How To Use a Podcast To Build Your Sales Funnel
Jason Van Orden has been making a living online through membership sites and selling premium content for several years. In this case study interview, I talk with Jason about his model for finding new opportunities for membership sites, how he sets pricing, and how his sales funnel works to continually bring in new members.
Watch the video below or download the mp3 file for audio only.
Transcript:
MemberCon.com: I’m here with Jason Van Orden today, and I’ve known Jason for a few years, first through podcasting in the Podcast Expo Show that I started a few years ago and just wanted get Jason on the phone for a few minutes and talk to him about his membership sites and what he’s been working because he has really built a reputation for himself over the last few years as someone who really knows the stuff in terms of Internet marketing and membership sites overall. So Jason thanks for joining me on the phone today.
Jason Van Orden: Not a problem Tim, always a pleasure.
MemberCon.com: So how many membership sites do you own or are you part of right now?
Jason Van Orden: Well right now, I have one that’s active called the Internet Business Mastery Academy, and then here in the near future I’m going to be duplicating that model and launching something called the New Media Mastermind and that will be my second full-pledged membership site.
MemberCon.com: OK. So you’re definitely sold on the idea of membership sites as a business model?
Jason Van Orden: Absolutely. It’s definitely treating me very well. There’s lots of great advantages. I love that continuous income coming in. Its something that could be very systematized and after I launched the first one last year, it’s been almost a year now, and I just continue to grow and grow. And once I saw the immediate success of it I was asking myself why I hadn’t done it a year or more earlier. So, yeah, definitely I’ve been very pleased with the results and all of the benefits that it’s offered to my business brand and just bringing value to my customers in my community.
MemberCon.com: Yeah, I noticed you also of course do your Internet Business Mastery Podcast which is free which is great content in and of itself, but you also used it as a marketing tool for the membership side of things, the premium side. Is that your primary vehicle for marketing that membership site?
Jason Van Orden: Yeah. I’d say most the sign ups come from people who hear the podcast first and then basically that’s how we designed the sales funnel. I mean my favorite business model right now is basically identify your target market, get out there and find out what they want, create great frequent authoritative valuable content to get their attention, build a relationship up with them, learn more about what they want, and then deliver them premium content that they paid for. And my ideal vehicle for delivering that premium content is through the membership site model because of the continuous income that I mentioned and it just makes for a very smooth and automated type sales funnel if you will. So all kinds of people find our podcast and our blog through search engines, through iTunes through, all these great channels that are out there now for marketers to get their message out there, once they’ve connected with us that in that way and you know opted in by being a subscriber to the podcast or subscriber to our email newsletter, we interact with them overtime and eventually that converts a good portion of them over to being members of the membership site and so that’s the basic business model that I use.
MemberCon.com: Is it a constant conversation that you have about how much you should offer for free in the podcast versus what you put behind the username and password?
Jason Van Orden: It does take some time to find that right balance for your audience, but a good rule of thumb is we try to deliver great actionable content through the podcast, but there’s really only so much we can get out there in 20 or 30 minutes of the podcast. And so a lot of times, you know, people will take info, they might put into action, but then they’re like, “OK, well now I want like the next step or the behinds or all of it, all at once the A to Z from beginning to end.” And so to get that really nitty-gritty how to and the really in-depth step by step starting from the beginning going all the way to the end if that’s where they’re willing to pay to have it all in one convenient place inside of the membership site. Another way that we look at it is we kind of stick to the what to do kind of end of things and then the really nitty-gritty how to do it is what’s inside the premium site, the what to do is all inside that podcast. So, the podcast in a way is just selling them on the idea of the message that we get out there and why its beneficial, why they should be wanting the Internet business, why its such an idea of vehicle and get them excited of that prospect and when they’re really ready to take the leap and make it happen for themselves, they can join the membership site and get everything they need, all the tools are there, all the information is there.
MemberCon.com: You heard so much these days about making sure your content is really niche and yet Internet business mastery that’s pretty broad. I mean extremely broad when it comes to looking what membership sites are these days, is that any concern for you?
Jason Van Orden: You know, at first glance that may, Internet business seems like a very broad thing but we’ve been very, very specific about who it is that we target and anybody who listen…Once you come and find and listen to a few podcast, you’ll know that very specifically we’re looking for people who want to get out of their nine to five job. They’re sick of being a cubicle employee. They want something of their own. They want to replace that income so they can quit their job, be in charge with their own lifestyle, their income and create that entrepreneurial vehicle that allows them to provide for their ideal, you know, what makes them passionate in life, what they enjoy. So, we’re looking for people who want to take that angle and we’re also looking for people who are willing who wanted to take their life’s passions, their interest, their expertise whatever it is and brand themselves as a go to person in that market. So, we are very specific about people who want to do those two things right there and we’re also…So we’re not about, “Oh, come make money through Google AdWords and AdSense or come make money through affiliate marketing or come make money through, you know, there’s a thousand ways to make money on the Internet. We’re very specific about the system that we teach and the types of people that we’re wanting to attract with that system. And so that’s another great reason why the podcast is a nice part of that sales promo because through listening to the podcast they quickly self-identify if they are our target market and if our system is for them. And its more beneficial for us to do it that way because we can more readily and easily have our message resonate with the market that we can do our best to work with and that we’re excited to work with and the people who are most likely to succeeded with our information. So, it does seem broad at first glance but we’re very, very specific about who we want to reach and what we want to teach them.
MemberCon.com: I was talking with Paul Colligan yesterday and we were taking about the death or the myth of the death of the long sales page. And you’ve got a couple of look through in a lot of your different sites, you’re using a video in a great way, but you also have some long sales pages too. What’s your thought about how well those videos are working in? What about the people that are just using the video and they opt an email name for only now?
Jason Van Orden: Our sales tunnel works like this. I mean, like said usually people end up finding our content first and then from there we try to get them to a landing page where they sign up to be on email list and that email list, it is an incentive for them to get on and we say, “Hey, there’s this premium content you can only get by signing up for this email list and you also get our weekly newsletter with the additional tips and recommendations.” So we know we realize that the value of exchange there, they’re giving up their email and saying, “OK, I’m allowing you to contact me on a regular basis because I see the value offer. I trust what you have.” And then from there, they do receive not only our newsletter but then also we do have autoresponder style meaning its set up to automatically go out to them messages that continue to give them information about Internet business and then there’s sales message woven throughout. And then by the time they actually land on the sales page they probably already been through a few episodes of our podcast, gotten a few issues of our newsletter and since some of this autoresponder email that also had a pre-selling type material, so even though you end up landing on our long sales page and you might look at that and go, “Wow, like who’s really going to read this thing?” It’s actually pretty rare that that’s the first thing that somebody sees. You know, the sales process is much…I prefer to see it as a stretched out overtime. Ideally, its a relationship that’s building up overtime and we’re hitting them with different, you know, one piece of content might kind of sell them in our headline of why Internet business and why it’s so great, and then another piece of content might hit them up and, you know, to try to get rid of some because certainly they might have taken that leap in starting a business of their own. So, really by the time they hit the sales page its almost like that’s just a reminder of everything I’ve already kind of found out from us through other people’s content. However, the long sales pages is still there because it’s still work and we do still want all the info for people to be able to reference back to. Now, the way our sales pages right now, I actually planned to and hoped to like add more video and audio to that sales page as it stands right now because video and audio do convert and there’s going to be a lot of people who’d rather just watch a 15-minute video message from you rather than read the whole sales page. So I kind of try to see it as a sideway sales page overtime. It is really the process that’s going on even though if you just at first land on that sales page, you might be, “Oh,” you know like, “Wow,” that’s kind of how that works. But you know the truth of the matter is that it does work but it is just one piece in a much broader sales process or sales funnel that we have for our business.
MemberCon.com: And the video player that you’re using is gorgeous. I don’t see any branding on it from any hosting site. Do you host it yourself and what is that video player?
Jason Van Orden: Let’s see, the video player…Well there’s a couple of video players we use. We host our videos on Amazon S3. When it comes to especially sales related stuff that we want to be there, especially for sending a bunch of traffic all at once, that is prescribed time. You want it to be dependably served up, so Amazon S3 has worked really well for hosting the video files. The player itself, sometimes we edit that and render it through a program called Camtasia. TechSmith makes that and it’s an excellent product for making screen cast where you record your screen or even adding in, you know, talking videos of yourself. And then they have all kinds of great, just easy wizards for rendering it out into several different formats. One of which is just a nice little compact Flash player that you can embed on your site. So, that’s the one that we use the most. I think there is another FLV player out there. I think it’s called JW Player or something like that that we’ve used as well but mostly it’s the Camtasia player that we use. And as you said, yeah, there’s no like company branding from it but you can put your own branding into that player if you want. It’s clean and dependable because most people have Flash and that’s going to work for them, and so that’s why that’s the route that we do.
MemberCon.com: Let’s talk about pricing a little bit here on your membership sites. I think is the Internet business mastery the one, is it 97 a month?
Jason Van Orden: Yes, correct.
MemberCon.com: And anything you did to come up with that particular price?
Jason Van Orden: Well, pricing is always a tricky thing and certainly with membership site it can go a couple of different ways. I know some people who go the volume approach and they’re like, “Well I’m just gonna keep it so inexpensive, let’s go 10, 15, 20 dollars a month.” And we’ll go with trying to get just volume approach because a lot more people are going to sign up that way, and we’ll crack them in there and they’re more likely to stay longer ’cause it’s not such…They’re not so conscious of it in their pocketbook when they see that show up on their statement, that charge. However, with our…and it’s going to depend on who your market is and what you’re trying to do with them. Now, our market first of all, it’s a market that stands to make money from what we teach and so clearly when you’re teaching someone how to start a business that can make them money and there’s a definite ROI there, you’re going to have an easier time getting them to pay more money than say if you’re just teaching them how to knit. Now, I’m not trying to, and people love knitting right and probably they’re going to be willing to pay money for that information as well, but it might be harder to justify when it’s just this hobby that you do at home. Now, maybe if you’re telling them how to start their own business, making and selling their own knitting stuff that maybe different. So, that’s going to play into the price point. But we also know that by having that higher price point of $97, we’re going to attract a more serious customer. So we might not get as many sign-ups, but we know these are people who are more likely to take the information to succeed with it and because they are paying a substantial amount. It’s like going to the gym and paying. I mean, when I was living in New York City, at one point I was paying $125 a month for a gym membership. Now, just for myself, and that might sound like insane to some people but I worked out more during that time than I have in any other time I’ve joined a gym or just trying to work out at home because I took that investment seriously, right? So, there’s that kind of an element that goes with it as well. But in the end, you have to maybe just test the price. I mean, I don’t want to say it was completely arbitrary. We had an idea of how much we thought we could charge and sometimes we think we could even charge more. And so sometimes you just have to test it and see what the response is. One other little piece of information that we give there is when we launch it the very first month we said, “Look, we’re going to launch it right now for $67 a month. If you sign up now because it’s a brand new thing that’ll be a charter membership, you’ll be our first member. We know you’re taking, you’re going to be the first one who’s getting in there using the system, telling us how it needs to improve but then after this it’s going to go up.” And now, a lot of people signed up and they kept that $67 price for life and even a year later they’re still members because they want to keep that price. But it allowed us to see, OK, what the response is going to be at this lower price point. A lot more people is going to jump on now because they stand to lose something, meaning they’re going to have a higher price if they don’t sign up now, so that was the one thing that kind of helped us dial in that price and gauge on the response to the $67 price. And we decided, OK, we’re going to raise it to 97. Let’s see where that goes and we’ve been happy with that price point till now.
MemberCon.com: So that did a great job I’m sure of launching it and so you got initially a group of members. A lot of people these days seemed to be closing and opening their sites to try and generate that urgency. Have you been doing that or are there other things you do to try to get people to just whip out that credit card.
Jason Van Orden: Yeah, urgency is always…I mean it’s an important part of the sales process, and yeah a lot of times people will do like, “OK, I’m going to remove this from the market and then bring it back to create that urgency.” I mean the thing is that they obviously should be careful of is if people foresee that the urgency is false or just kind of made up, then people can see through that. So, I mean with the membership site, it does get a little trickier because obviously it’s always there. Now, certainly if we ever get to a point of saying, “Hey we’re going to raise the price again.” We’re going to do a big push and say, “Look, sign up now because in a month the price is going up.” I mean we haven’t done a whole lot with the urgency thing. It’s just kind of in this constantly running sales funnel, so I’m sure there are people that it takes them a few months to get around to making that decision, but at the same time, because we have the podcast, it keeps people around and people tend to be a part of our community for a long time. I think we’ve reached…And our site has been up or the academy has been up for a year now, I think we’ve reached a point where it’s reaching more of a critical mass and people who have taken a few months to make that decision are seeing some of the success that other people have had and they’re just willing to come in now because they hear us talk about it in every episode. They see the success stories that we share. So, we use other, I guess hot buttons and sales technique other than the urgency to socially prove and things like that to get people into the site. Now, whenever you can, urgency is a great thing to get in there. And so for instance, we’re going to be launching a platinum level of the membership site and that’s going to have some direct access to…but it’s going to be a small group of people. We can only handle 20-30 people because they’re going to have direct access to us and it’s going to be a prescribed amount of time, from this start date for six months. And so there, obviously we are going to use the urgency thing. We’re going to say there’s urgency because (A) once the 30 spots are taken, that’s it, and (B) if you don’t sign up now, it’s going to be another six months until we possibly do this again. So that’s one, and obviously we’re going to charge a much higher price for that level of membership. So, you know, we will kind of integrate those kind of things through other styles or levels of membership and that’s going to be coming up here in the next couple of months something that we’re going to try.
MemberCon.com: All right, we’ll finish up with one more question. Do you sell one off, white papers, e-books that sort of thing to people who are existing members or do you just throw it in to the monthly membership?
Jason Van Orden: Right now, everything that we sell is inside the membership site. We have thought about taking pieces, and we will do this eventually, it’s just a matter of time and resources for what we do. Because the membership site is broken up into specific courses, there are 11 specific core courses in there, so we could pick any one of those courses and say, if somebody just wants to buy the one about “How to Start and Manage an Email List,” they could just buy that. And so, and eventually I think we will sell that discretely. However, I’ll say we will probably put a price point like 297, 397 on that. And really the play is going to be more of that. We don’t expect people to but that but they’ll see the price that’s being charged for every individual course and they’ll realize, “Well hey, at $97 a month, I can start getting access to this stuff.” So, it would be more of a price positioning thing to just make becoming a monthly member seem like a better deal and that makes sense. So, right now everything is just in the membership site. There’s nothing sold discretely. Well, other than we do have a DVD with like our first 50 shows, and our CD set has all our first 50 shows, MP3s that you can buy, but you can join the academy and get that inside the academy as well. So there, I guess it’s a bit of a positioning thing as well. And so, yeah, that’s the approach we’re taking right now. I think there could be an advantage at some point having an entry level, maybe like a $47 or a $37 e-book, and I think we may do that at some point and try that, “OK, well you know, try this out first and then if you like that, become a member of the site, just have a baby step in between.” That’s something we may try it. We’re not doing it right now but then we may try it.
MemberCon.com: OK, well Jason, if somebody wants to find out more about you and you’re sites and things, is there a general site you want to send them to?
Jason Van Orden: Well I guess, I’ll just, since we’ve been talking about Internet Business Mastery, I’ll tell them to go and check out internetbusinessmastery.com. I mean for a few reasons obviously if they’re interested in this membership site and everything we teach about Internet business on that podcast visit will definitely apply, and if they’re interested in starting a membership site. I mean there would be tons that could be learned by just joining up for a couple of months and seeing how we do things ’cause we definitely push the envelope on some of the technology out there and how we structure the whole thing. So, I think that would be interesting for anybody whose thinking about a membership site to see how we do things just as much as what we actually teach inside there. So, you can go to internetbusinessmastery.com and check that out.
MemberCon.com: All right Jason. Hey, thanks for your time today. I appreciate it.
Jason Van Orden: Not a problem.
building your list, site marketing, starting a membership site
MemberCon is written by Tim & Emile Bourquin, brothers and owners of Ideas For Download. MemberCon.com is your front row seat to see what we've done that worked and failed in selling content online. Thankfully, we've been pretty successful but we promise to always show you the reality of building an online business.
