will encourage you to continue having enrollment conversations.

Now when you go online, you’ll see people who sell online products. This is because one way to sustain your online marketing is by selling products. These are typically priced between $17 to $1,000.

But, when you sell a thousand-dollar product online, the challenge is, you have to sell a lot of those to make a living. And if you’re only starting out, and you’re brand new to this game, you have to sell a lot to actually bring in revenue.

For my business, we sell a lot of online products as well. But, our purpose for online selling is to acquire clients. We’re not making loads of revenue from selling those products. We make our money by selling clients into our programs or services.

Learn Online Marketing

Well, the first thing you must do is sell lots of products first. I also do this in my business. But still, even when people buy your products, the goal is to sell them your programs and services.

Don’t make it any more complicated. When you’re planning to market your business online, always remember that goal. So your frame of mind must be, “I’m selling services, so I need to create a funnel online that will sell more of my services and programs.” Makes sense?

If you’re currently leaning more towards offline marketing, I will advise you to expand to online marketing gradually. Your entire business doesn’t have to immediately rely on online marketing just because big entrepreneurs are doing it. If you completely let go of your offline strategies — or not even attempt to do them at all — you’re only setting yourself up for ‘I hope’ marketing.

I want you to get this. This is so important, so critical: it’s not going to rain money for you just because all of a sudden people are buying your products online.

You have to understand what it is you’re doing when you apply online marketing. Learn and understand the different strategies, and pick one that you will use for your business. Once you pick a strategy, learn its ins and outs. Find out how it will work for you. More importantly, how you’ll make money from it.

The Cost of Acquiring Clients

I’ll give you a perspective on how we do things in my business. The way we make money online is primarily through Facebook marketing. We sell our programs and services consistently through Facebook marketing.

Anytime you set out to sell a product, service, or program, there’s always a cost to acquire a client. That’s why from my perspective, simply sticking to selling online products will not gain you revenue if you’re brand new. You have to pay for online traffic to sell your product, and you make your money back when you sell the product.

So again, there is always a cost to get a client. If you’re doing offline marketing, you’re paying for it through your time and energy, as well as all the people you need to talk to so you can get that client. When you use online marketing, say through Facebook, you’re paying for that client through your advertising cost.

Even if you get strategic partners to promote you online, you still have to pay them. And the reality is, most strategic partners don’t really want anything to do with you until you have a list.

I think the best way to acquire clients online is to invest and allocate a marketing budget towards Facebook. Putting in $20 to $50 a day is good enough to start. The important thing is to begin somewhere in creating an advertising budget so you can actually acquire customers.

The Online Sales Funnel

Let me give you an overview of how my business’ online sales funnel works. First, we sell products on Facebook, like those priced between $37 to $97. We sell a lot of low-tier products. The primary purpose of selling these is to acquire a customer. We want to build a relationship where somebody becomes a customer by taking out their credit card and paying us. It’s that simple.

And when they pay us, we want them to consume our information, our product. The fact that they’ve committed to paying us means that they’re serious.

So even in our business, we spend a dollar on Facebook advertising. When we sell an online product, we’re not actually making the dollar back. As of lately, we put in a dollar but we’re making 80 cents back. So for us, acquiring a customer is still costing us money.

But once we’re able to sell a product, we acquire a customer. Then we can upsell them to our products and services. And let’s say that my service or program is priced at a thousand dollars a month. Even if I sell just one, I’ll make $12,000. That’s pretty good.

So in my business, we run a Facebook ad for a product first. Then we upsell customers to a higher-tier program. But if you’re only just starting out with online marketing and you’re already selling offline, go straight to selling your service or program online.

Read Also: What Is Marketing Funnel Automation? (Spoiler: Its Customers on Autopilot!)

The Difference Between Online and Offline Marketing

When you want to enroll a client using offline marketing, you need to get on the phone with them or meet them in person. So if you think about it, you sell a program or service by talking to somebody.

When you go online to sell your program or service, I recommend that you still get on the phone with your customers. The only difference is that with online marketing, Facebook is sending the person to you as opposed to chasing after the client when you’re marketing offline.

A lot of times entrepreneurs say that online marketing is really hard, but look at it from this perspective: rather than you chasing the clients to sell your service, if Facebook brought clients to you, how much more successful can you be?

Sell Your Program and Service

Now, being a coach or an expert, you might be thinking, “What is the program or service that I’m going to sell?” Some of you might be speakers who want to get attendees to their live event. Some of you might be expert service providers selling a subscription program. Those are the types of services and programs that you can sell.

It doesn’t matter much what you want to sell. The point is, you can sell it. You just need to decide and pick one service or program to start. That’s it.

Initially, when you’re selling a service or product over the phone, I recommend that you price it between $500 to $7,500. Before you get on a call with a customer, they’ve most likely already seen your ads and video presentation. And because they already know something about you, they’re not a totally cold market.

But is it possible to have them make a purchase decision that’s over $7,500 over the phone? Yes. But, I’ve found that the strike zone over a phone call is between $500 to $7,500.

I’ll give you an example. One of my clients, David, runs a Facebook ad as an online marketing strategy. And his goal is to get clients on a phone call to sell them to his $5,000 live event. He succeeded in getting four people to come to his live event. Again, he only did Facebook marketing, spoke to clients over the phone, and sold his program, which is his live event. It’s not more complicated than that.

Online Marketing: What You Need To Know

You might be wondering, do you have to have somebody run Facebook ads for you? Or do you have to take a course to learn it? The answer is yes. Do you have to learn how to create a presentation? Yes, because the way for customers to book a free consultation with you is by watching a presentation.

I recommend a short video presentation (about five to nine minutes long), where you’re going to teach your audience something. And afterwards, you’re going to offer them a free consultation with you.

Related: My Ultimate Online Presentation Guide Guaranteed To Get You Clients

The purpose of the Facebook ad is to actually get people to watch a video presentation. And then get them from that video presentation to book a free consultation. Once you get on a call with the client, you’re going to sell them to your program or service. Pretty simple, right?

Related: How To Create A Client Enrollment System For Your Business

When you think about it, the outcome is still the same. You’re still going to sell your program or service. I want you to get the fact that whether you use online or offline marketing, the end goal is still the same.

Often, the hardest part is figuring out what you want to sell. But once you decide on that, the next thing to do is to price your program or service.

If you’re brand new, to purely go online without offering up any program or service is an unreasonable way to start. I think you need to have one or both of these so you can truly make a profit.

So again, identify your service or program and pick a price point. Then ask yourself, “How am I going to sell this online?”

Figure Out Your Marketing Funnel

Now you have to decide what kind of marketing funnel you’re going to build to accomplish your objective. Remember that the goal is still to sell your program or service. But again, if you don’t know what you’re selling, how can you decide on the kind of marketing funnel you’re going to build? You can’t.

Once you’re clear on what you’re selling and its price point, then you can go online. Even better, if you continue to sell it offline, you’re going to develop your skill set in enrollment. That is actually very critical to succeed with your online funnel.

Think about it. If you don’t know how to enroll offline, when you go online, you’re not going to be good at it. So offline marketing and online marketing go hand in hand. Because the more you practice enrolling face-to-face, the better you’re going to get at enrolling clients over the phone.

You are most likely putting in a lot of effort in developing your online products. And that’s great. But more importantly, after you sell your online products, you need to have enrollment conversations next. That’s where you’re going to sell your program or service.

Master the Free Consultation and Selling

Here’s that #boost you’ve been waiting for: https://t.co/pW4FS4tWyh! #motivation #inspiration #goals #success #tedmcgrath pic.twitter.com/Q8oEEHicGb

— Ted McGrath (@ted_mcgrath) January 30, 2018

One of the things that you need to master to sell is the free consultation. When you’re doing the free consultation, you’re enrolling your customer in your program or service, and you must get good at this.

You can very well say, “Selling is not my strength.” But I’d argue to say that if you can’t sell, then you probably mustn’t be an entrepreneur. All selling is communication, and it’s confronting a conversation with somebody. It’s communicating back and forth to help two people accomplish their goals. If the goals of the salesperson and the customer are aligned, a sale is made.

So if you don’t feel comfortable with selling, you need to practice more to master it. As an entrepreneur, you must be comfortable with selling. Otherwise, it will show up in every area of your life. Being able to communicate well is an invaluable skill set for an entrepreneur.

Offering up free consultation is something that you’ll do for both online and offline marketing. This is how you’ll upsell and enroll them in your program or service.

Create Your Own Video Presentation

You might be wondering how you’re going to get free consultations in after your initial online setup. The answer is, through a video presentation. If you’ve sold before, you won’t have a hard time creating this.

In a video presentation, you’re going to do the same thing you do offline to book a free consultation. For instance, when you meet somebody at a networking event, you tell them, “Hey, I’d really like to book a free consultation with you to see how I can serve you better.” Because you’ve spoken to that person, you got to know them and their interests. Then you get on the phone for the free consult and sell your program. That’s what you do in offline marketing.

The only difference between an online video and offline marketing is your physical presence. It’s still you talking in the video, but you’re not with the customer physically. And because of this, the next things to figure out are: how long the video needs to be in order for you to teach the customer something, build trust, and get them to book a free consultation.

I’ll say that ten minutes is just the right length for the video. It doesn’t have to be a heavily-scripted webinar presentation that’s 45 minutes long.

Just to share with you, some of our clients right now are putting in a dollar for advertising and making $3 back right away. Not only are they getting their money back — they’re making three times their cost. And this comes from a simple video presentation.

What I want you to understand is this funnel right here. What is creating success is in the video. All you need to do is teach something valuable, then make a call to action for a free consultation.

The Purpose of the Video Presentation

When you create your video presentation, keep in mind that it needs to do these three things:

1. Educate viewers so that they’ll understand how you can help them.
2. Build credibility and trust through your life story, journey, and results.
3. Offer a free consultation so clients can book a phone call with you and you can sell them a program.

This is really the gist of the funnel: clients will watch a video, book a free consult, and then you’ll sell them a program. You have to run Facebook advertising so that people will watch your video. But that’s a topic for another time.

If you want to sell programs and services, you must create a video presentation that can sell for you. And to create a good video, you need to know your message. You need to know what you’re teaching and selling.

Read Also: How To Create A Brand Story Sure To Attract Clients

But the great thing is, your video doesn’t have to be amazing to get people to book a free consultation. It doesn’t have to be the best in the world — it’s a low-barrier entry. So you won’t have a hard time creating it if you already have an experience in selling.

These are the things that I wanted to share with you so you can understand online and offline marketing better. Each of them has its own advantages, but they work best hand in hand. Remember, when you’re marketing your business, don’t stop doing what works. Master the fundamentals of booking free consultations and selling to achieve your goals as an entrepreneur.

Which marketing strategy are you using for your business? How is it working for you? Share with me your experiences in the comments section below.

Up Next: My Ultimate Marketing Strategy Guide Guaranteed To Earn You Millions