[Transcript starts at 1:14]
Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. So today we are talking about how often you should talk about your services. For any of you who care, it has finally stopped raining. I'm looking out the window right now, and there is a little hint of blue patch in the sky.
It's been raining here for far too long. If you're new to the podcast or if you just don't know. I live in what I usually say, sunny SoCal, but it's not sunny and it's been raining for what it feels like my entire life, and like monsooning raining, not like a little bit, like big rain. I don't pay for this. It is expensive to live here, and I'm going to demand a decrease here's in my rent because I don't wanna pay the sunshine tax when there's no sunshine.
So today we're gonna talk about talking about your services. Um, this is a question that often comes up in my Instagram Intensive, which is one of my services. Um, and something that didn't necessarily come up specifically last week when I spoke at, or just this past weekend- but when you listen to this, I think it'll be like a week ago- um, when I spoke at the Raise the Bar conference, but it was something that was addressed in different ways at the Raise the Bar Conference.
And so I had it in my little list. I have a running list of podcast, possible podcast topics and I was like, you know what? This is top of mind. Let's dive into this. So the short answer of how often you should talk about your services is it's up to you. The middle answer is that it depends. And the longer answer is what we're gonna dive into in this episode.
in general, I always recommend, and everyone at Raise the Bar, who, all the speakers recommended, you always wanna lead with a give. You wanna give a million times, you wanna give, you know, exponentially more than you are asking. But you do have to ask at some point. You do have to aka market your services, talk about your services, talk about your offers at some point if you're trying to have a business.
I would say, just to kind of put some numbers around this, if you are new to the online space, and when I say new, definitely anything that's less than a year, I would encourage you to give, give, give, give, give. In my ideal world, people would not create anything before one year of consistent concerted effort.
Um, 18 months is even better. Four years is even better. I've done tweets about this before where if you were willing to wait four to five years before you ever asked for something and you just showed up and provide value just every day, you would be able to create a very sustainable, in my opinion, very sustainable and profitable business.
But, I'm gonna encourage you, if you are less than one year in the space, you are just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, and you are absolutely waiting to create. Meaning, you are not gonna create any offers or services until you know that people want this specific thing. We know that Field of Dreams bullshit is quite frankly that, it's bullshit. If you build it, it does not mean that they will come. You create free value, right? You create value for free. Um, you give away value for free. You create content in the online space. You attract an audience, you build trust. You see what they have problems with.
You listen, and then you productize a service based on what they've been saying they need help with.
Let's get into the, what it depends on, as it relates to how often you should talk about your services.
Um, one of the talks from the Raise the Bar conference that I'm thinking about specifically that kind of addressed this and really pointed it out was Kelsey Heenan, um, I believe she's @thedailykelsey, Kelsey Daily?
Um, she's so sweet, love her. Um, and her husband, Dennis, they spoke about email marketing and they were talking about their personal story and they were in like a mastermind and one of the coaches said, Hey, do you wanna make more money? And Dennis was like, yes. And he was like, well then send more emails, aka talk about your stuff more.
Um, which we, we understand intuitively. The more you talk about your stuff, typically the more money that you can make, the, the more opportunities you give people to see your stuff and actually buy your stuff and, you know, enlist and enroll in your services. I will also say something that came up quite frequently at the conference that I totally agree with is when you are selling, be selling.
So you don't have to always be selling, but if you are selling, make sure that you're selling. Cause one of the things we see is that people get kind of tepid. They get timid with it, and then they don't sell anything cause people actually don't know if they're selling anything. They haven't talked about their officers, they haven't talked- offers, they haven't talked about their services, and people have no idea these idea that these things exist.
And so they're like never selling anything. This is something that I actually pointed out in my, my talk, um, which was How to Actually Use Social Media to Create a Profitable Online Personal Brand, uh, in 2023. And, you know, we have all these like skills and things like that and ways to show up. The big point there as we're looking, as it relates to actually having a business, a profitable business, is you have to ask for the sale.
So one of the things that I have heard many, many times, and I, I pretty much disagree with it, is this narrative out there that looks to try and convince people that selling is service? Yes, selling is a service. It, it does a service and it is oftentimes a disservice if you don't let people know about this awesome thing.
But it's, the narrative that I don't like is it's kind of like looking to convince people of something that they just don't feel good about. And if you don't feel good about it, we know you're typically not gonna talk your way out of it, or you're not gonna talk your way into feeling good about it. You need to create concrete evidence that, you know, refutes this belief or overcomes this belief. So I think that the way that we overcome this gross feeling that many of us have about selling and talking about our offers is to sell. Get firsthand experience that this thing that you've created, this offer you have, this service that you provide, does actually help people.
I'm gonna plug one of my services, which is one of my offers, which is my Value Ladder. I've talked about it in previous episodes. I'm gonna drop it in this one again. Um, it's in the show notes. Thank you, Courtney. Um, also if you're listening, you wanna head to themovementmaestro.com/valueladder, all lowercase.
Um, it'll take you right to the opt-in page for that, but, the reason I'm plugging that is because the Value Ladder will teach you how to stratify your offers and different offers that you can create so that you can get some reps and get some confidence in selling things. What I oftentimes see is that people wanna sell this big thing and they don't have confidence with it.
Whereas if you start off small and it's like, hey, I'm just gonna do a small workshop or a small webinar, that's, that's much easier to to market. And you get one or two or three or eight people that sign up for that thing, you can start to build some concrete evidence of, okay, this thing that I have, it does help people and I wanna talk about it because I wanna help people.
Right? So there's the plug for that. Um, and as it relates to that narrative of selling is service, yes it is. But you're probably not gonna talk yourself into believing that. So let's do the thing. Let's outwork your insecurity. Let's create some concrete evidence that yes, me selling this thing, me offering this thing, me talking about this thing actually helps people, because I have had people go through it, utilize this service, utilize this offer, and they have been helped.
Realistically, circling back to this concept, if you wanna have a business, you do have to talk about your services. You do have to ask for the sale at some point. I am a big fan of showing up on social media and attracting attention, and this is what my talk was about this this past week. This past weekend?
Yes. Attracting attention by providing a ton, a metric shit ton of value that demonstrates that you can solve problems that people actually know they have, that they want solved and that, yeah, they would be willing to pay to have solved. I see a, you know, yes, we are in a time where, attention is the the primary currency, but there are, you could do a million things to get attention.
Seth Godin talks about it. You can go set yourself on fire and get attention, but that's not gonna get you the attention that you want as it relates to having a profitable, viable business. The attention that I want you to get are eyes from people that are like, Hey, this person is a resource. They could help me.
They could solve my problems. At some point in time I might be willing to pay them to help me solve my problems. So I believe if you show up for a long time and you provide a massive amount of, oh, hit the, hit the thing there underneath my desk, if you show up for a long time, you provide a massive amount, a massive amount of, uh, value by sharing content that solves problems that people know they want solved and that they would pay to have solved, at some point when you are ready to sell something, right? You've listened and you've waited to create, and you hear people have this problem and you're like, yeah, I can, I can actually, you know, productize this and create something, create a, an actual service or offer around this thing. When you go to sell that, it largely just becomes offering a solution in exchange for money.
And initially it may feel a little bit weird. , but that is that, uh, overcoming and gaining that gaining of confidence that we get by doing the thing. And we can do it on a smaller scale, get some, some reps, get some wins with that, and then we can look to go, to go bigger with that.
As it relates to social media, to an extent, how often you should talk about your service and your services and your offers is up to what you like doing to an extent, and we're gonna get into this a little bit more.
Absolutely the more you talk about your services, the more you talk about your offers, the more that people will actually know about it. Cuz no one sees anything, right? We understand that a small part of your audience sees things.
This is not their job. It, right? We can blame the algorithm, but we can also just think about how human, how humans are, and the fact that people aren't obsessed with you. Uh, sorry to break the news. Um, they're not watching every move that you make, they don't see every single thing that you do, so they may not even know, uh, and not everyone reads everything, right?
People are busy, they have lives. So understanding that the more times you put this in front of people, the more opportunities you give people to actually hear and see what you do. The, the more likely it's that they will actually know what you do and, uh, when the time comes, be willing to invest in whatever you, whatever it is that you.
I personally, I'm making this episode full, you know, knowing full well that I don't do it a ton. I don't talk about my services a ton online. Um, and this is why I said to an extent how much you talk about your services, um, will lead to more sales because social media can penalize you. And we'll get into that.
I don't talk about a ton. Um, but I also use a launch, more of a launch model for things. And I, not surprising when I do talk about my services more, when I do talk about my one-on-one client, uh, one-on-one offer, if you go one-on one-on-one coaching, uh, when I do talk about the fact that I offer discovery calls, then more people sign up for them.
So I will kind of use that intentionally or talk about things more intentionally when I'm like, yeah, I want more of these. And if I'm like, I'm kind of busy right now, I'm not gonna talk about it. It's, it's very much intentional.
So what I was alluding to before with the fact that, uh, the more you talk about it on social, the more awareness there is, and oftentimes the more money that you can be making that is to an extent.
And the way that I get around this is with what I call direct versus indirect advertising. So, if you just directly advertise and you're like, Hey, I have this thing, it's for sale, come to my webinar. That post will not do well. Any of you that have put something up like this on Instagram, you know, it just doesn't get as much reach.
Instagram doesn't push it. Why? Because they don't want you to make money without giving them some money. And it was really cool. I did a talk last Thursday, um, at APTA's CSM. It's a big, it's a big physical therapy conference for those who don't know. And one, it was with a team of us, a group of us. There was four of us total, and one of them was Mike from The Prehab Guys. We were supposed to have Craig.
Craig got sick, so Mike filled in, but either way, he was speaking about the fact that they sell using paid traffic. On their organic channel or their organic traffic, they're just giving value. They're just sharing videos. They're not looking to get sales from that. And I think it's actually very, very smart to separate the two.
Um, we're gonna talk also though about indirect advertising, which is a way that you can promote your services and talk about your services that you typically will not get penalized for on social media. Now it's not like someone comes and yells at you and like restricts your account. It's just that that specific post when it's direct advertising will not go to as many people, will not be shown to as many people.
There is still a lot of value in creating this post, especially if it's like a doors open, like, Hey, I just wanna announce that I have this webinar that's coming up. Just having one of those posts can be, you know, I think there's a lot of value in that and needs to exist. It's just an awareness post. But the rest of your content moving forward, if you're in a launch period, should probably be what I call indirect advertising, which is where you share something that relates to the outcome that you get for people using that service.
And then within the caption, you kind of Trojan horse it Wow, you kind of Trojan Horse it. It's like really hard to say. Uh, you kind of do that in the caption and you can let 'em know about the offer. That's what I will do when I'm selling my Intensive. It's largely just content about social media, how to use Instagram for online business, and it gives 'em a win in the actual post. And then in the caption, I'm gonna let 'em know, hey, if you want more, doors are open, or doors are closing, or doors are opening soon, something like that.
I wanna give you some structure based on the offers that you may have. Right? Cuz I do believe that as it relates to how often you should promote your services or talk about your services online, it's based on a few things. One which we just kinda went over was your personal preferences and just how much you like to talk about things. Um, second is your goal. You want like a bigger business, you wanna sell more. Third is gonna be your offers and your actual business. So I wanna get into that right now.
As it relates to your offers, I'm gonna, I'm gonna group it into two different categories here. One is, if you only have one offer and it's ongoing, typically it's gonna be, if that's gonna be your one-on-one service. This is where, if you're just entering the online space, your best bet is to start with a one-on-one service. Not to make a course or anything like that, cuz you need volume to sustain that.
So if you have this one-on-one coaching, that's typically gonna be an ongoing offer, meaning that like it's always available, it's evergreen. So three things that you can do here. One, you can just always be talking about it, and this is largely gonna lean on what we just spoke about, which is indirect advertising, where you are making posts that provide value and then in the caption you're saying, Hey, you know, if you, if you want results like this, or you're interested in learning more, and you can have that call to action, be hop on a discovery call, or you're just talking about the actual one-on-one service that you have.
For brick and mortar businesses, which I don't work with as much, but I still understand business, online business or online marketing, I should say.
If you have a brick and mortar business, I'd love to see people just, you showing clients doing the thing. I'm thinking about gyms and physical therapy places right now. Like I just wanna see the service being provided and provided and provided. And you won't get dinged for that cuz you're not like overtly saying like, here is a webinar.
It's just like, Hey, here's, I'm thinking right now of a recent account I looked at that I love and it was youth athletes just fucking crushing it. And I'm like, this is indirect advertising, and it's kind of direct advertising as well. Um, but it's largely kind of, if I have to pick one, it's lean towards indirect advertising, and then you can put in the caption, you know, your, your phone number, you can put in your business address or whatever, you know, whatever next steps, call to action, um, that you want.
So you could always be talking about the offer. This is something that you have an offer, an offer that's always ongoing or service that's always, always ongoing or always going on, always for sale. Uh, you could dedicate one time a week to talk about it. Which is in, I believe Stories are typically best for this.
Again, my, whenever I talk about social media and using social media for online business, it's, it's, Instagram, right? Like that's, that's my, my expertise, my zone of genius. So, and I think it's just like affords so many different parts of the platforms that you can utilize. So it's great for business. So you could talk about your services directly in your Stories one time a week.
Yes. If you have links that are outbound from your Stories, Instagram typically does not like that. Um, which is one of the reasons I think that people use that whole, like DM me the word whatever. And then you can send them from the DM. You can send 'em away from the platform with a DM as opposed to having it in the actual Story. If you're like, really, you know, focusing on numbers, which I suggest that you don't.
Um, so like I was saying, if you have an ongoing service, you can dedicate one time a week to talking about it. This could look like a Story that you're just giving a case study. Um, maybe you're showing what your day looks like and you know, you have these clients. I see a lot of PTs do this, which I think is good.
Um, they just show like the cases that they have and the things that they're treating. I actually just did a Story and asked, I'm like, are you folks interested in knowing what I talk about on my coaching calls? Cause I say that I have coaching calls, but there's a good chance that you have no fucking clue what I do on those calls because I never talk about it.
Um, so that's a cool way to- it kind of leans towards indirect advertising. It can be more direct if you're like, this is what I do, these are my services. Um, but if you're just talking about what you did during those services, during the day, during those calls, then that's more of indirect advertising.
That can be really, really nice. If you wanna do a specific post, and this could be once a week that you do, then it could be again, client win or success story, or testimonial or a case study, um, or just explaining your actual service. Uh, if you're gonna do it once a week, I would lean on more of that indirect advertising where it's the person's gonna get value out of that post.
And it's not just, this is the thing that I do. You could also dedicate one full week. I've seen Jill talk about doing this. Dedicate one full week a month to talking about your services. This again, could be really good in your Stories where you're just really going hard on, like that sounded bad. You're just really going hard in the paint, uh, talking about this is the service, this is, this is what one-on-one, you know, working with me looks like here's a case study or here's a testimonial. Play around with it. See what actually feels best for you. But that's just some, you know, uh, what do I wanna call it? That's some structure.
If you're looking for, How much should I do it?
The flip side here is if you have multiple offers, um, where maybe you have some webinars and there's different, one different one-on-one services that you offer. You do audits and you do one-on-one coaching and you do a bunch of different things, then I think that the ways to work with me post, like a monthly post or- monthly you'll see comes around pretty quickly- but a monthly ish post could be nice. Or just a Story that outlines hey, ways to work with me.
Um, I think it also would be really nice to have this laid out clearly on your website, which is, I am a big fan of folks having a website and getting one early on. Cause it just forces you to organize your thoughts.
Um, and kind of tying back into what we said before is you could share in your Stories about the services that you're delivering, especially right after you deliver the services. So I talk about this in the Intensive. If you had a really good discovery call, you had a really good coaching call, go in your Stories right after that, call and share about it.
Obviously ask for permission or you know, make it anonymous. But people can feel your energy about that service, that offer, and they love that. People are like, oh, I wanna work with this person who loves doing this thing. So that would be the two approaches if you had one service that's ongoing or if you had multiple offers, that's how I would break it down.
In general, I would recommend having a specific bio. If you check out episode 449, thank you, Courtney. Uh, that's titled How to Create a Killer Bio. I go through all the steps and what I suggest goes in that bio. Um, and this makes it easier for people to know, like, oh, what does this person do? Can they help me?
They don't necessarily know your specific services, but at least they know in a direction like, do you actually provide a service around this cuz this is the problem you solve. I recommend, like I just previously said, having a specific page on your website. Lay it out for people, and then you can have other pages that are linked, but like, let people know how can they work with you?
I personally, as it relates to Instagram, I don't like pinned posts. If you don't what they are good for you. Um, but to me, pinning, you know, taking up valuable real, real estate, those first three posts and they're pinned and it's, I've seen people use it as like, meet me, my services, how to work with me. I personally don't like doing this mainly because one is, it takes a valuable real estate, but two, I'm running a personal brand here.
I'm not running a business page persay. Um, I think it's different when you have a brick and mortar business because people are going to the brick and mortar business for that specific service. For me, people, and the way that I wanna show up, I'm a personal brand and people are coming to the page for me and the things that I'm gonna say, but I wanna make sure that I infuse me and my humanity, person in there.
I'm not a business first. I'm a person first, which is why I don't wanna just hit 'em immediately with like ways to work with me and like, here's my services. It feels like, it very much feels like to me if I go to a page like that, it's, there's an ask first before there is ever a give, and that is just a personal preference.
So, uh, a third thing to consider as it relates to the, it depends answer of how often to talk about your services is what phase of business you are in. I've broken this down into three distinct phases. That initial phase, which is the wait to create phase. Definitely if you're a year or less in that time, I suggest that you're just really showing up and providing a ton of value, metric shit, ton of value. And you're waiting to see what gets traction.
I would love for you not to productize before a year, but it's gonna be up to you. But in this phase, you're not really talking about your services that much because you're just listening. You're creating content, you're showing up, you're providing value, and you're saying, what do people actually like?
How do I like talking about things? What do I like posting? And then you can go and create more of that. At some point, yes, you must ask and you must put the services out there. But I want that to be based on what's gotten traction. And again, I'm plugging that, um, Value Ladder ebook that I have, because a very nice thing to start off with that you're gonna ask for money is going to be a webinar.
I think it's one of the easiest and best starting points. Yes, you can always have that one-on-one offer going in the background for sure. Um, but a like super solidly productized offer, I really like that webinar. I talk all about that in the Value Ladder.
The second phase of business, we're looking at it. Excuse me. Whoa. Leave that in, Courtney, leave it in. I'm human.
The second phase of business that we're talking about is the launch model phase. So if you are doing launches where the, the beauty of a launch is that it has an open and a close, so it puts some parameters around your selling times. It's one of the easiest ways to sell, quote unquote, because you only have to sell for this defined period in time. It's not just like I'm selling forever. It's like, Hey, the things, the doors are gonna close at some point, so I have to sell until that day. Once you have a set offer that is, oh, cart open and cart closed, then you would be in this kind of launch model. And this, for something like a group offer is obviously gonna be a bit more of an advanced business owner.
Not necessarily that you need to be advanced, but you're more far, you're farther along in your business career, um, because you have the audience that, that makes it, um, worth, makes it, um, appropriate to launch something that is this leveraged model. You will have this open and cart closed though however, for something like a webinar. Right. That is a leveraged model and at some point it closes.
I like at least, you know, talking about it for like about a month beforehand. Um, two to three weeks before for sure. I mean, you can get in into an episode about just, you know, launching logistics and things like that. But if you're in that launch model, then you're just gonna be talking about the thing during those launches. When you are launching, you're gonna be launching.
When you're selling, you're selling. Go hard in the paint when you are launching. This will get easier over time. It'll get easier for you to sell and show up and promote your stuff if you run the same offer because suddenly you know this thing can get results for people. This thing is good. It is helpful, and you want to actually be talking about it.
Tactically during this time, you will have, you know, probably one direct advertising and one or a few direct advertising posts. This thing is open, and then when this thing is gonna be closed. And then the rest will be those indirect advertising posts where you're providing value, you're teaching something, you're sharing a win, um, or an outcome.
You're solving a problem, demonstrating how a problem gets solved using this approach that is whatever you deliver in your, um, your service. And then in the caption you can hit 'em with the ol' if you want more, join the program kind of.
And then the third phase, right? So we see, wait to create, we're probably not talking about the services that much. Launch model. We're talking about it when we are launching, which is nice that it's very much laid out. And then the big scale model, and this is where I'm thinking about Kelsey and Dennis with this, you know, Jill is largely heading into this kind of there already. Prehab guys. Um, this is to me where brands become businesses and people are going to this place, this person, to buy stuff.
We're seeing with this kind of the constant soft calls to action and what I, the caveat here is that I think you'll typically see more of these calls to action, whether they're soft or hard- that sounds weird, but we're gonna go with it- calls to action. Soft meaning that it's just like, it's not like you have to go buy this thing right now.
It's just like, Hey, you know, I just, I just dropped this thing, this might be helpful. Or it's not like a, a hard sell or anything like that. Not, not a specific sell. Kind of like try ties into that indirect advertising model. I think you're gonna see more of that, um, with ads and with email. Just cuz again, with organic social media, if you are selling something, it typically doesn't, we don't get the reach.
And if these brands are looking to be businesses, they're looking for eyes, they're looking for volume and so they don't wanna do things that are going to suppress that reach. Um, you're also, with this, these businesses, you're gonna see more cont more frequent content distribution in general. So yeah, it's going to be them talking about their services more often cuz just from a sheer volume perspective, ratio perspective, you're gonna see it. Um, we'll see again, have the hyperlinking of things in emails cuz it's gonna be easier to sell, be easier, meaning you will not get penalized by something out of your control, meaning the, the algorithm by you talking about this sale. Um, you may see things like a constant footer at the bottom of the page.
Something that says like, when you're ready, you know, here's some ways to work with me. Um, not that you have to be an advanced business owner, cuz I've seen plenty of people that are not super advanced in their career do this in their footers. But something that I've definitely seen more of, um, that when, when we're looking at personal brands that have evolved into businesses, um, and within this last phase, this big scale model, they're gonna be talking about their services more.
Cuz they're, they're launching more, right? They go from launching less to launching more frequently. They're really segmenting their list and they're just talking about their services and offers a lot. So there's no nothing wrong with any of this. And I hope within this e, this email. Wow. I hope in this episode you see that it depends on a lot of factors and there's no wrong or you know, one right or wrong way.
One thing I will encourage you is to, to steer away from is to really place your own, like, well, I hate when I get emails. Yes, and, if you take a step back, perhaps you realize that you don't mind getting more emails when it's coming from something, a brand that you trust, right? So not to say that you want someone selling to you all the time, but there are just, I put that out there just to make sure that you don't just cut things off and you're like, I'm never gonna do that.
And you don't allow yourself to be open to the fact that you may go through these phases and you may progress in your business, and then be talking about, you know, your services more, because that's just the phase that you are in your business. So to answer the question how often should you talk about your service?
It depends. On what? On you, on your business model, on your phase of business, on your goals. Typically, you will sell more if you talk about your services more. But as always, and I, I don't think I can say this enough, give far more than you ask.
All right. That is it. I'm looking at the time. We went a little long with this one, but I was passionate about it.
Maybe I'll have a little call to action today. If you liked it, if you loved it. If you're picking up what I'm putting down, share this with somebody who's asked you how often should I talk about my services? What do you think?
Share it with somebody who you think it could help. As always, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you.
Until next time, friends Maestro out.
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