Episode 02

High Energy Marketing: Do You Have A Lead-in Product?

Episode 2

Do you have a lead-in product?

Tami and Joe talk about why you need to have a lead-in product and how it helps secure clients for a long-term commitment.

Episode 2 Transcript: 

Tami: Welcome to High Energy Marketing, a podcast following Ajax Union’s president, me— Oh, they changed the intro on us this time— a podcast following us Ajax Union as we interview our CEO, Joe Apfelbaum.

We go through key marketing topics and share everything you need to know about how to properly grow your business online. 

Everything is coming from Joe’s book, High Energy Marketing. And you can find this at AjaxUnion.com/book that will redirect you to where you can get this book and follow along with us.

We do have several people following along with us and taking notes and sharing those images with us. So that’s nice. This is a Q&A podcast. So I will be asking Joe different questions about different topics every week, we go through one chapter at a time.

Last week, we chatted about the difference between a marketing strategy and a business plan. And this week we are going through chapter two.

Today we are going to discuss lead-in products: do you have a lead-in product? What is the purpose of lead-in products?— all about lead-in products—that’s what we’re discussing today.

Joe: I love lead-in products and they’re so necessary for businesses. So make sure that you’re paying attention here.

Tami: So this is the second official episode of our podcast, High Energy Marketing. And first, let’s do a little housekeeping. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so that you don’t miss the next episode covering the next topic about digital marketing.

Let’s do a quick inspiration of the day. Joe, do you want to hit us with a little bit of inspiration?

Joe: Of course. I want you to realize that wherever you are right now in your life, or in your business is exactly where you need to be. If you’re frustrated about something that happened in the past, if you’re frustrated about not being far enough, maybe it’s because you didn’t learn from what happened in the past, maybe you didn’t learn why you need to be here right now.

So remember, that is wherever you are right now in your life is exactly where you need to be. And when you accept that and you become one with that, only then from a foundation of acceptance, can you then move forward and start creating what you want.

You can’t resent the past and expect for the past not to follow you into the future. So if you want to get motivated, if you want to improve your life, if you want to create something that you’d never had before and live the life of your dreams, realize that where you are right now is exactly where you need to be and learn those lessons from the past that you can take into the future positivity, excitement and more mojovation.

Tami: I love that. You always like to say everything that happens, happens in our favor.

Joe: Yes, 100%, every single thing that ever happened in my life was to get me where I am right now. And if you’re alive, just like I’m alive—the key is to remember that everything that happens is in our favor, and you’re going to have more good things happen in your life.

Tami: Thanks, Joe. So we have a couple of questions for you about lead-in products. First of all, what is a lead-in product?

Joe: A lead-in product is a product that leads your customers in the door. So maybe you solve one problem for one specific type of target market.

Tami: But why can’t they just be led in the door by my main product? Why do I need a different product?

Joe: Because often your signature product is something that people need to think a lot about and the need to invest a lot into. And if your main product is your lead-in product, then you’re leaving a lot on the table. 

Think about your business like an iceberg. Most people don’t really see your entire business, they only see the tip of the iceberg. And that tip of the iceberg is something that you want people to be able to consume quickly and get in the door.

And once in the door, you can give them a tour of the whole iceberg. But if you try to throw the entire iceberg at someone, it’s just way too much. And so in my business, the way that I’ve been able to be successful and many of our clients is first we give people a taste of something.

So maybe it’s something small, for example, at Ajax Union, we created something called the LinkedIn Authority Blueprint that’s a lead-in product that walks people into us creating a strategy for them. And that allows us to be able to offer something for an affordable price to our target market.

And when they purchase that then we can go to the next level and sell them our upsells from there and our customers might be worth let’s say $200,000 to us, but our lead-in product might only be a few $1,000 to get them in the door.

Tami: Hm. Do all businesses need a lead-in product? Okay, we’re a service business. We have one. I mean, do all types of businesses have lead- in products?

Joe: I believe that every single type of business out there needs to have a lead-in product in order to be effective. And if they don’t have a lead-in product, and their main product is a lead-in product, they’re missing their back-end product, and they’re leaving a lot of opportunity on the table.

Now, some businesses, they don’t want to have to deal with a back-end product. So they create affiliate deals with other companies. And that’s their back-end product where they make all the revenue.

I know somebody who sells courses, that’s their lead-in product, but their back-end product that they sell technology for other affiliates because they don’t want to have to deal with all the operations of building the technology themselves.

And they end up making a lot more money off the back-end affiliate deals that they have, then off the course itself. So I really want you to consider when you get a customer in the door, what is the lifetime value of that customer and it should probably be significantly more than what the customer is paying you off the first shot.

Tami: Hmm. So how do you know what to offer as your lead-in product? How do you come up with what that lead-in product should be?

Joe: In the previous episode, we spoke about our marketing strategy. And in your marketing strategy, you learn about who your target market is, and what problems they have, and what goals they want to accomplish, what their fears are, what their dreams are.

And if you know who your customer is, and you can solve a simple problem, that’s a big problem for them. And you can solve it quickly, efficiently. and affordably, then that is what you need to create as your lead-in product.

It’s all based on who your target market is. So for example, if your target market is somebody that wants to learn something, but can’t afford to pay you to do it for them, then you might want to create a lead-in product, that’s a learning opportunity.

But if somebody doesn’t have time to learn, and you’re going to try to create a product for somebody who doesn’t have time to learn, and they just want you to do it for them, because they have more money than they have time, then your lead-in product needs to be around something that you do for them that you solve one problem.

So thinking about who your audience is will determine what your lead-in product should be or could be. And this works both in business-to-business services and products. But that also works with business to consumer, for example, I know a chiropractor who offers massages for $25.

Now maybe the massage will cost him $75 to give it but once you get somebody in the door to do the massage, you might sell them a $2,000 chiropractic care package. Or maybe for every three people that come in, he’ll sell them one of those packages, and it’ll pay for everybody’s massages.

So I want you to consider creating a lead-in product that solves the problem. Nobody wakes up in the morning and is like, Oh, I really need a chiropractor to straighten out my back. No, they’re like, I’m all tired, I need a massage. And so that’s the idea.

When you’re thinking about the problems of your customers and you speak in their language, you can create a product for them that will help you be able to accelerate your business by getting people in the door quicker and then upselling them.

Tami: Hmm. So that was a really great example. It was very clear when that person would upsell their client, but let’s consider a different type of business. How, how do we know when is the right time to upsell our clients on our next product?

Joe: The right time to upsell your customers or your clients on the next product is when you uncover a bigger problem. Typically one problem, when solved, uncovers another problem. I’ll give you an example.

Customers come to us and they’re like I have no strategy for LinkedIn. So we offer them our LinkedIn Authority Blueprint, which will then give them a 90-day strategy, a written strategy for their LinkedIn, they’ll take it, they’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, just the strategy itself was worth the entire fee”.

But you also get a content calendar and an asset library and amazing posts that we create for you when we give you a connections dashboard and lots of other features. Now, once they get all this, they realize, “oh my gosh, I don’t have the time to actually do all this stuff myself”.

At that point, we offer them our LinkedIn management service, which is an upsell from that. And then they start with our LinkedIn management service. And maybe they say, “Well, I need someone to manage all of my marketing”— this is a bigger problem.

And then we’re like, “Okay, well now we can manage all of your marketing because we have a full-service digital marketing agency”, and they become a full-service client of ours. But it started with solving one problem for one individual turning into an additional product when their problem we solve that problem for them. But now they see they have a different problem.

And then we solve that problem for them and now they have a different problem. And that’s really the key. The key is for you to create product after product up your value ladder and feeding people by adding more and more value to them to the point where you’re like giving them your full solution.

Tami: So you always have been giving us this great example of the LinkedIn Authority Blueprint, which is a great lead-in product that we’ve had success with. Are there others that come to mind about lead-in products that you’ve had great success with?

Joe: We have another company called Evyrgreen, and at Evyrgreen we offer coaches, consultants. and entrepreneurs information on how to have practical advice to be able to create real results in their business.

So we created a lead-in product called our Clubhouse masterclass. If you want to learn how to master Clubhouse, it’s literally just like less than 100 bucks and you could sign in, you get 12 pre-recorded videos with a framework and you get everything that you need in order for you to go from a listener to a master moderator and get results from Clubhouse.

Now somebody makes an investment. They purchased this for a couple of dollars. And the next thing they know is they’re like well I know how to use Clubhouse now. But how do I use LinkedIn?

So then we offer them our LinkedIn signature product, which is lifetime access to nine modules, frameworks, cheat sheets, checklists, scripts, coaching workshops, we give them the whole kit and caboodle now maybe it costs us $300 to get someone to spend a few dollars to actually buy the Clubhouse masterclass, so we paid more for the person to buy it than what they spent with us.

But because we know that X amount of people buy this X amount of people will upsell. We can afford to invest in advertising more than we’re making to be able to get people in the door for our lead-in product and then we upsell them we have a few lead-in products like this. And you can test out to see for different audiences what works best for a coach.

Maybe our Clubhouse masterclass works really well. But maybe for a consultant, our goal-setting masterclass would work better. And for an entrepreneur, maybe the Sales Cure will work best for them.

So depending on who the person is, that’s who will promote a particular lead-in product. And then we’ll go through the upsell opportunity once they raise their hand and say, Hey, but I still have an issue, you solve this problem. But now I have another problem.

And that’s really the key, and how you want to be able to move people through your business by adding more and more value to them.

Tami: I love that. So those are different kinds of products. One’s a course, one’s a service, there are other types of products as well as lead-in products.

So what are some key things? If there are any, what are some key things that your lead-in product should include, as you offer it to your target audience?

Joe: One of the key things that you want to include as a lead-in product is making sure that you’re solving a specific problem for a specific audience. Remember, every audience has a different problem, that’s going to be their main problem, if you can pinpoint solving one specific problem for one specific audience.

And another thing you want to consider is that whatever you’re going to be charging for the lead-in product has to have more than 10 times the value of what you’re charging.

So for example, if you’re gonna charge $1,000, for a lead-in product, it has to have at least $10,000 worth of value. If you’re charging $100, it has to have at least $1,000 worth of value. So it’s a no-brainer for someone to say, you know what, let me get this because, this is, I need this anyway.

And you don’t have to make a lot of profit off this lead-in product. The key is you have to get in qualified leads to purchase this so that you can upsell them.

Now if you figured out how your lead-in product is also profitable. Congratulations to you. Now you have the fuel that you need in order for you to scale your business.

Tami: That’s awesome. Thank you so much, Joe. That was amazing information. I hope everyone got as much out of that conversation and your amazing answers as I did.

Again, we went over chapter two of Joe’s book High Energy Marketing that you can get at Ajax Union/book.

On next week’s episode we’ll be talking about if you should hire an agency or freelancer to help you with your marketing or if you should just do it yourself. So be sure to subscribe wherever you’re listening to this episode or watching this video so you can catch that episode.

Your action item right now is again to subscribe. You can follow us on Instagram  @AjaxUnion. Follow Joe on all social media platforms @JoeApfelbaum and find him on LinkedIn at JoeLinkedin. com. That’s J-O-E linkedin.com. That will redirect to his profile and you will find him there.

If you didn’t catch any of that, all of the links are in our description of this show episode. You can find it wherever you’re watching or listening to this. If you have any questions shoot us an email at amazing@ajaxunion.com.

Our music is by Michael Suarez. This podcast is produced by Sarah and Shannon, and we are edited by Sami Mititelu. Have a great day.

Joe: Bye, everybody. Thank you Tami. Boom.

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