How to Talk About Your Offer (Without Wearing Out Your Audience)
You inevitably have to constantly talk about your offer in order to keep it top of mind with your audience. After all, according to the rule of 7, someone needs to see or hear your marketing message seven times before they finally purchase from you. That seems like a lot, right?
Well, talking about your offer doesn’t always have to mean you’re directly promoting it 24/7. There are other ways to indirectly promote your offer without driving your people away (because it’s almost guaranteed you’ll lose followers or list subscribers if all you’re doing is selling to them).
Keep reading as we dive into how to talk about your offer without wearing out your audience!
Post More Value Than You Sell
On social media or email, post (or send) more value-driven content than promotional. For example, during a regular week of content, if you post three times per week on your channels, two of those posts should be focused on providing value. Maybe you don’t even directly sell your offer but once every two weeks. Whatever your usual marketing calendar looks like, try making sure your ratio of value content outweighs your promotional content.
Let’s be honest, would you want to follow someone on Instagram if all they did in every single post was try to sell you their thing? The answer is probably not. Think about why you follow someone. The likely reason is that you want to learn more about something, and that person seems to know a lot about it with their posts.
You should aim for that same concept. For us, we hope people come around for our business knowledge, mindset tips, and inspirational posts, but we want them to stay as a customer of The Shop or a student in one of our courses.
In all actuality, even providing value is indirectly selling your offer. It’s also totally fine to mention your offer briefly in your value posts! The main focus here is that you don’t want all of your posts to be just about your offer.
Use a Freebie to Attract Leads
This goes back to the same concept of providing value, only this time with a freebie instead of a post on social or an email to your list. The difference between the two is that your posts don’t necessarily have to be structured based on the journey or solution you provide with your offer. With a freebie, though, you’re more intentional about what you’re teaching because you want it to naturally lead into your offer and the solution you provide.
For example, let’s say you’re a photographer who has a course on how to start a photography business. On social media, you might post things like photos from a recent shoot, lighting tips, posing tips, behind-the-scenes, etc. But in a freebie, you could provide a PDF list of all the equipment you need to run a photography business. Of course, that’s only a small part of what goes into starting the business, but it leads into the course. Or you could host a free workshop that gives a very simplified overview of how to start a photography business. You could walk them through the basic framework and provide a few of our favorite tools, but all of the juicy details and support are in the course.
See the difference there? You’re definitely teaching something valuable that’s more than just a social media post, but it’s structured in a way that it leads into your freebie seamlessly.
Nurture and Pitch with a Welcome Sequence
We love welcome sequences because they’re the ultimate triple whammy— they introduce yourself to your audience, provide value, and pitch your offer without you even having to lift a finger once you’ve set it up. The best part is that they catch your reader while they’re still a warm lead because 9 times out of 10, they’ve joined your list via a freebie.
Everyone structures their sequences differently, but they all essentially accomplish those three things. Usually, they start by helping your audience get to know you and your business better, then the rest is a strategic dance between educating and soft- and hard-pitching. (Check out our post on how to write a welcome sequence that converts right here.)
And those are our basic tips on how to talk about your offer without wearing out your audience! As you can see, you’re almost always talking about it, whether you’re hard selling it or just mentioning it in an education-focused post. Either way, mixing up your content this way is the key to making sure your audience isn’t bombarded (and bored) with hearing about your offer.
If you want help figuring out the strategies behind nurturing, be sure to join The Creative Shop Co-op! We're hosting all new conversations to help you with the strategies your business needs in order to grow. Learn more here!
