Salome Schillack:

Welcome to episode number 105 of The Shine Show. In today's episode, I am going to tell you how to boost sales in your next online course launch with these five ads. We're going to unpack five different ads that's going to help you make more money the next time you launch your online course. But before we dive in, I have an announcement.

The doors to the Launch Lounge will be opening up again on the 29th of July. The Launch Lounge is the only membership that takes you from zero to six figures with profitable, online course launches without wasting money on ads that don't work or hiring a team of geeks to help you along the way. We are here to support you, and we want you to join the Launch Lounge. So if you want to get all the juicy deets about that, you need to go to shineandsucceed.com/tllwaitlist. That stands for the Launch Lounge. So shineandsucceed.com/tllwaitlist. Now let's dive in

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack. And I help online course creators launch, grow, and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine. And this is The Shine Show.

Last week, my kids had parent teacher interviews. Or I should say I had parent teacher interviews at school. And the way they have it set up at our school is you get 15 minutes with each teacher. So it's kind of like speed dating. And they do the bookings online. So there's an online portal that we need to go to. And they announce when the bookings open. And then it is your responsibility to make sure you get the 15 minute slot that works for you. Needless to say, this can create quite the scramble.

Now last year, I didn't realize that this was going to create such a scramble. So I kind of took notice of the time the bookings opened. And within a day or so, went into book my session. And then most of the good spots had already been taken. Plus I have two kids, so I have to see two teachers. And I wasn't able to get any back-to-back 15 minute slots. So I had to do my 15 minutes that I found for one teacher and then hang around at school for a while and then do the next one.

So this here, what I did was when I saw the email come out telling us when the calendar opens to schedule these, I put a reminder in my calendar. I put an alarm on my phone. I did everything I can to get in quick and get the best spots. And the minute that calendar opened, I was in. And I managed to secure spot number one with teacher number one and spot number two with teacher number two. So I was like same time I'm picking up the girls from school. I'm just going to do teacher one, teacher two, and we'll be home in under an hour. I was very impressed with myself.

Now, this is a great example of how the school uses scarcity to get people to take action faster, also to get people probably to get to the point faster when they're discussing their beautiful little angels with the teachers. But this is a concept that Robert Cialdini wrote about. He wrote an entire book about this, and the book is called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. And today, we are going to look at some of these principles that Robert Cialdini teaches us and how we can apply them to five specific ad strategies that we use inside live launches to boost more sales.

So if you're wondering how you can use ads to boost sales even more during your next launch, if you've worked hard to get bucket loads of people onto your webinar, or your video series, or your challenge launch, you have probably spent thousands of dollars to get people registered and interested in signing up for your email list and your launch. And now you're wondering, "How am I going to get even more sales out of these people?" Then stick around because today's episode is for you. And what you're about to learn today will help support the hard work you're doing with your launch, your email sequence, and on social media so that you can get even more people to pay attention during your launch and see all that wonderful launch content that you've created. When you add these ads into your launch mix, you'll see more conversions. And you're going to make more money during that final cart open phase of your launch where you are doing your best work to sell as many of your courses as you can.

But before we jump into how to make even more money in this final phase of your launch, I just want to back it up a little bit and remind you what came before this, so that you know exactly what we're talking about.

So inside the Launch Lounge, our membership, where I teach you how to launch profitably, we cover five different phases where you would run ads for any launch. The first one is ads to build your audience. Those are the kind of the engagement ads that I teach in A-Lister. They're the very basic, I have some podcast episodes about how to get started with $5 audience building ads. That's phase one.

Phase two is. List building again, something we cover inside of A-Lister. How to start building your email list and get it to 1,000 people, and make those people your first offer, or your next small offer and start making money.

Then we go into phase three, four, and five, which is your launch phase, which we cover in-depth inside the Launch Lounge. Now these three phases are the phases that we would typically run ads for our clients. And they include the following three things. The runway phase, which is, can be anywhere from three months to six weeks before your cart open date. And in that phase, your main priority is to build your email list and to start overcoming some objections. Then the next phase is the launch phase where you are actively getting people to sign up for your launch. The next phase. And the last phase of a launch would be the cart open phase. That is anything that comes after you made the announcement to say, "The cart is now open. You can go and buy my course."

So this episode, we are specifically looking at phase five, specifically at everything that happens after you've delivered your first webinar and said, "Here's the link where you can buy," or off after you have done your three-part video series. And you've said, "The cart is now open. This is where you can go and buy." So I just wanted to make sure that you know that this is the phase that we're talking about today. And I'm going to show you how to boost sales in that phase of your launch with five specific ad types.

The first ad type you can run during cart open phase that's going to help you get more sales is what we call an early bird enrollment ad. So back in January, 2020, before all the COVID craziness unfolded, my family and I were in Disneyland in California. And one of the things we looked forward to most was all the new Star Wars rides. We are Star Wars fans in my house, and we just love Star Wars. So we were very excited for the four days we were going to spend in Disneyland to go on all the star wars rides.

But if you've ever been to Disneyland, you will know that even for the oldest rides, I mean even if you want to go on space mountain, you got to stand in line for hours. So the fact that the Star Wars rides had just opened up, we knew we were going to stand in line for hours.

So on day one, we were there about 10:00 AM. I think they opened the gates around 9:00 or 10:00 AM. They opened the ride, the Star Wars ride. So the Star Wars rides opened up a little bit after the park gates open. And we were standing there ready to receive whatever the information is we need to know how to get on this ride.

So we're standing at the gate waiting for them to open the ride. And we see that everyone says, "No, they've already booked. They've already booked." And we go, "What do you mean you've already booked?" And they say, "Well, you have to go to this app. And then you can book. And you get put into groups and then the groups get called through the app when they're ready."

So immediately we're on the app and we're like, "Okay, we're going to book." And the number we get, we are in number 180, group number 180. And then they give you kind of an estimate and they say, "Yesterday by 11:00 PM when the park closed, they got to group number 140." So we're like "Okay, we're 180. And yesterday by 11:00 PM, they didn't get to 180. So we're probably not going to get in."

So we abandoned that idea and decided the next day we were going to be at the park gate at 6:00 AM. We were going to be right there when the park gate opens so that we can make a dash for the Star Wars section of Disneyland and be right in the front for the minute that the app opens up where we can book. And it was the funniest thing. Because we were there at 6:00 AM standing in line to get through the first set of doors. We got in. We dashed with everyone else to get to the Star Wars doors. And we all sat there waiting.

And I think the app opened at 9:00 AM. So at five to nine, you start seeing the whole Disneyland just slow down. Everything just slows down. And everyone collectively is picking up their phones, and starting to refresh, and starting to refresh. And it's the weirdest thing to watch this giant crowd of people, everyone's looking at their phones. And in that minute before nine, the whole park is dead quiet. You can drop a pin in there. It is incredible, and everyone's refreshing. And then the clock strikes 9:00 AM. And then it's 10 seconds past nine, 20 seconds past nine. And then people start erupting in joy or disappointment as they've been refreshing their feeds and then booking their spots trying to get in. So anyone who then did get in was of course shouting, and screaming, and very excited. And those who did not were very disappointed. And so happy we got into, I think our number was, we got into group number 20. So by midday that day, the Schillacks were in line. And we were experiencing Rise of the Resistance, which is I'm going to say a giant, big travel highlight for me.

So the way that early bird ads works is it kind of does the same thing that we just experienced with this Disney ride. They're ads that you run either before your cart opens to a select group of people like the people who are on your wait list, or they're ads you run for a small window of time, a small period to everyone who is in your launch.

So you typically want to run them for about 24 to 48 hours. And you can run them before your webinar maybe to your wait list, or afterwards to everyone in your launch. And the idea is to catch those people who are truly sitting on the edge of their seats with their credit cards, ready to buy. Get them in first, get them in quick. and reward them for sitting there waiting for you to open the door. Give them some bonus, give them something special for sitting there waiting for you. We call these early bird bonus ads. And the creative in these ads, we've run ads where we literally used a flamingo and said, "Early bird bonus, get the early bird." I have seen people go early bird catches the worm, or you can put the emphasis on the actual bonus that they're getting in this short window of time. Or your creative's emphasis can be on the fact that this is only available for the next 24 hours. So that is what an early bird bonus ad is. And that's how it can help you get more sales.

One thing you may want to pay attention to is that if you run these early bird bonus or if you create an early bird bonus before your first webinar, you may see lower show up rates on the webinar, which could affect the energy on the webinar live. But in all fairness, we really want show up right so that we can make more sales. So if you can do both those things, then that's an even better situation to be in.

Okay. So now you know the first type of ad we want to run, and that is an early bird enrollment ad. The second one is a disappearing bonus ad. My husband just went through this purchasing experience for a Gozney barbecue. Now, any barbecue fans out there might know how this unfolded. These guys have been promoting the Gozney barbecue, which is some special, I don't know what it does, if it's going to bring me coffee in the morning or something like that. It's super special. And my husband's been wanting one for a while. So he's had his name on the wait list, and they've been announcing it's coming for so long. And finally they announced the date and the time. And I told him he needs to wake up early in the morning or in the middle of the night, because over here, it comes from America and we're in Australia. So the opening time is in the middle of the night. I told him, "Set an alarm, wake up, and make sure you get in. Because the people have been raving about this thing. And if you leave it until you wake up the next morning, you're going to miss out." And he's like, "No, no, no. No, it's fine. It's fine."

So the next morning, I wake up and he's already awake. And the first thing he says to me is, "My barbecue's only coming in September." And I'm like, "good morning. Okay. What time did you get on?" And he said no, he did leave it until he woke up. And he'd missed the first couple of hours of selling and ended up getting his barbecue on back order. And now it's going to come in September. Which was still a better deal than what some other people got, who also purchased in the next 24 hours, because they were just told, "We're at capacity." These people sold out these barbecues within hours.

But here's the thing is that feeling of competing with other people, that feeling of losing something if he does not make a quick decision, that forced everyone into taking action. And that is what a disappearing bonus ad does. Scarcity motivates people to take action. When we feel like something is in high demand and we're competing with other people or we're going to lose something, our brains don't like that very much. Our brains are wired to desire things that we believe will go away.

And in the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert Cialdini goes deep into how this works and why our brains do this. So what I want you to do, I want you to include a bonus that either has a limited number of people who can have this bonus, or announce a bonus that will be disappearing at a certain point in your launch. Disappearing bonuses works really, really well in that mid-cart phase. That phase in the middle of your launch, where the initial rush has passed, and the urgency at the end hasn't quite come yet. So if it's a bell curve, you kind of get most of your sales in the beginning, just as many at the end. And then there's this middle piece where the traction kind of starts losing a little, where you start losing traction a little bit.

So these disappearing bonuses can work really, really well. And you can use any ad that effectively creates that scarcity and the urgency in the communication and makes sure people know that there is some form of urgency and scarcity going on here. And if they don't take action right now, they're going to miss out on this. And it's going to force people who are sitting on the fence to make a decision.

Now of course, we don't want to force anyone into making sales decisions. We want to force them into making the decision that is best for them. So they're either going to then decide, "No thank you. I don't want to buy." Or, "Yes, I do not want to miss out on this disappearing bonus." So use disappearing bonuses in that middle phase of your launch to get more sales.

So now you know how to use early bird enrollment ads and disappearing bonus ads. And the next one is testimonial ad. Now I will be honest and tell you that we don't often see a massive amount of sales coming from testimonial ads. However, don't underestimate the value of running these ads to your audience in order for them to build that social proof and in order for them to see other people who have had success with your course. And we've even started seeing people now run testimonial ads during the runway phase of their ads, where they are just telling the stories of their students. And it creates such a deep connection with so many people that by the time you even start launching, people are already saying, "This is the right course for me, because I've watched a video by such and such. Or I've seen an ad where you interviewed that person, or this person, or someone who was just like me."

While ago, I was looking for a new business coach. And I had sort of narrowed it down to a few that I knew, that was referred to me, or that I'd always been curious about working with. And I couldn't narrow it down. I couldn't decide at the end. So what did I do? I went to both of the final people that I thought I want to work with to their websites. And I started looking for testimonials.

And the thing that I was looking for is people who are like me. So in my case, I was looking for testimonials from people who ran Facebook ads. Testimonials from people who have online course businesses or who has agencies like me. I'm going, "Where are the people like me so that I can know this business coach can help them?"

And in the end, choosing between the two really that I narrowed it down to really came down to the person who had the best word of mouth referrals and word of mouth testimonials, or website testimonials. So a few good testimonials resulted in thousands of dollars for this business coach that I ended up going with.

So why do we want to run? Why does it work so well? When we see other people that have done what we want to do, we feel safe. And it reduces risk. When those people look like us, look like they have businesses like us, or similar to us, have things in common with us, that breeds familiarity. We feel safe in a space where we feel there is familiarity. And when they use the exact same words to describe the challenges they had before they worked with this person and the dreams they were able to achieve after working with this person, and that language matches up to the language we use inside our own heads when we're talking to ourselves saying, "If I can only overcome this challenge, then I will have all these awesome things." If the testimonials link to those words, then we are in. We love it.

So ads you can run for testimonials include carousel ads, where you use the photos of the people who've given you the testimonials, because other people's faces are important. You want to use other people's faces because they are recognizable and we associate with them.

Video ads work really well. You can also build a video carousel or carousel ads where you put the Facebook comment or the DM that you got from someone who got the results that your ideal customer wants. You can put those DMs or those messages, drop them in images and create a carousel of that. That works really well as well.

We even use testimonials inside the copy of our ads. So if you're writing that doors open, or enrollment open copy, or enrollment closing copy, add a couple of testimonials in there. It gives you a lot more authority, and it helps people overcome the resistance they might see in buying your course and just makes them feel safer, makes them feel like they found the right place for them. So that's how you use testimonial ads to increase sales. And now you know early bird enrollment ads, disappearing bonus ads, testimonial ads. And now let's look at Q&A ads.

Russell Brunson tells the story of how he wants stayed on a webinar for about six hours after the webinar had ended. Six hours, imagine that. But he said there were still people on the webinar, and they were still asking questions he could answer. And as every time he answered a question, there were more sales.

Now this is not content questions he was answering. Please, please know this. He was not teaching them things. He was not sharing content. What he was doing is he was overcoming their objections.

So objections are always going to come up. And objections come up when we want to buy something with our emotions, but we haven't yet justified that with our logic. So we are going to come up with all sorts of logical reasons why we're not quite ready to buy.

And in some cases, it's just a matter of needing to hear someone acknowledge that. And in other cases, they're totally legitimate circumstances that you just want to get clear on so that you know that you're making the right investment. Know that if you start out with your launch with a very long list of typical objections you get, and you can sit down and answer each of those objections in a way that helps your ideal customer overcome the objection or find the answer, the right answer that's going to help them make the decision that works best for them. Then you will make more sales. Overcoming objections in different ways with the same questions over and over in slightly different ways will also help you.

So if you prepare, let's say there's 10 objections, you get over, and over, and over again. You can prepare three different ways you're going to overcome each of those ones. And that gives you 30 Q&A questions that you can literally just go through at the end of your webinar. And as long as there are people still on there asking questions, the longer you can go with just reframing and rephrasing different objections with different answers, the more sales you will make.

So how do we do this with ads? What we like to do is we like to use a Messenger ad. Now these ads are not Messenger bot ads. They are not those ads that you get that keeps coming up in your Messenger the whole time. These are just Messenger ads. They are ads that we tell Facebook, "Hey Facebook. What we want people to do from this ad is message us or DM us." And the creative in this ad usually says something. It's usually a really short copy ad. And it just says, "Still have questions about X, Y, Z, course? Message us. Someone on the team is standing by to make sure your questions get answered." That's one way of doing it.

The other way of doing it is you could run an ad where you say, "Hey, still got questions? Check out our FAQ's page." And then link to a sales page to the FAQ section in your sales page, and make sure that you have another short little pitch at the bottom of that. Because once they finish reading it, you want to make sure that they know exactly where they can buy that.

You can also have something where they can book a call with you. So it might be an ad where you say, "Hey, have you still got questions? Book a call." And then you run a traffic ad to a landing page that's linked to a booking system like Calendly, and you can then just have them book in 10 minute, or five minute, or 15 minute. However long you need to spend with them, you can just have them book some calls there. You will only run this ad in the very last 24 to 48 hours of your launch. And you have to make sure that that customer support inbox is manned properly or womaned properly so that people get a response immediately if they use it. You're also only going to run this ad to your super warm audience. This works really well when you run these ads to retarget people who've been to your sales page, but have not yet purchased. So you know they are very interested in your course, but they haven't yet had the moment where they went, "Okay, I'm in. I'm all in. Let me do this." So these work really well. So now you know how to use Q&A ads to boost sales in your launch.

The last way we're going to look at how you can use ads to boost your sales in your launch is the cart close ads. My daughter, my oldest [Mila 00:29:29], she turns 10 in June. And I mean hello, where did the 10 years ago? I can't believe I've been a mother for 10 years. But I said for her for her 10th birthday, "We are going to go and book into a hotel, just the two of us." And we are going to have spa day and do all the things she loves to do. She's got a bit of a sweet tooth. So there has to be waffles for breakfast. That I've already heard. And we have to go to her favorite ice cream shop. And I'm sure there's going to be going to the movies, and maybe buying her some clothes. And I'm really looking forward to spending a weekend with my oldest, who is just turning into this magical human being all of a sudden.

But here's the thing. I went onto booking.com, which is a site I use to book hotels, and searched for some hotels that are available in Brisbane for that weekend. And I did leave it a bit long. So the bookings, it was a bit full. But once I found the hotel that I wanted us to stay at, I looked at the rooms. She insisted we need to get two separate beds. I was like, "Aren't you going to cuddle with me in one queen sized bed? We can cuddle. And there's enough space for both of us." And she's like, "No mommy, I am not doing cuddling anymore." Okay, fine. So I had to book a room with two beds in it. and finding the room that I want and then seeing that little message in red and yellow at the bottom that says, "There is only one room like this left."

Oh my goodness. Do you think that stopped me from procrastinating from booking this room? I booked the room. I was kind of in the mindset that I'm just going to browse and see what's available. And by the end of it, the room was booked. It was done because I knew what I wanted. And they used scarcity really well to tell me to make a decision. Because if I don't make a decision, I'm going to lose out.

This whole cart closing psychology plays into our fear of missing out, our FOMO, right? Because we all have FOMO when we believe something's available now, but it's not going to be available soon. The best evidence of this is Black Friday, right? Or here in Australia and I think in the UK, we also have Boxing Day sales. It's the day after Christmas. And for the Americans, that's exactly the same as Black Friday. So Black Friday is kind of taking off here now, too. So now we have great, we have two awesome shopping days at the end of the year. We have Black Friday and Boxing Day.

But that's kind of the principle that Black Friday and Boxing Day works on. It's this one day where we all go and get the thing that we have hoped would be on sale for Black Friday or Boxing Day. And we all have fear of missing out. So we all go click crazy on that day to get the thing that we wanted.

Now in live launches, we have real urgency. We have a real doors closed deadline. So it's important that you stay in integrity and really close the doors when you say you're going to close them, because that makes these ads even more efficient and even more effective. There has to be real urgency.

So if you are running an evergreen launch, we use a software called Deadline Funnel, which artificially creates these deadlines based on how people interact with our funnels at different times so that everyone ends up getting the same scarcity, even though they entered the funnel at different times.

You'll run cart close ads to everybody who was in your launch. So everyone who signed up for your webinar, or your video series, or your challenge, with the exception of the people who've already purchased of course. Some people run these ads to their entire warm audience, because sometimes if you have a very established online course or you're well-known, you might not even need people to sign up for your video series, because they've already followed your launch one, two, three years in a row, and they're already ready to buy. You just need to remind them of the deadline that it's going away.

I have personally purchased a $3,000 course in the past because I saw the doors closing ad from someone well-known in the industry. The course was always on my wishlist. And then it kind of fell off my radar again. And when I saw this ad, I was like, "Hold on. I have been meaning to purchase this course for the longest time, but I haven't been paying attention to the launch. So I'm so glad this showed up in my launch." And I can say that I'm purchasing $3,000 courses that way, because I now have a budget for online education in my business, which I didn't always have. So please know that it's not something I have always done. It's something you work towards. But these doors close ads are super efficient and super effective because they get people to take action.

What I want you to pay attention to with these ads is be creative in how you communicate the message. I have seen people use a battery, an image of a battery that is running out. Like that battery when your battery is low, we all get anxiety just seeing the battery low image. I have seen people running off to boats saying, "You're going to miss the boat if you don't get in." I use an hourglass, and I tip the hourglass open over so that the sand pours out so that people can see that time is ticking and you should be doing it. I've seen people pull their hair out and cry and say, "We don't want you to miss out."

So get creative with this. Communicate effectively and communicate creatively what people are going to feel, or make a connection to some kind of a metaphor or something as so that people know what they are about to miss out on if they don't get in before your doors close.

And that is cart close ads. So now you have learned how to use early bird enrollment ads. You've learned how to use disappearing bonus ads. You've learned how to use testimonial ads. You've learned how to do Q&A ads. And you've learned how to do cart close ads so that you can get people to take action faster and get you more sales during that final part of your launch where you are working so hard to get sales and to get more people into your courses so that you can change their lives.

So just like the school my kids go to, have the parents, get the parents to book with their teachers and they limit the conversation to 15 minutes. Thereby creating massive FOMO and urgency. You can use the same principles to help your students make decisions about purchasing your course in your next launch.

Now just know, this is not about manipulation. So if that's coming up for you, just know that that is not what we're doing here. But I'm sure that you'll agree the school in no way, shape, or form ever manipulated me to do anything I didn't want to do by creating these very clear boundaries. They helped me make a quick decision about something I really wanted.

So how can you use boundaries, these clear boundaries, to help those of your students who are going to massively benefit from learning from you to make quick decisions about buying your course? So think about the early bird enrollment ads, the disappearing bonus ads, testimonial ads, Q&A ads, and cart close ads. And think about how you can use these ads in your next launch to help your future students be decisive and make deliberate decisions to take that next step with you so that your course, your teaching, your coaching, your training can start to impact their lives forever.

Now my friends, I'm very happy to announce that the doors to the Launch Lounge is opening up on the 24th of June. Inside the Launch Lounge, we show you exactly how to launch your online course to the right people every time. Build profitable, live launches, and set yourself up to scale your business to six figures and beyond, without wasting money. You can get on the wait list for the Launch Lounge so that you can be notified when we open by going to shineandsucceed.com/tllwaitlist. That's TLL for The Launch Lounge, tllwaitlist. We'll get you on all the notifications so that you know exactly when we opened the doors and when we create scarcity and close those doors again. I hope to see you there. I hope you have a lovely week, and I will catch up with you again next week. Bye.

Well, there you have it. And I hope that your next launch is going to be so profitable. I hope you're going to use one of these five ads. And if you want to learn more about the Launch Lounge, we are opening for enrollment on the 29th of July. The Launch Lounge is the only membership that takes you from zero to six figure launches faster without wasting money or hiring a team of ads managers. Come join us there. Sign up for the white list. Go to shineandsucceed.com/tllwaitlist. I'll see you there.

Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week and remember to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a thing.