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From stalling to managing free time - Progress of a Social Media Marketing Agency

Social media marketing, advertising, and growth

Jeff Noel

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This thread is about my girlfriend's business and what I do in it since I jumped in to work with her.

I plan on notifying you guys in this thread when I leave my day job to concentrate fully on this. Before this happens, we will need to triple the business income.

What is it ?
The original offer: A blog on social media entrepreneurship that switched to become a social media agency, with 1-on-1 coaching for entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs, free and paid ebooks, mockups, guides, editorial calendars, etc.

The numbers
(This is not net income)
$30,000 the first full year.
The second year is looking to be ~$20-25K, which is where I jump in to push the business to higher levels.
20 000 active members on her private Facebook group.
$3,000 coming from a yearly reccuring newsletter already (monthly newsletter, yearly payment).

Why am I making a difference ?
I'm not better than her to train and coach people. That's exactly why I'm there ! She's doing good on the production side, but she doesn't have enough time on her hands to manage other people's businesses along with her. Since she's still not making enough to pay someone else, my goal is to drive sales home and automate what can be automated... and then hire to give her more free time.

What has already happened
I started executing the day I registered on this forum (about 4 days ago?). Since then, I sat down with her to make a list of all the services we offer. We looked at her offers descriptions, worked on the website's copy and products descriptions.
Thanks to @Andy Black and @Sean Marshall resources scattered around the forums, I have built targetted landing pages, identified and analyzed search terms and buyers interests to update her perfect buyer's avatar.

We've completely updated the SEO of the website. I'm waiting to receive a letter from Google for the Google Business card setup.

She started writing operation manuals for her different services (as she's doing them). She also started rough drafts of the marketing guide for the potential people we will hire.

I have set up a complete redesign of her main products page, which will simplify the choice for the customers, along with a rebirth of her yearly paid newsletter: the last customer that paid for it was in September, she hasn't talked about it since then ! We are going to purchase the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension so we can bill people monthly more easily.

I will update this thread regularly. Feel free to ask me anything if you need more details, I feel like this post is slightly all over the place (we've changed a lot of things in the last few days).
 
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Jeff Noel

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Oct 26, 2018
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We're building a plan to trigger her community's curiosity and strengthen her mailing list through a new splash page teasing the products on her homepage.

We already built a theme around the new products which is 100% in line with the original business plan, so it shouldn't upset the long-term customers she already has.

Her expertise on social media platforms and marketing helped her build a 20,000 members community of established entrepreneurs and wannabe-entrepreneurs, but she's always struggled to get these people to purchase her main product (which was business coaching).

We're moving things around a little bit to create different tiers of passive products along with different tiers of counseling products, where she will actively partake into meeting the customer and analysis his business, the industry around it, product opportunities and so on.

All of those new products will be recurring monthly fees and will respect the T part of the CENTS, where it will totally be possible to replace her with an employee once things take off. They are also not far off from the already existing passive products (which will be replaced by the new generation).
 

Andy Black

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Following. Good luck.

Check out some of @Tom.V ’s posts as he’s building an agency too.
 

Jeff Noel

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I set up a special landing page up for an exclusive 20% rebate on all her coaching offers for all the members of her community, since she hit 20,000 members yesterday (already at 20020 this morning). The post is already planned to show up at the most busy time of the day for the group. People will be able to purchase bundles ranging from 1,3,6 or 9 meetings (scattered throughout the following months) and save over $200 over the regular price. We'll see how it goes. This coaching offer is her original offer and not part of the new products, which he didn't launch yet.

It'll also give me a good idea of how the landing page I made creates interest for the customers... I didn't fill it with crap, just the rebate, different bundles and add to cart buttons (with a decent cta on the buttons). There's an alternative sale offer for those that are more interested in getting their content made for them instead of learning how to produce content for their business, with a "Tell me more about your business" CTA linked to my girlfriend's business email.
 
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Jeff Noel

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Oct 26, 2018
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We rebuilt the "About us" page completely to be easier to read and to pinpoint what the business is about.

I started reviewing her final version of the new ebook before we start adding pictures in it. There's 69 pages of text and nearly 17,000 words. I feel like it will probably be closer to 90 pages with all the pictures added.

I can't wait until we're done reviewing to see the final result :)
 

Jeff Noel

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The ebook preorder managed 5 sales from retargeting trafic that already went on the website before. I want to target a wider audience now. Jumping in AdWords.
 

Jeff Noel

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Last week, my girlfriend had a call from the (only) local newspaper. She's on the front page and has a full page 3 article about how she makes a living from her blog, along with a link to the website.

The moment I saw the article, I added a small, non-obstrusive banner right below the main menu of the website on the homepage talking about the "NEW EBOOK: How to build a strong community and monetize your blog", with a link to the product's landing page.

According to Analytics, we had over 120 direct visitors (that typed the website's address manually) in the last few days, which is great. There were 5000 units of the newspaper published, so this is a 2.4% lead conversion from the free publication (but no sales) ! Local awareness is always great IMO.

Considering the nature of the business, she's also working on setupping a weekly vlog on her Facebook page talking about what happened during the week in the business, along with links to the newsletter to get more info and details, etc.

I also worked on the mobile and tablet versions of the site to make them more user friendly.

Even though it's not converting a lot right now, Google Ads generating clicks with appropriate search terms (after I excluded "How to make money online", gosh, my budget !). The ads have a CTR of about 4.8% right now. I've literally just adjusted the max CPC for the campaign... I didn't realize it was limiting all my bets !

I'm pumped, I'm motivated because I love fiddling with those "backend" settings, optimizing the website, seeing how we can do things differently. I'll keep working on the website to see what I can optimize to get more people to buy !
 
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Jeff Noel

Go all in.
Read Fastlane!
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Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
219%
Oct 26, 2018
699
1,534
Quebec, Canada
So, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday crazyness really didn't hit us. About $135 in sales.

I reworked the main service page to be easier to navigate and straight to the point.

I suggested small price changes ($134.95 instead of $135) and greater discounts on package deals. My partner said she will think about it (she's in a meeting right now).

I stopped Google Ads, but I will eventually get back to it. Tried a Facebook ad campaign and it got blocked (after being approved ?) because it was selling get rich quick scheme (weird reason, we're selling coaching services and we never mention you can get rich quick or anything like that).

I'll update as things evolve :)
 

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