How To Create A Marketing Plan That Doesn’t Rely On Facebook Ads

It’s like the quintessential question of the hour. Of the year.

Business owners who’ve relied so heavily on Facebook Ads now are staring down high costs, fewer conversions, and more headache. We have to pivot. We can’t just “wish” for better days, or say, “Oh well my business worked when I had 4x ROAS.” The time for grieving is over. We’ve got work to do, and the longer you stare at the past, the further behind you will get.

First, let’s simply break down the FOUR big buckets of traffic when you’re looking for new audiences.

1. Social
2. Search
3. Relationship
4. Paid

Social Traffic

It’s helpful to sit down and give yourself a grade on how well you use each of the following platforms. Bonus points if you can grade how well you promote EACH product on said platform. Social traffic is interesting because you’re interrupting people who are on the platform, and trying to create sticky content that gets them excited to actually follow you and see what more you have for them. This traffic is fleeting. The whole goal of this traffic is to get them on your email list or somewhere where you can continue to market to them.

• Facebook Profile (we’re not including a FB page since that’s primarily for paid traffic)
• Facebook Group
• Instagram Posts
• Instagram Stories
• Instagram Reels
• IGTV
• TikTok
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Search Traffic

Search is fundamentally different from social since this is targeting people who are actively looking for you! This is all about being clear. Showing up at the right time when they are like “Hey I need help with xyz.” This type of traffic grows over time.

• YouTube
• Google
• Pinterest
• Amazon
• Podcast
• Apps

Relationship Traffic

This is a high value type of traffic, but comes with its own set of SOP’s and work. However, you’ll find this traffic over time works even when you’re not.

• Dream 100
• Affiliates
• Public Relations/Media
• Licensing
• Referrals

Paid Traffic

Here’s where most of it gravitate because it seems the easiest.

• FB/IG
• YT/Google
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• TikTok

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Then there are four big buckets of marketing you can do internally to your existing audience.

1. Launches
2. Email
3. Product Spotlights
4. Upgrades

Launches

Launches are simply a way to concentrate your marketing efforts around some scarcity or urgency to drive sales. Here are just a few types of launches:

• Email
• Webinar
• Workshop
• Events
• Challenges

Email Campaigns

This is where you use email to market to your audience to help them make purchases (either new ones or get them back on track when they abandon the cart)

• Abandon Cart
• Fulfillment
• Nurture

Product Spotlights

How can you spotlight a product to your audience without going through a whole big launch? Sometimes just being top of mind is enough to remind people to buy.

• Newsletter
• Text
• FB Group

Upgrades

After someone becomes a customer, where and how can you strategically place upgrades so you can up your average cart value?

• In Course
• Order Confirm
• 2nd Chance OTO

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Okay so you have the four big buckets of cold traffic marketing channels and the four big buckets of warm traffic marketing channels, and now it’s time to put a marketing plan together.

Step One: Figure out what products you want to feature internally to your WARM audience

You can do this on a quarterly basis or a yearly. I think quarterly is easier because so much changes. Look at your product suite and decide what offers you want to feature with your audience. This will drive your WARM traffic marketing plan for the quarter. Maybe you want do a launch, or perhaps you want to focus on adding upgrades in a course with an email sequence that leads them to the next product. Choose ONE big marketing initiative per month to focus on (unless you have a giant launch, then it may spill to two or three months). If you have a team, you can obviously focus on more. Overall, you should be able to do one to three things with your product suite that help drives more sales to your internal audience.

Some of these things are operational that you put in place and then just run.

For example, maybe you decide to do a weekly product spotlight in your Facebook group on a product. Take a month to get the tools, people, and SOP in place and then let it run in your weekly routine in your business.

Step Two: Create your content topics for the quarter for your COLD audience

So let’s say you’re doing this for Quarter four. There are 12 weeks in this quarter, plus some holidays. Use the calendar and pick out content that you can focus on each week. One piece of big content per week is probably a good way to start. If you know that you’re doing an internal launch for Black Friday for example, you can skip that week. Either way, make sure you have one good piece of content ready to rock for each week where you’re not doing a big launch.

How do you pick topics?

A lot of people struggle to come up with ideas, and I understand that can be tricky. You should have five or six big topics you cover in your business, and for me it’s business, leadership, money, marketing, ethics, productivity. Pick your five big buckets and then start hunting for inspiration.

I use Twitter and Instagram, but you can use Facebook groups, sites that help you find keywords, Google search, even Amazon reviews! There are a million ways! Don’t try to drum up topics with a blank piece of paper. The best way to pick out topics is to be problem focused. Think about all the issues and complaints you hear/see everywhere. Then take to social and search on that problem and see if it sparks an idea.

So I found this tweet that seemed to have good engagement.

From this I thought, well what are the problems around sales? People don’t know how to create desire for their products. They don’t know the line between manipulating and good sales. They don’t know how to be an authority in their niche. They don’t know how to craft a logical argument. So here I could write four blog posts (or podcast episodes)….

1. How To Create Desire For Your Product (even when it’s a boring product)
2. 6 Tips For Crushing Sales Calls Without Using Manipulation Or Slimy Sales Tactics
3. How To Be The Go To Authority In Your Market (even if you feel like an imposter)
4. Crafting Your Impenetrable Sales Argument That No One Can Say No To

I now have four ideas.

Step Three: Figure out which content works best for the buckets you have (Social, Search, & Relationship)

Some topics are better as blog posts. Or YouTube videos. Or content for your affiliates. As much as we want ALL content to be leveraged everywhere, it’s just not always the case. Especially when you’re thinking about search traffic vs. social traffic. Search traffic is actively looking for a solution. Social traffic is looking for something that gives them a dopamine hit and makes them feel smart for sharing.

Once you have your 12 or so topics, assign them a bucket. See if you’re too top heavy in one or the other. Maybe that’s intentional while you grow that channel, but over time you want to spread out!

Of my four ideas, I think number two has the most “search” potential. So I’m going to take that headline and throw it in Google. You can get more intense with this and fancy search tools, but if you’re just beginning, just try what I’m doing.

As you can see, there’s a bunch of stuff! You might want to try to compete by doing something better than what you see here, or you can look at related searches at the bottom of the page. Those are sometimes easier.

Whatever I decide, this content will be great for my search bucket – YouTube, Amazon, Pinterest, Google, etc. You don’t have to get that content on every search channel. Just the one you’re focused on. For me, this would become a blog post and podcast episode.

I’ve decided that my number 3 headline would work great on Instagram since Imposter Syndrome is something that people struggle with and that’ll probably stop the scroll.

As for my number 4 headline, I think I’m going to create a simple little workshop and send it out to 10 influencers who I know have audiences that would love this content. See if I can provide value to their audiences with this content.

That leaves headline 1. I will do that in my Facebook Group (and then probably leverage it in other places).

Four headlines and I’ve spanned the three major buckets of Search, Social, and Relationship (we’re not focused on paid in this article because it’s an over-exercised muscle).

Step Four: Create the big pieces of content

It might be writing, recording, etc. It depends on what you decided. Here’s the most important part: You design the content for the channel you thought it would do BEST in, and that’s what matters.

For my example, I have a blog post for search traffic, an IGTV topic (that I will do a story, Reel & post about), a Facebook Group long form post, and a video training for my Dream 100 people. The original form of the content is created in the channel you’ve designed it for.

Step Five: Repurpose the content

Just because you created it for one channel, doesn’t mean it can’t be repurposed. This is the main rub I have with the repurposing stuff I see online. They give you ONE system and tell you to repeat it. But if you choose IG as your primary content creative, that content doesn’t always work on YouTube or other places. SO in this way, you’ve already created the content for the channel, and now you can see how it might be chopped up for other things.

Step Six: Add growth activities to your marketing plan

It’s not enough to just post content. For most social channels you’re trying to grow, what you do on other accounts is as important as what you put out. This means engaging with other peoples’ tweets, following folks on Instagram, sharing their content, etc. For relationship based channels, this is all about conversations, leaving reviews, investing in that relationship over time. Really the only channel that doesn’t require active engagement is the search bucket.

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Takeaways

1. Stop crying about Facebook Ads not working for you anymore. The ship has sailed. Time for a better plan.
2. Actively work on growing marketing channels in the three big buckets besides paid (Social, Search, & Relationship).
3. Break your marketing plan into two buckets – what you’re doing internally to your warm audience and what you’re doing for your cold audience.
4. Choose 1-3 internal marketing objectives per quarter based on the internal channels of launches, email, product spotlights, and upgrades.
5. Come up with 1 big piece of content per week for the quarter (based on the calendar and around your internal plans).
6. Use inspiration to come up with topics. Don’t start with a blank slate. Think about the problems.
7. Categorize that content into the bucket it works best for – social, search, or relationship.
8. Create that content FOR that bucket first.
9. Then figure out how to repurpose it.
10. Build growth activities into your marketing (which includes engagement, leaving reviews, commenting, and sharing the love).

How To Price Your Products & Services Online

In the online & digital space, pricing is bizarre. Given that Cryptopunk pixelated NFTs are going for $250k per pop at the time of this writing, it’s no wonder we’re all confused about how to price things that are digital.

$50,000 masterminds to $27 offers to $5/m newsletters to $10k websites to $250k NFT’s, how do you price your courses, digital assets, and services fairly & profitability?

#1 Calculate the cost for you.

For services, this is simple. If you’re building a website that takes 30 hours, and you have 160 hours a month available in your freelance gig and know you have to make $10,000 a month to pay the bills, you need to be earning $62/hr. Let’s bump that up a bit for taxes and $70/hr is your baseline. That means you cannot charge less than $2100 for that website and still be in business.

If you’re using contractors, that cost is going to go up. And remember, most businesses don’t sell their goods at cost. Just because it costs you $2100 in time to build the website, doesn’t mean you should charge that. Double it. That way if you have to hire someone to do what you do, you as the owner can still get your $2100 per site, and still pay the team doing the work.

If you’re course creator or digital asset owner, calculating cost is a bit more nuanced. The cost to create is heavy the FIRST time around (the funnel, the content, etc.), but then there’s virtually no limit to how many copies you can sell of that thing. The return on investment is much higher.

What are some ongoing costs for course creators? Things like a customer support person, the cost for updating the content, the software tools, managing a Facebook group, etc. are just a few examples.

For both service based and digital businesses, most people do not factor in the MARKETING as an expense to consider. But if you’ve run a Facebook Ad in the last 12 months, you know that marketing is expensive.

Does your price factor in that it’s going to cost you a certain amount of money to get a customer in the door?

If you want to make $10,000 with your product, bump your revenue goal up by 30% so you can account for the cost of marketing. So to earn $10,000 – plan to hit $13,000 with $3000 of that going straight to marketing.

Then adjust that bump percentage after a few months of data to see what it’s actually costing you.

#2 Calculate the value to them.

This is another number that’s gotten skewed in recent years by Marketers who drink their own koolaid. The question to ask yourself is, “How much value will they see, feel, experience in the next 6-12 months?”

If you determine that reading your book will result in starting a business that makes $50,000 in their first year of business, then that’s the value. However, if what they learn helps them start a business that makes $10,000 in its first year and goes on to help them make $100,000 the next year, you’d say the value was still that $10,000.

What if the value is not monetary? It might be a time value. A pleasure value. These things are hard to calculate but try this…

Let’s say you wrote a book on knitting. Does the book help them buy the right materials? Make Christmas gifts? Do they have knitting night instead of movie night? How might that look money wise if you added those things up? Maybe it would amount to $500-$1500 over the year.

No one sane is going to charge these prices for a book, which is why value is not a great number to use to calculate price.

However, it does help with the next principle.

#3 How big of a price/value gap can you create?

The bigger the gap, the more irresistible it becomes. If you only pay $15/m for a service that saves you thousands a year, that’s a large price/value gap which makes it a no brainer to purchase.

Think about something like Netflix. The cost is millions and millions for them, though at scale it works. And the value to the subscriber is quite high. Unlimited entertainment 24/7. This enormous price/value gap is what makes it so lucrative. It’s a no brainer for most people to spend $15/m for that level of valuable entertainment.

The greater the value the more room you have to create that gap and make your offer irresistible.

#4 Play the price expectation game.

This is an actual game you can play with someone using your product page. Take all mention of the price off the page. Have them read it, and then guess the price.

If they guess the price right, you’ve lost.

The idea is you want them to guess a price HIGHER than what it actually is, to create the dopamine drop.

As I read a sales page, I might be thinking “Okay this is going to be $500”. I’ve made that assumption based on the value I’m perceiving on the page. Then when I get to the bottom, I’m excited and surprised to see that it’s only $297. You want people to guess and assume higher than the actual to create a hit of dopamine when they realize the price is lower than they guessed.

One caveat to this….

#5 Don’t go too low – people will be suspicious.

The extreme of #4 is you end up charging so little, people think there’s something wrong with the product. If you promise to teach someone how to fix and flip houses for the low price of $19, they are not going to believe you. It’s a fine line of irresistibility and suspicion, so checking out the price range of competitors can help you figure out if you’re too low.

#6 Use price to command the type of customer you want.

Sometimes it makes sense to price higher than any of the numbers you come up with in the first 5 principles because…you’re commanding a certain type of customer. We see this all the time in the regular product space.

• You can buy a pair of sneakers for $30 at Walmart.
• You can buy a similar pair of sneakers at the mall for $100.
• You can buy a similar pair of sneakers at a high end brand store in NYC for $700.

Yes there are differences in quality, but not at that range. This is about attracting the type of customer you want. The brand savvy customer is going to buy the $700 pair, whereas the Walmart shoe brand is aiming to be the cheapest. Are you trying to be the rock bottom price, the solid stable value, or the luxury brand?

#7 Anchor your price to something higher.

There are a lot of ways you can do this. If you’re taking payment over the phone or with an invoice/proposal, you can do this on the fly.

Find a reason to give them a better deal. “Hey I see that you’re a referral from Joe Schmoe. He’s a great friend. So I’m going to send you a proposal for $5k but I want to knock off a $1000 since you’re a friend of a great client.”

There’s always a reason, you just need to find one!

When it comes to courses/coaching/digital assets, you can’t customize it as easily so anchor your price to a higher “rack” rate on your website.

• Sell a $47 offer with a $10 off coupon.
• Can you give alumni or member discounts to incentivize existing customers?
• Run a special the first time something comes out, or during a holiday promo

#8 Watch those “hump” prices and be careful!.

There are natural price humps that people see differently. For example, from $11 to $14 is a difference of $3.00, but $14 to $17 feels like a lot more than $3.00 because it went over the hump of 15.

Natural hump prices are…

• $5
• $10
• $15
• $20
• $25
• $50
• $100
• $500
• $1000
• $1500
• $2000
• $5000
• $10,000
• $25,000

Try to keep your price as high as it can be without going over the next hump price. So if you have something at $17, just set it to $19. You’ll likely not see a huge change in conversion unless you go over $20.

#9 What would it cost to buy all the pieces separately?

If you’re selling a bundle of services or assets, go out and price them all separately. Actually get quotes and then add it all up. Not only does this make a great marketing argument on a sales page, call, or webinar, it also justifies your price as well.

Let’s say you sell software and it’s $97/m. If you add up all the software they can cancel and it totals $450, then you’ve got a massive savings there. If it’s only $200 and you’re selling for $97, ask yourself if that’s enough of a savings to get them to do the painful migration over to you.

#10 Does the way you frame it matter?

Yes.

There are a lot of studies on whether to use the comma in $1,000. It depends on if you want to make it FEEL like a bigger number or a smaller one. If you’re using $1,000 to show how much something is worth, add the comma. If you want to sell it for $1000, keep the comma off.

Whether or not to use 7’s or 9’s is another big one. General rule of thumb is that 7’s and 9’s convert better on order forms. The exception is if you’re on a sales call trying to sell something high ticket. It sounds weird and salesy to say out loud you’re charging $4997 for your coaching, so just say $5000.

If you are having a sale and taking $10 off a $30 product, is it more juicy to say $10 dollars off or 35% off? In this case 35% is a bigger number than $10 so go with the percentage rather than the dollar amount.

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When all is said and done, the most important thing you can do when pricing your stuff is to make the delivery of what you offer EXCEED the pain of letting go of the money it cost.

Ask your customers if it was worth it. Watch how people respond. Expect 25% of people to say no because of price and 75% to say yes. Use these principles as your guide, and happy pricing!

xx J