Tired of discounting your best products?

I get it. We work so hard to create what we’re selling and it’s disheartening to sell them so cheaply. We know that the products are well worth the investment!

Marco Torres from Marketing Boost joins me to discuss using travel incentives as an ethical bribe to encourage conversions.

I’ve since tried this method with my own company and have been pleased to see the results as part of the program.

Discover how to get started and provide greater value to your customers.

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover how to work with me: https://www.adamliette.com/work-with-me

Transcript

Adam Liette
Okay, welcome to this week's episode of smooth operator, so glad to have you with us. And it's Fridays, we have our interview, or weekly interview, and today I got a special one for you guys, you know, I always bring it on Friday. And this one, like I've been geeking out about this all week, because it's a fascinating topic. And I can't wait, I got my notes out, because I know I'm gonna learn a ton. So get your own notes out too, because I know you're gonna get some great information from this, you're going to start implementing right away because I'm thrilled to bring Marco Torres on to the show to talk about one of my favorite topics, marketing, you guys know how much of a marketing nerd I am. So Marco is the founder of marketing boost.com. And he's helped 1000s of business owners increase their sales and scale their businesses through incentive based marketing rather than discounts. Ooh, so I'm geeking out about this. I'm super excited to hear more about this. And thanks for joining us, Marco, how are you today?

Marco Torres
Thank you for having me. Adam, I look forward to our chat here. And and hopefully I can drop some value bombs, some of your you know, listeners out there may take away and run with them.

Adam Liette
I'm sure absolutely. So tell us a little about yourself, how your background how you came to this place?

Marco Torres
Well, I've been a well, I've been an operator as well. So we'll go into that a little bit. But I started as a very early entrepreneur at age nine, I built a paper out and by age 12, I was featured on the front page of the newspaper having built the biggest route they'd ever seen. And went on to open up five restaurants at a nightclub. By the time I was 23 that I moved to Florida, he sold some of those restaurants to Taco Bell because we had all of the food court malls and this was in Puerto Rico. And then went on to get into the internet marketing business. In the mid 90s. I was early adapted to that. And by 1996 97 I was mega spammer before they called it spam. We were emailing millions of people back then I had you know, my garage was turned into you know, a bunch of servers and and I was emailing all kinds of stuff and in the travel space. Back then people loved email to you. We all had AOL accounts, and you get that big thing. You've got mail. So I was one of the ones making sure that you weren't lonely and your email was lightened up put with offers what else we so I've been around and watch the entire evolution of the Internet and have helped employed over 4000 telemarketers at one time that was you know, with internet lead generation online generating over a billion dollars in sales in my career for either my own businesses or my clients. And much of that was during a period that I was an operator for a big travel company. And so I know the insides of matter of fact, one of my favorite songs is Carlos Santana, smooth operator, which is, could be a theme song to your show. But so anyway, hopefully we can. Some of them might nuggets of learn what makes people tick, what makes people take action. And all of us that are listening, you know, if you're an up by business operator, you are, were responsible for the numbers at some point, you know, and therefore that means your marketing, you're in sales. And that's what I've been involved with all my life, so that I can help others find ways to improve either sales techniques, closing techniques, or lead generation and acquiring more prospects, putting them into the pipeline, and so forth. So that's what I do. That's what I help members do. And we've been I help currently my the business that I'm most excited about his marketing boost.com, where I help 1000s of business owners with specifically ideas on building their business with the travel incentives that we offer. And we find that they work for nearly any industry niche. So we'll cover more about that as we move along in the conversation. Oh

Adam Liette
my goodness, that's amazing. Yeah, I can't even imagine like the the old wild west days of the internet. Like you guys were just making up the rules as you went right?

Marco Torres
It it was pretty cool. We there wasn't. Yeah, we were there were no rules. And it was, although there was challenges. I can tell you this back then, you know, you had to you had to write your own code. You had to learn HTML. You had to There wasn't, you know, there wasn't so much technology that is available today that this has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur than it is right now where you know, you can, you can, so much available to build you whether it's building your own website or building your sales, landing pages, your funnels, it's easy, right? You can do all of this stuff, there are more obviously more rules and making sure you're getting proper double opt in leads and all that kind of thing. But, but basically, the essentials still work the same. I mean, email is still a very big part of my business and my clients, businesses, you've got to generate a prospect and build a relationship with them via email via text message via ringless, voicemail broadcasting via, you know, your social media platforms and so forth. And so it still, you know, marketing continues to change and evolve. But at the end of the day, it's still the same techniques that were used 100 years ago, still work today, in many cases, you know, in in variations of that, if you follow me. Like I follow, I follow Dan Kennedy's on my favorite, you know, books over there. Russell Brunson talks about Dan Kennedy. And I mean, this guy was writing books 3040 years ago that are still very, very relevant today very effective in the NRA, implement marketing techniques.

Adam Liette
For sure, I get to hear Dan Kennedy speak three weeks ago, this convention with Russell Brunson. And like one thing Dan says was like you online marketers, online marketers, that's not a thing. You're just marketers, just the channels changed? And that's what I find so refreshing about it. It's like, it's just marketing guys, like, what are we really trying to do get people to take action? That's what marketing is the end of the day?

Marco Torres
Exactly, exactly. When we talk about incentives, you know, let me give you some examples, because a lot of listeners at this point, okay, I'm talking about incentive based marketing, and you're like, what is that? And how would I, you know, my business is different? How would I use incentives for my business? So I'd like to talk first about two examples. That obviously, everyone I'm, as I mentioned, them will be aware of, but it might spark a an idea in your mind might get you thinking about? Yeah, incentives do work for some of the biggest companies in the world. So why would I be looking for an incentive? And let's start with Amazon, Jeff Bezos, one of the biggest, richest persons on the planet, one of the most successful business concepts ever. And what is what did he do years ago that he's still using today, that's part of the the incentive that many of us bought into, and the majority of us did. And we now are hooked and loyal clients to Amazon, thanks to what Amazon Prime when he first launched as many of us weren't even into streaming video. But we bought Amazon Prime 99 bucks a year, whatever it was, not because we wanted so much the video streaming content, we wanted what we wanted free shipping. So the incentive, the was free shipping, pay for Amazon Prime annual membership, and you got free shipping. And then what happened, we became loyal clients, if we were going to shop for something on any other.com We would then go wait a minute, let me go see if Amazon has it. Because with Amazon, I get my free shipping. So you'd go there and end up buying you know, so everybody, every vendor out there ended up having to put their products on Amazon because we were all loyal to Amazon for the free shipping and paying that annual membership to Amazon Prime. So it was a genius strategy. He still uses it today. And he has us all loyal. Then let's talk about another big example we'll all recognize is McDonald's, they have the Happy Meal. The Happy Meal is the incentive for parents to bring in their children to choose McDonald's over Burger King Wendy's any other fast food operation, because they're got they always rotating the toy, the toy so it includes the burger, the soda, the you know, the package, the meal, whatever they include in it. And of course the toy. And so the toy and they're always changing the themes of the toy and about the movie with the you know, the new movie comes out they got a new toy to go with it new. And so they become these collectibles. And you know, adults and children are of course hooked on taking their their eye off of the price and getting the happy meal. So they can bundle all of this and charge you know, maybe more than they would get for a burger and a soda together but by calling it the Happy Meal with the toy. No one's even worried about the price. They just ordered a happy meal for the children. The kids are busy playing with the with with their food and playing with their toys and mom and dad can actually maybe get a conversation in while they're at the restaurant or in the car. So Um, what is your adult Happy Meal as well we call, that's what we do at marketing boost, we teach people how to create and an adult Happy Meal. So that client, their clients have that incentive that helps them take their eye off of the price and focus on the prize, and helps them you know, jump off the get off of the fence and make a decision. Take action today, that kind of thing by plugging in. What I can talk about more in a moment is the types of incentives that we offer. But we also say even if you don't use our incentives, you want to create your own maybe, or work with. You want to potentially network with other clients similar to yourself and use products and services from them and trade your products so that you can create additional value add to whatever your call to action is, versus discounting the price. And, like get into next, if you'll let me I'll start talking about what marketing boost offers. I don't want to be an infomercial. But essentially, if you understand what marketing boost offers, then you can begin to see how you might use marketing boost incentives or find something similar to create, make your offers stand out from the crowd and your promotionals you know whether your lead generation ideas, etc. become more powerful.

Adam Liette
For sure, and for our listeners that were at this unique time, where Marco talked about the happy meal, you know, McDonald's has that darn adult Happy Meal out literally while we're talking. And it's like a Big Mac meal that's priced. I did the it's $3 More than the regular Big Mac meal. But it's in a box with a stupid little toy.

Marco Torres
I didn't even realize that they launched a new one for adults. Yeah, joking about that.

Adam Liette
They did. And they it's like 12 bucks for a Big Mac meal. Good but it comes in the stupid box with a toy. And tick tock I was on tick tock the other day and all these McDonald's all around the world are saying stop order it we're out. We're out of boxes, like McDonald's can anticipate the demand

Marco Torres
is crazy. And it literally again, it's taking you takes your eyes off the prize focusing on the prize and the toy, and the collectibles and whatever they're creating to go along with it. And I'm telling you, they've been doing it for decades already. And it generates for them billions, billions of dollars in additional revenue every single year. Every single day. It's about $10 million a day and additional revenue that they know they're getting over and above you know normal just because of the happy meal. And what they're pricing the product for you know, they're getting a little bit more money for that box and toy than they would be if they were just selling the burger and a soda for the kids. So it or juice or whatever they offer there. I haven't had my kids have grown up. I haven't been to McDonald's and ordered a happy meal in decades. But I still remember. I know that they keep changing the menu I think they have fruit now there instead of French fries, and what have you tried to be more eco friendly for the children to eat more healthy, but at the end of the day, it's the same. And so as you say, you know, it's now they've got they actually do have an adult Happy Meal. That's funny.

Adam Liette
I only know that because well. I have two children of still happy meal age. So I've made it almost a week without buying a Happy Meal Marco I'm pretty proud of myself. So you know, I'm going for two weeks this be a new record.

Marco Torres
So you're the exact parent I'm talking about. You ended up selecting, you know, burger, McDonald's, or Burger King or Wendy's. I don't know why they haven't followed suit with a similar Happy Meal themselves. But just to not copy them or come up with a different name for it. Right. But But parents are choosing McDonald's because the kids once they get hooked on these toys are going to be yelling in the backseat, Burger King. I mean, McDonald's, McDonald's, and then there you go, you're pulling in for another happy meal.

Adam Liette
So it's so fascinating, and especially in my industry, which is primarily information products. You see discounts all the time, like, Oh, we're running a discount, we're running a discount, but as you noted, like these value add incentives, they beat discounting prices. And I'm really curious as to why that happens or like your your experience with why they work so darn well.

Marco Torres
Well, let me first Yeah, talk about what kind of incentives that we offer it marketing boost. And get your mind going on how you could see how that this types of incentives could accomplish the goal of getting people to actually purchase your product without discounting and so on. So at marketing boost, we've been in the travel business for decades. And it this business came about actually by accident we were we had a very successful travel website that was booming, and we were one of the fastest growing travel sites in North America we wanted you want to know obviously to grow more like any business. And one of the things that we were looking for was a bit Do testimonials, we kept thinking to ourselves, if we had clients actually go that extra step of filming, not just giving us a review, we always want those two. But if we could get them to film a selfie video from the resort from the beach, from the pool for the bar, and if they were bragging about, you know, kind of doing a hotel review, if they were bragging about the hotel brand that we were marketing, if they were bragging about our brand, or the deal we offered them, we would be able to leverage those testimonials into 1000s of additional sales. So we kept scratching our head going, what can we offer do to motivate people to go through that extra step of filming actually filming a selfie video for us. And we came up with an idea of what this is going to cost us a lot of money. But let's try it anyway. So we said we're going to give you a bonus trip. So we would do it. Now here's the takeaway anybody listening should run with, we would do a survey, when we thought our clients would be at the happiest, which was typically day after checking. So we would send them an email and a text message the day after they checked in and say, you know, or even the same day they checked in and be like, Hey, how's the hotel living up to your expectations? So far, by now you should have checked in, you know, how are you liking it on a scale of one to five? What do you think of the property? What do you think of our service so far. And if they gave us a four or five, we weren't immediately responding back with an automated message. Again, all you know, again, you should be setting up automation, but we'd be sending an email and text message saying wonderful, you're glad you're having a wonderful time at this hotel property would you do us a HUGE favor and help us spread the word about this hotel and if you would film a selfie video of then review the hotel and review our brand, where we reward you with a bonus complimentary hotel stay and your choice of Orlando or Las Vegas. So we were gonna give them a three night stay on us if they gave us that selfie testimonial. And of course that worked like a charm. We started getting dozens and then hundreds of these video testimonials coming in. We were putting them all over our website leveraging them for social proof that we needed that these deals that we offered were for real, and so on and then we would we were just generating 1000s of additional sales. But then those folks started raising their hand and saying okay, we want to get that free trip you offered and of course now we're having to dig into our pockets to pay for those you know rooms that we had offered free and we thought to ourselves well what can we do to reduce the cost of that because this is obviously we can't keep doing this offering three nights days for free if if we you know what if we have to come out of pocket for each one of these. So we went back to our travel partners since we were again a very high volume travel company we went back to them and said look we've got we know you have a problem and we think we can fix it. A problem for you is we know your hotel is never full year round. I mean you're full on certain weekends peak seasons, holidays special events, but the majority of the years 70% of the year let's be honest 30% of your rooms if not more go empty and you still have the same fixed costs you still got a mortgage payment you still got front desk staff, cleaning crew, maintenance crews, etc etc. So they a few hope we got a few hotels in Orlando and Vegas to participate and you know agree to give us their empty these rooms that would have otherwise gone unsold at ridiculous rates or practically free. So that we could put went out and convinced them that look, these people are going to spend money, they're going to be warm bodies in your hotel. And they're going to probably book additional nights, they're going to spend money at the restaurant, the bar, the spa, the casino, the gift shop, the excursion desk, the you know the room, service, casino, etc. And they agreed and so within this, give it a shot. So we now were able to fulfill those that incentive we were offering for the video reviews. And that just continued to blow up. Well, we now have over 30,000 video testimonials on that site and our travel sites more than any other travel company in the world that we've ever seen. And that became we ended up saying can you imagine if we had, instead of just Orlando and Vegas, if we had dozens of destinations around the world and hundreds of hotels participating with this idea, we'd have another standalone business, which is what eventually became marketing boost.com We created we turned the travel incentive business upside down as never, we're not the first to be in the travel incentive industry. But we totally revolutionized it in that one. We made it a win for the hotel partners, helping them fill rooms that would otherwise go empty. We made it a win for our marketing boost member partners. Because now they were able to give away use these incentives and give them away to their clients as a bonus offer as the adults Happy Meal as the closing tool as the lead generation ID etc. And we were able to make it a win for the end user who received the complimentary incentive because now they're getting a BA Due to travel or pennies on the dollar, they're not. Of course they don't include airfare. They don't include food and beverage. And they don't include the government taxes every hotel when somebody checks in that the government is expecting to get paid their, their tourism, hotel taxes etc. So those gotta get paid. And so we have a there's an activation fee that's required to activate the certificate that pretty much covers those government taxes. And then they've got 18 months to log in. There's no phone calls to make no hoops to jump through no timeshare presentations to listen to or anything like that. And they have 18 months after they activate their complimentary hotel stay to search the search the you know put in the dates they want to go look at what's available and get booked get get instant confirmation, instant gratification. And again, everybody wins. So we now offer 125 destinations around the world from three nights days in places like Orlando, Las Vegas, Branson, Miami, Atlanta, New York, San Diego, Spike nights days in places like Hawaii Cancun four nights in Cabo San Lucas or Punta Cana, seven night stays in places like Phuket, Thailand or Bali. So we've got, you know, the all of Europe and Australia, we have literally members around the world that use our service. Now, because we've got destinations, you know, literally throughout Asia, throughout the Philippines, through Europe, in Australia, and Singapore, I mean, you name it. So it's attractive for business owners anywhere. We also offer the second category of incentive, we offer our hotel savings cards that come in increments of 100 to three and $500. These are good at they save you compared to the retail prices, save you money from up to the 100 to three or $500. And I like to recommend people using smaller incentives for a smaller call to action. So we have the hotel savings cards. And then we have restaurant savings cards that good at about nearly 100,000 restaurants and businesses throughout the US and Canada that are available for as an incentive against smaller instead of what I call micro incentives for a micro call to action. So depending upon what you're selling or promoting, you might use a hotel savings card as an incentive to you know, for example, one of the key things a lot of my clients do is they'll they'll use a hotel savings card 100 or $200 Hotel savings cards when you book a no obligation zoom call. So a lot of us have in today's world, we have the amazing luxury now where we don't have to drive all over town for every sales call. And you know, have all that downtime of driving somewhere and meet somebody only to find there and no show. Well, now we do it on a zoom call, right we have meetings, sales meetings, and our sales staff doesn't have zoom calls every day. But of course, people book appointments and don't show up. So the hotel, our our incentives can be used just to help people incentivize them to show up on time. And that alone can make a huge difference in your bottom line. Because if you've got a sales team or even if it's just you as a salesperson, if your people are actually showing up for their for their appointments for their president, you know, sales presentations, that your salespeople are going to stay busy. And that means they're going to what be talking more prospects closing more sales. So simply adding an incentive to show up on time for your webinars or your zoom calls, or that type of appointment setting. Even in home setting, we have a lot of companies that use our services for, for example, Home Improvement companies, roofers, solar sails,

you know, any type of home improvement where they need to go visit the parent, you know, the window replacements, and so forth, they need to visit the fit of the couple inside and make a presentation and they're hoping both husband and wife are home. Well getting them to actually stick to that appointment. And both of them being available is a challenge pu often a salesman to show up and only the husband is available to the wife's not there. Well, they're not going to make a decision together without being together. So it's a one leg or we call it but if you offer it incentives, and hey, if you and your wife or make sure you're both there, because if you're both there for the appointment on time, we're going to reward you with a complimentary three nights day and your choice of you know, Las Vegas or Atlanta on us your choice. And so, you know, people will will will do what you're asking them to do in order to earn that adult Happy Meal. So just to give you some ideas there but that's a little bit about what marketing boost is today. Adam does that get you sparking your curiosity there? Does it give you some questions you might want to ask?

Adam Liette
Did I got so many ideas like right off the bat like it's huge because I mean, just put in something tangible that idea I came up with just when you're talking because I sell high ticket co During programs, and it's all about building your operating system. But like, listeners, you know, this, like, how many of you have not actually physically met your team members? Me, you know, we're all in this remote thing. But I'm thinking for a high ticket program, if I can offer five days in Las Vegas to meet with your counterpart, and actually implement the operating system on me in a hotel. I mean, that's like a no brainer, isn't it? That's, that's better than a live event that's, hey, go work on your business for three days, or five days or whatever, on me get to hotel and focus time. I mean, that's like, the immediate thing that came to mind. The other thought, I thought, because I've been looking into webinars recently, and like, there's always an incentive to stay to the end. And it's, it's always like, oh, a free course or something, it's like, do we need more of that, this, it stands out

Marco Torres
that love, yes, this, this can really stand out for that, if you're not you want, you got to get people to agree to sign up for the webinar in the first place. And then, of course, you're trying to keep them till the end, because that's when you're going to typically have your call to action to take action today. You know, if you take action on this on this call, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna offer this, this, that and the other. And, and that could be, you know, one we're giving away, you know, you can use those instead, we have a lot of people who do these for the webinars, and they're like saying, Hey, stay to the end of the call, and be engaged during the webinar. If you're asking the most questions, and you're the most engagement, we ask questions, we're going to pick three winners at the end of the webinar from choice, you know, a complimentary hotel, stay five nights in Cancun, we're going to give away one to Las Vegas, and we're giving away one to Orlando, so you want to stay on till the end of the call. And now at the end of the call, you might be adding that saying, by the way, anybody who takes action today, if you go ahead and sign up for our program, we will do the following You know, and then you throw in one of these additional, these incentives, you're guaranteed a winner if you go ahead and sign up for our six month course, or what have you. Another thing people do or I like to recommend people do, let's say you're selling your high ticket coaching program. And of course, people will you know, it's hard to get them to commit to you maybe you have an annual contract or or maybe you don't, you said look, you could hire us month to month, and no long term commitment required. But obviously, you know, in order for your program to work, you need the client to work with you for 369 months in order to implement all the ideas and everything you're going to be coaching them on. And if they're, if they're bailing after 60, you know, 30 days, you know, what good did it do? So you might dangle the carrot saying, Oh, by the way, when you reach your six month anniversary with me, and not only are we going to be reaping the rewards of the profits, additional profits that I'm going to show you how we're going to implement for you, I'm going to reward you on your six month anniversary with a six day five night stay in your choice of Cancun or Hawaii, on us. Now, of course, it doesn't include airfare. These are the disclaimers that you would need to cover doesn't include airfare won't include food and beverage, and it won't include the government taxes, but you're gonna get your hotel stay at a luxury hotel on us. That sounds pretty cool. Great. Let's get started. How do you want to handle that first payment, you know, Visa or MasterCard? Let's get started. And so that's an example of creating kind of a loyalty program based on being with you for a period of time, I had a client comes to mind right now I have one of my guys who he has a subscription model. So his business model was and he launched his business in January of 2021. And he built up hundreds of people paying him $97 A month for access to his team's tips and yet an entire team and looking and analyzing when was the best time to buy and sell certain stocks and cryptocurrencies or what have you, and people were paying him 97 A month for that and he was proving in them six, you know, successful ways to be making money. And he found marketing boost and he came up with an idea to say hey, if you will pay for six months in advance, so this was the promotion he ran. If you once his clients got used to the value of his service, then he would offer if you paid for six months in advance and become a Gold member. We will offer you your choice of three night as a bonus three nights in Orlando three nights in Las Vegas. If you pay for 12 months in advance, and you become platinum member and you get this that and the other other other additional bonuses that he rolled in, and your choice of Five Nights in Cancun or Hawaii. Now he generated almost $500,000 in additional revenue in three days with that first promotion because he had you know about 300 of them step up and pay for the 97 For the annual plan, which was like $1,200 apiece, and he had another 150 or so step up and pay for the six month plan, which is six $700 each. And so combined, it was close to nearly $500,000, in his first three days of that promotion. And now it's just an ongoing part of his program. So after he has clients use his service monthly for a while, then and they get to, like, know, and trust Him, then he's dropping the promotion of, hey, if you step up and pay for our biannual or annual plan, these are some additional bonuses that you get. And it's just a part of his business model to raise cash flow, you know, with people that have been with him for a little while. So that's, you know, there's just so many ways to skin the cat here on, on finding unique ways to use these incentives. To you may have some more questions. Otherwise, I could just keep hugging the microphone here, Adam and rattling away, but I'll let you I'll let you ask.

Adam Liette
I think there's an interesting social science aspect to this right now that we're at a unique opportunity in the market, from my perspective, and I'll let Margo weigh in on this. You've had a lot of people who've been locked away for several years now and have been not travelling or hesitant to travel. And so like, I see nothing but opportunity here. Where if how, what percentage of your prospects, honestly ask yourself that listeners, like what percent of your prospects have been itching to travel, and this is just going to be that dangling carrot of opportunity to really excite them and pull them over the finish line. I think it's just an incredible time period to be offering something like this. And I'm geeking out and figuring out how soon I can implement this to be totally honest, man.

Marco Torres
Yeah, I'm glad you glad you said that versus me because that is one of my taglines were absolutely is never been a better time to use these travel incentives. Because yes, people around the world are sick and tired of the lock downs. They've been, you know, we've all been for fear or government rules restrictions, we have been, you know, either forcibly or voluntarily locking ourselves down into a very limited travel. And now people are like dying to go somewhere. Even if it's jumping in the car, it goes somewhere, you know, relatively close by, they need to get away. And we've never seen such high usage of these incentives, both on the on the on the business side of people using them, and giving them out with the call to action, the conversion rate of people who actually activate them. And the usage rate of them is never is never allowed during COVID. Obviously, we took a hit, like every business pretty much. But we did, we had we had a number of our members, because again, we have a subscription model, people pay us to have access to these incentives. And we had probably about 30% of our member base, you know, positive accounts or drop off. And, and the other 70% that stuck with us, they kept finding, well guess what they found people even during COVID, even during all the fear factors, everything else. The travel incentives, were still working as the call as part of the call to action. To me, because people knew that they had hoped to travel they wanted, they saw Well, this is not going to last forever. And I want to be able to travel as soon as it's over. So people were activating those certificates and giving having the and we extended from 18 months to 24 months to travel during COVID. So people had more time to actually use them. So yes, we had, you know, very high bond, almost the same volume of people activating certificates. Of course, they The truth is they were not using them during that 2020 2021 until about mid 2021 When everybody that vaccines were working, or, you know, it seemed to be getting controlled. Mid 2021, July of 2021. And August, September, then it was just like skyrocketing back everybody was booking travel again, using those incentives to all of everybody who had activated the previously was now booking dates. And it's been a growth factor again for us ever ever since. So, we're we've never seen anything like it like we're seeing right now. It's a perfect time to get on. And enjoy being a member of marketing boost and building your business with.

Adam Liette
Awesome. Yeah. I'm glad my my thought was validated for sure. I was like this has to be it right now. Yes. I like my background prior to all this was in social sciences and like psychology of societies and like what's going on in the mass markets? And so yeah, perfect. That's exactly what I was thinking. So question on these. When we're doing discounts. Just to kind of flip the script on what people are used to doing is you'll have like that, like that one week discount or three day discount or even 24 hour discount flash sale kind of thing. Do you see people doing that with these value add incentives as well? Well, and like, how would we employ that and kind of to add to the scarcity? Or is that a non Well, what have

Marco Torres
you ever know? What are the challenges you have with discounting? Right, as you're also coaching, you're, you're also training your client base, to not take action until the next promo cycle. So it's good and bad, because yeah, you're offering that offer, you're creating that scarcity and urgency to take action before the window clock, you know, and, and but you want to, we caution you anyway, on how much discount you're giving is it really hitter is going to hurt your bottom line now, in the information business that you're in, or many of your listeners might be in, then at least your product doesn't have a hard inventory cost. So you're when you discount information, okay, you spent the time and money to build or write the content or film the content or what have you. And so that cost is, you know, it's got a lifetime, as well as its relevancy, and so forth. So you got to move it, and you're gonna make money on volume. But you can, obviously a B testing is a great idea. So you could, you could do your value stack, you know, and say, Okay, here's you take action today, you get course a you get course be one of the ideas if you probably do this, but I've seen this done a lot with people that information businesses, is networking, so that you can, you can offer your course, maybe to a colleague and say, Look, I'll let you use one of my courses that you can give away as a bonus with you sale of your course. And you give me your you know, one of your courses with for me. And so now when you can say you know, as an add value, add you buy course, a you get course b from from Joe Blow included as the bonus free. Plus, on top of that we're giving you if you take accident, you know, before five o'clock today, what have you, you get the bonus for days and three nights in Las Vegas, or five nights in Cancun, when you make this purchase. Today, if you're, you know, create scarcity and urgency if you're, you know, we're giving the first 50 perks, you know, transactions will get a three night stay in Las Vegas or something along those lines. So you're creating that scarcity and urgency to take action today. Now as a as a marketing moves member for for ads, by the way, it's only $37 a month to use our service. So it's ridiculously affordable. Anybody can any entrepreneur can afford to give this a shot. And or solopreneur, or big business small business, obviously, it's incredibly affordable. So at $37 a month, you have the ability to give away an unlimited amount of these. So even though you might and we recommend just because you can give them away like candy because your account allows you to give it as many as you want away, we do recommend you create that scarcity and urgency don't give them away like candy. Make people feel that they did something to earn it as in take action today or byproduct beta go with product A and you get the bonus. So after they made the first decision, whatever your tripwire product is, they bought the first course, boom, if you get course b to go with x, that's what you really need to be successful, then we're going to also give you if you take action on the product B to go with product eight, we'll throw in a bonus of Five Nights in Cancun if you're one of the first 50 to take action, and yada yada yada. So yeah, creating that scarcity and urgency is again and it is about positioning, it is about how you testing a B, testing on how you lay out the creative and how you we provide free tons of hundreds of video content, you know, little mini spot little commercials promoting the destination with the call to action. So we probably got every niche covered out there as to adding one of our video clips or some of our suggested, you know, banner ad type creatives, landing pages that we've built, as well as sample landing pages, sales funnel pages. So are we're all about helping our members make sure they're successful. And we make money, multiple ways on one on the incentive that the membership fee monthly fees that everyone's paying us to we make money when people actually activate those certificates in travel because we are we're going to help them book additional nights we're going to help them upgrade room types we're going to offer. So we're a travel agency on the backside obviously. And so we actually want more of these incentives going out the door and being used, because that's how we're helping fulfill what we promised our hotel partners which is plenty of business to help them fill those rooms. And we're helping people upgrade by additional book additional nights, travel excursions and all those extra stuff. So we win on the on the back end as well. So that's how that's how it makes sense. So we can actually do this. Well, we

Adam Liette
all win, right? Win Win win, I mean, your your customers are gonna win with a great experience, you're winning, because you're getting more customers and marketing boost is winning because they're filling their back end. Because, you know, I think it's kind of a good marketers understand the back end and how valuable the back end is versus the front ends. There's so much focus on the front end, but I'll be perfectly honest, I've had a front end product that rent for years, I sold millions of dollars worth of it. And I made absolutely no money because I was selling it at cost. But where was I making the money, I was making all my money on the back end, because once I had him on my list, then I had my remarketing I had my value ladder that I was sending them up. And that's the exact framework you guys took. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. I'm loving everything about this man, I'm an AI, you're gonna see me signing up today, this is happening. Now, now I got to recreate my sales page, and I'm not even gonna bother split testing it, I'm just gonna go with it. Because I know it's a brilliant idea. And it stands out in the market. That's the other thing that's brilliant about this. I funnel hack, five to 10 offers a day just as part of my routine. And if you're not doing that, like that's a really useful thing to be doing. I don't see these kinds of things in my industry, I don't see them. And what a potential differentiation from your competition is so huge in marketing I do it I'm geeking out man. Oh,

Marco Torres
no, it really can't be deal a game changing. You know, whether you're using full blown out marketing campaign strategies with this product or service, you know, with these additional incentives, or whether you're just occasionally sprinkling sprinkling them in with your, with your follow up email databases, you know, you want to read read live and a kind of a dead database and you run a promotion to, you know, hey, register again, or register for one of our webinars were given away, you know, multiple trips on. So again, the point being is that whether you're using them with every call to action, or you're occasionally dropping them in to create some engagement and excitement, your social media pages, I've had people grow Facebook page, Facebook groups, from zero to 10, that one example comes to mind, he went from zero to 10,000 members in less than 90 days, by using the marketing boost incentives, the complimentary hotel stays as viral contests. So he would every week run, hey, next Saturday 12 noon, we're giving away a trip to Myrtle Beach. And it to end to all you need to do to win is invite more people to join this group for every person that you invite to join the group is another chance to win. And then he make a big deal of who won the complimentary hotels day on Saturday, live on Facebook in the group, you know, and send them the incentive. And then he'd say he then he would announce the What contest for next week. You know, we're giving away three nights in Miami Beach, you know, I didn't make a big deal all week out of pictures of Miami and we're you know, whoever wins this trips, gonna get three nights in this one of these hotels in Miami, yada, yada. And he's just growing his Facebook group. And then what you now have a group of, you know, 10,000 followers or whatever, and you're the you're the authority, the expert, and you can start continuing to drop content of whatever it is your product or service is all about, and invite people to your webinars, and eventually you're going to be monetizing that Facebook group. And of course, if you already have a Facebook group with 1000s of people in it, this is one way to start reengaging and keeping people excited and having something to talk about something different. So just throwing out some ideas there, whether it's Facebook or any other social media platform.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. Fantastic. So I want to write we spend a lot of time on the front end of the customer experience and kind of in that first initial area where we're pulling them up the value chain. But as I was doing my research preparing for this, I noticed he talked about how to reactivate those on our lists, like the people that have gone dormant and have gone cold that we probably should delete from our CRM. But if you've ever deleted 10s of 1000s of emails from your CRM, you know how painful that is. It's one of my least favorite things to do. And what you mentioned is this can be an incentive to reactivate them. So I would love to hear some of your thoughts on that.

Marco Torres
Ya know, for example, the you know, the hotel savings card it's gonna sound believable, for example, you know, one might be you know, hey, we're, you know, just point blank the subject line asking them, you know, should we do lead you are not, you know, let us know and you know or something like that and, and throw in there, you know, reactivate, just ask them to reactivate your account with us and you'll be entered to win five nights and you know, or seven nights in Phuket Thailand, make it sound sexy or what have you. And then also, you could you know, if you get them to open the email now you can get into more details, every reactivation click here to reactivate that you're still interested in our content or what have you. And we'll be sending you a $100 hotel savings card on us good at over a million hotels worldwide for your next hotel booking. So you know, you're promising them, they're gonna get something for nothing, just to click the button and say, Yeah, I'm still alive. And I'm still want to be in your database. And even if they didn't, it doesn't mean you have to delete them. But now you've you've, you know, if you got 10% of them to or, you know, 30%, open rate, and you got 20% to click on it, well, now you've got that 20% Kind of like, boom, you can put them back to the top of the funnel and start a whole new series of messaging to them. Or then maybe, you know, maybe that hotel savings card is tied to complete a, you know, click here and fill out a quick survey, tell us where you're at today with your, you know, products, you know, questions that you might ask, in a in a short survey, to prequalify them a little bit more, are they actually good, you know, lead or not, and, and reward them with complete the survey, we're giving you a $500 hotel savings card just for for filling out this survey about where you are in business today, compared to where you were when you first signed up with us or, you know, again, if you're a marketer, you can be you can write some creative copy. And again, your your your the ideally you want to think here is you're writing some creative copy with what purpose you're getting, I'm gonna reward you for doing something. So you want to make them do a little bit of something to earn it. And then it's going to be believable. If you just say, Look, just click here, you get a $500 hotel savings card, you're like, Yeah, all right, doesn't sound it sounds ridiculous. On the other hand, if you say we, you know, we're at and big, you know, you could literally be honest with it, we want to see, are you still interested in our in our content. And if you are, we're going to ask you to fill out a little survey. And if you do, we're gonna reward you with a $500 hotel savings card just to tell us where you're at in business since we met you, you know, whether where is your, you know, whatever, if you're selling business coaching, then you might want to be, you know, we met you six months ago, when you signed up for our service. How are you doing in business today, yada yada, if you'll tell us a bit more about your business, where you come where you've grown, how you've, if that is any of our content helped you, we will reward you with a $500 hotel savings card just for reactivating your account, and you're gonna get people to do it, I promise you now it's a matter of how many questions you know, you could make it to, you know, it doesn't matter how long your surveys actually is, if people drop off, you can still send them the reward, so that you can, but you're going to potentially not only reactivate, you're going to re qualify people, and they're going to appreciate the fact that you were rewarding them and thinking of them. And whether you're a realtor, you're an insurance agent, I mean, these can be done, this similar idea can be done to just as a honor on the on the anniversary of the purchase of their home or the anniversary of their insurance, it's time to, it's time to meet with them again and review their their their financial needs to see if it's if they've had any major changes in their life, they need to consider getting more life insurance or what have you. These are all you know, ways to stay in touch with your, your community or your following or your database. And, but be relevant and at the same time be rewarding them for you know, being in your circle.

Adam Liette
Yeah, I was just thinking like, you can do so much with the copy to frame the travel around something you know they're interested in. So like, I put it as, hey, you're learning this operating system take three days to go to hotel and implement it turn off the world. If a buddy of mine sells golf clubs, Hey, you want you always wanted that trip to Pebble Beach? Now the hotels on us, right? So framing the travel around your offer your prime offer is how you make it seem. It's the believable part but also the Hey, this is actually a super benefit to me because of XY and Z that's framed around your offer. And for your Facebook group or you mentioned the Facebook group. I just I just had this idea and I probably shouldn't share all my ideas because I'm going to be doing them now. But the latest super annoying thing that you see people do in Facebook groups is they'll do that at every one feature, which notifies everyone in the Facebook group, which would be super annoying if unless it's Something super cool. So if it's a contest for a five day trip to Phuket, or Bali, like that's, yeah, it's interruption marketing, but it's like, how much more attention can you get for that if you have cold engagement on a Facebook group? So it's another little whatever, whoever,

Marco Torres
I'm not even aware of that what how does that work? You can act, everyone, how does that work? What do you mean?

Adam Liette
So if you're the admin of a Facebook group, and you create a post, and instead of like, at Marco, you put at everyone, everyone in that Facebook group will get the notification of that post. And marketers are using it intrusively where it's like, hey, reengage with the group, and just like not good marketing. And it's really super annoying when they do it wrong. And so I've been constantly like circling my mind, like, okay, Facebook gave us this feature for a reason there is a legitimate good use for it. Like, how can we use it in a way?

Marco Torres
Yeah, it can be abused, or if you've got really something cool to offer, then that's where these incentives can kick in, right? Because if your company isn't, okay, hey, we're doing this than the other and for whatever this call to action is, you get, you know, five nights and in Cancun or something along these lines with three nights in Las Vegas. And again, you could, because you have, even if there's one for the next, for the next 12 weeks, every week, we're giving away one trip to that one of these destinations, you're gonna want to pay attention, you know, or something. You know, again, you could be creative and find ways to do that. So

Adam Liette
I love it, Marco. Well, I, I could geek out about this all day, but we're coming up on your time. And I do want to be respectful of your time. So before we depart here, do you have anything additional you'd like to share with the audience or any, any place they can find you on the internet? Yeah, I'd like to recommend

Marco Torres
go to Marketing, boost solutions.com marketing boost solutions.com. On that site, we do have a few different not only the the marketing boost products that I mentioned here with the incentives, but we also have automation platforms available, you can subscribe to my podcast on there as well, where we do. I'm always interviewing experts in the marketing world, and bringing in experts about using marketing boost incentives as well. So you want to get on the subscribe to the podcast. So marketing, boost solutions.com is where you can go to follow us join our Facebook group, etc. All the links are on marketing boost solutions.com.

Adam Liette
Fantastic, Margo. This has been an absolute treat. Thank you so much for the great information. And like this is a real opportunity, I think for all of us. And even if it's not with travel with Marco and like this type of construct. I think the bigger point is like if we can move collectively away from discounts. Well, maybe I collectively know only the smart people listening to this show move away from discounts. Let's let everyone else stay on that discount land and race to the bottom as Dan Kennedy would say. And instead of focusing on discounts focus on value added incentives that make this a no brainer for our prospect prospects, convert them into customers. And this is one arrow in your quiver that you can consider this. This is great. Yeah, this has been fantastic. Marco, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.