Creating Pocket Products®️ for Service Based Business Owners with Courtney Foster-Donahue
Episode 565: Show Notes
Ready to grow your audience and grow your revenue at the same time, but don't know how? Well, this is the episode for you! Today on the show, we welcome Courtney Foster-Donahue, an Atlanta-based four-time entrepreneur and business strategist. Courtney founded and runs a multimillion-dollar company where she has worked with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs across the world. Through her acclaimed programs, Pocket Products™, The Course Course, and Launchpad, she helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses through digital courses, digital products, and digital marketing; which is exactly what we are chatting about today!
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We pick Courtney’s awesome marketing brain as she shares her tips for innovating while simultaneously keeping things simple and provides a peek behind the curtain of what is working for her right now. In this episode, we talk Pocket Products™, the revolutionary and inexpensive lead generation method that is perfect for service-based business owners like yourself to incorporate into your income revenue stream, so that you can have another way of making money, add value to your audience, grow your list, get paid to grow that list, and serve up intense, amazing value!
We discuss the number one way to grow your list through low-priced, high-value digital products, how to get paid and grow a list of customers rather than subscribers, and how to use the W.A.N.D. Method to figure out exactly what your Pocket Products™ should be. If you haven’t been introduced to Courtney yet, you’re in for a real treat! Tune in, get out your notebook, and grab a fresh cup of coffee, because we’re pretty sure you’ll be ready to hit the ground running after this episode!
Low-Priced, High-Value Digital Products for Lead Generation
Courtney kicks this episode off by answering a simple question: what exactly is a Pocket Product™? Well, first and foremost, it is a type of lead generator. If you want to make sales, you have to have customers. If you want to have customers, you have to engage with a pool of people, and lead generators like Pocket Products™ are a key tool in allowing your business to better engage with potential customers. More specifically, Pocket Products™ are low-priced, high-value digital products that typically cost less than $50. These are digital products that actually solve a problem, unlike your standard opt-in freebie lead magnet. Lead magnets give you the ‘what?’ and the ‘why?’ of a problem. Think high-level overviews, step-by-steps, and teasers.
Lead magnets encourage people to work with your business because, ideally, they now have a better feel of how you can help them. With a Pocket Product™, you provide the ‘what?’, the ‘why?’, and a little ‘how to’. Rather than simply giving your customer information like you do with a freebie, a Pocket Product™ gives them a little something to implement immediately. This can take many forms, including things like a micro-course, an e-book, a Trello board, or a Google Sheets calculator, for example.
Whatever you decide is the best mini-offering for your business, a Pocket Product™ helps customers solve one specific problem. It doesn’t facilitate a massive transformation in the same way that one of your services might.
How to Get Paid to Grow a List of Customers, Not a List of Subscribers
Pocket Products™ work in the same way that Trello for Business does; rather than having to pay to grow leads, Abagail and Emylee get paid to grow leads! Courtney believes that Trello for Business is the perfect example of an effective Pocket Product™ for service-based businesses because it acts as the gateway to everything else you can offer. By helping someone solve an individual issue, you inherently promote your business as a whole by building trust, creating buy-in, and generating an immediate affinity with potential customers.
Statistically, repeat customers spend 33 percent more on average than first-time customers, so why not start the relationship with a lead as a customer, rather than just a lead or another subscriber to your newsletter? Why have an email list full of what Courtney calls ‘freebie finders’ when you can have a list full of solution seekers? When you use a Pocket Product™ to grow your list, the side effect is that you also grow your revenue at the same time, which is a bonus, but perhaps more importantly, you grow a list of customers, not a list of subscribers.
Pocket Products™ as a Prerequisite for Service-Based Businesses
Another great way for service-based businesses to utilize Pocket Products™ is as a prerequisite for working with you. In other words, customers have to complete your mini-offering before they can work with you one-on-one or sign up for your signature offering. This can take a lot of different forms. Perhaps you require that they do some kind of prep work before they can apply for one of your services. In this instance, a Pocket Product™ can be any prerequisite that will lead to a service, so feel free to think really creatively here! Pocket Products™ as prerequisites can help customers appreciate the value of your bigger offerings.
By helping customers solve one problem, you increase the perceived value of your done-for-you or one-on-one services, and prepares and primes them to make that bigger investment. Courtney shares some of the ways that she pitches her services throughout her Pocket Product™ offering and the benefits of implementing what she calls an ‘upgrade email sequence’, as well as providing opportunities for her customers to take it to the next level right away. The leap from Pocket Product™ to signature service can happen so much faster than you think!
What Not to Include in a Pocket Product™
For a Pocket Product™ to do its job, it needs to grow your list on autopilot. You want to make sure that, whatever you include in your Pocket Product™, people can consume it and begin to start implementing it within a weekend. If it’s longer than that, you have just created a course or written a book, you haven’t created a Pocket Product™. The other thing that a Pocket Product™ cannot include in order for it to work is your time. Courtney advises against offering 90-minute coaching calls, for example.
Remember, your time is not scalable. You only have so many hours in a week. If you make your time part of the offer, heaven forbid you sell a whole lot of Pocket Products™ because, suddenly, it is a curse to your business and not a blessing! Tips from Courtney include keeping everything digital, pre-recorded, and self-guided. That doesn’t mean you reject any and all queries and requests for guidance. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with answering questions from your Pocket Product™ students, but it’s about finding a balance between providing personal attention and making your time part of the offer.
Why You Should Promote Your Services Like the Gifts They Are
Courtney believes that your courses, services, and Pocket Products™ are all gifts. Whenever someone asks her how to promote their services, she asks them, “How would you give a gift?” For example, would you give a diamond ring to someone by throwing it in a plastic bag and leaving it on their doorstep? No! You would probably put it in a beautiful box, wrap it in pretty paper, and hand it to them with reverence, perhaps explaining the value of the gift and why you chose this ring specifically for them. The same applies to putting a product or service out into the world. Put it out there like you care!
That doesn’t mean, however, that you have to spend money on advertising right out of the gate. Courtney advises her students to do a few weeks of organic sales before they dabble in ads, so they can make sure it works and it’s received in the manner they intended. She offers a valuable tip here: start with who you know. Whether you want to admit it or not, your first few sales will probably come from friends and family. When you launch your Pocket Product™, start with your existing following if you have one. If you don’t, reach out to friends, friends of friends, and family. Explain how this can help people. Connect with people whose audiences are complementary. Leverage the power of referrals.
How to Use the W.A.N.D. Method to Determine Your Pocket Products™
While it may seem as simple as waving a magic wand, W.A.N.D. in this instance is an acronym for Whiny, Audacious, Needy Desire. When you are trying to come up with an idea for a Pocket Product™, of course it’s low-price, it’s digital, it doesn’t include your time but, at the end of the day, it’s all about fulfilling a want; a whiny, audacious, needy desire. You are not necessarily fulfilling a need. That is what your services, courses, and programs do. You are fulfilling a perceived need. When you structure your Pocket Product™ around this W.A.N.D., you meet your customer where they are at. A lot of times, consumers aren’t problem-aware enough to appreciate the great service you offer that will solve their big problem. Problem awareness is something you will likely have to address with your marketing, but you can also address it using lead generation or Pocket Products™. By creating something that fulfills a desire, whether that is a needy desire, a whiny desire, or perhaps even an audacious desire, you create something that is an irresistible impulse buy!
Quote This
Make sure that, if you’re promoting something, you’re not putting out just a piece of content, but you’re creating a connection.
Highlights
Low-Priced, High-Value Digital Products for Lead Generation. [0:05:47]
How to Get Paid to Grow a List of Customers, Not a List of Subscribers. [0:11:22]
Pocket Products™ as a Prerequisite for Service-Based Businesses. [0:15:22]
What Not to Include in a Pocket Product™. [0:22:48]
Why You Should Promote Your Services Like the Gifts They Are. [0:29:02]
How to Use the W.A.N.D. Method to Determine Your Pocket Products™. [0:40:42]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:40:30]
Use the W.A.N.D. Method to determine what your Pocket Products™ are.
Address problem awareness with marketing and lead generation.
Create an irresistible impulse buy that fulfills a W.A.N.D.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Courtney Foster-Donahue
Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook
Courtney Foster-Donahue is an Atlanta-based four-time entrepreneur and business strategist. She founded and runs a multi-million dollar company, where she has worked with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs across the world. Through her acclaimed programs, Pocket Products™, The Course Course, and Launchpad, she helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses through digital courses, digital products, and digital marketing.
KEY TOPICS
Service-based Business, Revenue Growth, Lead Generation, Value Add
