Ep. 089: How (and Why) to Create Beta-Offers
Beta means the first version of a new offer that you are putting out into the world, and it is a great way to see how an offer resonates with your audience. The benefit of Beta testing is that you get to help people while also testing out an offer. Understanding what state an offer should be in, how to price, and how to deliver it, are all important factors in a successful Beta test. In this episode, we talk all things Beta testing so you can help solve a problem you are seeing in your client base, bring in revenue, and test a new concept all at the same time.
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Bro marketing culture and sketchy MLMs have given modern business a bad reputation. It feels harder than ever to succeed as an entrepreneur, even though we've got an abundance of info and tech, right at our fingertips. If you feel frustrated, running your business, stress over your sales schools or are baffled by marketing strategies, you've come to the right place.
You deserve to run a successful sustainable business without spamming all of your friends or wasting time and money on marketing gimmicks. This is the sell it sister podcast, and you're going to learn how to make more money without complex systems or sleazy sales tactics. I'm Erica turbans and I teach highly motivated female and gender expansive entrepreneurs.
That selling doesn't have to suck. I've been running successful businesses and teaching others how to sell harder, earn more and create raving fans for over 15 years. And I'm excited to share what I've learned with you. If you want success without truly serving your clients profits without any passion or the next get rich quick scheme, I'm not your gal.
But if you're all in as an entrepreneur, want to make a difference with your work and are ready to run a business. You're proud of. Thank get ready to sell it, sister. Before we jump into the episode. I wanted to tell you really quick about something you are not going to want to miss. If you are looking to create a new profitable offer for your business in 2021, I'm bringing back a live version of the, your next big thing workshop.
On Friday, January 22nd at noon. And this workshop is going to walk you through. Step-by-step my proven framework that will enable you to create and launch what I call hell yes. Offers. These are offers that not only feel like a hell yes for you, but they're also a hell yes for your clients. And that means that it will be much easier to sell.
You won't have to go through a massive launch and people will actually be thanking you for offering it because it will be so good. So not only does it help you to amplify the impact you want to make by serving more people, but it's also going to be a really simple path to boosting your own income because there's no complex sales funnels or.
Giant launches or anything like that. I don't want you to struggle to get the work that you love doing out in the world to more people. So before you waste a ton of time, money and energy on accidentally creating the wrong offer, because at the end of the day, every offer type that's out there can work, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every offer type is right for you.
So we're going to help you find what is the right offer for you to devote your time, money, and energy to that is going to get you to your goals quickly and easily and not accidentally burn you out in the process. So if you go to bit dot L Y forward slash next big thing workshop, so that's all lower case and all one word bit dot L Y.
Forward slash next big thing workshop. You can learn all the details and you can register and save your seat, but definitely at least your do yourself a favor and go check it out and learn more because I know. Personally, I've gotten so much feedback from, uh, participants. Who've gone through this workshop before that they, or thinking about doing one thing.
And then they ended up doing a different offer instead, and they were so thrilled and they were so, so glad that they took the time to really be intentional about creating the right offer that hell yes. Offer instead of the wrong one. So again, bit dot L Y forward slash next big thing workshop. See you there.
In this episode, I am going to be talking all about beta offers, creating them, launching them, all the good stuff. And I'm really excited about this episode in particular, because I asked recently in my group program in rebellious success, I gave them a list of some upcoming ideas I had for podcast episodes.
And pretty much all of them were like, yes, talk about beta offers and launching them. And so here we are, and it's also perfect timing because, uh, on Friday the 22nd, yeah, Friday the 22nd of January at 12:00 PM. Eastern time. I am hosting an offer creation workshop called next big thing. So you probably heard the little intro snippet about that, but yeah, it's, it's all about framing out your offers.
And one of my regular ongoing offers that I currently have is my next big thing. Offer creation intensive. And in this intensive, usually what I am doing for people is helping them create what is essentially a beta round of a new offer. It's not that it's necessarily like technically, always a beta round, uh, or that they are calling it that to their audience, but it's essentially helping a client to, uh, create and launch a new offer so that they can serve.
More people in their business, uh, in a way that doesn't burn them out and helps them bring in more revenue and all that good stuff that all of the stuff that you and I are, are here to do in the world of, of online business. And my focus when I do those intensives is always what is the easiest way that we can.
Get the offer put together and out there and sold so that people can start to be helped by it. And that you can also start, uh, bringing, you know, making money from that offer like sooner rather than later. And so it's really important in there to focus on what the minimum viable product will be. So if this is, if you know, if you've never heard me talk about minimum viable products or you've never heard others talk about it, um, or pre-launching definitely listened to episode 70.
After this one. So this is 89. So just go back a little bit to episode 70 and listen to my episode where I talk all about minimum viable products and pre launching your offer. So we're helping them. I'm helping them to figure out what their minimum viable product will be so that they can. Beta launch that new offer into the world.
And beta just means it's like the first version of a new offer that you are putting out into the world. So it's the, it's the trial run essentially. And this is a great way to see how an offer is resonating with your audience so that you can help solve a problem that you're seeing in your client base.
Obviously bring in revenue and to also test a new concept. So let's say that you are a, I dunno, email marketer, right? So you're an email marketer and you are doing done for you email marketing services for people, but you have a lot of people who love to learn from you, right? Like maybe they're not ready for.
Your one-to-one done for you work, but they love the content that you're putting out. They find it super valuable. It's really useful. And they know that they need some level of help with their email marketing in their business. So you might be thinking to yourself, okay, well, I don't know how to reach that.
Like I don't, I don't know how I can serve them. Right. I don't know how I can serve them because, um, they, they're not ready to invest in my one-on-one. And there's obviously a cap on how much you can do with one-on-one unless you convert your business into an agency model. And even still, there's always going to be a cap there.
And so you're like, okay, well, like what can I do? Should I do, you know, a group program? Should I do a membership? Should I do a course? Like there's so many options, right? And so you are thinking you're like, I just want to be able to serve more people more easily. And so maybe you're thinking like, I am just going to.
Try out like a small group cohort, right. I'm going to get 10 people and I am going to walk them through exactly what I do. And then maybe you're going to like repurpose that content and turn it into a course or something else. Right. But at least in this first round, you are just going to see, can I. Help other people to get similar results to what I can get with my clients, without them having to work with me in the standard way that most people work with me.
Right. And so when then when you, um, when you beta test, you get to help. Out people, you get to serve more people while also testing that concept that offer and are able to find ways that you can improve it for when you launch again. And I know a lot of times, like this is something that can feel really scary and it's something.
Mentally that I've had to get over too, because I think that when we're growing up and we're going through school, we're very conditioned that there is, there is a way that something is like an a plus and then a C and then a failing grade. And we are always told to be striving for that eight plus. Right.
The reality is, is that in the world of online business, There are a lot of ways that you can really, really, really serve people well, and like a B minus level, which isn't to say that you should just be like phoning it in and just like, you know, going for the money grab without really serving or anything like that.
Obviously I'm not about that, but what I mean is that. You don't need to get bogged down in this idea of, I need something to be absolutely positively the best it's ever going to be before I sell it. Because if I do that, like if ever if I don't do that, if it's not perfect, if it's not a plus level, Them, the people going through it are going to be mad.
They are going to be upset. They're going to feel like I robbed them of their investment and all of this, but that is actually not true. So I will use an example of something that is unrelated to my. Current business, my current like Erica Devin's consulting business. And that is my friend, Michael and I have a, uh, separate course that we co-created called the farmer's market success system.
And he and I both used to farm. I used to work for him ages ago. I was his market manager, and now he does, um, consulting and teaching too. Farmers. And so we created this course for farmer's market vendors to help them make more money at the farmer's market. And when we first launched it, we straight up told people we're like, this is the beta round.
It will never be this low price ever again. And I'll, I'll talk about pricing in just a minute, but we straight upset. We guarantee you, we pinky swear. It will never be this low of a price ever again. So if you want this information, And if, and, you know, knowing that once you were in you're in, so anytime that we upgrade it, anytime that we rerecord videos or add bonuses or do anything to it, you will automatically get that without any additional costs that you have to pay us.
Like you might as well. If you're, if you're thinking about it, get in now, because. You know, next year when we relaunch it and it's even better, it's gonna, the price will be going up. And then when we relaunch it again, the price will be going up from there. Right? So we were just very, very Frank. It was like, if you, if you know, like, and trust us, and you want this information and you are willing to be an early adopter, you are going to get rewarded by being able to get in at a price that nobody else in the future is going to be able to get in for.
And what ended up happening was those people who joined the first round. They. Loved it, they were so well-served they were so like patient and understanding, like we, we did release everything on time, as we said that we would. Um, but you know, it wasn't, it wasn't super polished. Like we, we fixed up a lot of stuff in the next year and we upgraded the, the course and all the assets for the course, but it didn't matter because at the end of the day, They learned so much from us that was so valuable.
And just from being in a community of their peers and getting help and feedback from them. It was so valuable that they made back way, way, way more than their investment. And not only that, when we relaunched it, they were more than happy to actually like help us relaunch it. Like we did. Um, all sorts of testimonials.
We did, um, these like video Q and A's with that, we did all of this stuff and they, they didn't care. They weren't like, Oh yeah. This first round was, you know, like super janky because we knew that we were still doing our part of the bargain. Right. But it allowed us to actually listen to their feedback along the way.
As we were delivering it and it gave us really good insight to be like, Oh my gosh. Okay. So they keep really asking about this. We hadn't thought that that would come up so much, but now that we know it is we can do a bonus or an additional module, or we can make sure we spend more time talking about that.
Right. Also, there could be things that we were like, Oh, this is going to be a real, like, big selling point for them. And they might've been like, Oh, it's, that's actually. Yeah, I don't, I don't really care or it's, I mean, it's cool and all, but it's not super timely for me in this moment. Right. So it gave us good data to actually make the final version of the program that much better, because we weren't guessing as to what people will want or what they'll find value in or what they have questions on.
We actually. Got to hear it directly from them. So that was really, really, really, um, powerful. And, uh, and so speaking of pricing, you can definitely tell them, as I said already, that it's at a lower cost. You can be very upfront about that. And, um, there's really no, like, I definitely suggest that you charge for it.
And I'm going to illustrate that with a story in a second. But really there's no right way to price your beta versus. The final one, because pricing is very tricky and it's very personal. And some people might say, you know, you do it half, or you do it, you know, 20 or 30% or whatever. I really feel like it's a matter of what feels right to you.
Like where do you, where would you like the price to end up and what feels like it also honors like your, the value that you're delivering and your time it's taking you to create it and market it. And. The whole shebang. Right? So that really has to be personal. That is something I help my clients with is the, is the pricing piece.
Cause it can be tricky, but you do want to charge for it. And here's why, so one of my longtime ago, clients, who's actually also a return client. Um, we're back working together. Now. She, when she first created, um, her course a couple years ago, She had a few people, uh, go through it in the beta for free. And what ended up happening is that because it was free, they didn't necessarily all.
Go through it in the same way that they would have had they paid. So there's some people who really didn't do any of it. Some people who only did like part of it. And what's hard with that is, I mean, in, in any time you're like offering a course, there's always some like percentage of people who, even if they've spent two grand on it, like don't complete it.
But when that happens, when it's free, people are not prioritizing it. And therefore. It's really hard to rely on that feedback that you're getting. Right? Because there's no, there's no like skin in the game. Right. And that saying, you know, nobody will, your, there's probably always going to be people who will be super appreciative and they'll go through it and they will give you great feedback and all of it.
But generally speaking, it is better for you and the other person. If there is some sort of. Uh, monetary transaction that needs to take place before they get access to the content so that they are. Emotionally energetically, financially invested so that they take it seriously so that their feedback is really, really valuable because what if somebody like wasn't really paying attention and they went through for free and they did part, they only did part of it.
And then they're like, yeah, yeah, it's great. It's perfect. No, I don't think you should change anything. And you're like, great. I don't, then I don't need to change anything. And then you offer it again to paying people. And you find all of these gaps in it, right? Like you don't want that. Right. So definitely, definitely, definitely charged for it.
And what's really cool about that is again, in the story I illustrated about the farmer's market course, it gets people excited because they're like, hell yeah, I'm going to get all the upgrades and stuff and I don't have to pay for anything. And I get to try this out. Like, even if it's not something passive, right, I've done this.
Um, When I first did my next big thing intensive, I actually reached out to two. People who I knew would be perfect candidates for it and would be great would give me totally honest feedback. And I said, Hey, this is what I'm envisioning. I think you're perfect for it. Here's why, and I want to give it to you at this discount.
Right. They still have to pay for it. But I said, you know, I just laid it out very black and white and they both like, and I was, I only had the two spots available and they both jumped at it because. I made my case for why it was going to be valuable to them. They knew it was going to be valuable to them.
And they're like, well, hell if I'm going to do it anyway, it's like, I might as well save a little bit of money on it. Right. So even though they're not getting like unlimited future access to me or upgrades or anything, cause it was like a one and done, it was an intensive. Um, but they, they still got, uh, an extra value from saying yes to going through it at the beta rate.
And so now the next thing, so when you're, you know, you've thought about your concept, you know what you're going to do, you've thought about your price. Now. You really want to make sure, you know, what is essential to deliver it, right. Again, you don't want to spend too much time making it perfect. So that's for future rounds that's after you get the feedback.
Right. And the other thing I will say about feedback to you is you can even say like, You can even have it baked in and say, if for the people going through it at this beta price, like part of you getting to go through it at the lower price is that I am requiring that you give me feedback, you do a survey or, you know, an exit interview or something that you give me feedback at the end.
And that's like the trade-off right. So you can bake that right into the offer. Uh, and then that way you can, uh, take that feedback and adjust it for future rounds. But in this, you want to get out the essentials. So this is where you, you could do some market research. You could chat with some people beforehand.
You can look back over. Things that you have been doing or saying repeatedly, like questions that you've been getting asked, things like that to help inform you of what should be in there. And you want to be sure that it can help deliver the results that you. Are selling, right? So no extra bells and whistles, unless you find yourself with some extra time, maybe then you can do some fun ad-ons, but really just what, what needs to exist to help your client get that result that you are selling with the.
Offer. And if this is something that, that let's say is a group program, or it's going to rely on, you know, a cohort or a certain amount of people to go through to make it worth your time, you can always prelaunch it with what some people call a kill number. Meaning let's say you're like, I want to do go back to the email marketer.
I want to do a group program where I'm walking them through. My process, right? You, you might like have a goal of 10 to 12 people, but your kill number might be five. So what that means is that you are saying, if I do not get at least five people, I am not going to go through the time and the energy and everything to put all of this together.
At least not now, maybe in. Three or six months, you're going to revisit that, but at least not now, I'm not going to do that because often what happens with a beta offer is you're creating it as you are rolling it out. So you're, you're a little bit ahead. So you're not scrambling last minute. You, you do work ahead in part of the plan, but you are also creating it as you go.
And this is going to prevent you from, let's say you spend, you know, One to two months creating this in-depth program and then you launch it and it's crickets. Right? Well, what if you had an outline of the program of just the essentials, you pre-launch it, you know what that minimum viable product is? You end up, you know, not hitting your kill number, then you're like, okay, well, I'm going to put that on the back burner or maybe I'm going to revisit it and see what can be tweaked.
Right. Or you're like, Oh my God, this is a hell yes, offer people are buying it. This is super great. And then you're really excited and you're like, well, I already know what my minimum viable, viable product has to be. I already know what has to be in there. So I am going to start prepping it now so that I can be a little bit of a hit, like a little bit ahead once I actually launch it.
So let's say. You are launching at the beginning of the month and it doesn't actually start until the beginning of the next month. Right. So you're launching it for a couple of weeks and then you have a couple of week buffer in there, so you can actually start creating and get ahead a little bit. So though, that is sort of the, uh, that's like the main, the main overview, um, right there.
But if you're thinking like, well, what, you know, what should I offer? Like, how do I know? What is like, what needs to be the essentials. I will give you the actual example of the workshop that is that I mentioned at the top of the episode, my, your next big thing, uh, offer planning workshop again, that I'm doing on the 22nd.
Just want to make sure like it, it will be like, Potentially available after. Um, but if you come live, if you sign up now and you come alive, the benefit to that is you can actually ask me questions on the call and we will be working through it in real time. So you won't get off and then have to still schedule an hour to like do homework on the worksheets.
Like, no, no, no, this is hands-on. We're going to be going through it in real time. So I just want to be sure. That everyone knows, like when it is and what it is and everything so that if you are able to attend it live, you can actually get your questions answered in real time. But when I very first put that together last year, so in 2020, it actually came about, because I had this epiphany one day, it was like driving around or something I wasn't even working.
And what I realized was, Oh, all of my private one-to-one clients. When we are creating new offers, I literally just go through this like sequence of questions that weren't there. Not even like written down questions, it's just what is going on in my head. That's like asking them different parameters to help them figure out what their offer is.
And then we would go through the process of mapping out what I like to call a low key launch plan for it. And so I, I sat down. I was like, okay, there's, there's gotta be like some continuity here that I'm asking. Right. Cause again, I didn't have these questions written down. So I made a plan when I was actually like at my desk and working that I was going to map out like, what the hell am I actually finding from my clients that helps my brain go, Oh, I know what you need.
Like, you actually don't need. A membership. You need to do this instead, or you don't need a course. You need to do this instead because usually those are like the most common like course and membership. And so I started high level brainstorming and I was like, Oh, I get it. Okay. This is what I'm asking. Oh.
And if I sort out what I'm actually trying to get at. It's these three main areas. So it's the client's schedule. So like their personal capacity of what they actually have time to deliver as a new offer. Right. And then it was going through, okay, what are your strengths? Right. So like, how do you like to show up for people?
Is. Continuing to hold space for a group. Like, is that energizing or is that draining? Is, you know, like in terms of a course, like, do you, is that something that you like, does that get you excited? And I don't just mean about like, excited about, you know, Oh, making money in your sleep or whatever. I mean, like, literally like.
Teaching and delivering a course, like, does it make you excited and going through all these options? Like, what are your strengths? Like, what are your clients saying about you? What do people like love about you? What are your superpowers, all of those things. And then who do you want this offer for? Right.
So what is your scope? So, you know, Where are they at on their customer journey? What do they need from you? What does that price range look like? Right. So once I got that out of my head onto paper, I was like, I have a framework. And once I had a framework and I also have a podcast episode on frameworks too, but once I had a framework, I was like, I can teach this framework.
And so that was the birth of my, your next big thing workshop. When I very first did it. It was, I was like, Oh, what if instead of people having to work with me one-to-one I could actually walk them through my framework for profitable hell yes. Offers. And they could figure out on their own, like the two to three.
Offer types that are best for them right now. And that they could go back to in the future, maybe six months a year from now, when they're thinking about creating another offer and go back through the, the, the framework back through the questions and assess, okay, what is the next new offer type? And I actually am doing this process with myself right now.
And then when I had that. I created from there, my next big thing intensive, the actual intensive, where we spend two hours together and we map out all of the details of your hell yes. Offer and the low key launch plan. Right. So it was just a matter of like, I couldn't, I couldn't force this. Right. I, it only came through me doing the work and me being able to look backward and go, what are the things that I am doing again and again, and again, with all of my private clients, all of my one-to-one.
Um, clients, and this was a theme now there's other things that I do with my one-on-one clients as well, but. This was one of the things that I was doing again and again and again. So I framed it out and figured out what were the essentials and who knows, like maybe there's going to be a day where I make it more in depth.
Right. Maybe there's going to be a day where I it's like a whole course or something like that. Right. But right now, the simplest way that I can deliver at people is. In a really quick, like time honoring, uh, workshop again, where you just get, you know, by the end of that hour and a half, like your next way forward.
Right. It's not as intensive as like spending. You know, three months going through a course or anything like that, it's quick, it's impactful. It's low cost so that you can get the result that you want right now, because what, what ends up happening when we overthink it. And we try to quote, I'm using air quotes.
Perfect. It is that we are keeping that magic from the people who need it most. So this is what I want to end this episode on. And I I've been in various courses with people who I love and I have been in their programs for years and I've seen revisions and the revisions are beautiful and the videos are all sleek and upgraded and the platforms are new and fancy and it's beautiful, but you know what?
The core content, the transformational content. Has been there all along. So yeah, maybe their videos from three years ago weren't as polished and shiny as their videos now, but I still was able to get the results and if they had waited until all the conditions were right and all the conditions were perfect to put that out in the world, not only would they not have been making money from that offer all along.
But the people that they serve with that offer in, in that time that it had been out would not have been able to be served. So trust that your perfect people, they are not looking for perfection from you. They are looking for help for guidance, for a transformational result that you can offer to them in a beta quality.
Offering, right. So it doesn't need to be this thing of, uh, Oh my gosh, they're gonna judge me harshly or, or anything like that. It, we don't have to worry about that instead. Focus on what do they need to know right. In this moment right now to get the result that I want them to get, I'm going to start there and then I'm going to allow myself to experiment and be inspired.
By their feedback and the process and all of that. And I'm going to trust that with that combination, I will make this better and better and better in the future, but right now I can get it out there into the world. Right. So that is the power of a beta offer. Beta beta offers truly allow you to work smarter, not harder.
They're a great way to increase your income and your impact without a big, huge lift. And they are an amazing way to help serve more people right now at, you know, what is essentially a discount or a, like a special, so it's a as Michael Scott would say it's a win-win. I hope you love this. If you have questions, uh, if you're new, maybe you don't know where to find me, but that's at Erica.
consulting over on Instagram. Uh, if you've been here a while, you know, you've heard me say that, but I really, really do love to connect with people over there. I check out all of my DMS. I have you say hi, I will message you back. I love to hear for my listeners. I also really love it. When you share in your stories.
That you are listening and that you tag me. Cause then I know that you're listening and I can send a big heartfelt. Thank you. But also what it does is it helps. The people who follow you learn about this podcast. And because I hear from listeners every week about how valuable this podcast is, my aim is to actually double my downloads this year.
Not for vanity metrics. I don't care about that, but because I know that people need real, no fluff, no sleaze sales and marketing strategies to have more success in their business. And you can help me spread the word. When you share out with your business, friends, your followers, all those, all those folks.
Thank you again for being here. I appreciate each and every one of you. If you have any questions, reach out and as always happy selling. Thanks so much for tuning in this episode of the, sell it sister podcast. If you loved it and you want more, be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode and then head on over to sell it.
sisterhood.com to join my free Facebook community group. And as your mama said, sharing is caring. So if you got a lot of value out of this episode, be sure to share it with your biz besties too. Okay. Now get out there and sell it, sister.
