How To Create A New Offer Using Existing Content

All the experts say you need to have a steady stream of content to share with your audience. You need content to share your expertise; to build your mailing list; to sell to your ideal clients; and to attract new prospects and social media followers into your funnel. It’s enough to make your head spin, right?

What we’re focusing on in this planner is NOT reinventing the wheel to create all this content. Instead, we’re smartly using what you have already created and using it in brand-new ways. Of course, you should create new content regularly (or hire writers to do it for you) but repurposing your previous content can speed up the process.

Repurposing simply means updating it and putting it to use in a different format. For instance, transcribing a podcast interview and posting it as a blog post. Or turning a blog post into a Facebook Live video. Or taking a series of blog posts and turning it into a how-to video or webinar.

The possibilities are endless for ways to repurpose free content. Now switch that thinking just a little to the number of ways you can turn existing content into a PAID OFFER.  There’s a place for using free content but ultimately, don’t you want to lead your prospects toward a paid offer or two?

That’s exactly what we’re exploring in this planner so if you’re ready to make money from your existing content, let’s get started.

Step One: Inventory Your Killer Offer Potential

You have everything you need at your fingertips to create your next great paid offer, literally. While you let your brand new content ideas simmer for just a bit longer, we’re going to streamline a process for using previously created content which you can bundle together into the next great e-book, master class, or video demonstration.

Before we can start using the content wisely, you need to know what types of content you have available. We’re not just talking blog posts (although that’s a wonderful place to start organizing); think deeper about guest blog posts you’ve written for other sites. Think about podcast interviews, either for your own podcast or from those where you were a guest.

This inventory is going deeper than your blog content, we are going to peek into the nooks and crannies for each piece of sweet content we can leverage. Here’s a comprehensive list of content formats to help you get organized:

• Blog posts
• Guest blog posts
• Articles published in traditional magazines and/or newspapers
• Audio/podcast interviews
• Webinars you hosted or were on as a guest
• Presentation slides
• Notes and slides from live presentations
• YouTube videos
• Live videos
• E-books
• Lead magnets
• Short reports
• Email marketing (newsletters and autoresponders)
• E-courses
• Case studies
• Infographics
• Social media posts and images
• Social ad campaigns
• Digital paid courses
• Notes from speaking opportunities
• Collaborative projects
• Q&A sessions
• Challenges you’ve hosted (free and paid)

Of course, there’s nothing wrong if you don’t have every single one of these formats to catalog on your spreadsheet. Even experienced coaches don’t have all these categories, so tailor this list as you see fit by deleting any categories that simply don’t apply right now. Make this spreadsheet user-friendly based upon where you are right now with your content.

Along with the title of each of these content pieces, you’ll want to track the general topic and the date of publication. Any guest writing you’ve done, jot down the name of the publication and/or website where it appeared. Any speaking gigs, take note of the group/person who hired you. Add any other information you want to the spreadsheet, so long as it’s useful and doesn’t confuse you.

Lastly, print or duplicate as many of these spreadsheet pages, as necessary. And if you feel that any of this older content no longer serves your audience, or that you’ve changed your banner message, feel free to discard them. Every person and business changes over the years and you may have included some blog topics that aren’t relevant to your current audience. Only add those content pieces that are evergreen or that can still be relevant with a little updating.

Step Two: Mine for Gold and Strike Your Perfect Opportunity

Wouldn’t it be great to have a million dollar launch every time you created a new product? Or how about just consistent sales throughout the weeks and months following your launch?

If you want a product that sells like hot cakes, we need to understand what your audience is already feverishly consuming from you and then give them more of that! That is your sweet spot. If you can hit it Again, hold off on developing any new product ideas until you fully analyze what you already have created. Start off with your list of current paid products and programs. Those are the same ones you broke down into modules or lessons in the last exercise.

Now take a look at your sales stats for those products/programs. Your shopping cart program should have those stats in your backend dashboard. In this next exercise, write down the paid product’s name, when it launched, how much you’ve earned to date, and how many units you’ve sold (ex: number of e-books, number of group coaching members, etc.).

After you have all the data entered, you can switch up the rows to show the highest earning product first and your least profitable program at the bottom. Once your chart is organized, you should easily see which products are selling like gangbusters and which are not.

Those products and programs that are performing well, keep doing what you’re doing with your marketing and advertising strategies. For your other products that aren’t selling as well, analyze further if you need to ramp up your marketing, if you’ve promoted it enough on social media, and consider if it’s a seasonal program that would naturally have few sales during the off-season.

Something else to consider is whether your under-performing products are properly aimed at your ideal client. Did you keep your Ideal Client Avatar (ICA) in mind when creating it or did you just wing it because you wanted to produce something in a hurry? Also ask yourself what tweaks can you give these products to make them more appealing to your ICA. Or how can you tweak your marketing message to reach more of your market.

Remember, when making tweaks, only make one change at a time so you can track its progress. If one change doesn’t bring marked results, then try a second change. Your ultimate goal is to make enough changes to your current products to increase your sales profits.

Step Three: Building Your Tantalizing Offer

Now that you’ve got all your previously created content sorted out, it’s time to craft your awesome offer. But there’s more to this process than just lumping all your old content into a new bundle and slapping a price tag on it.

First, decide on a very specific problem that you’re going to solve. Make it sexy, almost thrilling, for which YOU can supply the perfect result. When your ideal client sees this offer, it needs to grab their attention and give them a virtual slap, in essence saying, “You’d be stupid to pass this up!”

For instance, relationship coaches could offer a course about “How to Fall in Love with Your Spouse Again after 20 Years of Marriage”. Or an e-book titled, “Spicing Up Your Foreplay in 10 Easy Steps”. These titles are specific as opposed to more general topics, like “finding your soul mate” or “how to rekindle the flame with your spouse.” The more detailed the problem, the sexier you can make the title, even if you’re a business or life coach.

This specific offer should be timely and relevant to your audience, but it may be an old, lifelong problem this market is tackling, or it could be a brand-new problem that has become more common over the years. By staying in touch with your target market and asking questions, you’ll be on the cutting edge of what this market needs. Once you become their go-to person, they’ll start feeding you product ideas.

Second, choose a format for your sexy offer. This is where your Product Vault Assessment exercise from Step Two comes in handy. You should know pretty quickly if your group coaching programs outsell your e-books, for instance. Part of choosing the correct sweet spot is choosing the right format. Of course, you can switch things up and try new-to-you formats at any time, but for the purposes of this planner, go with what you already know works.

If you don’t have a clear front runner in the format category, choose the format you’re most comfortable creating with the understanding that you WILL need to make some tweaks to the product itself or your marketing strategy so it sells more quickly. Maybe you need to outsource your e-book cover or hire an editor to streamline your manuscript or your lesson modules. Or maybe you need a social media guru to help you plan a marketing strategy to attract more people to your offer.

In a perfect world, we would come up with stellar ideas, create products based on those ideas, then produce a hugely successful launch, followed by consistent sales for years to come. That’s the dream of passive income and it’s certainly doable; but you need a strong framework to follow and you need to get out of the shadows to actually promote your product and coaching services.

Step Four: Map Out Your Compelling Content

Now comes the fun part…it’s time to map out the content you have and truly take it to the next level. You’ve got your sexy topic and title; you’ve chosen a bestselling format; now it’s time to sort through your content to map out what you can use in this newest product.

Even though you might be thinking, “I’d rather just sit down at the computer and start writing my product,” outlining your entire product really is a saving grace. Just like a business plan keeps you on track when making business decisions, a product outline keeps you on track with what content to include.

Imagine sitting down without an outline and you discover at the end of your creating process that you’ve veered down some rabbit holes that don’t really have a purpose. Or that you have skipped over some important elements, leaving customers confused about how you went from Point A to Point D so quickly. Writing an outline FIRST allows you to see any gaps that exist. If you’re explaining a process that has specific steps, you’ll also see from the outline whether your process is in chronological order.

Your outline is going to take your customer on a transformational journey from where they currently are to the exact place they want to be. At the beginning of your product, describe to your customer how you can relate to the problem they need solved. Describe your personal experience or describe how you’ve helped others overcome this same problem. Your customers need reassurance that you care about helping them, not just making a buck off of their suffering.

As you progress during your product creation, make it very clear what the different steps are in this transformation. A health coach’s weight loss product will have more obvious visual transformations than a product about mindset. But that mindset coach can describe what it feels like physically when their clients release the blocks that hold them back from their goals.

Step Five: Repurposing to Find The BIGGER Purpose

You’ve already done the hard work by creating a product or coaching program in the first place. Now it’s time to reposition your offer and make sales in a brand-new way…without recreating the wheel. All you need to do is refresh an existing course and do a relaunch.

Take a look at your current offers and choose one to focus on with this planner. Consider choosing a product or program that has produced mediocre sales with the goal of refreshing it to bump up those sales to the next level.

First, look at the content and consider the year it launched. If it was longer than two years ago, you’ll want to look all the content inside to make sure it’s still relevant and up to date, especially if you’re talking about technology or social media. So much can change in these two areas in a short amount of time that your product could be outdated even within one year. Consider hiring a writer or editor, especially if you never had the original product edited.

Are there any modules or chapters that you want to add now, both to clarify what you’re teaching and to add value to the course?

In terms of content, are there any gaps that you see? Is there new information that should be included? Are your graphics and visual data up to date? Would graphics help explain your topic better?

Do you like the format of this product or do you want to change it up? Which format do you want to try? What format sounds like fun? Or do you have a budget to hire independent contractors to do this for you?

Look at your product graphics. Do they look professional or amateurish? Do the colors appeal to you and your market or do you need an entire redesign? Ask for graphic designer referrals from colleagues.

Now think of your sales page and advertising campaigns. How can you spruce up the copy to make it more compelling? What’s your message and is that being portrayed in the sales copy? Do you need to hire an experienced copywriter? Ask for referrals.

Lastly, create a marketing and advertising strategy so you KNOW you’re promoting your revamped product properly. It’s simply not enough to put up a few Facebook posts and call it a night. Consistent promotion coupled with being active on your platforms will get your name – and your product – in front of the faces who need it most. If necessary, hire a social media expert or a marketing guru to assist with strategizing.

While this may sound like an awful lot of steps, your biggest time stealer is in the actual creating of the product. Since you’re only revising the product, the process should take less time than the first time you created it. Save even more time by hiring contractors on a per project basis.

Step Six: Confidently Price Your Offer So The Sales Flow In

Who wouldn’t love to bring in $50k a day? While some big-time gurus talk about multimillion dollar launches, not every product (or market) will have that kind of success. The key is not to gorge your audience just to make money; that’s a sure way to make your audience flee. Instead, learn how to price your offer confidently so that it aligns with your audience and they flock to the buy button.

When you’re thinking about pricing a product, you want to remember that if you price it too low in the hopes of bringing in a ton of sales, then you run the risk of being considered “cheap” or “inexperienced.” Some lowball offers never even get noticed.

Likewise, when you price your offers too high, you’ll get pushback from your ideal clients. Many will cite budget constraints when asked why they didn’t buy. Others will just sigh and move on to a competitor when they see your price because they’ll think you’re serving a higher caliber client.

So, keeping your ideal client in mind is important, especially when it comes to their economic situation and what they can afford. However, don’t discount the time you spent creating this offer or the outsourcing costs you spent to have a product created. All these expenses should factor into your overall pricing.

Also keep in mind what your customers are receiving in this offer. Selling an e-book for $297 will seem outrageous to many until they find out that e-book also includes some “free” coaching sessions or a group program. Likewise, selling a course for $47 that includes 12 modules, a private group, and access to you may seem like the deal of the century. Finding that sweet spot, that healthy middle ground between making a profit and still serving your target market, gets easier the more offers you produce.

Lastly, you need to have confidence that your offer is worth the price. When you get prospects asking about your offer, you can’t hem and haw about how much you’re charging. You don’t want to state the price and then immediately offer a discount. Your confidence about your pricing and your ability to deliver your intended promise is what will spur customers to open their wallets.

Be prepared for pricing objections from prospective customers. It’s human nature to ask for a coupon or if this is the best deal but this is where you can get worn down and tricked into lowballing your product. If necessary, think about the questions some customers may ask about pricing and prepare answers ahead of time. Consider offering a payment plan. Or add in a bonus to make the offer more valuable as opposed to offering a coupon for a discount. Save any discounted sales for Black Friday or your birthday.

If you’re still in doubt about your pricing structure, ask an objective friend, business coach, or business peer if your prices sound fair based on the features you’re providing. Ask them about their first impressions. Describe what you’re offering and then ask them if the description makes the price more reasonable.

One word of caution: Be careful about comparing your offers to what other coaches offer. There are SO many differing variables that you may not be comparing apples to apples; however, taking a quick glance might give you the validation you need to move forward with the offer.

Step Seven: Make That Money, Honey! Tap Into Easy Profits With Additional Cash Making Opportunities

You might think that we spent so much time fine tuning your pricing in the last exercise because that’s where all your profits will come from. Sell a product, get money in your account, rinse and repeat. But if you’re not optimizing every single step of your checkout process, you’re losing out on extra sales.

Your audience is primed to BUY when they hit the check-out page, and you are in a fantastic place to encourage them to up-level even more at this point, especially if you make suggestions for products that are a great price and a good fit with your initial offer.

You have multiple locations to add bump offers but you can pick and choose which locations to use in your own funnel. Experiment with all of these locations or try one at a time. It’s most important to remember that all these extra offers should be relevant to the original purchase, otherwise you’re just spamming your customers with useless extras.

The Bump Offer

Your customer has reached the checkout page. Before they hit that purchase button, entice them with a complimentary offer or a coupon for a discount on a second item. Let’s say you’re selling the latest and greatest smartphone. A bump offer might be for a coupon discount for a screen protector or case for that new smartphone.

As a coach, maybe you’re selling your latest group coaching program. A bump offer might be for a coupon for a second coaching program. The ultimate goal of the Bump Offer is to increase the total of that shopping cart.

The Upsell

Using an upsell is another way to increase the total of your customer’s shopping cart but the idea is to upgrade your customer to a more expensive version of your product. For instance, let’s say you create a private, paid community, or membership group. The base price allows members access to the last year of your training modules. An upsell would be upgrading to the next level of pricing, in which customers would receive the original year of trainings PLUS access to a monthly mastermind group call.

If you wanted to create a third upsell level, this premium level could include the year of training, access to your monthly mastermind, AND one private call with you each month. As you progress up to the higher levels, the price increases.

Most shopping cart platforms have a way to customize your upsell offers so the whole process is automated.

The Downsell

Quite literally the opposite of an upsell, the downsell is a technique used to save a sale. For instance, if a customer clicks on your original offer and hesitates for too long or closes the browser window because they’ve changed their minds, savvy shopping cart platforms can then introduce the downsell. These offers are LESS expensive, valid alternatives to your original offer.

Let’s say you’re selling a group coaching program about crushing debt. If your customer hesitates over the group coaching program, maybe they’d prefer your e-Book/workbook about Household Budgeting 101. The group program and the e-Book topics are similar yet different enough that a hesitant buyer can still get the help they need. In fact, after going through your e-Book, they may realize your group program is exactly what they need, and they’ll be ready to sign up the next time it’s offered.

In this case, you may not have earned the price of your coaching program, but you also didn’t completely lose a new customer either. A small sale is better than no sale.

The Download Page Offer

Most digital products are accessed from a download page hosted on your website. Why not place an offer here, in this prime real estate, to pique the interest of your customers? Remember, it’s always easier to sell to a current customer because they already know, like, and trust you. They just made a purchase, so why not make another offer here?

As always, make the offer relevant to what they just purchased. Consider offering a coupon for a future purchase, or a complimentary workbook, checklists, or templates for a discounted price. If you price it right, you’ll get people saying to themselves, “It would be stupid NOT to buy it.”

The Thank You Page Offer (aka One Time Offers)

Many marketers will create Thank You for Your Purchase pages to confirm to their customers that a purchase has been completed. Consider this another place to add an inexpensive yet relevant offer. By making it a One Time Offer (OTO), you’re creating a sense of urgency because customers KNOW they won’t see this offer again. That sense of urgency is often enough to spur people into making this additional purchase.

The Tripwire

A tripwire offer is an irresistibly inexpensive offer that is not meant to make money. Instead, its sole purpose is to turn hesitant leads into paying customers. Psychologically, it’s easier for people to commit to an inexpensive price to try you out before making a larger purchase. This way, if they don’t like you or the way you coach, they don’t feel they’ve lost a substantial amount of money. Tripwires are often promoted individually, or it may fall under the downsell offer in terms of looking at a funnel.

As always, pick and choose which of these options you’d like to pursue. A word to the wise: Use different products in all of these extra spaces. This becomes easier once you create a library of products in all different formats.