Author: Karan Dharamsi

There is no standard rule for all when it comes to splitting your online marketing budget. It all boils down to the basics, the size of your company, and the nature of your company.

Everything about your company is what will play a major, major deciding factor. Thus it’s a completely subjective matter.

However, based on my personal experiences of starting and growing 6 different companies, here’s what I want to share with you seeking a full-proof solution to this ultimate question.

The answer to this question lies in balancing your budget between Branding and Direct response.

If you are a start-up and wish to grow and sustain your business, follow this one simple rule! In the initial stage, your focus should be on sales and only sales!

Think of ideas and strategies that will help you boost your sales. Do not let your time, money, energy and focus shift to branding or story-telling in the beginning!

Comparing your budget to the one’s set by huge players like Flipkart and Amazon will be the stupidest thing you can ever do. Understand this one major point, all these big companies have investors’ money, a safety net to fall back on.

Yes, branding and story-telling will make people aware about your brand, but it takes the act of sales further away.

What matters the most is to channelize your resources on generating direct response. And maybe along with that start building up on your story.

Focus on testing your product, your service, your market! You need a solid start that ensures a good amount of cash flow into your business.

SO HERE’S THE FORMULA:

1. IDEAL SPLIT FOR STARTUPS

If you are a start-up entrepreneur, use 90% of your budget for direct response and the other 10% on branding. Once you get on track and pick up the pace, you can change the numbers accordingly!

Using 90% of your budget on direct response will enable conversions and cash flow into your business. And thus later you can use that to increase your budget on branding.

2. IDEAL SPLIT FOR MID-SIZED COMPANIES

For a mid-sized company, split your budget into 70% for direct response and 30% for branding. At this stage, you will have made enough sales to add onto your story-telling bit.

3. IDEAL SPLIT FOR MILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES

And if you are a huge company like Amazon with billions of dollars of investor cash, go for 40% direct response and 60% branding.

People often ignore this little fact while competing with everyone around in the ultimate chase to success. And in no time, they experience a downfall.

Learning from my mistakes and experiences, I don’t want any of the other entrepreneurs and start-ups to take the wrong step that could hamper business growth.

So that’s the ultimate learning from this, the choice to make when it comes to branding v/s direct response when you are starting your business.

So go forward, and make those sales! MAKE IT HAPPEN, MAKE IT COUNT!

If you are new to Facebook ads or haven’t had much success in generating revenue from Facebook ads, worry NOT!

In this article, I’ll not only show you how you can build your brand on Facebook and turn your Facebook fans into paying clients/customers …

But I’ll also show you how we generated a 721% ROI from a recent ad campaign targeting our Facebook fans.

But before I reveal my strategy, I want to let you know that no matter how good your marketing strategies are, if you don’t deliver world class products or services, no marketing can keep you in the game for long.

We deliver world class products, coaching and services to our clients and our definition of marketing is –> It’s a means of helping us spread the message (product/service) that we believe in which will solve people’s problem and add value to their life.

And if you too have a great product or an amazing service that can solve people’s problem, this strategy will do wonders in helping you grow your business in the short and long run.Now getting back to the actual strategy..

You see, the biggest MISTAKE most people make when they advertise on Facebook is, they directly ask for the sale when they run ads to a cold audience.

By cold audience, I mean, running ads to people who may have not heard about you or your brand.People Get on Facebook Not To Buy Products Or Services!

People Get on Facebook to check out what their friends are up to. They check Facebook for entertainment, gossip…

And when out of the blue, you land up on their newsfeed with an ad to buy your product or service, it’s like asking someone to marry you when they don’t even know you.

What do you think is the probability of them saying a yes to your proposal? Most likely zero to low, right?Instead, to get the maximum ROI from Facebook ads, you should be:

STEP 1: ASKING FOR A DATE FIRST, NOT DIRECTLY PROPOSING!

We do this by running meaningful ”Like Ad campaigns” first and building our fan base. By ”Meaningful Like Ad Campaign”, I mean, you clearly specify the benefits for someone liking your page.

For example, in the ad campaign above for my Fitness company, I clearly specify – “Like My Page to Stay Fit & Get Inspired! Get Daily Health, Fitness & Motivation Tips!”

So people clearly know what this page is all about and what they can expect from me and the page. And only if they are interested in fitness, motivation and living a healthy life will they like my page.

You see, getting people to take the simple action of liking my page is the first step. I”m not asking them to buy my products or services.

I”m not proposing marriage which is where most Digital Marketing agencies or Facebook Ads Gurus go wrong and NEVER make any ROI from Facebook ads.

They forget that at the end of the day, we are dealing with ”Human Beings” and understanding human behavior (which I’m a constantly learning about) is an important aspect of any successful ad campaign. You can’t treat human beings like an ”Algorithm”.

 

Also, another benefit of following this strategy is the screenshot above. I’m paying JUST Rs. 3.30 per like which is NOT bad at all to build my brand and a large fan base of people interested in Health & Fitness.

Alright, now that you know the First Step in getting a great ROI from your Facebook ads is to create a ”Meaningful Like Ad Campaign, let’s head to step 2.

STEP 2: ENTERTAIN – EDUCATE – ENTERTAIN:

While you are building your following… it’s time you simultaneously turn your followers into Raving Fans. It’s time you get them to know you, like you and trust you.

Wondering how you can do that?Well, by posting AWESOME content on your Facebook page that entertains them, solves their problem and also educates them about your brand and what your products or services can do for them.

Your content should be a mix of 70% Entertainment + Inspiration & 30% Education.

This is the perfect ratio to keep your audience engaged with you. And when I say entertainment, I don’t mean that you turn your page into a Hollywood or Bollywood gossip newsfeed.

What I mean is, you should turn yourself into a celebrity or your business into a showbiz.Wondering how? Read on….
Simple, by giving your followers a closer sneak peak into what you or your brand represents. By posting videos of you or your team doing random fun stuff.

 

Here is a video that I had posted on my Facebook page and it was viewed 2,249 times and counting.It was a video I shot with Sandhya at home on my phone in just 12 minutes and clearly people loved it.

So you see, you don’t need a fancy camera or a BIG budget. You just need to post stuff. The more raw your stuff, the more people like watching it.

Also, the more people watch these videos, the more they know about me and the more they trust me and thus the probability of them investing in my products or services goes up at least 10 times.

And in the middle of all the entertainment, I also post content that helps my followers, educates them and solves their problem.Here is an example:

 

When you post AWESOME-RELEVANT content, your fans will start trusting and liking you or your brand.

As you can see in the examples above, a mixture of Entertainment + Education is getting us a lot of engagement.

But more importantly, it’s helping us turn our fans into paying clients because they now see the value in taking up our coaching programs and they know what we stand for.

Now I know you are really interested in the part where we turn our Fans into Paying Clients and how we do that.. I’ll get to that in just a minute.

But before that.. Let me quickly recap what we have covered till now before we talk about the MOST Important step.

The first thing you would do is run a ”Meaningful Like Ad Campaign” and while you are building your audience, you would simultaneously post content that Entertains & Educates your followers and turns them into your raving fans.

If you do everything right and as per direction up to this point.. here is the final and the most important step to generating profits from Facebook ads.

STEP 3 – THE FINAL STEP: UNPREDICTABLE DIRECT TRIPWIRE OFFER

First, let me explain what a TripWire Is:

A TripWire is a very low cost product or service offer that you would promote to your fans with the sole intention of turning leads (your fans) into paying clients/customers.

The price-point of a Tripwire is intentionally so low that it makes the offer absolutely irresistible.

A typical Tripwire offer would be somewhere between Rs. 9 to Rs. 299 or ($1 to $7).Now I know you must be thinking, after doing so much.. why do I still need to offer a Tripwire? Why can’t I just promote my actual product or service?

To answer that let’s go back to the whole dating analogy.There is always a progression towards marriage, right? You meet the person, you ask for a date, then you go out on a second date and maybe you start holding hands, and then the third date…

Slowly when you feel the other person trusts you enough and likes you would you propose to them, right?

And that’s exactly what we are doing here by promoting a Tripwire offer and NOT the actual product or a service.

We don’t want to screw up the relationship by jumping the gun. We are almost there and we want to build a long term relationship with the clients/customers and be happily married to the client forever.

So stick to the process and promote a Tripwire if you want this process to be a long term success.If you directly promote the actual product or service.

You may get a few sales but you will turn off a lot of your fans and they will NEVER do business with you.

Alright, so now that we are clear on what a Tripwire is and why you should be creating a Tripwire offer.. let me give you an example of a Tripwire offer that we recently promoted and how we got a ROI of 731% from it.

You see, our normal diet consultation fee is Rs. 2499 per session. And although our fans love our brand and love the awesome content we put out for them.. asking them directly to pay Rs. 2499 would be a uphill task.
Yes, they know me. They trust me.

But they are not directly consulting me. They are going to be working with my Head Nutritionist – Mahak Agarwal.

And they have never seen her consult anyone before. And most people prefer live consultation, most have never done a phone consultation before.

So you see, I had so many barriers to cross. So many objections to overcome in people’s mind… And had I put out the actual offer of Rs. 2499 consultation, I would have had very few people interested in the offer.

That’s why, we promoted this Tripwire offer.

 

I wanted to give the FWK fans an opportunity to try our consultation once even if it meant I don’t make any immediate profit on it.

I knew that if they try our consultation once, they will be Blown-Away and will want to continue coaching with us and wouldn”t mind paying our regular coaching fee.

Because by now they would have seen that our coaching programs are unlike anything they have seen or experienced before.

And this would only be possible if I promote Tripwire offers. Had I not done that, a lot of people may have never signed up and would have never known the value of our coaching program.

Yes, the Tripwire offers can be loss making sometimes and not worth the time. But don’t look at them in the short-term.

Think about the value that these offers bring to the table 3 and 6 months down the line. Think about how many repeat customers/clients you will have 3, 6 and 12 months – this is where the profit is in this strategy.

As you can see, we had tons of likes and comments on our Tripwire post. But more importantly we had 142 people sign up for the Rs.99 offer and we extended the offer to each one of the 142 people who signed up before we closed the offer.

So we spent Rs. 2000 on promoting this post to our Facebook fans and we made roughly Rs 14200. Now that’s a great ROI here itself, right?

Wrong! we still haven’t deducted the cost for like ads and the time and salary paid to my team to serve all the clients at Rs. 99 plus the transaction and admin fees.

This is NOT where the profit is.. the profit is at the back-end.

So far out of the 142 people, 8 have signed up for our 6 months of coaching program bringing us over 95K in revenue and we expect another 40 people to sign up in the next 2 weeks.This is where the profit is made. In the back-end.

Over a period of time, in the long run. And I know the ROI from just promoting the Tripwire is 731%. But it would eventually be way over 731% in the next 3 months.

This is the power of our Facebook ad strategy.So always advertise Tripwires to your Facebook fans. Turn your fans into paying customers and once that happens, you can then always pitch them your main product/service.

Now the likelihood of them buying your main products/service is 1000 times higher since they already have made a purchase from you. So they know the value you or your products can provide.

ONE NOTE OF CAUTION:

Don’t make your Tripwire offers predictable. Always keep your offers unpredictable. If your fans know that you would be posting the same offer each month, they won’t be compelled to invest in your Tripwires.Keep your offers random and exclusive.

I hope you implement my 3 Step Strategy to Generate Maximum ROI From Your Facebook page.

It’s a strategy to: “Create Brand Awareness, Grow Your Following & Fan Base, Turn Your Followers Into Raving Fans and Turn Your Fans Into Customers.” 

For this strategy to deliver amazing results, make sure you implement it at least for 3 months.Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions. Would love to know how this strategy helps you grow your brand and business.

In this article, you will discover:

1. #1 Reason why the junk food outlets are always full of customers.
2. How unknowingly these junk food outlets teach us the #1 marketing lesson.
3. And why without using this #1 Marketing Lesson & Strategy it’s almost impossible to grow any business
4. And so much more.

So without further ado, here’s the first episode of ”The Marketing Nerdz Show”.

The Marketing Nerdz Show – Episode 1:
We all live in such a fast paced world. Things are changing so rapidly around us. And there are 10,000 different things that need our attention leaving most people in a constant state of overwhelm and stress.

WHERE DO YOU THINK MOST PEOPLE HEAD OUT TO WHEN THEY:

• Fight with their husband/wife
• Feel overwhelmed with all the work on their desk
• Have confrontation with their parents
• Have a Disagreement with a colleague..
• Or in general when they are emotionally down.

You guessed it right – They head out to Eat Foods loaded with Sugar.

If you never thought about it this way, take a deep breath, close your eyes and think about it for a minute.

Think about someone who you know indulges in foods loaded with sugar. And you may start realizing that there is always a pattern that triggers them to indulge in these foods. And it always boils down to meeting an emotional need.

Most people use food for emotional reasons – something they are themselves not aware of consciously. No wonder Junk Food outlets are always full of people, right?

You see, sugar is the new drug of the 21st century. It immediately makes people feel good.

It helps people relieve their stress in the moment just like drugs or cigarettes do. So junk food outlets solve a problem?

Although it’s the worst solution for the people in the long run but, most people never think about the long term. People mostly look for instant gratification. Now, if you are wondering.

WHAT HAS ALL THIS GOT TO DO WITH MARKETING AND GROWING YOUR BUSINESS?

Well, there is an important connection. You see, we humans are emotional beings.

We make most of our buying decisions for emotional reasons. And the only reason Junk Food outlets are always so full of customers is because junk food makes people feel good, emotionally in the moment.

So just like Junk Food – How does your product/service make your customers/clients feel good, relieve their stress or solve their emotional problem?

And even before you start thinking…No, but my product is different and it does not apply to my product… Well, think again.

Even if you sell an electrical switch board, it applies to your product. Because your product solves an important problem of keeping the family safe from electrical issues.

A malfunctioning switch board could have dire consequences. Talk about how your switch board will keep the family safe, how the house will look amazing with your remarkable switch board designs. Talk about how your switch board will blow away your customers’ guests and make their house look beautiful.

IT’S ALL ABOUT FINDING THE EMOTIONAL PEG OF YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE.

For example, someone selling Sunglasses will write the following in the old school style: Our sunglasses are the best. We have been in the industry for over 75 years and we use the best material.

The smart ones who use the emotional peg would say something on these lines: Our sunglasses will make you look more confident and enhance your personality.. so that next time you walk through that door.. people around won”t be able to take their eye off you.

Which one would you go for? I”m assuming.. most likely the latter option.

You see, every product or service solves a problem. And when you highlight that and bring that to people”s attention, they will flock to you just like they flock to the Junk Food outlets.

Remember this, If someone buys your product or hires your services, then you do solve their problem.. Or else why in the world would anyone buy your product or pay you for your services.

So highlight your product/service as a solution to your market”s problems. And when you do that you too will start attracting customers/clients like the Junk food outlets.

THE BIG LESSON:

To grow your business.. talk about how your product/service can solve the emotional problems of your customers/clients.

Don’t talk about features in your marketing. Talk about emotions and solutions in your marketing campaigns – attract more people into your business and see your business grow.

Now, I’ve got 2 tasks for you:

1) First, come up the emotional angle for your product/service. Answer this question: “How does my product/service solve the emotional problems of my customers/clients?

2) Once you’ve written the answer, come and share it here. Leave your response in the comments below. Thank you so much for reading and joining the discussion in the comments.

P.S. If you found this of value and worthy of your time, please share it.

There was never a better time to turn your passion into profits. But before I talk about how you can turn your passion into profits, let me share with you story.
A story from my past.

Growing up, I saw many of my relatives and my dad’s friends working in these so-called BIG companies. They worked like machines.

They would wear their uniforms (read formals), leave for work at the same time, come back home at the same time.. and they would repeat this forever..

I Was always told, and I’m sure you were too – “Study hard, so that you get a good job in a BIG company like your relatives and your life will be settled”

But something did not seem right to me when people told me that.

I always wondered, why do all these people who I see work in these big corporates look so unhappy and bored?

If working in a big corporate is what a great life is all about, why are these people not excited and passionate about their lives? What’s missing?

I had no answers to my questions back then.. Although not convinced by study hard and get a good job philosophy.

I still followed this advice, studied hard and got into a pretty good Engineering college in Bangalore.

I was going to be a computer programmer. Dream come true, right? Not really!

I was not passionate about computers nor about engineering. Although I scored well in exams and even got placed in a big software company, I just hated the thought of seeing myself in the uniform and to work like a clock.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t judge people living a disciplined life. In fact, I do my best to live a disciplined life.

But the mere thought of spending my life behind a computer killed me from inside. I constantly asked myself during my graduation -Is this all my life is worth? Was I put on this planet to do this? Will I be happy doing this for the rest of my life?

In the middle of all this, I fell in love with Fitness and working out. My time in the gym was the only one hour in my day that I looked forward to.

The joy I felt while in the gym came close to nothing. Nada! 4 years flew in this dilemma.

I graduated and became a computer science engineer. The time to officially join the company that I was placed in and move to Gurgaon was real close.

I spent sleepless nights thinking about what should I be doing.. I had discovered that my passion was fitness.. But how would I communicate that to my parents, especially when they ask my how would I turn my passion into profits?

They would think I’m crazy.. Everyone would think I’m crazy. How much does a fitness trainer earn? Do people really respect trainers like engineers?

But after a lot of drama, back and forth.. Long story short..I finally got a go-ahead from my parents to follow my passion. This was the turning point of my life.

I decided not to join the big software company. That was not for me. I came to Mumbai to follow my passion.

It was time to Turn My Passion Into Profits And Live My Dreams! 

The #1 Mistake that most people who turn their passion into their careers do, just like I did, is they think all you need to be successful is be great at what you do.

Of course, you need to be amazing at what you do..

But, you also need to master the art of being able to communicate what you are passionate about to the world. To let people know that you have a solution to their problem.

I was really naive when I started. I was drawing a salary of Rs. 6,000 as a trainer in the gym. I really mastered everything about training.

But I knew nothing about communicating to attract new clients. I thought, if I’m good, the clients will come automatically. No one came.. Not in the first 4 months at least.

I was a broke engineer borrowing money every month from my parents almost on the verge of giving up my passion..

This is where most people who make their passion their career give up. Thankfully, I did not!

And then one day, I asked myself – Why am I not out there in the world.. telling people about myself. I believe in my training. I know I can change lives.

If people who want to lose weight don’t know about me.. It’s a disservice that I’m doing to them by not reaching out to them and getting them out of their misery.

So one thing was clear. No one is going to find out about me. I have to be out there.

I need to master not just my craft, my passion but also the art of reaching out to more people. Being a broke trainer serves no one.

This was another turning point in my life.. Post that I spent hours and hours studying how to reach out to more people..

How to find more clients and how to make a great living following what I’m passionate about. After months of struggle and hard work..

I had finally mastered the art of turning my passion into profit and serving the world while doing so.

And In this article, I’m going to show you the 4 Steps you need to follow, if you wish to turn your passion into a career and make a great living doing so.

Using these exact same steps, I built successful companies around my other passions.
And all you need is just your Passion and an Internet Connection.

So, if you are Passionate about something + If you have Internet Connection – let me show you how you turn your passion into profits and make a great living.

If you follow these 4 steps, I have no doubt that you could turn your passion into profits too and make a great living doing so. So, let’s jump straight to the 4 Steps:

 

STEP 1 To Turn Your Passion Into Profits: IDENTIFY THEIR PAIN-POINTS! 

Too many people who make their passion their career end up focussing on their needs. Here is what I mean.

When I started as a Fitness Trainer, my goal was to get everyone I trained to Squat and Dead lift. I wanted them to master these exercises.

Was it their goal? Not at all! Everyone who came trained with me just had one goal: They wanted to lose weight and look great.
You see, my clients and I were on a completely different tangent. So, soon they got bored of the workouts and discontinued training with me.

It took me a while to realize that I should be focussed on what pain my clients and potential clients are going through and help them overcome their problem and not force my agenda on their throat.

If Squatting and Deadlifting helps them solve their problem, by all means, I should include it in their training. But, I should not eat their brains talking about why they should be Squatting and Deadlifting.

My goal should be to solve their problems. And when I focussed on my client’s problems, I attracted great clients and almost all of them continue training with me till date.

So, start with making a list of all the potential problems your clients must be going through.

Here is an example of my fitness clients: –

• Unhappy with not being able to wear some dresses
• Unhappy about husband/wife not being that attracted to them anymore.
• Fear of health diseases
• Being conscious about weight in Social Gathering
• Pain of constantly being judged by others
• Fear that their children might become overweight too

Now, these are some of the examples that I came up.

If you don’t have clients you work with at the moment and are just starting out. Google about your passion. Read what people are talking about..

What the magazines are writing about. What’s popular. Check out social media pages related to your passion.

This will give you enough idea to make a list of pain points your potential clients must be going through.

 

STEP 2 – BUILD YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE: SOLUTION TO THEIR PROBLEM!

Now that we have a list of potential problems your future clients must be going through.. It’s time to build your online presence focused around solving their problem.

If you notice, most website and social media pages look like a copy-cat version of each other.

Most people who are passionate about something end up creating an online presence which just boasts of how amazing they are I’m this and this..

I’m this certified and that certified.. I’ve worked with X number of clients.. All that is great. But seriously, who cares?

You think someone with weight issues would be interested in how great I am? Nope, right?

What they would be interested in is – Can I help them lose weight? Do I understand their problems?

So, now make a list of possible solutions that you can help your future clients with and build your online presence around the solution to their problem and not around how great you are.

Here is a not such a good one. You see, in this example, it’s all about how great I am.

As you can see, in the example above: When a patient lands on the site. All he sees is how great I’m. I’m sure Dr. Lele’s intent wasn’t to boast but to help patients.

But as you can see this example and many other dental sites, they all have almost the same content.

Instead, here is what you should be doing: 

As you can see, in this example. The online presence is created by talking about the solution of your clients problem.

The website talks about not missing school or work which is a BIG fear in the minds of people who plan to get braces done.

Plus, it is smartly backed by Guarantee. This is how you should be creating your online presence. Be it your website or Social media pages. Focus on the solution to your potential client’s problem.

 

STEP 3 To Turn Your Passion Into Profits: THE $5 SOLUTION PROMOTION

 

Now just pick one of the solution from the list you made above and turn it into an article or a video and post it on your Facebook page.
For example: From the list of solutions I wrote above, I will turn the solution of a low carb diet into an article.

I might write an article that says, How Low Carb Diet Can Help You Lose Weight Safely.

Or if you are comfortable doing a video, shoot one on your Smart Phone. Once I complete writing this article, I’ll post it on my Facebook page and promote this post for $5.

Here is how to target people:

I’ll select men and women interested in weight loss in India and Pakistan.

Plus, I’ll ask Facebook to target friends of people who like my page.

So by writing an article or creating a video and demonstrating the solution to a problem, you accomplist 2 things:

1) I get more likes on my page and more people know about my work.

2) I help people solve their weight loss problem in advance, so now they trust me.

 

STEP 4 To Turn Your Passion Into Profits: HIT THE IRON WHEN IT’S HOT!

Next, everyone who interacts with my post on Facebook – By interacts, I mean – Likes, Shares or Comments – I send them a PM which is something like this.

“Hi First Name,

Thank you for liking my post. I hope it was of help to you. If there is anything that I can help you with in living a healthier life, please feel free to get back to me.”

You see, what happens here is – It opens up a communication channel with a potential client and you don’t come across like a sleazy salesperson that everyone hates.

You just helped them; they like you and now you are offering to help them further. And if you strategically take the conversation ahead, they would sign up for one of your programs or buy one of your products.

If you want to know how to communicate with these leads… How to turn these leads into clients… Check out my 10 Lac Club Program. 

In the 10 Lac Club Program, I teach you everything you need to know to generate new qualified leads and turn them into your clients on demand.

Here is another great resource if you want to learn how to grow your business – Click here 

I hope you live your Passion and change the world doing what you love.

Oh, and here is an article on how to get clients as a Freelancer. You should read this one if you want to get new clients.