My guest, Tash Corbin loves organic content! (Almost as much as she loves ads!) In this lively and info-packed episode, we explain how successful organic marketing can be worked into paid ads success.

Watch this episode on: YouTube.

Listen on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

Tash Corbin’s website: https://tashcorbin.com
Tash Corbin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tashcorbin/

Transcript:

Lou: Hey, so I am joined with Tash, who is a super awesome business coach and knows a lot about great stuff about organic marketing. So we’re going to have a bit of a chat about that today. And where we should start with it essentially, and why this is something we should look at before doing any sort of paid advertising.

Tash’s Journey with Organic Marketing

Lou: Do you want to get started and tell us about what you mean with all of this?

Tash: Yeah, for sure. So, I love organic marketing, probably a little too much, actually. I avoided ads for a very long time in my business. And if I could go back to the start of my business and remind myself that if you did organic and ads, you would have way more growth. I absolutely would do that.

But I think my love of organic marketing simply comes from the fact that when I first started my business, I had no money. And that was back in 2013. I quit my job, went overseas, spent all my money, came back, and then was sitting at my desk going, “Okay, start a business, budget zero.” And so because of that, I needed to find ways to get in front of people for free and learn how to market my business organically. And I just absolutely loved it. In six months of starting my business, I had a 20K month from completely organic marketing strategies, and it just showed me how powerful organic marketing can be.

And as I said, I wish I had actually done ongoing list growth ads at a minimum. Even from like three years in or four years in. But I almost wore it as a badge of honor for far too long that, “everything I do is organic!” And so I do think long-term, it’s a really powerful strategy to start with organic… And add paid strategies once you’ve proven your messaging and your offers and your niche and all of those sorts of things through the organic strategy. So yeah, that’s probably where it all comes from for me, is that I had a lot of business growth just organically from social media strategies for sure.

The Importance of Organic Marketing Before Paid Advertising

Lou: That’s perfect. And I would strongly encourage anyone who is looking at marketing options to do what they can organically first. Because before you’ve put any extra money into it… Then like you said, you know for sure that your messaging, the content you’re putting out is hitting the mark. And so when it comes time to actually spend money on it, you’ve actually proven that what you’ve put out there works. And now you can just bring it to more people.

Tash: Yeah, absolutely. I find that the organic algorithm reflects the same structure as paid pricing models, right? The job of the algorithm is to show content to people that want to engage with that content, want to watch that content. And so if you are organically sharing your content to your hottest audience… Let’s say you only have 50 followers on Facebook, for example. If you share a post on your Facebook page with 50 followers, the algorithm will show that post to your hottest audience out of those 50. If they don’t engage, if they don’t like that content, if they don’t find it helpful, if they don’t click on it, if they don’t read it, why would the algorithm show it to more people? Right? Like it’s not doing its job; it’s not effective.

I find that if we see organic marketing as a stepping stone towards very scalable, high-growth paid marketing… And it’s like your backup mechanism, it’s your training ground for how to create great ads, great creative imagery, copy, how to get people to take action. You get to test all of that out for free and get real feedback on what is good and what isn’t, simply by the reach numbers. I mean, what, like do newspapers let you advertise in them for free and test out all your marketing before you pay them?

Lou: Absolutely not.

Tash: So we are operating in a very different landscape when it comes to paid advertising, absolutely. But there are just so many opportunities that are available to us. And I think for a lot of people, they’re very frustrated with organic not working… Or they get very frustrated with the little reach that they can get with their organic strategies. And it almost like we catastrophise it to like, I’m going to be doing this forever and just never reaching any people.

If instead, we see it as a stepping stone and as a training ground, as a learning experiment, that then gives us assurance that paid strategies will return on investment for us. I think that different approach, that different mindset means when you view it differently, you behave differently, and you have less frustration sometimes when things don’t work.

Lou: Yeah

Tash: So I’m a huge, huge fan of, let’s try it out organically first, let’s test it and see.

And let’s also get into the rhythm of consistency of content as well because I think also, like a lot of people who talk to me about their frustrations with ads in particular… I say, well, what, let’s have a look at how your ads are different to your organic content. Well, they haven’t posted anything organically for three months.

So they’ve not posted anything, they’ve tried to use ads to make up for the fact that they haven’t been around… And they haven’t been consistent, haven’t shared content. And of course, those ads are more expensive. And those ads are, you know… There’s no information, like the algorithm has no information on who likes your stuff. The algorithm has no information on what’s going to be compelling for your audience.

So you’re going to have to pay more to get in front of them because, like… Even though we see an ad every 4-5 posts on our feed these days. That is still hotly contested space. Even though you might be willing to pay the same as a very popular advertiser… Well, you’re going to have to pay more to take that spot because people love that ad, people engage with that ad, people want that ad.

And so, yeah, I do love organic as a stepping stone into the paid strategies.

Tash’s Transition to Paid Advertising

Tash: And even when I did finally go, “Oh, okay, maybe I’ll play with some ads,” and hired an ads person… My ads people, like I’ve worked with three different ads providers before working with you Lou, and all three of them were like, “I cannot believe the engagement you get organically. I cannot believe how easy this is,” right? Because of my organic background and my consistency of organic content, it’s a dream for advertisers to work with me because they can see I know what my audience wants. I know how to get my audience engaging. I know who I’m speaking to as well. And all of that has come through the organic stuff. Yeah.

The Power of Organic Marketing in Startups

Lou: Oh, that’s so perfect. So I want to ask a question here because I have a feeling I get a lot of people coming in my sphere who are sort of in startup or have not really done anything with ads before. Let’s just say that somebody’s never run ads before and they want to make more money in their business in the next month. What should they do with their marketing?

Tash: Yeah, so if we were to look at what would be a good organic strategy for short-term income growth, right? Like if we’re not going to use ads, then how are we going to bring in short-term income growth?

Well, first and foremost, for a lot of people, they assume they’ll make more sales if it’s cheaper. But if something is cheaper, the conversion rate is still the same. So regardless of whether you’re selling something for $50 or $500… You’ll still have about 1% of your active audience will be ready, willing, and able to buy that thing at that point in time. If you get super cheap, you might see a 2% conversion rate, but the cheaper something is, in essence, the more leads you’ll need to make the exact same amount of money.

And so when you are in the early stages of business, the most expensive thing for you to get, in time and money, is reach… Reaching new eyeballs. So what we want to do, if you’re looking for short-term income growth, is number one, focus on a higher-ticket product so that you don’t need a huge audience to make the money that you want to make. Let’s say you want to make $4,000 in the month. It’s easier to sell four $1,000 products than it is to sell 40 $100 products. Because the number of leads you need is actually higher for selling the $100 products.

For a lot of people, that is like a little bit of an unlearning because we assume cheaper, more sales, it’ll be easier. But that’s not the case, especially not in social marketing.

High Connection Strategies for Short-Term Income Growth

Tash: So focus on something that is a significant investment. It’s a nice chunky portion of what it is that you want to be making. And then use high-connection strategies so that your number of leads that you need is lower. So, in order to make a sale of a $1,000 VIP package, for example, most people would get that sale with three to four sales calls.

If I was going to run a webinar to pitch a $1,000 product to get one sale, I’d need at least a hundred people to come to that webinar. Right?

➡️ Related article: Episode 149: Can you skip 1:1 and jump to selling courses? – Tash Corbin

Webinar Conversion Rates vs. One-on-One Calls

Tash: So again, the webinar, even though it’s live and they’re learning from you… Because it’s at scale, it’s one to many, the conversion rate is going to be around 1 to 2%. Especially if you’re early… Your messaging is not going to be strong, you’re not proven, you don’t have social proof, you don’t have a large audience, all those sorts of things. So your conversion rate is going to be probably quite a bit lower. Whereas if you were to just get on a call with four people who were interested in the thing that you deliver, one out of four of those people is likely to buy from you. Especially if you’re learning, you know, asking lots of questions and learning what people want along the way and learning to refine what it is that you offer to meet the needs of the individual.

And so anything where you have a one-to-one relationship is going to be far higher in conversion than where it’s a one-to-many relationship.

Joining Facebook Groups for Community and Connection

Tash: And so if I was helping someone to make money in the short term, like $4,000 in one month. My advice would be to jump into some Facebook groups where people are already connected and already in community. And be very present in that community.

Post every day. Heart-centred Soul-driven Entrepreneurs is my Facebook community. We have themed days each day, but there are dozens and dozens of great groups like that out there, not necessarily as big as mine. The size of the group sometimes can actually be a detriment. So my group has 35,000 people in it, so it’s going to be harder for you to stand out amongst that big portion of the audience. Versus there are some groups out there that also have daily theme days, and you can post and promote, and they’d have a thousand members or they have 1,500 members. That is, you’re probably going to get more reach in a 1,500-person group than a 35,000 group in your early stages.

So have a combination of the two, large groups, some smaller groups. Be present, and find as many ways as you can to connect with people one-on-one, with consent.

So I’m not saying jump into those groups and friend request and DM spam people. I absolutely abhor those processes and ways that people do things, but you don’t need to do that. You don’t need to do that. And like, for most people, one of the most confronting things about marketing and sales is, “I don’t want to sell to people who don’t want it.” Right? Like, “I don’t want to be this unwanted intrusion.” Well, if you’re sliding into people’s friend requests and sliding into people’s DMs, you are an unwanted intrusion. So of course, you’re going to resist doing that. You’re not going to want to enjoy that.

But those communities exist because people want to connect with each other. Those communities exist because people want to learn from each other, want to share with each other, they want to help each other. And so being in communities like that, where you’re posting every day, you can then create opportunities to have one-on-one connections with people.

Offering Free Services for Social Proof

Tash: So, for example, in the Heart Centred community, we have Freebie Day on a Thursday. I would be jumping into Freebie Day and offering a one-hour session to do your magic for free with maybe like three people. Like, three people, I’m going to do an hour quick da-dada, right? Whether you are a health person, in business mentoring, you do Facebook ads, you do graphic design, whatever it might be… I would jump in and get that social proof by working with people and giving them a sample of what it is like to work with you.

Similarly, on the Paid Advertising Day, so ours is Tuesdays, Market Day, I would do an offer where it’s like a really no-brainer price to get to work with you one-to-one. Because every single one of those one-to-one relationships is an opportunity for you to get a referral or a paying client who buys your $1,000 package or like a way to work with you in a more substantial way.

The Value of Your Services and the Importance of Experimentation

Tash: A lot of people get caught up in this, like, “Oh, I don’t want to give my services away for free because I’m going to devalue myself.” Right? Like, the value of your services is what the market pays for them. Right now, you’ve got zero. So that is the value. That is the market rate. And so, in order to increase the market rate of what you’re doing, you need to create that social proof, you need to get evidence, you need to get leads, you need to build relationships.

And so, I… some people, when they offer free services, it doesn’t work, like free sessions or whatever. But it’s worth experimenting with. When I offered free services, it didn’t really work for my niche. I had far more success offering lower-cost 2-hour mentoring sessions when I first started my business. But I tried both. I did both. And so, I learned what messaging did I need to share in that group to have people excited to work with me. What focal points were people really having trouble with that I could solve quickly and get them a quick win. It really helped me to understand my niche really deeply.

Providing Value and Building Recognition in the Community

Tash: And if anyone ever asks questions about, “Oh, I don’t know how to set up this template in MailChimp,” right?

Setting up MailChimp was something that my ideal clients would definitely have trouble with. So all I did was just go and watch a couple of YouTube videos and work it out, and then I’d go and tell them how to do it, right? Because I just wanted to help. And I didn’t know the answer off the top of my head. But I knew that that would be a reasonable question to get from people who were starting an online business.

And so, it’s a good skill for me to learn that and be able to give people advice on that.

So I’d quickly go and learn something, and then I’d come back, and I would share, “Here’s how you do it, step by step, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.” Now, not just that person that I’ve helped now knows me, knows my name, and has been helped by me. But anyone else in that group who ever searches “template MailChimp” or who sees that I helped with that along the way now knows my name. And my profile picture is my face; they know my face.

Human-to-Human Connections in Business

Tash: And so we think about how we are in human-to-human businesses here. Think about all of those human-to-human connections that we can create for free in connected spaces… With people who are potentially your ideal client.

There are so many great ways that we can get in front of people for free these days in online spaces.

Three Key Strategies for Business Growth

Tash: So that’s kind of my three key things:

1. Go high ticket, with what your package is, right? What the big thing is.
2. People would assume that it would be better to sell five spots in a group call for 20 bucks each than it would be to give away five one-on-one sessions for 20 bucks each, but that’s actually incorrect. If you’re in the early stages of business and you are looking to nail conversion and get sales of a high-ticket product… The more one-on-one the connection is that you have with the person, the more likely you are to understand their direct needs and what they specifically want. The more you’ll get them telling you, you can ask questions, and then you can say, “Okay, well, if you’re struggling with this, I can absolutely help with that. Here’s how I would help you.” Boom, you’re going to get that conversion. So, it’s go high ticket, go high conversion. And then…
3. Build your network one-on-one at a time. In 30 days, if you did an hour a day on Facebook for 30 days doing that high connection, high-ticket upsell process, I think it’s almost impossible not to make it work. If you are there for an hour, really focusing on being helpful, building your network, and building one-to-one connections… That to me is the fast track to getting those first high-ticket sales, creating proof of concept for yourself, and creating confidence in your own work, and creating confidence in your messaging and the way that you speak about your products and services. Which all then carry over to, you can then incorporate that into paid strategies.

Incorporating Organic Marketing Insights into Paid Ads Success

Lou: Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what I was going to say. The information that you glean from those one-to-one conversations is like the ingredients for your landing pages and your ad copy.

Tash: Yeah absolutely. Every question that people ask, like, “Oh, but what about X?” Okay, well, interesting, people assume it doesn’t cover X. Or if someone, and you know, a lot of people get upset or despondent because they’ve had four sales conversations and everyone said they can’t afford it. That to me is also really interesting information. It doesn’t say to me you have a pricing issue; it’s too expensive. It says to me you have a value proposition issue.

Pricing Objections

And then people get really whiny because they’re like, “That person said they couldn’t afford my $500 package, and then they went off and bought a $2,000 program.” And it’s like, because afford is relative to the value that we get from what we’re buying.

I scrimp and save trying to get the cheapest movie tickets I possibly can, but then when I go out to dinner and order a bottle of wine, I am not skimping on price, right? Because my experience buying a movie, like, I’m sitting in the same seat as someone who paid full price… But I got my little RACQ ticket and saved myself $20 there, thank you very much. I’m having the same experience. So to me, that’s a different value than buying a bottle of wine.

There, I follow this amazing Instagram account called Two Broke Girls, highly recommend them. And they talk about things that you don’t want to skimp on, like a hairdresser or a tattoo artist, or, you know, those sorts of things. When you represent the value that you are providing in an effective way, then yes, there will always be a portion of your audience for whom it actually is a physical cannot afford it.

Addressing Value Proposition Issues

Tash: But there’s also a portion of your audience who say they can’t afford it because they don’t see the value. And so it’s important that we don’t, if, by the time someone says, “I can’t afford it,” you’ve missed your chance. Right?

I always honor the no. I’ve got a podcast episode about what you do if people say they can’t afford it. I’d recommend people go and check that out, happy to share that.

➡️ Related article: Episode 274: What should you do if they say “I can’t afford it”? – Tash Corbin

But by the time someone says, “Ah, yeah, it’s just out of my budget,” you’ve missed your chance. Right?

That to me says you didn’t confirm that they saw what you were offering as valuable and that it aligned with what they needed and wanted at that particular point in time before you pitched it to them. And so you’ve got a value proposition issue. You probably won’t be able to fix it for that individual. But the insight that you get from that and the information that it gives you then allows you to, in your next conversation or in your next social post, ensure that you’ve really nailed it.

➡️ Related article: Episode 242: Sales conversations that don’t feel gross – Tash Corbin

➡️ Related article: Episode 370: The number 1 sales call mistake and how to fix it! – Tash Corbin

The Importance of a Messaging Ecosystem

Tash: So yeah, there’s just so much insight and information that comes from all of those conversations. And as you said, it goes onto sales pages, it goes onto ad copy, it goes onto social posts. And can help to be part of that big messaging ecosystem that does, you know, that brings people closer and closer to being ready to buy.

Also, just quickly, another, I think, another alignment between organic content and paid content is that you can’t rely on one piece of content, one copy, one image to do all the heavy lifting in your business. So something that I love about the way that you do ads, Lou, is thinking about, well, what actually gets me in front of the audience? What gets the people to engage more consistently? What gets people on my list? What gets people to the sales page? What gets people back to the sales page? Right? Like, it’s this, we understand that from a buyer psychology perspective… Unless it’s like a fabulous poncho for my dog, I don’t just see an ad selling a product and buy that product.

Lou: Yeah.

You Can’t do it all with One Piece of Content

Tash: I see an ad for with some free content, I engage with that free content, I then see something about a resource that I can sign up to and give my email address. Well, that content was really helpful, I’ll give them my email address.

I then hear about the paid product, not quite ready for it yet. Then I hear about it again, then I hear it from a different angle. Then I get another piece of free content, and it’s like, ah, light bulb moment, I’m going to go back and buy that thing that they’re selling. Right?

So that is exactly the same with organic content. No one post just re-shared over and over and over and over and over again will ever do the heavy lifting that you need to have a sustainable business model and a sustainable content ecosystem. We need to remember that all content has a very short shelf life. And instead of looking for the one perfect way to describe our products and services, or the one perfect phrase, or the one perfect thing that’s going to convince everyone that they need to buy from us… What we should be doing instead is creating that ecosystem.

“But just tell me how to write it”

And it’s something that can be frustrating because it’s like, “But just tell me how to write it, right? Like, if only there was just like this one magical thing that would write it perfectly.” A lot of people think that that’s ChatGPT or AI, it’s not. So ChatGPT and AI actually write promotional post and promo copy based on what most other people are writing, right? And 90% of people trying to make sales on social media are making no sales… So why would you copy their content? Why would you get AI to go and scrape the internet to find all of this terrible content that doesn’t do its job… And give you a version of that of your own? I don’t recommend using AI or any of those sorts of things to do that writing for you.

Understanding Your Audience

Tash: What I recommend that you do is deeply understand who it is that you’re trying to connect with and what it is that they are hungry for, what they’re looking for, what they need help with, what their objections are, why they say they can’t have that goal. Like, really deeply understand that person and basically bombard them with hundreds of uplifting pieces of content. Thousands of ways that they can move forward in tiny little incremental ways because then you’re building that relationship of trust, you’re building that connection, you’re building that sense of “you actually understand what I’m going through, thank you so much.” And that is where we see that conversion then happen… Is because it’s a relationship over time through hundreds of different conversations.

Building Relationships Like Dating

Tash: I think about it like, you know, swiping on Tinder, right? So just because I swiped on someone on Tinder, I was like “oh yeah, that little bit was interesting,” but all you’ll get out of me is a swipe, right? So same with people who are following you on Facebook, you might get a like, or you might get a follow if you’re lucky, right? But that doesn’t mean you’ve got a buyer. You’ve got to have a conversation, you’ve got to go on a little first date…

You’ve got to actually get to know the human before you decide whether you’re going to invest any more time with that person, first and foremost, right?

If you’re going to invest any more energy with that person. So it’s very similar, and so many people are trying to, I mean… We can also look at terrible Tinder bios, and people are trying to get right to the sale at the very outset. But that’s what people are trying to do with their content on socials as well. It’s like, “Here I am, this is the first time you’ve ever heard about me, this is the first time you’ve ever heard about this, but here, pay me $1,000 for it. Here, pay me $200 for it.” It’s like, slow down, like, okay, let me just think about it first.

Content as Part of a Conversation

Tash: And so if you think about it that way, then it takes the pressure off every single post to be perfect, and instead allows you to just think, “This is all just contributing to the conversation. It’s all contributing to that ecosystem that’s helping people to move closer to being ready to buy, and it’s also connecting and building that relationship with them as well.”

Lou: Yeah, that’s so good, I love it. Yeah, I actually had this experience myself as a consumer. It was about 10 years ago now, but I actually engaged with a relationship coach, and I didn’t just engage with them off the bat. I consumed like a hundred of his emails and watched a hundred of his YouTube videos before I decided I was ready to pay money. So if you’re in a business like that, you know that’s the reality of what the sales process might look like.

The Importance of Connection for Quick Sales

Tash: Yes, and especially where it’s that disconnected piece, right?

So, the fast track to getting the sales, so if someone’s like, “But I want to sell this month,” is then imagine if you, Lou, had an opportunity to have a conversation with that person one-on-one and get to know them and have them get to know you. And they then were able to actually speak to just what you specifically needed. You would, that could have fast-tracked that connection, right, that purchase.

And so rather than expecting your content to do the job of a one-to-one conversation, quickly… See that the more disconnected the content is, the more of it people will need to feel like they know you and they trust you and they understand and they get it. Whereas the more connected that can be, the more you can fast-track the connection piece, the faster people will be able to make that decision about whether they like you or whether they trust this… Or whether they feel like this is going to work for them specifically as well.

And so that, I think that’s a really good analogy to use because then if you’re looking for quick sales, you recognize that… Distant, disconnected things like ads aren’t going to work as quickly as let’s just jump on a call and have a chat. Let me here, you know, why don’t we… Here’s a low-cost investment to get a great return or a great result in the short term and like fast-track that connection and that sense of they know you. Yeah, and trust.

Lou: Perfect, yeah, I completely agree.

Conclusion and Connecting with Tash

Lou: Alright, I think this is a good point to wrap up because I didn’t want to make these episodes too long. Is there something that you’d like to share with us, maybe a little… I wouldn’t say make a time-sensitive announcement, but places we can find you and connect with you?

Tash: Yeah, for sure. So, on Facebook, I’m @TashCorbinCoaching, all one word, and on Instagram, I’m @TashCorbin.

If people really want to get this nailed, one of the free resources that I have is a messaging template. Like a document that helps you to understand how to write that value piece and in a connected way with your niche. So if you go to my website, tashcorbin.com/message, there’s a messaging freebie there as well. And that helps you to really get into the detail of that.

And I use my own messaging template… I use that in front of me when I’m writing ad copy, I use that in front of me when I’m writing emails, I use that when I’m writing content… So I know who I’m speaking to and what they need to hear from me in order to move closer. I think that would be really helpful for people as well. If you want to go and grab that, you just have to give me your email. Trust.

But if you go to tashcorbin.com/message, that’s probably one of the best resources if people are really looking to get that piece nailed so that they can get their organic and paid content working better.

Lou: So cool, I can think of a lot of people who would find that useful.

Tash: Awesome, awesome.

Lou: Okay, I guess we’ll wrap it up here. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us about how much you love organic marketing.

Tash: No worries at all, Lou. I love these little bite-sized episodes! This is going to be really cool. I’m looking forward to the next ones!

➡️ Where Next? Check out Tash’s Core Messaging Template to help you understand how to create content that attracts more clients. Remember, if you get your organic content right, this will propel your paid ads success!