Ever came upon an ad that felt more like a regular blog post rather than a pushy sales pitch?
The kind that doesn’t constantly scream “BUY ME” at every call to action…
What we’re about to uncover isn’t something new – it’s been around even before Nat King Cole was crooning his tunes…
… and amazingly it still works up till this day.
So what is it?
If you’re old enough, you probably remember paper magazines.
They were filled with well-researched and interesting articles written by journalists.
And people would invest their minutes reading each article.
And yet once in a while, they realize that it wasn’t an article that they were reading…
… it was an advertisement cleverly disguised as an article.
These ads were called Advertorials.
The good news is that this very same strategy can work for high-ticket coaches to this very day.
It provides your audience with valuable content.
So they don’t feel bombarded with your overly aggressive sales pitch.
Yet, it’s designed to provide value upfront – which serves to build your credibility and generate trust.
This creates the right ingredients to make an offer.
However, despite its potential to establish you as an authority and generate quality leads…
This strategy is still under-utilised by coaches and course creators.
In this video, we’ll reveal how you can transform this ‘old-school’ strategy in the online advertising world.
So if you’re looking for ways to build trust and get the results – an advertorial funnel might do the trick for your business.
In this video we reveal:
- Broad overview of an Advertorial Funnel
- Our very own Advertorial Funnel strategy
- The benefits of adapting Advertorials for your business
Make sure you check out this strategy before your competition gets wind of it.
Introduction
Now, this is a funnel that’s not that frequently used by coaches and high ticket course creators. I don’t know why, but I think it should always be part of the integrated marketing strategy that you currently have in your business.
High Ticket Coaching Funnel No 5: The Advertorial Funnel
Hello, this is Terence from Radical Marketing. Today, I want to present to you High Ticket Coaching Funnel No 5, which is the Advertorial Funnel. This is something that is not that new, right? And basically, it actually shows you how to actually kiss a girl, right? From start to finish. So it’s like a little sneak advertisement right at the end of a piece of valuable information, right?
Evolution of Advertorials
So that is an advertorial. That has evolved into today, you see many of these advertorials all over the place, magazines. I mean if you still read magazines, right? It’s kind of like looks like an article right, but it’s actually an advertisement for a Slimming product here, right? This is another example of a more perhaps a more modern Editorial than you know the how to kiss a girl one I just wanted to show you that this is not a new marketing strategy, this is a very proven marketing strategy with over 100 years of history.
Case Study: Business Start-Up Editorial
So this is one we developed for a client who basically teaches people how to start their own businesses, right? And this one’s catered towards the more mature age people. So we wrote an editorial, like, it’s never too old to start chasing your dreams. This is kind of like basically educating people, if you scroll down, as to, you know, what you need to do if you’re a bit more mature and you want to start on the entrepreneurial journey, right? So we offer some tips here, right? Tip number one is like tip number two, tip number three, and so on, right? So it’s a full like article here that basically outlines various useful, valuable information and tips that people of that particular audience can use as an entrepreneur, right. So we have five tips here, right.
Call to Action and Debunking Myths
And yeah, at the end of it, we basically debunk the myth that entrepreneurship is just for young people. And at this stage, you might want to basically get people to sign up, you know, have button here to sign up for an appointment or consultation with you, a strategy call, or you could ask them to sign up for a webinar. So there are many, many choices, and that’s totally up to you what the call to action is at the end of it, right? Okay, so this is a broad overview of what an advertorial funnel looks like. You have your ad going to an advertorial, like the one I showed you just now. And then, in that example, I didn’t have a call to action, and I’ll explain why I didn’t have a call to action on that particular page.
Purpose of Editorial without Call to Action
But normally what you have is an offer, a little sneak offer, like a really soft sell offer on the bottom of the page after they have read the article, right? And then that goes to the sales page, whether it’s webinar or whatever, consult or whatever you want to actually is the next step in your whole sales process. And then of course, at the end, we have a thank you page. Now, the reason why I did not include a call to action in the editorial that I showed you just now is because that one was for pure retargeting purposes.
Retargeting and Building Goodwill
So basically, what we want to do is get lots of clicks to the editorial, build that brand, build our client’s brand, build goodwill, and then we wanted to retarget people to the webinar or the sales page, right? So, why we didn’t have that soft call to action at the end is because we want to come across as the good guys, where we’re just providing pure value, asking for nothing in return. And then when they see our ad in the future, it’s like, oh, I remember that guy gave me this value. So this is the whole purpose of not having that in our editorial. But in most cases, you can always have that call to action in your editorial.
Reasons to Use Editorials:
So, right, so now let’s move on to why use editorials, right? Why not just get them to, you know, directly to whatever you want them to do? Now, these are the reasons.
1. Less Intrusive
First of all, it’s less intrusive. So because editorials are less intrusive, you’re kind of like advertising just an article, right? So the barrier to entry, the friction is really really low. There is like no reason not to read an article, right? Because it’s just an article, right? So there is, it’s very, you get very very cheap clicks because you are just getting people to read an article.
2. Building Trust and Credibility
And so it’s also less intrusive, so you don’t come across as a coach that just wants to sell stuff, right? So you’re providing value up front, which is what actually creates trust and credibility, right? Because if you have a whole article giving them tips, giving them examples of how you helped other people in that particular audience, that helps you to build trust and credibility. You could include a case study, for example, in your editorial, right? And or testimonials as well. So that helps you to build trust and credibility.
3. Providing Value First
The other thing, as I just mentioned, is that you’re providing value first. You’re not asking for something straight away or trying to persuade them straight away. So you’re just giving them value, hey, here’s a nice article, here’s some content to help you out, right? So you’re providing value first, before you make the ask, which, in many cases, this actually gives you better prospects as well. Because if they bothered to read to the end of the article, and maybe spend 5 minutes there, chances of them, those who take action are much more serious than in a say like a normal other types of funnels right like lead magnet funnel for example.
4. More Engagement and Read Through
Yeah so and the other thing is there’s more engagement and read through. So say for example if you have like a pure sales page, people know you’re trying to sell them stuff so when they’re reading through it’s not that, a lot of them will drop off quite early, okay. Whereas here, if you’re providing value in the article, you’re basically getting people to have spend more time on the page and read through your whole article.
5. Explaining Complex Products
And it’s great if you have a complex product, a complex system, and it’s kind of hard to just explain it. So you kind of, yeah, in a normal sales page, but this is where you can kind of like softly kind of position your system or your solution and explain it in a very elaborate way and in a non in a way that doesn’t get get people’s defenses up when they read it. So that is not a reason why you can use an editorial. The other thing is branding and differentiation. I mean, how many coaches do you see out there that actually use editorials? Very, very few. Right. So, this helps you to stand out from the crowd as well.
Avatar Testing for Effective Messaging
And the other thing about avatars is that you could say, for example, write, you know, five different avatars and see which messaging resonates with your target audience. So from there, you can also be able to test what messaging resonates with your ideal target market. So that’s another benefit of using avatars, and you can get that pretty fast, right? So yeah, that’s another reason.
Retargeting for High-Quality Prospects
And finally, as I mentioned earlier, once you get people to the article, they’re engaged, they’ve read your article, you now can retarget them, right? And by retargeting them, now you’re able to get very high qualified prospects to your event, to your consultation, to your strategy call, whatever you wanted to do after that, right? So it’s very powerful when it comes to using it as a two-step marketing funnel where you’re basically getting them to the article, reading it, and then you’re retargeting them again.
So I think that pretty much covers it for advertorials. I hope you enjoyed this video. And hey, why not give an advertorial a try for your own business?
