Online marketing consultant, Allison Carpio, shares the secret ingredient to turn your followers into paying customers.

Hey go-getters, do you have a social media following but not sure how to turn those followers into paying clients? My gal pal Allison Carpio gives you the secret ingredient to make the switch! Also, she keeps it real and gives ComePlum an audit + advice how we can even step up our sales funnel game. Check out our video if you’re into our analogy with matcha lattes 🙂 otherwise, peep the transcript below.

For more goodies from Allison Caprio, check out theconversionkitchen.com where she created a website specifically for this yummy recipe!

 

A COMEPLUM CHAT WITH ALLISON CARPIO

 

Praise:  I will say that Allison and I haven’t always been titas together. We met a couple of years ago at our co-working space, The Assembly, and the more we hung out and talked (mostly about food) we realized that some of our work stuff kind of melded together as well.

Allison: In this beautiful Venn diagram, if you will.

Praise: Yes,  there’s a lot of overlap here and this talented woman has a lot of talent overlap for you too.  I know a lot of you out there have social-media followings and are still trying to figure out “What do I do with this?” like “What’s the secret behind using my Instagram? My Pinterest?” or whatever you have to actually help grow your business.

Tita Allison over here has a secret recipe for us to turn our followers into customers. 

Allison: Yep and it’s pretty simple. It’s only three ingredients, just like this matcha latte we’re about to make. 

Praise: Yes, so we’re gonna make a matcha latte, but first 

I want to give you space to brag first. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Allison: Sure! I’m an online marketing consultant and I work with some really big names out there and help them sell their products online. I was talking to Praise about how our worlds overlap and what your avatar is and one thing that I’ve noticed is that a lot of people will build these social media followings without really knowing what to do with it. 

So I work with businesses that have a really huge social-media followings with really big email lists and they kind of have that down to a science. So I’m real excited to share this with you today. 

Praise: We are so lucky! So lucky to have her here and so lucky that we can make something delicious in the process. So tell us secret ingredient number one: 

 

1. Solid Email Strategy 

Allison: Alright, so the secret ingredient number one (well, we have matcha for one so I’m just going to put that in there) but for your business it’s a solid email strategy. The way I like to look at it is your social media following is a great way to funnel people into your email list and the best way to do that is to have a really good, no-brainer irresistible freebie.

So Praise, let’s talk about your following and your freebie. What is the freebie that you have right now?

Praise: On my website and also on my social media, I have “5 Tips Anyone Can Be A Better Photographer.”

Allison: Great, okay! I remember you telling me that your avatar is the creative entrepreneur who wants to grow their business online, they have a social media following, so I think one way that we could make this even a little bit more targeted and getting the people who are more likely to buy from you is having a freebie that’s focused on the entrepreneur side of it. 

For example: Five Ways to Use Phone Photography for “X Type of Business”
Or
Five Ways to Use Phone Photography if You’re a Creative Entrepreneur

 

Then you’ll have all of these examples throughout there so that when you present your offers in the email list, that makes it a really no-brainer for them. But also, I’m curious about once they do opt in, what are the different CTAs that you have in there?

Praise: Once they opt in, they get their free guide but then I also give them offerings (especially if they’re in San Francisco) to come to the studio and do a personal branding session. And then I have a few other digital downloads that they can do too. There are mobile presets, my “5 Tips Anyone Can Be A Better Photographer” freebie, and in my upcoming freebie, (as per my consultant has advised me) for small business owners: How to Use Mobile Photography to Make the Sale – Empowering them with presets that they can use on their phone to make their pictures pop.

Allison: Remind me as someone who’s a total photography newbie; what’s a preset?

Praise: Oh, that is a great question! With editing, there’s a lot of different steps you can do. You can change the exposure, change the coloring, change the highlights and the lowlights and it’s a lot of work. So wouldn’t it be great if a professional photographer kind of just gave you a quick way to do it in one click? That is it! I have preset those things for you to make that photo editing a lot easier.

Allison: I see so it’s almost like a copywriting template. Like an email template, a landing page template. You don’t have to hire a copywriter to do it for you, you just have these templates and then you’re good. I love that! That’s really important and I’m glad we talked about that because the wider that distance is between your freebie and what you have to offer in your emails, the harder it is to convert them. We want to cast a wide net but not so wide that when people see your offer they’re like “Yeah, that doesn’t really make sense for me” or “That doesn’t really apply to me.” So that’s why we want to make sure that that freebie is really targeted to that ideal avatar that we talked about.

Praise:  I like it. So they can make that jump and that decision to opt in or purchase a lot easier.

Allison: We want the right people raising their hands. It’s like you’re inviting them to a party and the party is about a certain type of food. You want people who like that kind of food so that they’ll enjoy the party and enjoy the company.

Praise: Yeah, I’ve heard people say “You’re going to attract the right people when you really put out a specific ask, and you’re gonna repel the people you don’t want to work with anyways.

Allison: Exactly!

Praise: I like it! Okay, so for our ingredient number one was a solid email strategy. But then, was that second ingredient kind of the things I talked about?

2. The Irresistible Offer

Allison: So the second ingredient is the irresistible offer. That irresistible, no-brainer offer is what’s going to get people to say “Shut up and take my money!” Like “Yes, I want to buy from you! This is the exact thing that I’ve been needing in my business!” or in my life or whatever that is. So the question I like to ask is like:

What is the dream come true for your ideal avatar?

You mentioned that you have a strategy session headshots, like a personal branding session. You have the presets for that. So those are two really good offers. But I wonder if there is a third one that we can talk about. Let’s imagine someone bought both of those. What would be another step for them after that, that they need to grow their business using photography, personal branding, or anything like that?

What are some of the roadblocks that they’re experiencing once they have those photos already?

Praise: I would say, especially in the world that we live in, it’s constantly having to update photos. Having to keep on creating fresh content. I would say the struggle is to continue to stay relevant. So was your question “What would be my dream for my ideal avatar” or  “What would be the dream come true for the avatar?”

Allison: Yeah, what would be their dream come true? Like if they can have you wave a magic wand, and then something would happen. To sort of build off of what you said about content. That’s a really big pain point for these people. Especially if they’re focusing a lot on social media. They’re posting every day, sometimes twice a day. So how do they even do that? Do they need some type of content plan? Content calendar? Some way to map all this out and then integrate the photos that you have in there?

I think there’s something there with some type of workshop where you’re helping them map out all the content with all their photos. That way, one: that’s solving that problem for them and two: they’re actually using the photos in the best way possible. Because you want those photos to be really used, not just in their LinkedIn profile, their website, or in their social media avatar but throughout all of their entire content. I think that could be a high ticket thing too, because these are like really good lower ticket offers, which is great to get them introduced to you, but this could be one of the higher end offers that you have.

Praise: So that irresistible offer, it makes sense to them, right? They’re already my customers, they have my presets, we already did a personal branding session, they have some content that they might need help and guidance to put it all together in a sustainable way.

Allison: Exactly! That’s the next step for them. So you’re just helping them through every step. You’ve  already got those first two steps down and then this is the rest of it.

Praise: Would you say that is the milk matcha latte recipe?!

Allison: Absolutely, yeah! So the second ingredient in the recipe is this creamer, which we used a coconut milk. I believe it’s organic, sugar-free, sustainable and sweetened so we’re gonna pour it in here. 

Praise: YUM! And then we can do a little *whisk whisk* action. Waste not!

Allison: I’m like a real tita! By the way, for those of you listening and you don’t know Tagalog, “Tita” means auntie. 

Praise: Yeah, “tita” means auntie. “Lola” means grandmother. “Ninang” means godmother. Basically, all of the roles that are nurturing and affectionate and really fun and always carrying around a Louis Vuitton bag.  

Allison: Whether it’s real or not…? Hey, we don’t judge!

Praise: Yeah! You got it from Chinatown? That’s fine! That’s totally fine. 

Allison: Look at that color, it’s beautiful. Also, I had like a little bit of my thumb and I think I’m gonna be up all night now. I’ve got my caffeine, we’re good!

Praise: Okay, so we have our email strategy, we have our irresistible offer, is there anything else in this recipe that we need?

 

3. Have a Simple and Proven System to Test Your Offers Before Ever Building Them Out

Allison: Yes. The third ingredients in converting your customer (or your followers) into customers is having a really simple and proven system for testing those offers before you build them out. What we don’t want to do is spend all the time building this video course or writing a book that we know people don’t want to buy. Because, you’ll spend three months or even longer doing that then you’re going to spend time on a launch and then you’re gonna come up short on sales. That’s what we don’t want to happen.

I have a really simple system for this that I cover in my book “Shut Up and Take My Money” (that’s what we want our customers saying). So the first step once you have that idea is to test it out in a couple different ways. One is testing it out for interest and a really easy way to do that is post about it on social media. See what people are reacting to. Are people not reacting at all? Are they just liking but not commenting or asking questions about it? That should usually tell you if you can proceed to the next step.

The second step is to test for other engagements. So you could either start a waitlist where you email your list and say “Hey, I’m thinking of putting this together. Are you interested in joining us?” and that’s your waitlist. You’re not making a hard sell and no one’s gonna know if no one said they’re interested. It’s just a really easy personal invitation.

The third step is testing for actual payments. Once you move through those two steps and you have that validation, that’s when you make the offer to your email list and your social media following. That’s when you put that out there and you put a price point to it to see how many people buy. Then you can start building it and getting paid to build it because you already have an idea of what is included in there. You have an outline of what that includes but you don’t have to build that until people are already paying for it and you know they’re pre-purchasing!

Praise: I love that! I will admit, as a creative, I’m a really good idea starter and I am a good finisher, but maybe it would have been more successful if I just tested it out a little bit. Strategize a little bit more. So that is the final ingredient that makes this secret recipe really work, huh?

Allison: Yep! Like this creamer here. Can you tell us about this creamer?

Praise: It’s also coconut! Also organic. I mean, it’s sweet so there’s sugar in there…

Allison: Should we put all of it?!

Praise: Oh, we should go all the way! Look at that A-B testing you happening in there! That presale sign-up, that waitlist! It looks so delicious. So tell us while you’re whisking that together; how can people find you online?

Allison: Well, I just described part of my system, so you can get the full details at takemymoneybook.com. You could download my e-book there, I cover exactly how to do these steps that I covered and that’s it! That’s where you can get “Shut Up and Take My Money” and get your customers saying that for yourselves! (Since filming this, Allison has created a website specifically for this project theconversionkitchen.com)

Praise: Allison Carpio. You’re the best! A matcha latte queen. Online marketing consultant. Genius.Thanks for sharing this with us!

Allison: Yeah, thanks for having me!

Praise: Yeah. Do you wanna try it?

Allison: It’s probably 2 p.m… 

Praise: It’s gonna affect your sleep! That’s why we call each other Lola, so…

Allison: Yeah, but you tell me how is it?

Praise: It’s pretty good! Watch out… We’re opening up a Boba shop!

Allison: Boba Gals! Boba Titas!

Praise: Boba Lolas in the house! Thank you so much.

Allison: Thank you!

 

---

Want more helpful tips from other talented entrepreneurial women? Visit the ComePlum blog for more tips and resources from other female entrepreneurs.