The Ultimate Guide to Building a Winning Sales Funnel

In the latest episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I talk to Tammy Overhoff again, food blogger at Organize Yourself Skinny and digital product shop owner at Reset and Flourish.

In this episode we to delve into the intricacies of building effective sales funnels for digital products. Here are the key takeaways from our conversation, offering actionable advice and thorough explanations to help you create a successful sales funnel for your digital products.

Understanding Sales Funnels

A sales funnel is a step-by-step process that guides potential customers from initial awareness of your and your product to the final purchase. The goal is to create a seamless journey that addresses the specific needs and pain points of your audience, ultimately leading them to make a purchase.

Key Components of a Sales Funnel

• Awareness: Attracting potential customers through content marketing, social media, and other channels.
• Interest: Engaging them with valuable content that addresses their needs.
• Decision: Offering solutions that solve their problems.
• Action: Encouraging them to make a purchase.

Show Notes:

• MiloTreeCart
• Book a FREE 20-minute call with me
• Write Your Ebook with These 13 AI Prompts
• Reset and Flourish
• Organize Yourself Skinny
• MiloTree Pop-Up
• Join My Blogger Genius Email List
• Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group
• All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes

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Starting with a Challenge

Tammy emphasizes the importance of starting with a challenge or free lead magnet to engage your audience.

She uses a five-day challenge as the entry point into her sales funnel. This challenge introduces participants to the concept of meal prep and its benefits for weight loss.

Actionable Steps:

• Create a Free Challenge: Design a short, free challenge that addresses a specific problem your audience faces. For example, a five-day meal prep challenge for busy moms.
• Promote the Challenge: Use social media, email marketing, and your blog to promote the challenge and attract participants.
• Engage Participants: Provide valuable content and support throughout the challenge to keep participants engaged.

Strategic Email Writing

Tammy highlights the importance of crafting strategic emails that guide your audience through the sales funnel. She starts by mapping out the customer journey and considering what her audience needs to hear to take the next step.

Actionable Steps:

• Map Out the Customer Journey: Use pen and paper to outline the steps your audience will take from initial engagement to purchase.
• Craft Engaging Emails: Write emails that are caring and supportive, focusing on leading your audience rather than pushing for sales.
• Incorporate Testimonials and Videos: Use testimonials and video content to enhance engagement and build trust.
• Review Email Statistics: Regularly review your email statistics to refine your strategy and improve performance.

Frontloading Sales Funnel Work

Creating email sequences requires upfront effort, but once the majority of the work is done, the system becomes automated. This allows you to focus on driving traffic into your funnel and monitoring audience reactions.

Actionable Steps:

• Create Email Sequences: Develop a series of emails that guide your audience through the sales funnel.
• Automate the Process: Use email marketing tools to automate the delivery of your email sequences.
• Monitor and Adjust: Continuously monitor audience reactions and make necessary adjustments to improve performance.

Advice for New Entrepreneurs

Tammy offers three key steps for new entrepreneurs looking to create effective sales funnels:

• Analyze Audience Engagement: Look at email statistics to understand what content resonates with your audience.
• Identify Specific Pain Points: Dig deeper into the challenges your audience faces and create products that address these pain points.
• Generate Product Ideas: Use tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm product ideas that solve your audience’s problems.

Actionable Steps:

• Review Email Statistics: Analyze your email open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics to identify what content resonates with your audience.
• Conduct Audience Research: Use surveys, social media polls, and direct feedback to understand your audience’s specific pain points.
• Brainstorm Product Ideas: Use AI tools and brainstorming sessions to generate product ideas that address your audience’s needs.

Creating an Opt-In

An enticing opt-in is crucial for attracting potential customers. Tammy suggests creating a quick guide or a list of meal starters that help busy moms get dinner on the table quickly.

Actionable Steps:

• Identify a Specific Problem: Focus on a specific problem your audience faces and create an opt-in that provides a solution.
• Create Valuable Content: Develop a quick guide, checklist, or e-book that offers immediate value to your audience.
  Promote Your Opt-In: Use your blog, social media, and email marketing to promote your opt-in and attract sign-ups.

Upselling and Bundling

Once the initial product is established, consider upselling or bundling additional products to provide comprehensive solutions to your audience’s problems.

Actionable Steps:

• Develop Complementary Products: Create additional products that complement your initial offering, such as workshops, e-books, or meal plans.
• Create Bundles: Package your products together to offer more value and increase the average order value.
  Promote Upsells: Use email marketing and sales pages to promote your upsells and bundles.

Avoiding Overcomplication

Tammy and I stress the importance of simplicity in the product creation process. New entrepreneurs should focus on smaller, manageable products that can be validated through audience feedback.

Actionable Steps:

• Start Small: Begin with smaller products, such as e-books or workshops, that can be created quickly and easily.
• Validate Your Ideas: Use audience feedback to validate your product ideas before investing time and resources into larger projects.
  Iterate and Improve: Continuously improve your products based on customer feedback and market trends.

Understanding Your Audience

Knowing your audience is crucial when selling digital products. Tammy has found success with e-books and bundles, but emphasizes the need to nurture the audience over time.

Actionable Steps:

• Build Relationships: Use email marketing, social media, and content marketing to build relationships with your audience.
• Provide Value: Continuously provide valuable content that addresses your audience’s needs and pain points.
  Nurture Leads: Use nurturing email sequences to build trust and guide your audience through the sales funnel.

Pricing Strategy

Tammy discusses her pricing strategy, noting that digital products can be priced effectively to ensure profitability. For example, her ultimate bundle is priced at $89, with sales often bringing it down to $57.

Actionable Steps:

• Research Competitors: Analyze the pricing strategies of your competitors to understand market trends.
• Test Pricing: Experiment with different pricing strategies to find the optimal price point for your products.
  Offer Discounts: Use sales and discounts to attract customers and increase conversions.

Continuous Learning and Adaptation

Building a sales funnel is an ongoing process. Once the initial setup is complete, entrepreneurs can learn from audience interactions and make necessary adjustments.

Actionable Steps:

• Monitor Performance: Continuously monitor the performance of your sales funnel and make data-driven decisions.
• Learn from Feedback: Use customer feedback to identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments.
  Stay Updated: Keep up with industry trends and best practices to stay ahead of the competition.

Conclusion

This episode of the Blogger Genius Podcast provides valuable insights into the world of sales funnels for digital products. By focusing on audience needs, simplifying the product creation process, and continuously learning from customer interactions, entrepreneurs can build effective sales funnels that drive engagement and sales. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your existing strategy, the advice shared by Tammy and me offers a roadmap to success in the digital product space.

For more expert advice and strategies, be sure to tune in to the next episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast. And if you found this content valuable, please share it with your friends and leave a five-star review. Follow me on Instagram at MiloTree for more insights on building a digital product empire.

Other Related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes You’ll Enjoy:

• #338: Transform Your Food Blog: Effective Ways to Sell Digital Products with Tammy Overhoff
• #336: Master Email Tripwires: Convert Subscribers into Customer with Jillian Leslie
• #342: Fresh Email Marketing Strategies You Need to Know to Sell Online

MiloTreeCart, the Best Tool for Non-Techies to Sell Digital Products

I also want to introduce you to the MiloTreeCart, a tool designed for non-techies to sell digital products easily. It comes with features like fill-in-the-blank sales pages, check-out pages, a sales dashboard, upsells, and customer support. MiloTreeCart is currently available for a lifetime deal of $349 or three easy installments of $116.33.

#344: Transcript: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Winning Sales Funnel

Jillian Leslie 00:00:06 Hello and welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. I’m your host, Jillian Leslie, founder of MiloTree. If you haven’t heard, MiloTree is your all in one suite for growing your online business. It includes MiloTreeCart, the easiest way to sell digital products in under five minutes. MiloTreeLeads, which allows you to collect email subscribers by offering unlimited freebies and the MiloTree pop up app for boosting your social media followers. Our goal at MiloTree is to help you grow your audience, build your customer base, and sell to them. If this sounds intriguing, go to MiloTree.com and you can learn all about it. And if you want to get on a free 20 minute strategy, call with me and you can see if our tools are right for you. Head to milotree.com/meet because I would love to meet you for today’s episode. I am thrilled to have Tammy overhaul from Reset and Flourish back on the show. So Tammy is an old school food blogger. She focuses on meal and freezer prep and it’s all for healthier living and weight loss.

Jillian Leslie 00:01:23 Today, Tammy is sharing all about her sales funnels in part one that I will link to in the show notes. We talked about digital products and I asked her back to really go deep into sales funnels. So what she shares is what her sales funnels look like, how she put them together with the different products she sells, and even what her email sequences look like. Now just remember, Tammy’s funnels have lots of moving parts and they’ve taken her years to build, plus lots of trial and error. So Tammy also shares how if she were starting today from scratch, how she would think about building sales funnels out piece by piece. This is an episode you do not want to miss. So without further delay, here is my interview with Tammy Overholt. Tammy, welcome back to the Blogger Genius podcast.

Tammy Overhoff 00:02:21 Thank you so much, Jillian. I’ve been once again looking forward to this since our last call. I love talking strategy. I love talking digital products. So once again, I’m ready to dive in.

Tammy Overhoff 00:02:32 So ask me anything you want, right? Well, what?

Jillian Leslie 00:02:36 After our first recording, what I realized is you have all of these strategies and we kind of glossed over them in part one. But now I’m ready to dive in. I feel like you and I are so in the same mindset when it comes to what I call building your digital product empire. And people look at me and go, Empire! I’m selling an e-book and I say, no, it’s a strategy. It’s about putting all the pieces together, but at each step, testing those pieces, figuring out how to tweak them so that they all work together to build out this empire. So if I were to ask you, Tammy, how would you even start to think about this?

Tammy Overhoff 00:03:29 Yeah, well, let me tell you, I’ve learned I’ve had many lessons learned over the last decade or so. I’ve made many mistakes, so learn from my mistakes. One of my biggest mistakes was definitely almost trying to do too much all the time.

Tammy Overhoff 00:03:48 But thinking I was building this empire when really, the more spread out you are, the less effective you are. So one of the things that I really recommend to people is to just stay as focused as possible, because when you are trying to create all these different digital products and all these different things, you think you’re building this empire, but really you’re kind of like diluting your your whole digital product strategy. So one of the first things that I talk about is you really just want to focus in on one problem, and then you want to focus in on one path that leads to the solution to that problem. And when you can really hone in on that, that’s when you you’re you will be able to create that strategy that takes your audience on that journey from baby step to final step. And I can go over what that looks like as well.

Jillian Leslie 00:04:49 And so when you’re thinking about a problem you solve, Let’s give some examples. One might be like for you to lose weight and get healthier.

Tammy Overhoff 00:05:02 Sure.

Tammy Overhoff 00:05:02 And I actually let me give you a good example. Coming from my own experience. So with Reset and Flourish and organize yourself skinny, my overall theme I guess you can say or problem was always to help people lose weight through these habits and routines that help them to organize their lifestyle. And within that was meal prep, freezer prep, all exercise, exercise, calendar routines, challenges, whatever. And the problem was my opt ins and my products were all over the place. So even though you would think people would be able to come in in all these, you know, in all these different paths when they’re looking for weight loss or organizing their weight loss. In reality, it confused them. So what I started to do was I’m going to stop.

Jillian Leslie 00:05:59 You there, give you some examples of when you’re like, yeah, I could do this opt in or this opt in. Like what kinds of opt ins then were you offering that got confusing?

Tammy Overhoff 00:06:10 Okay, so perfect example. Part of my one of my strategies is using freezer prep and meal prep to lose weight.

Tammy Overhoff 00:06:18 And what I learned when I was doing these opt ins over the years. And I still use them, but I’m in the process of changing them up right now. There’s people who want to meal prep, but they don’t necessarily want to lose weight. But then there’s people who want to lose weight, and they know that meal prep is a great way to do it. So I was attracted. On one hand, I’m attracting the people that I want. The people who want to eat healthy, lose weight, they want to do meal prep. But then I also started attracting people who wanted to learn about meal prep and freezer prep, but they were like, but I really don’t want the weight loss information attached to it. So I started instead of just honing in on that weight loss component of it, I tried serving both audiences and that started to stretch me thin. So now another example would be I have my weight loss course with my Facebook, private group. For that, I have my meal prep, my meal prep course, my private group for that.

Tammy Overhoff 00:07:28 And what I’m working on now is now is building that one path where everyone that comes in wants to eat healthier, wants the, you know, wants to lose weight, and meal prep and freezer prep is one of the ways that we do that. So they’re not just coming in saying, well, we just want meal prep and not the weight loss. I want the people right from the beginning who are saying, I want to learn how to eat healthier, lose weight, and I want meal prep to be a part of that solution for me. So one of the ways that I’ve started to do that, because I’ve been thinking a lot about that over the last couple of weeks, is building out an opt in that leads into my ten day healthy eating challenges kid as a tripwire. And I know we’ll talk about that. That then turns into an upsell, which is my my overall Reset and Flourish Ultimate bundle, which includes all of my ebooks. And then ultimately then the other upsell is my weight loss course.

Tammy Overhoff 00:08:35 And then that leads into my membership. But everything now is will be one path, not all these different paths that people can join, whether you know whether they want to lose weight or not. It’s going to be people who want to get healthy, want to lose weight. They want to use meal prep, freezer prep, and all of my strategies to help them do that on their journey. So the key there is getting that baby step right essentially.

Jillian Leslie 00:09:03 And the baby step is ultimately I want to lose weight and get healthy. Then you’re going to teach them different strategies for doing that. Whereas before one of your strategies became a way in but that wasn’t you weren’t attracting that ideal person who’s raising their hand and saying, I want to get healthy and lose weight, like, that’s your North Star.

Tammy Overhoff 00:09:29 Yes, the baby step is more like the opt in. So what is that first little step that I can get someone to take where they’re just getting started and they’re ultimately will, they’ll ultimately ultimately wants my ten day healthy challenges kit.

Tammy Overhoff 00:09:49 Like that’s their next step. So the baby step will be like a 3 or 5 day challenge I’m putting together. And then from there they will move into that next step. They’ll be offered that next step of the Healthy Eating Challenges kit. And then from there they just go through.

Jillian Leslie 00:10:06 So say this again. Your first baby step is you are going to run a challenge. This is your opt in or freebie, something you’re giving away for somebody email address. So after they’ve joined your free challenge, what is the first thing you are selling them as you move down the funnel?

Tammy Overhoff 00:10:27 So after the challenge, they will be offered the ten day Healthy Eating Challenges kit.

Jillian Leslie 00:10:34 Is it similar and what does that mean?

Tammy Overhoff 00:10:36 It’s the next step. So that means so one of the reasons I even put together the ten day eating, healthy eating challenges kit is because people wanted that easy stuff to start changing their habits, but they weren’t ready for this like a program yet. They weren’t ready for all these restrictions, all these things.

Tammy Overhoff 00:10:55 So with that, it’s all you need to do is change one habit. So let’s start with the smoothie challenge. All you need to do is drink one smoothie every day for ten days. And what happens is when they do that ten day challenge, they are experiencing quick wins. They’re feeling motivated now. They feel ready now. They feel ready to take on more changes in their lifestyle. Now they feel ready to do a program and, you know, move to that next step. So the five day getting started, the Focus to reset challenge that is just like getting them ready, like starting to work on their mindset, putting in these very small habits. Once they can see that they can do that, they’re like, wow, I could do that.

Jillian Leslie 00:11:45 In the ten days. Is that an email series that gets sent automatically every day?

Tammy Overhoff 00:11:52 So if they purchased, if they purchase the ten day Healthy Eating Challenges kit, they automatically go into an onboarding sequence and that walks them through the entire Healthy Eating Challenges kit.

Tammy Overhoff 00:12:07 So and it’s like a 15 day onboarding sequence. So it’s longer and it really works on nurturing them and helping them get started. You know, did you guys remember you guys bought or you bought this? Let me help you. Let’s get started with this. Here are some tips.

Jillian Leslie 00:12:24 But what are the what are the deliverables and how much do you charge for this?

Tammy Overhoff 00:12:29 So the Healthy Eating Challenges kit full price is 2997. And they when it’s on sale I offer it to them for $19. So when they purchase it for $19 They automatically are given an upsell offer for the entire Ultimate Reset Fleur’s bundle, which includes my, Organise Yourself Skinny Book workbook and my freezer prep freezer to flourish. And that’s 4497. And many people buy that. And I just started testing that in the last few weeks. And that’s really what got me thinking about the linear, you know, just having that linear model. And then I then I was like, you know, what I’m going to add on my weight loss program as a second, as a one time offer so they can purchase they purchase the the Healthy Eating Challenges kit.

Tammy Overhoff 00:13:27 They get the upsell for the ultimate bundle that now becomes one one price. So for let’s say for it’s 44.97. So they bought that. After they buy that it goes now to a one time offer and I have a video, so the only people who get that one time offer are only the people who purchase my upsell it. When when through the ten day Healthy Eating Challenges kit and I have a video and I show, I show my face, I. I congratulate them for purchasing the bundle. I tell them this is you’re the only ones who get this offer. If you made it this far, you’re telling me you’re ready? Like that’s basically what I say. I walk them through the entire, weight loss program. I show them everything, and people have been buying that too. So again, it really confirms to me how important it is to get people in at the get them in at that baby, step the right people and move them through that process. And now those people will be offered my membership in about a month.

Jillian Leslie 00:14:37 Okay. So I want to tell this back to you because there are a lot of moving parts.

Tammy Overhoff 00:14:41 Yes. I’m sorry, I know I hope it’s not confusing for people because I know it is a lot.

Jillian Leslie 00:14:46 Well. But here. Okay, I come in five day free challenge at the end of the free challenge, I’m ready to start my weight loss journey. So what you’re saying is you’re going to sell me a new ten day challenge where I start on my diet and this is $19. And then from what I understand, you’re going to upsell me. So this is the third step in the funnel where I can get a bundle of materials, including this ten day challenge. So it’s what, something like $44 which will include the product for $19.

Tammy Overhoff 00:15:28 Yes. And if they purchase the upsell, the ten day Healthy Eating Challenges kit comes with that. So technically they only need to spend an extra $20 to get everything, and.

Jillian Leslie 00:15:39 They’re getting a bunch of other resources to help them prep to kind of give them more support in terms of other products.

Jillian Leslie 00:15:49 Yes. Then you’re saying to them, hey, now that you bought this for 40 something dollars, now is this when you start introduce, there’s a second upsell that your weight loss course.

Tammy Overhoff 00:16:01 Right. So they get the upsell the reset and flourish bundle. That’s that they purchased that. It’s theirs. It’s sent to them. But now because they bought that they’ve unlocked this one time offer to get into the weight loss program at a drastically discounted price. And what it doesn’t include.

Jillian Leslie 00:16:19 What is this program?

Tammy Overhoff 00:16:22 So this program now takes everything, but it adds to it, adds the mindset component to it. I break it down into four phases. So we talk about phase one, which is mindset said awareness, accountability. I walk them through that. Then we talk about how to layer in different habits. Now they’re getting videos and lessons on how to meal prep, how to freeze or prep. So it’s really taking everything that they see in the Reset and Flourish bundle. But now it’s broken down and explained to them even more through my four phases of weight loss and how they are able to layer everything and create this environment overall that supports their weight loss efforts.

Jillian Leslie 00:17:12 Okay, so if they bought your upsell, it unlocks this one time offer to buy your weight loss course.

Tammy Overhoff 00:17:20 Yes, this is all self led. So it is. This does not include coaching calls. This does not include the Facebook group and all or the zoom calls or anything. It’s literally everything mapped out for them, laid out for them step by step by step. And that’s why they get it for discount. But they will be offered down the road the opportunity to join my membership, which will now be all of my people, that it’s offered to everyone that purchases my products, where we I host live challenges in there. That’s where I show up and do live workshops. That’s where they get additional recipes and the weekly meal plans that I curate for them every single week and and send out to the people, the members in my group. So it’s all like a process, you know, and it’s all like getting them and and they get offered that through the different email sequences that I put together.

Tammy Overhoff 00:18:24 So once they purchased the weight loss program, they’re now in an onboarding sequence that is supporting them through the through that program. So talking to them about the different phases where they could, you know, what they should do this day or what they should do first, just, you know, walking them through it. And then after two months, they’re given the opportunity. If you want to join these live challenges, if you want, if you want to have that additional support, you can join the Reset and Flourish Planner for $19.

Jillian Leslie 00:18:56 Wait, wait. Okay, so how much? So I’m feeling like you’ve got your free. I’m always going back three five day challenge. Yeah. So to the ten day challenge with the upsell of more ebooks and things like that. Then there is the next piece, the course. How much do you sell that for?

Tammy Overhoff 00:19:18 So that is I’m only selling for $67. So when someone buys that and the upsell of the bundle, it’s 100. Like I think $110.

Tammy Overhoff 00:19:30 So to me like for a self led, like a digital product that just continues to sell. Like I’m happy with that. And then getting them into my membership later on, which will be the monthly fee. So if they get everything, it’s like $110. I’m not sure if the total math was definitely over $100.

Jillian Leslie 00:19:50 Okay. Got it. And you’re then putting them through another another series where ultimately two months down the road, they get invited into the membership. Yes. And how much is the membership per month?

Tammy Overhoff 00:20:06 The membership per month. You know, I go back and forth. I haven’t landed right now on I’ve, I’ve charged everything from 995. And I think I’m moving more towards 1995 because I do host live challenges in there. I, I do so much live in there and they’re getting a meal plan every week, like there’s a lot of upkeep to it. But you know, it’s all about what is the what is your audience willing to pay for? So the sweet spot for me, where people don’t, they they like paying for it.

Tammy Overhoff 00:20:43 They don’t cancel all the time is usually like 997. But then you have to get volume so you know, and which is fine. So when I start to see that the volume, if I can get that type of volume that’s bringing in maybe 3 to $5000, a month for that membership or more, then that’s fine. But and this is the one thing that I always teach with pricing. It’s your business. You can test it. You know, no one’s going back to the sales page and looking to see what someone else paid like once they buy it. I’ve never had that ever. So it’s okay. I’m always testing to see, well, what’s what’s a good price for this? What’s a good price for that? let it run for a little bit and then, you know, I’ll leave it or I’ll change it up, whatever needs to happen.

Jillian Leslie 00:21:40 If you are listening to this episode and thinking to yourself, this sounds really cool, but I don’t even have a product yet. No problem, I’ve got your back.

Jillian Leslie 00:21:50 Go grab my 13 AI prompts to write your first e-book. All you do is go prompt by prompt, and within a couple hours you will have an e-book to sell. To grab this, go to milotree.com/freebieprompts. So please don’t put this off. Start building your digital product empire today. And now back to the show. I’m a broken record, but I just want to lay this out for everybody. Five day free challenge leads to a ten day paid program to start your weight loss journey. Then you offer a bundle, which includes this ten day challenge and a variety of other resources to help you. After that, they get offered the course, and after another couple of months they get offered the membership. How long is that funnel?

Tammy Overhoff 00:22:56 Definitely at least three months. So about three to yeah, about three months. And depending on what they buy, how.

Jillian Leslie 00:23:03 Many email automation series did this take to set up.

Tammy Overhoff 00:23:10 Well now and this is the reason why I did it this way.

Tammy Overhoff 00:23:13 Now I have like there’s going to be one. So everyone that comes in will go in through the five day challenge. So that’s where I that is my goal. Everyone will be funneled in through that five day challenge. And then if they end up buying the healthy eating challenges kit, then they move on to that onboarding sequence for everyone that purchased that. If they don’t, then they will just go into a regular what I like to call my nurture to sales evergreen sequences. And in those sequences I just give lots of good content. I lead, I direct them at times to my Shopify store, so it’s always nurturing, but I’m always giving them options to buy as well.

Jillian Leslie 00:24:04 When you were writing these emails and tracking all of this stuff, like how many emails have you written to get people all of these different places? Like how how do you think through that strategy.

Tammy Overhoff 00:24:16 Thinking about it like strategically, I mean, I honestly will sit down with sometimes just like a pen and paper and I will map it out, like just.

Tammy Overhoff 00:24:26 Okay, we start here. I have arrows going this way, arrows going that way. so yeah, I mean, I definitely will think about I, I always think about what does my audience need to hear to take them to the next step. How can I lead them in that direction. And I always try to do it well, I always do do it in a very like, caring way. Like I’m never like, buy this, you have to buy this. I’m always just leading them down that next path. Sharing experiences I share a lot of testimonials. I’m putting a lot more video in. I’m always paying attention. I’m always going into my into ConvertKit. I’m looking at the statistics. I’m seeing what’s being opened, what’s being clicked on. I have no problem testing and email testing at a headline, moving stuff around. My email strategy is very important to me. It’s definitely the number one way that I make money with my digital products. And and it’s one it’s the number one thing in my business.

Tammy Overhoff 00:25:39 And I also use ChatGPT to help me kind of get my thoughts in order, fill in the blanks with stuff. but I, you know, I try that’s, that’s pretty much how I do it. Like, that’s I really do just sit down with pen and paper, map it out, brainstorm. I work in chunks. I will sit down and I will just do one at a time. I don’t ever try to do five different email sequences at once, but this is also so important, and I think it’s so important for everyone to understand this. When you are creating an email sequence and you’re creating this whole strategy, you are frontloading that work. It’s not like food blogging with like video creation or anything else, or recipe creation where you’re doing it all the time. It’s this task that you’re always having to do with the email you frontload the work, you get all that work done, and then yes, you’re going in and you’re checking it, and maybe you’re making little tweaks. And as you get better, maybe you’ll write like a different type of email or you’ll add that in.

Tammy Overhoff 00:26:47 But once you get the majority of that work done, you it’s that now it’s like working for you. Now it’s automated. Now all you need to do is get people into your funnel, get people into that email, and then just watch it and just watch to see how your audience is reacting to that. And that’s that will be where you’ll get just a lot, you know, a lot of your ideas or, well, maybe I should add this type of email in. Maybe I should talk about this with the product. Maybe I should highlight this feature. So. So yeah. So I think it’s important.

Jillian Leslie 00:27:24 If you are okay, given that you’ve built all these pieces in your business, let’s say I’m starting new, I’m listening to this podcast, I’m a food blogger and a nutritionist, and I help moms who have picky eaters. I have certain recipes, I have mindset stuff, all of this. So I go, so I say to you, okay, I want to start building my digital product empire.

Jillian Leslie 00:27:49 Where do I start? Because you’ve got so many moving parts, which ultimately I want to get to. But what would be the top three things you say? Start, do this, then do this, then do this.

Tammy Overhoff 00:28:03 Yes. So the first thing that I would suggest to someone that is just at the beginning, baby stages of wanting to create a digital product and get an idea, the first thing I would do is I always suggest go into your email and start looking at the statistics that your audience are already giving to you. So when you are creating a digital product, you don’t necessarily need to like suit your search or Google Analytics or even search Pinterest. You want to see what is your audience already telling you that they like hearing about.

Jillian Leslie 00:28:39 Let’s just go through three things a new person should do and create. So they discover what the problem is and they go, okay, I serve moms who are picky eaters. So is. And I recognize that family dinners are painful. That’s what people are clicking on.

Jillian Leslie 00:28:59 So do you go, okay, what is the opt in I can create to help moms, busy moms deal with dinnertime with picky eaters?

Tammy Overhoff 00:29:09 Okay, so in that case, that’s still too general for me. So I would want to dig in even more to really identify what painful means. So when when a mom is saying, well, dinners are too painful for me, well, what does that mean? Does that mean that your child just doesn’t want to eat broccoli? Or does that mean you’re not able to get your kid to dance class on time? You know what I mean? Or does that mean you you’re not eating dinner as a family because your kids want to? They don’t want to eat at five when dad or mom comes home. You know what I mean? Okay, so I would definitely dig more into that.

Jillian Leslie 00:29:48 Let’s say I’m making I end up making five different dishes for everybody in my family.

Tammy Overhoff 00:29:56 Okay. So the pain point is that you’re making five different dishes for okay each for.

Jillian Leslie 00:30:03 Each individual person.

Tammy Overhoff 00:30:04 And so what type of digital product they should start like thinking about with that. So yeah I mean there’s a lot of like the next step that I would do is really start. Well, I would start generating some ideas specifically for that topic, so I would probably take I honestly, I would probably go into ChatGPT at that point and I would say, hey ChatGPT, I want to write an e-book specifically geared towards moms who are struggling with having to make five different meals for their families every single week. Can you give me ten book ideas for this? And I would just start there so I would get ten different e-book ideas. I would look at that. I would then maybe take 2 or 3 of them. I would narrow them down even more, and I or I would also I was that’s what I would do, I would get that. But the other thing that I would do is I would start looking at the different recipes on my blog that I think I would be able to help my my reader with, and I would start looking at the comments on those as well and getting ideas from there, because ultimately, your book idea is not going to be ten recipes that, like I Can Make for a mom who cooks, you know, five meals a day.

Tammy Overhoff 00:31:41 It’s it’s really going to focus more on what is the method or the strategy that I have learned myself that I’m able to teach to someone else to relieve that pain point. So maybe you have learned how to cook three let’s just say three meal starters. You learn how to cook or for let’s say four, you’ve learned how to put together a sauce every week or grain every week, a vegetable, and they’ll say a shredded meat recipe. And you have learned to put where everyone could create their own dinner using those 4 or 5 different meal starters every week. So that is definitely where the direction I would take with that.

Jillian Leslie 00:32:30 Am I starting with my opt in? Is this my first product and where would you recommend I go from here?

Tammy Overhoff 00:32:38 Well, if someone is just starting out, they’re actually in a really good spot because then you can put together, you could really start thinking about that your your product and getting that solidified, and then also thinking about what that baby step is that you can create and opt in about.

Tammy Overhoff 00:32:59 So if you end up creating something, let’s just say you know how to take three meal starters and make ten dinners out of it. Which, I mean, I think people would find that to be really helpful. Okay, well, what would that baby stop be then? Like how? How are you going to bring them in?

Jillian Leslie 00:33:16 Making it a Hershey’s Kiss, something they want to open immediately, consume immediately to solve this problem in a small, small way where it’s not sitting as a PDF on your desktop, that’s never going to be open. It’s like asking a question what are the? Here are the three easiest meal starters that you need to have dinner on the table tonight in half an hour. Something like that. Yes. Okay.

Tammy Overhoff 00:33:44 Yes. And I and one of the things I always talk to my students about is thinking, like I just said before thinking about it in terms of your a method or framework or a strategy, you know, going like thinking beyond the recipes, thinking more like how can you curate a package of your recipes that is going to help solve this problem? Right? So like that’s how you really need to think about it.

Tammy Overhoff 00:34:11 Because if you’re just thinking about it in terms of just the recipes, it’s hard to think like, well, how am I going to solve this problem? So thinking, how am I curating this? All my my content, my recipes? What can I take from my blog? Curate that into a package that is going to help this mom solve this problem?

Jillian Leslie 00:34:30 Okay, so you now so what I like about what you’re saying is you’re starting with your book that solves a specific problem, but from that you’re taking a piece of it and you’re kind of marketing that as a tiny little taster, a delicious little taster as your freebie or opt in so you can get their email address and start sending them emails. And then if I were to think about, say, my higher priced ticket item from this, what would that be?

Tammy Overhoff 00:35:00 Well, you can definitely, some of the things that I do and I wrote down here, you can create that bigger bundle. So now yeah you could yeah, you could create that bigger bundle so you can put together different, you know, that’s where you can start putting together like different bundles of recipes that fall under that same theme.

Tammy Overhoff 00:35:22 like, for example, with my healthy challenges, kid, I could put together a soup challenge or, a cleanse challenge. You know, there’s all, like, different things that kind of fall under that same theme. So if you’re doing, you know, working with moms, with that, with that problem of dinnertime, what falls under that theme. So I would probably do a like a bundle or two. So you can have either like a bigger bundle or an ultimate bundle, you know. And I don’t know, I go back and forth with courses when it comes to food bloggers. I think, you know, you really want to have some smaller products to validate what that looks like for your audience first. But I also recommend you could even start if you create a bundle, you can put together different cooking workshops like, pre-recorded, even pre-recorded and sell it with with your, e-book. Like those sell great to people love that stuff. So there’s there’s so many options.

Jillian Leslie 00:36:22 One thing that I, I say and I think that I am being validated, do not go off and create a course for four months.

Jillian Leslie 00:36:35 Do not do this. Think of it like you’re repurposing content. Do a live workshop. Do small videos that you can bundle together as a course. The idea that somebody is going to, like we used to do, start at the beginning and get through it. It’s much better to be thinking about a quote unquote course, almost like it’s not a course. It’s like resources that could be provided in a variety of different ways. So the traditional idea of courses, the issue with that is they take a ton of time and they’re harder to validate because you’ve now sunk all this time into them. I like what you say, which is go do some workshops, go record yourself for an hour teaching something, and then bundle these. You could deliver them through email. Just being more creative, being a little less regimented. I say shake it up and be more. Think out. Think more outside the box when selling something that could look like a course, but doesn’t necessarily have to have all of that structure and all of that time.

Tammy Overhoff 00:37:47 Yes. And I just think it’s important to to know your audience. I think when you’re, when you’re selling to just to the everyday average mom, it’s just so much I have found it to be a lot easier to sell things like a digital e-book, a bundle, attached to maybe a workshop. The membership on the back end seems to be working good as well. The course works. I have sold a lot of my course, so I have. But like I said in my first interview with you, I had a very nurtured audience and that I nurtured for years before I even sold it. So I’m not. I don’t want to like, discourage people. I just think that you got to really think through who your audience is, what they’re going to pay for, how they want that information laid out. And to be quite honest, I mean, you could still you could charge quite a bit for digital products. I mean, my ultimate bundle in my shop, the full price is $89, and people pay that for for my entire bundle.

Tammy Overhoff 00:38:49 And when I put it on sale in there, it’s $57 that sells regularly. So, you know, it’s you can definitely price your digital products where you’re making a nice profit. So you don’t necessarily need that big course. Unless, like, you have been able to validate, that’s what your audience wants. So something just to think about.

Jillian Leslie 00:39:14 Okay, so to wrap up this this episode and we’re going to do a part three where we’re going to just talk about Facebook ads because we haven’t even had any time for that. Sure. So what you’re saying, which I really like is you’ve got this problem, like you solve a problem, I, I help busy moms with picky kids with dinnertime. And I’m going to start with an e-book using ChatGPT. By the way, you can get my ChatGPT e-book prompts by going to milotree.com/ebookprompts. And I’ve got all the prompts you need to write your entire e-book. Use that. Start there with a very specific problem. I loved how you go.

Jillian Leslie 00:39:53 I need a very specific problem, right? And then you go, what can I pull out of this to create a really enticing small, small, small but delicious opt in. And then you’re going, okay, on the other side of this, what could I upsell or what could be the next step? And I love your idea of a bundle of other resources that support this e-book. It could be, you know, any sort of guide. It could be a video. It could be like mindset stuff for stressed out moms. However, you want to take that problem and expand it, that’s how you want to think about it. And so it doesn’t necessarily lead directly into a course that’s going to take six months to create. Think more creatively about how to experiment with bundles of products.

Tammy Overhoff 00:40:45 Yes, absolutely. For sure.

Jillian Leslie 00:40:48 And I love this idea that you’ve got these bundles and you’re testing them and you’re sending people through email through these automations. But what you said that is really resonating with me is once you’ve thought through the automations and you’ve set them up, you’ve done the heavy lifting.

Jillian Leslie 00:41:07 You can then go through, tweak them, learn, go, whoa, people are dropping off here, so how can I fix this email? Or this looks like a leaky part of my bucket of my sales funnel. So how do I how do I fix that? But it’s already set up. You can learn and experiment, but most of the work is done.

Tammy Overhoff 00:41:29 Yeah. And and now that I know how to do this, I can get ten emails and ten email funnel put together in like a week. So I mean, maybe even less than that. So this isn’t something it’s taken me a long time only because I’ve tested so much and only because I’ve created so much. If you’re just doing one product, one funnel, and you’re keeping it simple, I mean, this is not going to take you years, especially when you’re learning from people who know how to do it and have made mistakes for sure. So yeah. Don’t feel overwhelmed if you’re like, wow, I don’t think I can ever put together this funnel or this or that.

Tammy Overhoff 00:42:06 It honestly, you can get that whole system put together and probably I’m going to even say like less than a month, you know, when you really just buckle down, really focus, get it done. I mean, and then it’s done and then the front, like you said, it’s front loaded. It’s done. Now all you need to do is get people into that funnel.

Jillian Leslie 00:42:24 And that’s what we’re going to talk about next time. All right Tammy I love you I love this I love.

Tammy Overhoff 00:42:29 How granular.

Jillian Leslie 00:42:30 We’re getting. If people want to reach out to you, see your funnels. In fact, I emailed you and said, hey, can you send me the beginning of your funnel so I can go through your funnel just so that I can learn? So if people want to reach out to you, learn what you do, connect with you on building funnels, how can they do this?

Tammy Overhoff 00:42:50 Well, they want to connect with me on actually building funnels and their e-book and all of that.

Tammy Overhoff 00:42:55 Go to Tasty Digital eats.com if you go to organize yourself skinny, you can definitely get into any of my funnels from there. There’s all, but I’m definitely cleaning stuff up. But you can definitely hop in to any of my funnels there. And once you go to my website, you’ll start getting Facebook ads. So then you can just click on me there. That’s great. Yeah.

Jillian Leslie 00:43:16 That’s great. And I would say to I mean, we’ve shared a lot, Tammy, you’ve shared a lot. And this has taken you ten years of learning. So please, for anybody listening to this who might be feeling overwhelmed, this can be as easy or as complicated as you want it to be. Start my recommendation. Start easy.

Tammy Overhoff 00:43:36 Yes, well, try to keep it easy too. That’s what I try to do. You really want to just keep it simple? As simple as possible. Go step by step, chunk by chunk, and then it just gets done for sure.

Jillian Leslie 00:43:50 And then you learn what people want and you build from there.

Tammy Overhoff 00:43:54 Yes, absolutely. 100%.

Jillian Leslie 00:43:57 So Tammy, thank you so much for part two and I look forward to us doing part three.

Tammy Overhoff 00:44:05 Absolutely I can’t wait. I look forward to it.

Jillian Leslie 00:44:07 Wow. I hope you guys like this episode. I love how transparent Tammy is, how she is willing to share everything. My biggest takeaway is that this has taken Tammy years to build, so if it sounds complicated, it is. But you don’t have to start like that. One thing Tammy continues to share is that for many years she overcomplicated things and by simplifying her process, she has had so much success. I think that we all need to hear that. Simplify, simplify, simplify. If you want to start doing this, start putting this together. And remember a simple sales funnel is a Freebie, an option that you offer with a simple product you sell on the thank you page. That is a funnel also called a tripwire. And that is where I recommend you start. If you want to talk about this strategy book, a 20 minute call with me.

Jillian Leslie 00:45:13 It’s all free. Go to milotree.com/meet because you can set all of this up very simply in MiloTreeCart. If you think this episode is valuable, please share it with a friend. If you like what I’m doing over here, I would love it if you gave the show a five star review. I’m doing a new series on Instagram about how to build your digital product empire in tiny little bits. So please follow me over there and I will see you here again next week.