Episode 277 Late Night Internet Marketing. This week on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, we're going to talk about a crawfish boil and specifically, how you can find clients without having to be a huge social media star. All this and more on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, and now broadcasting late at night from a little studio in the big state of Texas, your host, mark Mason. Hey, hey, hey, how is everyone doing? I am your host, mark Mason. I've been having a beautiful month, really starting to get a little rain, april showers and May flowers and all that good stuff coming to us here in the great state of Texas. I hope wherever you are in the world you're having an amazing week, and this week I want to tell you about my experience at what was really a very nice crawfish boil.

Now, if you're not from the south part of the United States, you may not be familiar with crawfish. Crawfish, also called mud bugs here in the south, are the shellfish that crawl around in the rivers here in Texas and mostly really in Louisiana, and you can think of them kind of like shrimp, a cross between crab and shrimp, and you eat the tails and they're very popular for parties. You boil up a bunch of these crawfish, you cook them live like you would a crab. You boil them up with lots of spices and seasoning, usually with potatoes and corn, and you pour them out on a table and everybody sits around and has a great time talking, usually in a backyard, with a lot of cold beer. It's a southern tradition and, again, I'm from Texas, but this is especially popular in Louisiana and it's made its way over here to Texas over the years, and I was recently at a really fantastic crawfish boil Actually, it was crawfish and brisket and cold beer one of my very favorites, a beer from Texas, shiner Bock.

We were having a really good time and I met a person that I hadn't talked to before and I found out that she was in the business of helping people, through coaching, deal with their personal financial debt. She's very passionate about this topic and I won't tell you her name, but we'll just call her Jill for the purpose of this podcast, and we got to talking. She didn't know that I was involved with marketing as we were talking, but it became apparent that she was really passionate about helping people and she is a certified coach in helping people deal with issues like personal finance and debt and these sorts of things helping people break that cycle of debt that so many people are getting into and is particularly relevant these days with inflation and the way the economy appears to be going here in the United States at the moment. Jill was really in a position to help a lot of people and, as a certified coach, she enjoyed the fact that the people who certified her did send her clients from time to time, but not enough clients, and she really needed more clients. Like a lot of coaches out there, jill needed leads. This is a thing for all businesses everywhere. You know, the purpose of business is to match buyers with offers and convert them so you can help them, and what Jill said to me was she just needed more clients really as simple as that, and so I asked her.

You know, it seemed obvious to me that a great place to get these kinds of clients would be on social media and using traditional marketing techniques, like we talk about right here on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast Not just social media, but newsletters and those sorts of things just having a strong online presence. And the first thing that Jill said to me was I hate Facebook. I just canceled my Facebook account. I'm not a social media person and I thought, yeah, I understand that. I've heard that before and you know it made me think, wow, what can I do to help Jill and the people like Jill understand that there are ways to get clients from social media without having to be social media obsessed, stuck on social media, without having to be an influencer, because more and more I hear this from people that they're not interested in using platforms like Facebook because they don't like those platforms themselves, and I totally understand that. But of course, the challenge is, if that's where your customers are, sometimes you need to figure out exactly what you can do about it, because really, in Jill's case, it's all about the visibility. It's not about her talent. She's a certified coach.

It was clear to me just from talking to her for a few minutes that she's got what it takes to help people. It immediately made me think this problem with Facebook. It made me ask this question If you had the cure for cancer and you didn't like Facebook, would you say, oh, the heck with it? The cure for cancer is more important than the fact that I don't like Facebook. I'm going to go ahead and go on Facebook so I can help people survive cancer. Well, I'm going to tell you something Helping people survive debt and that cycle that that brings on, that tears apart families and causes just tremendous stress that often leads to health problems and all kinds of other issues like divorce.

If you could find a way to use Facebook, I feel like it might be worth it, because really, what you need to find clients is visibility, and the thing that people object to which I still think is a valid way to go is this still works today is create valuable content on social media, build relationships with people to develop that know, like and trust factor and be really patient. And in Jill's case, I don't think you need to expose yourself as a person on Facebook in order to do this. As a person on Facebook, in order to do this, I think it's perfectly legitimate to create an avatar, maybe a cartoon of yourself, where you reveal your first name, maybe only to clients, until you get to know them, to the general public, as it were and you present valuable content about how people can get a hold of their debt. I know that Jill knows this from being trained in this area, but there are people out there with these problems that are suffering silently because they're afraid to ask for help. They're too embarrassed, they don't want to let people know that they've got this problem. They feel like they should be able to solve it on their own and they're trapped.

And what's great about social media is especially now with Facebook's ability to post anonymously in groups is that you can have a group on social media, on Facebook or your Facebook page, and you can talk to people and you can create a safe place for them. Well, the reverse is true for you too. You don't need to put your picture on social media. You can have a cartoon avatar that you build and build your whole brand around that. For example, my wife has a brand called Ball Cap Mom at ballcapmomcom. That's how she got started on the internet and it's a cartoon person that looks sort of like her that is wearing a ball cap, because everywhere my wife goes she's wearing a ball cap, a ball cap, because everywhere my wife goes she's wearing a ball cap. Now she doesn't work on Ball Cap Mom much anymore because she's 100% invested in her photography business, but when Paula was doing Ball Cap Mom, she was Ball Cap Mom, and I have another friend in the debt industry and she's all about being a Latina debt person expert. She's not really about her name. She's about the fact that she reflects the demographics of her audience, so you don't have to put yourself out front and center in the brand you can build around that.

Of course, the challenge with these classic organic growth approaches is they take time, but you can definitely put content out there to help people Trust building content like helping people prepare, in the case of debt, for a debt snowball Like here's three things you need to do before you start your debt snowball and if you're not familiar with that, that's a technique that people in the debt space teach. In order to reduce debt, you start with the smallest debt first and then you retire that debt and take that payment and put it on the next biggest debt, and so on and so on, and before you know it, you're paying hundreds or thousands of dollars a month off. On credit cards, you could create helpful content that educates people about the dangers of credit card debt and how double digit interest can really explode on you and how that thing that you didn't really need in the first place or that fancy meal that you probably should have just stayed home and cooked a hamburger but you bought that $200 meal, how that's going to end up costing you $300 or $400. And you can just create free value for people that causes them to know, like and trust you. These things aren't new, but they are things that still work. If you help people, it creates this know, like and trust factor and it makes people not only want to get more help from you, but also it makes people want to reciprocate. They feel good about giving you their hard-earned dollars because they know you've already paid it forward and given them great content. It forward and given them great content.

But one thing that I think can really work here and can accelerate this and can mitigate this needing to get out front with something on a brand where you're posting on social media every day and you're interacting with people, is this tiny offer strategy that we've been talking about Now. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but this is a strategy where you have a small product and you make that product for sale. So in the case of the debt space, you might have a small product that help people get started with the debt snowball Maybe it's a debt snowball workbook or something that can really get them started and you advertise that product, and the goal of this is to break even on the ads. So you're not out there posting content, you're not responding to a lot of people, you're not interacting in Facebook groups and doing all the things that Jill apparently doesn't like very much about social media. What you're doing is you're just running ads and they can be run as your company. You're running them under your Facebook page and you don't really need to be a part of that. In fact, if you look at ads that you see on Facebook, a lot of times you just see the product or the offering. You don't see anything about the people behind the product, and you can do it that way and that helps you build a list of buyers.

It helps you collect email lists and then you can upsell those people, once they buy your product, to your coaching. You can check in on them and say, hey, thank you for buying my debt snowball worksheet and week-long debt snowball challenge or whatever it is. How's it going? I just want to let you know that I have these additional resources available, so you can just very naturally say hey, I wanted to see how it's going. If I can help you further, please feel free to sign up for my higher ticket coaching.

So you know, for Jill, her tiny offers could be the debt snowball kit or maybe some kind of budgeting help. You know, household budgeting is not all that easy. Maybe you've got some templates that you've developed that you use in your normal coaching that are easy for people to use, and you could teach a quick $7 class on that and then you coach, then you upsell after that to the higher value coaching offer. Now this is a traditional funnel, but the magic of this is is you try to balance this very tiny offer, very low risk for your buyer, especially in this market of people with lots of debt. They've got financial trouble in the first place, and so I think it's important that you go in with a really, really low price point, especially in this kind of market, and you build trust. But you do it in a very accelerated way because people are spending the money. They're getting the result very quickly. They just heard about you in their Facebook feed 20 minutes ago and already they've downloaded your thing and they're working on their debt snowballer budget template and getting those results very quickly.

So this can be very effective and what it can do is it can unlock, and what it can do is it can unlock unlimited growth potential for your business. Basically, you're talking about an ad cost where your target is zero. Now, right at first, you don't get to zero ad costs, but even if you're only spending $5 a day on ads, that could be a pretty effective thing for you. If that brings you one or two or three or four new clients a month five new clients a month, depending on how your business works that could change everything for you over the course of several months. And it has these added benefits that it improves the trust factor in your business, because not only are you creating new clients, you're creating tens or hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of people that have bought your $7 product and are getting great results. Those people are now on, maybe on your email newsletter. You're staying in touch with them. They're referring clients to you, telling their friends about you. This is a really good way to grow your business without just dumping money on advertising. That has a long indirect return. The whole idea here really is that sometimes it can be really really hard to convert cold traffic on Facebook into a high ticket offer. That's hundreds of dollars a month or thousands of dollars a month in debt coaching or any kind of coaching, but that first conversion, that micro conversion of $7 or $10 or $17, that can be a lot easier and it can get the ball rolling, as it were, for you in your business.

So the other thing I would say is getting back to Jill's original objection of you know I don't really like social media. I'm not comfortable there. I'd say social media is a tool, not a lifestyle. You know you have to have a yellow pages mindset. I say about social media, when you're using it in this way, you really need to just think of it as a tool, like a business directory. This is just how you're getting your name out there. You don't have to do the things on social media that make you uncomfortable, that you don't like, that you don't agree with. You're just using it, in this example, as an advertising platform and it's not any different than putting an ad in the newspaper, putting an ad in the yellow pages. It's just a client finder for you and you don't need to be dancing on TikTok in order to do that. You just need to place the ads and create the offer for those ads. Now there are lots of other paid traffic options that work with self-liquidating offers, besides Facebook and Instagram. Those include things like TikTok. Of course, there are Google search-based ads, there are Pinterest ads that you can try out these days, and all of those you can use this very small ad budget and tiny offer method like we talked about. Remember this tiny offer method.

The person who teaches this, if you want to learn more about this, is Allie Burke, and I talked about that a couple of episodes ago. I ran into her at Social Media Marketing World and just really, really enjoyed her presentation. She did a really good job and I think it applies particularly to this case around social media ads. You know, one of the things we need to talk about here that I think is important is not just what you can do here, because I think we've got lots of good options for Jill.

I think anytime in business when we know we should be doing a thing and that's the reaction that I got from Jill is like, yeah, finding clients on social media makes sense and I really need clients, but I don't want to go on social media Anytime. We've got that kind of resistance that we're feeling in our business, whether it's launching the new product or trying out a new ad stream, like we're talking about or engaging with people in a certain way, whatever it is. We need to unpack that and understand what the heck's going on there. I mean, I think when I hear that as a coach, as a performance coach, that's my immediate instinct and that was my instinct with Jill. Now, it wasn't appropriate to do that. We didn't have that conversation at the crawfish boil, right? First of all, I had crawfish juice up to my elbows and I was stuffing my face, but you know, group settings aren't that great sometimes for these kinds of deeper conversations.

But the question that I want to know from Jill is well, why do you feel that way about social media? What is it in your framework, what are you telling yourself about social media that makes you think that? Are you telling yourself that social media is bad for people? Or you've got ideas about social media that make you not want to be involved in it and you're taking a stand? Or is it more that you're afraid of how you'll be received on social media and you don't feel comfortable with the idea that there might be people on there that say mean things to you or about you or about your product? Maybe you have this fear of failing visibly in front of so many people.

I see that a lot People feel exposed on social media and they have this fear, and the fear is what is causing the inaction. And I got to ask you you know what is really the worst thing that can happen there? So someone says something mean to you on Facebook and you block them. I mean, you delete the comment and you block them and you move on. I think what you'll find out, as is as you build an audience on Facebook of people that you've really helped, you'll find that there are so many people saying nice things about the great things that you're doing to help your community that those occasional detractors, first of all, they'll get clobbered by your true fans, which is always kind of fun for me to watch. And you, second of all, who cares? Right, again, you're helping cure the cancer of economics, which is debt. Right, you're rescuing people and their lives. And who cares if somebody says something mean or nobody likes your Facebook post?

I mean, really, your objective is the mission of your business, which is to help people, and to me, that should help you have the courage to overcome the fear. Now, I know it's not that easy, right, it's not that easy to to overcome these things, but you'll find that once you do it over and over and over again, the courage grows. And when you help people and you get those email messages or direct messages that say, hey, jill, you changed my life I mean, occasionally I get these messages hey, I listened to your podcast and that changed everything I mean these things make it all worth it. And so, jill, I encourage you or, if you're like Jill, I encourage you to really understand what's holding you back in these moments where you're not wanting to do something, you're feeling that internal resistance. I want to encourage you to really understand where that's coming from. It's okay if you're afraid that's totally normal. Or if you had a bad experience, I get it. But to go forward without unpacking that and understanding it and owning it and deciding what to do about it, I think that's a mistake. So here's your action plan.

If you're Jill, I think if you don't want to create organic content on Facebook and spend the next year and a half building an audience on Facebook, I think that's fine. Create a tiny offer like Allie teaches over at tinyoffercom and build a simple funnel and start $5 a day worth of ads and for the people that leave their email address with you as part of that funnel process, offer them your product, which is coaching right. And if one out of every hundred people that you get to come to your landing page takes you up on your coaching, that will be a huge win for you and you can build an amazing business on the basis of this and I think you'll be really happy because not only will you be helping people and growing your audience and growing whatever you decide to do, like an email list you'll also be getting new clients, which is what you needed in the first place. But don't be overwhelmed by it. It's a tiny funnel. Do it in tiny steps. Think about what the smallest thing you could do is that you could do easily. And if you're a coach and you already got a coaching offer, you're way ahead of most people and you probably already have all the collateral you need. Just take something that you already have or do a little webinar for somebody for your mom, you know, or for your kids and record that and make that your tiny offer and measure your results. Run ads, see what's working. Allie teaches this really simple three day, $30 a day method where she shows you how to test ads really inexpensively on Facebook. It's really fantastic. And then make adjustments and keep doing that until you find a formula that works, and just stay in constant motion.

Make your plan, write it down, talk to ChatGPT, tell ChatGPT what you're thinking, feed them the transcript from this podcast and then tell ChatGPT say, hey, I just listened to Mark Mason. He was explaining this thing. Here's the transcript. Here's everything I can tell you about my business. Give me a plan to make this work and ChatGPT will generate an action plan for you about my business. Give me a plan to make this work and ChatGPT will generate an action plan for you. Just like that. This is a great way to use ChatGPT and you can read that action plan and you can say you know what I like the first two steps, but step three doesn't work for me. Let's reconfigure this so I can do it this way instead of that way, or what else have you got? And ChatGPT will work with you tirelessly and talk to you until you two come up with a great plan for you.

Go, take that action now. And don't forget if you do this, you can accelerate your growth with tiny offers. But organic still works too, and I will tell you it's the hidden benefit of the tiny offers, because I think you'll find, if you run this tiny offer method, you're going to find out that organic is going to build automagically and you're going to end up with both, and that's going to be great for you because it's going to make it possible for you to sustain your business long-term. So take action. What's your tiny offer going to be? Create one this week. Let me set that expectation as well.

It shouldn't take you long to make a simple lead magnet. I'm thinking a week. I could do it in a day. So if I can do it in a day, you can do it in a week. Go do it now. And if you need my help, if you want my advice, head on over to the VIP forum at vipmarkmasoncom. It's free, and if you post a message in there I will answer you. So if you've got a question, you want to talk to me, vipmarkmasoncom Until next week. Ciao to leave feedback for Mark, download special bonus content, access the show notes and more. See you there. Until then, go and make some great progress on your internet business one night at a time.