Should you use income claims in your marketing?

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:: 00:01

How do you feel about using income claims in your marketing? I've been thinking about this a lot recently, as I've always tried to show tangible results in my testimonials and encourage my clients to do the same, but I'm also aware that each of us brings our own set of skills, unique personality and or privilege or lack of to every course or program we take.

:: 00:26

Plus no client or student is ever starting at exactly the same point, which means that testimonials that include income claims can actually be misleading. I'm Janet Murray, I'm a content and online business strategist. And in this episode of the courageous content podcast, I share my thoughts on using income games in marketing and invite you to think about how you might use them in yours or not.

:: 00:54

As the case may be Last year I ran an eight week program called the recurring income summer school. It was the first time I ever run a program like that one that was focused on generating recurring or passive income, whatever you like to call it. And I had some really good results. So two of my students generated around 1500 pounds in sales, and that was over one module core.

:: 01:23

So one of masterclass, they both had fairly low key launches, which sounds pretty good. Right. But what have I told you that one already had a super engaged Facebook community and a membership? The other was a well-known figure in her industry with a strong following on LinkedIn. I often joke to her that she's like a celebrity in her industry. So when you see those results in context,

:: 01:50

they're good, but they don't sound quite so impressive and more typical results. And one that I might consider to be more impressive came from a coach who sold 11 masterclasses at 27 pounds without ever having launched any kind of digital product. And I think that's pretty good for a new course creator and also for where this particular individual was with their business, but that doesn't look quite so impressive on the sales page.

:: 02:17

Does it, then there was the person who only sold one masterclass more on that in just a sec and something I may not be so keen to share on my sales page is that at least three students did not launch their course at all. One realized that selling one to many digital products wasn't for them and they dropped out another had to take time outs due to family illness.

:: 02:39

The third was just too busy, running their business to put what they were learning into practice. But does that mean that's the people with the less impressive sounding results didn't succeed? For example, the person who only sold one master class had a much bigger win from the program, going through the process, helped her recognize that she charge loads more over her one-to-one offering,

:: 03:01

and she could streamline the way that she was promoting it and delivering it so she could do it in loads less time and make more money. And going through that process was enough for her to conclude that actually she wasn't sure if she wanted to go down the one too many were doing more of what she was already doing and less time actually fitted much better with her lifestyle at the time.

:: 03:26

And her family commitments, something that's also difficult to convey on a sales page is that most of the students on that program picked up additional one-to-one clients or other work simply because they were out there talking about that online course, when we talk about results from online course launches. And particularly when we talk about disappointing results, often we're just looking at the number of people that we admitted to that particular program.

:: 03:57

But what we have to remember is that not everybody wants to do an online course. Not everybody wants to be in a membership. There's a certain type of person who is one-to-one or nothing or self study courses or nothing. They're just not interested in online courses or memberships and nothing that we could say or do is going to convince them otherwise. So a really valuable lesson I've learned over dozens and dozens of online launches is to remain open-minded.

:: 04:27

If somebody is raising objections about your online course or membership, instead of trying to steer them into that course or membership, because that's how you want to deliver the learning. It's often a really good idea to take a step back and ask yourself whether a one-to-one or a one day intensive might be a better fit for that person. And when you look at your launches like that,

:: 04:51

and you remain open-minded about how you deliver the learning, you can sometimes add hundreds, sometimes even thousands to your revenue. And that's exactly what happened to some of my students in that program. So what about the person who decided that one to many? It wasn't for her, is that really a failure? Because quitting early has probably saved her a ton of time and money in the long run.

:: 05:15

So hands up, I definitely think I've relied too heavily on income gains in my own marketing in the past. And I still feel like I've got a lot to untangle on this, but recording this podcast is I hope one of the first steps towards doing things differently. One question that keeps coming up for me is that while I might feel yucky about using income claims in my marketing,

:: 05:39

maybe my clients need them to get the reassurance. They need to invest in my programs. Maybe they need to know that some of my students do have really successful launches and they need to know how much money is involved. And that's a question rather than a statement and one that I'm still mulling over. But for me, I think the key is context.

:: 06:02

What doesn't feel right is continuing to use income claims without the kind of context that I've shared above and doing so would mean that I'm effectively supporting a system that gives people completely unrealistic goals to work towards. And crucially, for me, it makes people feel rubbish when they don't achieve them. So just to give you an example of that Josephine, one of the ladies who generated 1500 pounds from her first masterclass,

:: 06:30

I was very, very conscious of telling the others in the program that Josephine wasn't a newbie. So on the one hand St. Josephine, this is brilliant. Well done. This is the first time you've done it. It's great, but also reassuring the others that Josephine was more experienced. Maybe she hadn't sold that particular product before, but she certainly was experienced at selling digital products in some form,

:: 06:51

which meant she was going to get better results than the others. And I felt that was really important to say so that they wouldn't look at another person in the group or themselves and say, oh, you only got 11 at 27 pound, which by the way, I think it's really good for, and is a much more realistic. So I tend to have all the answers here,

:: 07:11

but I certainly have lots of questions and I would love to know what you think. How do you feel about income claims in marketing? Would you like to hear more of the real stories behind the results like I've shared above? I would really love to know what you think as ever ideal of hearing from you. And the best way to connect with me is on Instagram.

:: 07:31

I'm at Jan Murray UK.