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Five Ways to Create Experiences to Increase Conversions and Client Results!

Now, more than ever, people are craving authentic experiences… Why? Because we want to feel something. There’s no substitution for experiences, in a world overwhelmed by information. People don’t need more information they can’t implement. The age of information has resulted in human desensitization that’s killing people’s abilities to connect with those around them… And then, layer on the fact that the world’s been forced into the largest online migration in history and you realize that the need for creating avenues for experiences and human connections is ever more!

Your future success is dependent on your ability to connect with people in a real and meaningful way. To add to that, when you create experiences that allow your community to actually feel something, not only do your conversions go up, but your clients and customers also get better results!

You can learn more by joining me and my friend Marisa Murgatroyd as we discuss in depth the different types of benefits businesses receive by focusing on client experiences that…

  • Create the exact kind of products that their audience is looking for.
  • Stand out in an oversaturated and overwhelmed market.
  • Spend way less time and money on the sales and marketing.
  • Excite customers to get them “hooked” on taking action and getting results.
  • Turn one-time buyers into lifetime raving fans who continually buy from them.

Ah! So awesome! Alright let's get started with the 5 Ways to Create Experiences to Increase Conversions and Client Results!

 

Introduction to Marisa

Marisa Murgatroyd created her first online course in 2012. She spent six months building it, paying a copywriter $10,000 to create the sales page. However she didn’t see the result she was hoping for: she didn’t see the number of sales she wanted to. In addition she noticed that not many people who purchased the course were actually completing it.

She realized that industry-wide, this was a trend. Only 3-5% of people who purchase courses tend to complete them and actually get the results you promised them. This makes it difficult to get more sales, get more referrals, and have long-term success with your course. That didn’t feel good to her.

She became obsessed with what she could actually do to keep attention over time. Her quest pointed her to the world of viral apps and video games. She wondered how they manage to hook people in and keep them spending obscene amounts of their time, attention, and life energy on things that aren’t really life-changing. She thought if they can get people obsessed with playing games, let’s leverage those powers to get people obsessed with transforming their lives for the better.

Hers was a five-year journey to learning – learning from them and experimenting with what they were doing by applying it to a more meaningful context. Marisa really believes customer success is the new marketing.

 

The Importance of Human Engagement

Marisa’s example only highlights how important it is to truly engage your customers, at a deeper level, and also help them achieve success.

At the Prepared Performer, we’ve always believed that customer engagement is crucial and can be a game changer for companies who’re looking to create experiences to increase conversions and above all for companies who want to make a lasting impact and real difference in the lives of their customers.

Our belief in human engagement and our dedication to finding new ways of increasing customer engagement is exactly why we focused on Facebook Live so quickly when it first came out. And it validated what we already knew! Come to think of it, the “Like” button is actually considered the most addictive substance on the planet. And of course it’s not just about clicking but getting Likes. Getting a Like actually triggers the release of dopamine in your brain. This is why every time you create a post, you’re so curious to see who liked it and how many likes you got.

We’re just hardwired to move toward pleasure and away from pain. But when it comes to learning and transformation, it feels like we are in it for the long haul with no signs of progressing. So when you can give people those cues for the wins that we need, all the dopamine is activated. It is proof that you’re growing.

Be You

We both have different fun energies, which is so key in terms of our individualism and the ability to form dynamic relationships with those around us. Everyone has different personalities, tones, spirits, and topics of focus. But we’re talking about human psychology … a section of human psychology … an ancient part of our brain that gets triggered. People always want to feel like they’re moving forward. But rewards don’t all have to be fun and games; you can reward with meditation bells or whatever you want.

These techniques can be used for retirees, tax accountants, and people recovering from violent crime. It’s not just about the fun; it’s about engagement. These techniques can also be used for people who are selling products, especially if you need them to use it after they buy it, in order to get referrals, testimonials, etc.

Marisa created a set of 10 core experiences called the Experience Formula. It’s pulled from apps/games and entertainment, other worlds that are looking at human attention and really scoring there. They combine gamification, psychology of motivation, human behavior analysis, and more. When you stack all of those in your offerings, you receive 30x the level of consumption as the industry standard. Thousands of people have gone through Marisa’s program and applied these strategies to their offerings across a wide variety of niches.

This is all about improving the experience with your program. Sometimes people look at all the material within a course and get overwhelmed, so they stop before they even start. The cycle you want to get people in is “Action. Reward. Action. Reward. Repeat. Mission accomplished.” Smaller actions lead to smaller wins, which lead to larger actions, which in turn lead to larger wins. It’s that feeling of momentum that causes people to be more excited and engaged as they go. It’s experience escalation – what most video games and apps are based on – instead of the downward death spiral of overwhelm and frustration, which is usually what happens.

Principles for Creating Experiences to Increase Conversions

Now you’re probably wondering how exactly one can create experiences to increase conversions. Here’s how:

Experience Principle #1: Mission Accomplished

Many products are designed such that you can’t win or feel like you’re winning if you don’t know what winning looks like. There isn’t a clearly defined finish line for most products and addressing this is the first step to understanding how to increase the conversion rate. In order for a finish line to be defined, you need to photograph someone crossing that finish line, having that photo finish moment. It’s a case in point that illustrates how creating experiences can increase conversions. For instance, an example of not crossing the finish line is helping you develop confidence versus how you photograph when you have developed confidence. How do you know when you have developed confidence?

A Clear Mission

An alternative to that is your mission, should you choose to accept it, is six weeks from now, you will have a bulletproof plan that helps you ask for your next raise and have the confidence to put it into action. This clear definition allows people to envision how long it’s going to take, how long winning takes, and celebrate all the steps on the path to mission accomplished. Most online courses don’t do this though.

Creating a course with mission accomplished clarifies your marketing message and simplifies product creation. People know that if they can visualize it, they feel like they are working toward something the moment your program starts.

Marisa’s mission accomplished:
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design, market, or make $2,000 or a lot more with an experience product, which is what I call a product that uses these 10 core principles, whether it’s a one-on-one product, service, or group coaching program, whatever it is, so you can get off the marketing treadmill, make more sales, and have a larger impact.” 
    • It’s a 12-week program, and they know what they have to do in that time in order to get a certain result. Powerful and tangible.
    • With this program, the Experience Product Masterclass, if you actually go through the program, complete it, and don’t make your money back, Marisa will make up the difference. That demonstrates for people that Marisa and her team are the real deal. It creates a safety net for people to feel like they can go for it.
    • You can be responsible to people without being responsible for people. You can give them everything they need to succeed in the work without doing the work for them. That’s what Marisa feels like she is doing by providing this safety net and additional support.

 

Experience Principle #2: Constant Wins

Another effective principle pertaining to experiences or creating experiences to increase conversions is constant wins! Constant wins are that every single time someone interacts and engages with you, they feel like they’re winning. They feel like they’re making forward progress on a mission accomplished.

This is done through gamification. In the case of Marisa, she applied this principle directly towards the betterment of her customers: every time they checked off a task, they got one XP! There is a Kaching noise that is made each time you click this button, and you see a counter tick up. Because every training is based on an implementable action, whenever they undertake an action, it goes Kaching Kaching, and the points go up by two. They run leaderboard contests or jump contests to allow people to move up from behind.

    • There is validation in hearing the Kaching sound every time you accomplish something. It makes it more fun and slightly addicting. Kind of Pavlovian conditioning. 
    • We are going to move Camera Confidence into this system and out of the Facebook group. This will allow us to track and give rewards in a way we haven’t been able to do before now.

 

Experience Principle #3: Feedback Loops

This is how people can change your product: by using it and reporting what they didn’t like or what they would like to see more of, and other comments or suggestions. This tracking system is not just for your students; it also is for you. It gives you the ability to see if someone hasn’t logged on in a week or if they are behind or how many points they should have received by now. This allows you to do the red light and green light monitoring, which is automated through Marisa’s system. When someone hasn’t logged in for a week, you can trigger a series of automatic messages that send emails and texts nudging them and asking them if they need support. It is the seemingly simple things like these that have the ability to make an impact, make people feel like you are noticing and caring about their success, and it can be massively validating!

    • You can also reward people who are doing amazingly well by sending messages like: “Whoa, you’re on a streak! That’s amazing! Keep it up!” Can you imagine if you got a text that congratulated you for your progress? That’s also incredibly validating.
    • Marisa would have to do this manually. She reached out to one student who was falling behind. But she got caught up after we cared to reach out to her to check in, and she made six figures in a few months. In the four years since we’ve started working with her, she’s invested over $38,000 in my company. Talk about back end potential.
Reach out

People get freaked out about reaching out like that because they’re afraid of the negative results and people dropping out. But we realized that reaching out will actually help them to complete the program. Marisa does not believe that if you ignore your problems, they will go away. 

But here’s the thing: If you do ignore them, if they have a bad experience, maybe they’ll ask for a refund, make complaints, post bad reviews on social media, or disappear forever and never buy from you again. Repeat sales are 16x more profitable than first-time sales. It’s an abundance perspective.

It’s also an integrity perspective. People are placing their trust and investing money in you. Marisa is okay with giving some money back if someone can’t genuinely benefit from her product, but she’d rather save the folks who are getting in their own way than worry about the refund. It’s all about the long game in your business. Her community fights any trolls who are attacking her because Marisa has done so much for them.

 

Experience Principle #4: Normalizing Challenges

All of these experience principles all have anti-experience principles that you want to avoid. The anti-experience principle here is “Everything is awesome,” like the Lego song. 

When you can normalize challenges all the way through, clarifying, “This will be hard at times. You might want to give up. This is what I recommend in those moments. Reach out and ask for help! We’re there for you.” In a way you’re creating a challenge that they need to overcome – it’s also an effective strategy for increasing conversions by creating an experience – an experience that tells them they shouldn’t give up ever! By creating positive experiences like this, you’re not only increasing your website conversion rate but also practically helping them transform their lives … for the better!

I did a “Tough Mudder” a year ago. It's a 5k that is all through obstacles and mud. It was the craziest thing I have ever done. Adam Urbanski’s coaching program all did it together because of Ron Reich. So many people had to put their hands on my butt to help push me up the hill. The motto was, “No Molly Left Behind.” I was kind of the weak link… I was okay with it because I knew I was pushing myself. If they had said this was going to be easy, I would have cried more than I did. 

I make it super clear that with our programs, you have to show up and do the work. There is actual action that goes into this, and I make it clear that it will take time. Being real with people is so important. Marisa also will talk about how progress will depend upon how much time you invest into it. 

 

Experience Principle #5: Unstoppable Momentum

This is the sequencing of your program. If you look into flow study, how do you get people out of their comfort zone? As humans, we feel safe when we know what’s going to happen next. We feel most alive when we are stretching at the edge of our comfort zone. But you can’t move too quickly. About 4% over someone’s level of skill is an appropriate challenge they can sustain over time. Every level is about 25% harder than the last one in a video game, and that’s the upper limit.

Think of your course as a race or an experience – and creating experiences can help you increase conversions. Have an arc where you are leading people upwards to a peak point. There will always be challenges, but you don’t want to start there. Start so easy that people will get false confidence. By the time they keep doing it, and you are slowly ramping them up, before they know it, they are doing things they didn’t think possible a few weeks prior. They are building this unstoppable momentum.

    • As an example of a launch, we use “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston as a metaphor. It starts breathy, then she adds grit and speed to her voice. The chorus is rockin’. Then it pulls back. Finally, when you get to that key change is the rock star moment. But that crazy key change would never make sense at the beginning.
    • There is this video of two 15-year-old girls listening to a Phil Collins song. The song starts off smooth and silky and all of a sudden there is this drumming moment where their reaction is pretty hilarious. It’s kind of like that, it's that moment when you don’t know when the beat is going to drop. 

 

Researching these Principles

When Marisa first made the discovery that people weren’t completing courses, she asked a colleague if she noticed this pattern, too. Her response was, “Marisa, maybe some people aren’t meant to succeed.” That was a punch in the gut for her. She believes every person is meant to succeed given the right training and support. That made her realize a lot of people actually believe this. So they are creating programs with the full knowledge they will create programs that will leave behind the vast majority of people. 

If the industry average is 3-5%, Marisa’s average of course completion is 45%. She is hellbent on making it over 50%. Another 5-10% have the points but don’t hit the button. 

A lot of people craft a product in a vacuum without talking to their audience. You might build something that no one ever buys because you don’t realize no one wants to buy. It’s not a problem people want to solve. Just like these Picnic Pants. It’s a picnic table in your pants. They thought this was a brilliant idea and invested all this money in these pants. 

But big companies make this mistake, too. Microsoft lost $289 billion by building a product nobody wanted. So if you just figure out this idea, market test it, and validate it through proof of concept, then once people pay you money for it, you can build the whole thing out in full. Don’t invest all this time to create picnic pants.

Marisa teaches eight product launch formulas, some of which only require 1:1 sales. Sometimes people do massive marketing campaigns that they don’t need to do. 

 

Examples:

Marisa’s friend was the funnel engineer for Digital Marketer. He needed to pay his rent, so he built a funnel around it. He said he helped out 200 people with funnels. She suggested he send them all personal emails asking them if they needed help. That’s a chatterbox campaign. The first tool is the mouth. You have no business making money while you’re asleep until you can make money while you’re awake.

Marisa had a client in Australia who was having trouble launching something in January. While walking her dog on the beach one morning and bumps into an old colleague on the sand. They started talking and she tells them all about her product’s mission statement, and they purchased 12 of their courses for their entire staff. She hit “mission accomplished” before coffee, while walking her dog. Your customers are everywhere.

 

We are so happy we were able to introduce you to 5 Ways to Create Experiences to Increase Conversions and Client Results! Hopefully you were able to grab some really awesome ideas for creating incredible experiences for you and your clients.  A huge Thank you to Marisa for sharing her knowledge with us today and hope you connect with her on social media ( links below.)

Looking for more to help you boost your business? Check out how I accidentally hit $100,000 in sales and how you can expand your Organic Reach on FB

Contact Marisa

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