How many hours a week do you spend on social media? I’ve been reading a lot of messaging in my business groups that goes something like, “$20,000 in 2 weeks.” And I want to debunk these Facebook headlines once and for all.
I don’t mean to undervalue the contribution of most business & marketing coaches. However, I want to clear the air on the concept of “it’s easy.” It’s not easy. Anyone who tells you that building a business just happened for them is leaving out just a few crucial steps.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into these crazy headlines.
Campaigns take months & months to prepare for.
Having a great idea is only the first step in an arduous process. After you develop a concept & test it with your audience, you have to begin piecing together a marketing campaign.
From creating the product itself to rolling out the technology to sell it can take months and months. If you’re still engaging in other money-making endeavors, this work has to be done on nights and weekends.
One morning I got an email from my business coach at 5am. She was already up, in full make-up, hopping on a train to NYC for an event. It was January and she was just starting the promotions for a May event.
Building your audience is the most exhausting step.
Even after you create the shell of your business, such as a website and social media business pages, you’ve got to work on building your online presence. In order to sell your products and services you have to have an audience to sell them to.
This means that you can create the best ever ecourse (how to sell your ecourse, maybe?) but if you don’t have people to sell it to, well, you’ll be a bit sparse when it comes to sales.
When you see an incredible Facebook headline, remember that they have taken months or years to build their email marketing lists. Often they also have affiliates and partnerships so that these connections can promote to their lists, too.
Just to get the idea behind how this works, let’s say that I have 10,000 people on my email marketing list. We can expect a 3% to 5% conversion or sign-up rate – so let’s say 40 of my people enroll in my offer.
If you also have a list of 10,000, I may ask you to promote me to your network. Again, 40 people might enroll. If you have 10 partners, you should be able to enroll 400 people, and so on and so forth.
Within this type of promotional network, you may also offer someone with a large list a percentage of every sale they make for you. So, for the 40 people you enrolled for me, I might give you 25% of the sale – that would equal $250 on a $1,000 coaching program. Now times 40 by $250…and you can see how the money rolls in, yes?
30% to 40% goes right back out the door for services.
I was shocked to learn how much most companies spend in order to bring in their business income. There is a tipping point where the amount you make is more than what you spend. However, you’ll need to discover what that number is for yourself.
You’ll need to have some of this budget up front, as well. The key is to remember that you can’t do it all yourself. You don’t have enough hours in the day. Expect to hire people to do the pieces you don’t want to handle yourself.
This will include website designers, copywriters, social media experts and a VA to manage it all. Oh, and how are you getting paid? PayPal takes about 4% off the top, too.
You might also choose to pay for ads on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Google Adwords my also be a good option. These can be done at the beginning stage to build your audience and/or at the launch phase to promote your program.
Money earned is not the same as product delivered.
When you see a Facebook headline that boasts a dollar value, this might not be from start to finish. If someone bought your coaching services, you still have to offer that coaching.
So, you can technically earn $20,000 in two weeks, but then you’ll need to spend the next 3 months earning that money. The dollar value seems high, because it’s the total of your earnings over a few months.
Let’s go back to my business coach. During her big event, she may earn $50,000 in three days. However, this total dollar value took her six months, three smaller events, and weeks of promotions (webinars, Facebook ads, etc.) to get those clients enrolled in her programs.
Ok, one more step…now that they’re enrolled, she’ll spend months coaching them before…she starts all over again for next year. The total lifetime value of the average coaching client is about $3,000 to $5,000.
In other words, you can’t just earn $20,000 in two weeks. I wish you could. But the intricacies of building a business require years of learning and building an audience.
Next time you read one of those Facebook headlines, just know that, well, if it was actually true, I’d immediately invite you to my private mansion estate in Hawaii…and I surely wouldn’t be writing blogs anymore.