Two weeks ago, I had a 30-minute meeting with Blake Burge to talk about improving his business’s revenue.
Blake has a massive Twitter following and is an Excel wizard who creates helpful threads for other Excel users.
But, Blake was facing a challenge that other creators face: he was getting in his own way turning attention into revenue.
In today’s issue, I’m going to share our discussion, my recommendation, and the results.
Blake’s biggest challenge: A complicated Twitter Thread sales process
Blake had been selling a $49 Excel course and wasn’t getting the traction he wanted.
So I asked him to walk me through the most common way that someone becomes a customer of his product.
Here was his previous sales process:
- Step 1: Prospect reads a Twitter thread of Blake’s
- Step 2: Prospect moves from thread to website to download free Excel templates
- Step 3: Prospect receives the free Excel template & is moved to an email sequence
- Step 4: Prospect is pitched a $49 Excel course over several emails
- Step 5: Purchase is made
This math is extremely challenging.
Even if Blake gets 2,000,000 impressions on his thread, he might get 400 free template downloads.
From there, he’d be lucky if 10% (40) of those people opened it up and started the template. Free products are easy to ignore because there is no skin in the game.
Of those 40 people, he might convert 1.5% for 0.6 customers or $29.40 per thread.
There’s no way that should be happening.
My recommendation: A simplified purchase process at people’s highest level of engagement
I told Blake he should charge for the templates upfront.
They are extremely valuable, solve a problem his customers have, and are more likely to get used if someone pays.
I also recommended he reduce complications.
Present the offer for the paid templates when the customer was at their highest level of engagement – at the conclusion of the thread.
Why wait and nurture someone who doesn’t need to be nurtured?
Here’s the creator funnel we came up with:
- Discovery: His Twitter audience
- Expertise builder: The thread walks interested readers step-by-step through how to build the template on their own for free. This shows Blake’s expertise.
- Sales Pitch: “Spend $10 NOW to get the template and save yourself hours of time.”
- Email sequence upsell: “Love these templates? Want to learn how to master Excel to build your own? Grab the course for $49”
The results: $2,243 in sales from his next thread.
We eliminated the middle math by piquing interest, showing expertise, and making a simple pitch on the spot.
Blake executed this strategy for the first time in this thread here.
Here were the results:
- Thread impressions: 2,000,000
- Template purchases: 200
- Course upsells: 5
- Revenue: $2,243
50% of the people who would have normally downloaded the template for free just bought it for $10.
We literally 76x’ed his average thread revenue the first time he ran this play by giving people an immediate option to buy.
Furthermore, we now have a baseline of $0.00112 cents per impression.
That means if Blake delivers a thread with 500,000 impressions, he could roughly expect $561.
If the thread delivers less revenue, he can hypothesize why it happened, isolate the problem and eliminate it.
If the thread delivers more revenue, he can hypothesize why it happened, isolate the improvement and double down on it.
To me, that still doesn’t seem like enough revenue per impression.
But there’s a silver lining here:
I believe Blake can get similar conversion rates at $50 or even $150 turning the average impression to $.0056 or $.0168.
So future threads of even 100,000 impressions could be worth almost $1,700.
This is now just one of many plays Blake can run over and over with different products that he creates and generate revenue each week.
But, what if you don’t have a following like Blake’s?
The lessons here are still powerful:
- Look for friction in your sales process: What does someone have to do to buy your product, that you could remove? In Blake’s case, it was downloading a free template first.
- Look for leakage in the sale process: Where could people potentially fall out and never return? In Blake’s case, it was opening and actually using the free template or reading the email sequence.
- Look for ways to reduce complications: Is there a place in your sales process where buyers might be ready to buy, that you aren’t simply offering your product? In Blake’s case, it was after reading a very valuable thread.
This example works well for lower-ticket items and probably isn’t as relevant to selling a high-ticket item, but the lessons & questions are still applicable and worth asking.
I hope you found this article helpful.
Cheers.