Salome Schillack:

This is episode number 83 of The Shine Show. Today I am going to reveal the biggest secret to you, the secret that maybe you have been wondering about, how do you sell to complete strangers using Facebook and Instagram ads? That is coming up for you in this episode. But before we do, I want to tell you about our sponsor for this episode. It is my online course called A-Lister. A-Lister is the fastest way to build your engaged audience and make your first or next sale using Facebook and Instagram ads without wasting your money, selling your soul on social media, or getting a tech degree. This is for you if you have been trying to figure out how to sell your knowledge online, how to build an audience of people who actually engage with your content, and how to turn the ads that you have been running on Facebook into money-making ads that actually bring money back into your bank account. If you want to get on the waitlist, we open the doors for enrollment on the 13th of January. So, make sure you get on that waitlist to get all the details about A-Lister. You can go to shineandsucceed.com/waitlist to get on that list. Now let's jump into the episode.

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.

I have this moment with my students where they confess to me that they may have been building their email list for a while but they haven't really sent their email list anything in a while. Or they may have had a period where they spent a lot of time list-building, and then life happened or something got in the way, they stopped building their email list, haven't emailed their list. And now I'm asking them, "Okay, well you want to launch, so how big is your list?" And they would say, however big their list is, let's say, "2000 people, but they haven't heard from me in a very long time." I get it, why this happens. It's a lot of work. They would say, "It's a lot of work, and I don't see any money for it. I've worked my tail off trying to build this email list. It is de-motivating because my list grows so slowly or my audience, and I just don't see how it gets me closer to making any money."

My students would say to me, "There's so much work that goes into building an audience and building an email list. Why can't I just make some money now?" I totally get it, totally get it. I remember feeling exactly the same way back when I just started. And then there's this phenomenon that makes it even worse for them is when they are inside giant Facebook groups where they're surrounded by other people who are learning with them. It sometimes can feel, easily can feel like the only posts you see in those groups or the only messages that gets celebrated are messages where people are posting about their massive launches that they did with almost no email list, or these unicorn success moments.

It can leave you feeling a little bit less than. I certainly remember feeling that way, and I remember looking at a lot of people who started with me and grew faster than me and going, "Well, what are they doing that I'm not doing? What do they have that I don't have? Or in what way, shape or form am I lacking in any way?" It just breaks my heart when I see this unfold, because A, I've been there, and B, I get it. It is a lot of work to grow an audience. It is a lot of work to grow an email list, and it is a lot of work to nurture that audience and nurture that email list week after week after week if you are not seeing any money coming back to you. I totally understand that.

So today I want to share with you the recipe for selling to complete strangers. I have a little bit of a spoiler alert that we are not going to sell to complete strangers. There is a place for it, there's a very specific place for it, and I'm going to show you what that place is. But the recipe that I want to teach you today is the recipe that is the basic foundation for making money online, or actually making money anywhere, offline too. That is leads plus offer equals sales. Leads plus offer equals sales. You need leads, and buy leads that could be people on your social media, people on your email list, people who sign up for your webinar, people who are in your paid workshop, and then you make them an offer. You say, "Hey, I've got this thing. This is what it's going to do for you. Here's why you want it, and here's where you click to go and get it." That's how you make money, leads plus offer equals sales.

Now, it sounds very simple, and it is if you know how to talk to your audience at the different phases of the funnel, which brings me to TOF, MOF, and BOF. And no, those are not the names of the three bears in some fairytale land. TOF, MOF, and BOF stands for top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. In Facebook ad land, we just call it TOF, MOF, and BOF. It wasn't until I really grasped this concept that I was able to really understand the importance of crafting my messaging to either the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, or the bottom of the funnel and changing the messaging based on what people needed to hear from me at those different stages. That's what I'm going to share with you today.

When you're done listening to this episode, you are going to know exactly why it matters that you show up on your social media, that you build your email list, and that you send them regular good content if you want to make money from that audience. You will also understand exactly how to make money from your audience, whether they're cold, mildly warm, or hot, and you will create replicable systems that you can scale so that you can make even more money from this audience. Before we dive in and talk about each of these three things, TOF, MOF, and BOF, I want to explain a little bit of the big picture, a little bit of the broader concept to you. We call this top of funnel, middle of funnel, or bottom of funnel, which you may have also heard the terms know, like, and trust. Know, like, and trust also represents three layers that we need to move people through in order to get them to know us well enough, like us well enough, and trust us well enough in order to give us their money.

So when we're talking about the top of funnel, what we're talking about is loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of people, en masse, large groups of people who are going to see our content for the very first time. They don't trust us. They don't even know who we are. They don't even like us yet. Can we sell to them? Probably not. There is a way that you can sell tiny little low dollar offers, like $7 offers or $17 offers. We see a lot of these tiny offer ads around these days, and they work as long as you have dialed in that offers so well that you know when you offer this to people who have never met you, they are going to be like, "Yes, I want that. I'm all over that." So until you have dialed in your offers, nailed your offers, I recommend you stay away from selling anything to a cold audience.

And then we move down to the middle of the funnel where we're talking to fewer people. It may not be millions and millions of people, it may just be tens of thousands of people. But at the middle of the funnel, people already know us, they have had a brief introduction to us. There's generally more trust. They're a little bit more engaged. They're paying a little bit more attention. We could get them to make small micro-commitments, like opting in for our email list or buying a low dollar offer like a $247 something, little workshop or something.

And then we move to the bottom of the funnel. If you guys can imagine an inverted triangle, and at the top of this triangle is the wide part of the triangle. We're pouring people in at the top of this funnel, by the gazillions, right? But as they're coming down the funnel, more and more of them are dropping out. They're dropping out because A, they're not our crowd, B, they don't gel with us, C, they don't like our offers, D, they got distracted by someone else, or whatever the reason is. But as we bring them down the funnel, those that stay with us become warmer and warmer and warmer, and they build know like, and trust factor. Those that drop off are not our people, and are probably unlikely to buy from us.

However, we want to make sure that we triple check with them if they didn't accidentally fall off, and that's why we use retargeting when we run ads to these people. So now you understand why we don't just lead with selling to complete strangers. When you have a good understanding of how to bring people down your funnel strategically, that becomes a complete game changer for you, because then you understand how to make money online, because you can create funnels. And then those funnels turn into replicable systems that you can scale so that you can make even more money.

So let's talk a little bit more about the top of the funnel, what happens at the top of the funnel? I have a little running joke about my engagement strategy that I teach, that it's like Joey from Friends when he walks into a coffee shop, or let's call it a bar, and he says, "How you doing?" That was his famous pickup line, and it worked. If anybody else ever uses it, it will not work. But for Joey Tribbiani, if he says, "How you doing?" the girls pay attention.

And there's this other little story that I heard Ryan Deiss talk about when I was learning from the DigitalMarketer crew. He was talking about a book that somebody wrote, and this guy actually studied... I think he studied chimpanzees or something, but he wrote a book about the different phases of intimacy. He said, "There are different levels and different layers to building intimacy with people, or between chimpanzee, inter-chimpanzee intimacy." There's not a topic I want to explore. But in humans it would be pretty similar. We start with eye to eye. Or I think it actually starts with eye to body and then goes to eye to eye and then goes to hand to hand or hand to shoulder, and then hand to hand and then shoulder to shoulder and then body to body, and then it gets a little bit PG. But I think you understand what I mean.

What Ryan was saying what this guy teaches in this book is that if you skip over one level of these layers, it creates discomfort. If you skip over two levels of these layers, it feels like you're assaulting the person, right? I mean, imagine you're walking into a bar and just grabbing someone by the hand and holding their hand. It would be creepy. It would really be creepy because you skipped over the eye to body, eye to eye, hand to shoulder bit. You went in too intimate too quickly. So, how we build intimacy with people online is by paying attention to these how-you-doing moments, right?

We've got to do that first. We've got to lead with value first. We've got to have them like us first. And in order to do that, we've got to introduce ourselves to people. So when you are creating your top of funnel content, I want you to keep in mind that you are talking to millions of people, millions and millions and millions. So you've got to know what your ideal customer broadly wants so that you can create content that interrupts their scrolling on Facebook and Instagram. You've got to get their attention. Because remember, their attention span is pretty short and their care factor for you at this point is almost zero because they don't know who you are and you haven't done anything to make yourself matter to them. Their commitment to you is very low. They've got one eye on the TV. They are watching Game of Thrones and scrolling on their phone. It is up to you to interrupt them and make them pay attention to you. So their engagement is fairly low.

Your job at the top of the funnel is to capture them in a custom audience. So create your custom audiences inside your Ads Manager so that you can re target them later. Your job at the top of funnel is to lead with value and to give them a reason to stay and to want to learn more. Your job at the top of the funnel is to build trust and connect deeply with them and make them care about you, make them want to come back. Your job at the top of the funnel is also to repel those people who are not right for you. You need to put a stake in the ground for what you stand for, what your values are, and who you are, and how your community operates. Because the clearer you can communicate that from the start, the more of your peeps you're going to attract. You're going to just attract the right people. If you're not prone to swearing, but then you swear as soon as people buy your product, that would be a shock on their systems, because now you've attracted the wrong kind of people, people who are offended by the way that you speak.

But if you do that on social media because you're going to do it once they buy from you, just let them know who you are from day one. I just used swearing as an example, but it could be many other things. Some examples of top-of-funnel content include your podcast, your blog, your social media. If we want to talk about Facebook ads, this is where engagement ads come in. This is video view ads, it's traffic ads to blog posts or to podcast episodes. So those are all of your top-of-the-funnel content. So the two things to remember for the top of funnel is your audience is very large, but their trust of you is very low. So lead with value, and if you're going to sell them something, make sure it's something really small and make sure that you know exactly that that offer is going to convert.

Now, once we have done the work at the top of the funnel, then some of the people, not all of them, some of the people move down to the middle of the funnel. Now in the middle of the funnel, we're kind of in the dating space. We're kind of dating each other. We're getting to know each other. This is a little bit less Joey and more Monica and Chandler after they get back from London but before Ross yells, "Get off my sister." You know what I mean. In this phase, we are building trust. We are hanging out together. They're reading our emails, they're consuming our content. They're deciding if we are the best thing since sliced bread, and we're building a relationship with them. At this level, our audience might be tens of thousands of people. This is where your email list starts growing to 5,000 and 10,000 and 20,000 and 50,000 people.

You have to keep adding value to them on Facebook and Instagram. You have to keep building your relationship with them there. Because they're not just going to engage with you on their email list, they're also going to follow you on Instagram. They're also going to want to send you a DM when you post something cute in Stories, or when you do your little dance on Reels, where you're pointing at different things that matter to them. Their attention span is a little bit longer, and you have to work and keep working to maintain their care factor, okay? They pay more attention to you, but your job is to build their care factor. So they're somewhat committed to you in that they're probably on your email list. They're probably listening to your podcast. They're probably watching your IGTV videos. They're probably going to your YouTube channel. They're probably showing up when you go live on Facebook. But they haven't bought from you., And you're still building that relationship. Their engagement is high-ish, as long as they are interested in what you're saying and in what you're sharing.

So your job is to get them on your email list and keep them engaged until you're ready to go into your prelaunch phase. Your job with this middle-of-the-funnel people are when you're ready to go into that pre-launch phase is to get them to show up for your webinar or your workshop or your masterclass or your challenge, the thing that's going to sell to them. The middle of the funnel is where the magic happens, because this is where they are this close to buying but they haven't yet bought. And so your conversations with them is all about helping them, it's all about showing them how you can help them get the results that they want.

Remember, your job here is to continue to build the trust and connect deeply with them. It's also to continue to repel those people who are not right for your paid programs and deepen the relationship with those that are. To give you an example of middle-of-the-funnel content, we're talking about the weekly emails you're sending out to your email subscribers. We're talking about your podcast. We're talking about your YouTube subscribers. We're talking about people who are on your email list. If we look at ads, we're talking about list-building ads, we're talking about webinar ads or ads that get them to sign up for something, a challenge or a workshop or something where you most likely are going to sell something to them at the end of that sales event. So that's the middle of the funnel, and that part is a lot of fun. Most of your energy will go into that part because that's where you get to help people see if you are right for them, and if you can get them results.

And then we move on to the bottom of the funnel, and this is where people are highly engaged. This is where we love each other and we want to get married and have babies. This is Phoebe and Mike getting married in the snow outside of Central Park. I mean, it does not get more loved-up than this. The number of people you're going to have in this audience is smaller. It could be tens of hundreds or thousands of people. It could be only hundreds of people. It could only be tens of people. It's going to be pretty small, and it depends on how high the cost of your program is that you're selling to them. Because you can imagine, the higher the investment that they need to make, the longer this runway needs to be and the more nurturing you need to do.

Also, as you grow, as your audience gets bigger at the top, it's also going to get bigger at the bottom. So there's a time/money balance here, right? You might need to spend more money in Facebook ads to bring them in at the top of the funnel so that you end up with a large enough audience at the bottom of the funnel. If you don't have money to spend on Facebook ads to bring them down to the bottom of the funnel, then you're going to have to put in the time and the sweat equity. You are going to work your heinie off on social media. I know people who very successfully have done this and have built their Facebook pages to hundreds of thousands of followers just by going live every day. So it can definitely be done. But I mean, there's a faster way and we call it Facebook ads.

Now, at the bottom of the funnel, it is important for you to know that you are still nurturing them. You're nurturing them deeply, and you are delivering your absolute best service to them. You're also selling to them at the bottom of the funnel. You are selling to them from a heart-centered space, an authentic space, and it does not ever feel creepy or icky because they've already self-selected to be there and to be sold to because you've taken them through the top of the funnel and you've taken them through the middle of the funnel. At the bottom of the funnel, they want to give you money. They really, really want what you're offering. That's why they're there. That's why they're hanging out with you, and you have their full attention.

At the bottom of the funnel, they are super committed to you. They're on your email list. They're are podcasts listeners. They show up when you go live. They reply to your emails. And most importantly, they buy when you make them an offer. Their engagement is high, and they ask about when you'll be opening the doors to your course again when they're in your community. Your job at the bottom of the funnel is to help them see the future that they want and see how your course can help them get that future. Your job at the bottom of the funnel is to help them believe in themselves. Your job at the bottom of the funnel is to help them overcome the objections they have to buying your course. Your job is to use urgency and scarcity to help them make a purchasing decision or help them realize that it's not for them and they need to move on. Your job at the bottom of the funnel is for those that buy, you need to deliver like your life depends on it, and take them on a journey to the next step in their success.

And whether that means you sell them onto your next program or your group coaching or your high-level membership, whatever that is, your job is to take them and make sure they get the success they need so that they can continue the journey with you. When we're talking about ads, these are the ads we run to the people who are most likely to buy from us. They are usually smaller retargeting audiences that you would target with ads like enrollment open ads, enrollment closing ads, and any other launch ads that you may be running to remind them to sign up for your course. So that is the bottom of the funnel, and that's where you get to make the majority of your money. That's where you get these business models where people do two launches a year, and in those two launches they make six figures and that carries them through the rest of the year. And then maybe they sell some smaller things during the rest of the year, but those two launches could very well be the only launches people have, but it's enough to carry them through.

So you remember at the beginning of this episode I told you that there's a very simple formula for making money online, and that's leads plus offers equals sales. And it really is just as simple as falling in love, two people who love each other and who do stuff together until they decide they want to do more stuff together. That is as simple as it is. So leads plus offers, you need to be out there finding your leads. You need to be out there building the relationship with your leads, and you need to start making them offers when you've built that relationship. So don't be like Ross and Rachel and be all like, "We were on a break," with your email list. Email your list every week, because that's how you bring them down that funnel, and that's how you get to making money.

So when you again think that, "Well, I just want to make money now. So I don't have time to nurture my email list?" Remember that the gateway to making money is bringing people down the funnel and then making them an offer. If you don't have time to email your email list or nurture your email list, then you are probably unlikely to make any money from them. So don't go on a break with your email list, and please don't take 10 years to seal the deal. Nobody has time for that anymore. That's another Russ and Rachel reference for those of you who didn't watch for 10 years like I did. Well, I have run out of cheesy Friends analogies, so I hope that you've enjoyed today's episode. I want to let you know that A-Lister is the fastest way to build a lucrative audience online and make your first sale using Facebook and Instagram ads without wasting your money, selling your soul on social media, or getting a tech degree. Enrollment for A-Lister opens again on January 13th, and you can get on the waitlist by going to shineandsucceed.com/waitlist. I will see you again next week. Take care. Bye.

That is it from me, my friends. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful Christmas. Next year, it is going to look different. Just know that if you're missing your family, if you're not around the people you love this year, hang in there, it will get better. Next year we are all going to be able to hug each other's necks again. So have a wonderful, wonderful Christmas, my friends. Remember, if you want to get on the waitlist for A-Lister, the fastest way to build your engaged audience and make your first or next sale using Facebook and Instagram ads without wasting your money, selling your soul on social media, or getting a tech degree, the place to go to is shineandsucceed.com/waitlist. I will see you guys again next week. Have a Merry, Merry Christmas, everyone. Bye.

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