How You Can Create an Organic Source of Revenue with SEO Expert Marcio Santos

Jeremy Deighan
Hey, everyone, thank you for checking out the podcast today. We have Marcio Santos from Nerd Digital, who is going to give us some strategies and tips and advice on how we can do a really good course launch and how we can leverage organic marketing strategies to get people into our course. And I'm really excited to have you on the show today. How are you doing?

Marcio Santos
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me, Jeremy.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, it's definitely my pleasure. I'm glad you reached out. And I was looking at your information. And I'm really excited for today's episode, because I know that one of the main things that people struggle with is, "How do we get people into our course, to buy our course, to see our course, and then execute on taking that course.?

So I think this is going to be a great episode. And I always like to start at the very beginning and hear kind of, you know, where you come from, what you were doing before you got into online business and online courses. So if you would just kind of give us a couple minutes of your backstory. And yeah, how did you get into this world?

Marcio Santos
Yeah, Jeremy. So again, thank you for having me on the show, I started off, you know, my online marketing journey, doing graphic and web design. Back in the day, I started, you know, real basic stuff, splicing slicing images for the web. And from there, I kind of just kept on moving up. I was just always so curious about, about designing websites. And then I worked on a bunch of things like that. And eventually I bought a, an online gaming league. And so I built that up as well. And eventually, I worked for some agencies with brands like BMW, Kettle and Fire is one of my clients today.

And just recently, last year, I started working with a course creator. And he became one of my clients, he approached me for SEO. That's sort of what I'm, what I'm known for. And I really enjoyed serving him and was able to really transform his business and help him and so that's what I'm looking forward to sharing today.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, yeah, that sounds great. So how did you... you said you had someone who was creating an online course and then you helped them out with SEO? So what did that look like? Did they already have an audience, or they didn't have an audience and they had a course? What was kind of the arrangement there?

Marcio Santos
So at the time Khe from RadReads, he already had a course. And they had already done a few launches before, he already had an audience as well. And so from an audience perspective, he was, he had about 20,000 subscribers or so. And in terms of his course, he had already done a five figure launch.

But he was curious whether or not he can get some more juice out of SEO for him. So he blogs a lot. And, you know, he, I guess he had acquired using some tools, and he saw, like a site audit tool from, from Ahrefs, pull up some information about his website, and he wasn't too sure whether or not he could fix it and how to go about that. So he, he started digging, reached out to his network, his network found me. That's how we did our first engagement, was just doing a basic site audit and fixing a few things up. And then from there, we just kept working together.

Jeremy Deighan
So for anyone who's listening, that might be kind of new to online courses, or kind of new to online business and marketing. Can you just go ahead and take a moment to describe, what is SEO and how that helps someone who has an online course?

Marcio Santos
Certainly, so SEO stands for search engine optimization. And search engine optimization really is a set of techniques that you can use to optimize your content and optimize the way your site is structured. So that Google, the search engine, will send you more free traffic. In a nutshell, that's what it is. And that's the purpose of it.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, so this strategy is, is leveraging on Google search. So when someone types in, "How to bake a cake", you'll have a better chance of appearing in those search results. Is that correct?

Marcio Santos
Yeah, that's correct. You'll have have a better chance of appearing higher in the search results. You will probably appear somewhere, you know, Google has a bot and the bot crawls everything that's out there. And so you probably appear somewhere. It's getting to the first page, because there's even a joke between SEO is that, you know, "the best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google search results." Nobody. Nobody goes there.

Jeremy Deighan
Right. Okay, so the key is really getting onto the first page of Google. Now, why is that strategy important? In you eyes versus leveraging maybe some other type of strategies out there? Why do you focus on Google and SEO?

Marcio Santos
Good question. So, when it comes down to SEO, and why you would want to focus on this, it's really creating an organic source of revenue. Oftentimes, when you speak to an SEO or you engage in SEO, you might start a conversation around just traffic. So you want more traffic to your website, organic traffic, organic traffic.

But really, what you should be thinking about is organic revenue. And it's important for you to, to be a little bit agnostic, I am a specialist at SEO. And so it's easy for me to say, you know, invest all your money and effort into SEO. But after working with this for over, over five years now, I've learned to appreciate mixing your strategies together and making sure that things work well together. So not just focusing on SEO, but having an understanding how SEO plays into your marketing strategy online.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, and when you're doing the SEO to get this organic revenue, as you, as you called it, is the SEO for the course itself, or is it for the website? Because I've heard the term used before, whenever we're talking about creating content. So if you had a blog, you might be optimizing that blog to get those blog articles to rank. Are you talking about that? Or are you talking about just the website in general? Or if someone just had a course landing page that it could rank?

Marcio Santos
Good question. So the way I would, I would, you know, advise someone that's listening to this that has a course is, I would think about it in terms of opportunity. And when you think about your, the topic that you're a specialist in... So if let's say for example, you're a specialist in work productivity, it makes sense that you would want to appear in searches related to work productivity.

Now, in order for you to do that, you have to put together a strategy that, that can help you do that. Right? So you, you want to think about if you do have a website, you do, and you do have a blog, are you writing content? Are you creating content that targets searches for work productivity? And then if you have a landing page, sure, do you, is that landing page gonna rank? But you know, those two things alone don't often work.

One strategy that works super well. And this is one thing that we pulled off for for RadReads, is to put together, let's call, we call it a journey page. And essentially a journey page is a step up from a hub page. Are you familiar with the term hub page Jeremy?

Jeremy Deighan
Kind of like a, like a central page that sends people off into different directions based on their needs?

Marcio Santos
Correct. And the one nuance I would add there is that it's always based around one specific topic. So it's not one specific keyword, but a specific topic. And this has become more and more important and more and more effective of a strategy with, you know, all of the different Google updates.

And the reason why is that, you know, back in the day, people would try to super optimize their content for this keywords. And so you would have pages that were created for, let's say, work productivity for people that use a Mac. And then you'd have, you know, the very same, essentially the same content, but for a different title, that would say, you know, work productivity for tips that somebody that uses Mac in California, or work productivity for tips that, for somebody that uses Mac at night. So it's, the content is probably the same, but they're just trying to, you know, over optimize for a term that they, a keyword that they found.

Jeremy Deighan
Right.

Marcio Santos
And so Google's bot, and Google's algorithm became, you know, evolved. And now it, what it does is it tries to find the most relevant search results for what you're searching for. And so, you know, to make a long story short, focusing on a topic is more effective than focusing on one narrow term. And so when it comes back to work productivity as an example, if you're a course creator, you want to own that term. A journey page can really help you with that.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, and how is a journey page laid out? What's the structure? And what is a journey page doing differently than, say, just a regular web page?

Marcio Santos
Yeah, so a hub page is, a journey page is laid out in sequential order. That's, that's the biggest, the biggest difference. And the way to contrast this is to think about a category page on your blog. So if you have a WordPress site, or if you've been to any WordPress sites, you know that there are category pages. And so usually you visit a category page, and there are a bunch of blog posts, just, but they're just in no real order. Maybe they order by date, maybe they order by feature.

But the difference for the journey page is that you have really like these visual guideposts of what is beginner level, for example, what is intermediate level, what is advanced? Or just, what is the order that you should consume the content? And so the layout reflects that. So you have, let's say basic content at the top, intermediate content in the middle, and then more advanced content at the bottom.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, and these, these are just links that are directing people to other content that's already on the blog.

Marcio Santos
Correct. Yeah. So you can have links to your own content, you can even have links to other people's content or to videos that you have on YouTube. Really the whole idea is to make a page that's so comprehensive and so useful, that anybody that really wants to learn more and wants to use that page as reference for the future in terms of, again, using the example work productivity, they're going to bookmark that page, they're going to remember it, they're going to talk about it, they're going to come back to it time and time, time over time, and maybe leave a link to it. Which is in SEO world the holy grail of improving your ranking.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, that's what I was going to ask. And I believe you answered that. But let's just break that down a little more. So the journey page is, is kind of like a database in a sequential order to give people content the way that they should consume it so that it makes sense, instead of just having 100 blog post on a website, and you don't know what to pick, right? So I understand how that helps the end user. But how does that help Google and you being able to get searched on Google in the SEO practices? How is that actually helping that side of things?

Marcio Santos
Good, good question. So the way the Google algorithm works is it rewards certain what we call signals, and one important signal that became more relevant over the past few years, are user signals in terms of their usability on the page. So let's think about work productivity, so somebody types in work productivity, and there are a bunch of results, right? So on the first page, let's just say there are 10 results there. If somebody clicks on the second result, and they visit the page, but then they click back instantly, and then they click on the third result. And now when they visit, the third result, they stay on the page a bit longer, they maybe click to a few pages.

What Google will do, is it will learn from that and say, "Look, I showed them the results in spot number two, and they weren't happy with it. And I showed them the results in spot number three, and it looked like they were happy because they didn't return." They'll use those signals to outrank number three to number two. Right? So the next time around, let's say, hypothetically, they would say, "Okay, let me show the result number three higher, because that'll probably, that's probably the best search result for this term for productivity."

And so that's essentially how the algorithm continues to continuously optimizes itself to show the best results. So breaking your content is important. You know, doing your keyword research and making sure you're optimizing your content is important. But today, you have to go way beyond that. You have to make sure that your content is laid out well, is useful, grabs people's attention. And so you have to essentially start off with the premise that people are completely scatterbrained, people are overwhelmed.

While they're visiting your website, they probably have their cell phone, in one hand, they have a tablet in the other, they have, you know a set of headphones on. They have kids screaming in the background, they have, I mean, there's a ton of things going on. And so your page has to hold them by the hand. If they're a beginner in the topic, you have to make sure that you're showing them beginner level stuff. If they're an advanced user, then you want to make sure that you're showing them advanced stuff in their journey.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, let's go to the beginning phases of anyone who's listening to this podcast. So on this podcast, we will have some people who haven't created a course and are just starting out and then we'll have others that are more advanced and we'll go step by step. But thinking about someone who's listening to this particular podcast right now, and they have just created their course or they don't have a course and they're getting started. What would you recommend someone do to implement these organic strategies? It's safe to say they're just kind of starting with nothing. What would be some of the first steps that you would recommend to someone who is just starting out?

Marcio Santos
Good question. I think the very, very first thing you want to do if you're just starting out, is to conduct some, a little bit of user research. And what this entails is getting into the shoes of your consumer to understand, what it is they're looking for, and how your solution can help them. By doing that, you will better understand you know, how your solution can stand out. Because nowadays, creating a course is not the issue. It's standing out is the issue. So if, for somebody starting out, that's, that's where I would definitely start.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, so going out and doing some some research and finding out what kind of information that you can provide. But let's say that we, we have that information, we kind of know the road we want to go down, the content we want to create. How do we create content that uses the proper SEO strategies versus just, you know, putting random content on a site and just hoping that it's going to rank?

Marcio Santos
Awesome question. So now that you've done your user research, and you have an understanding of like, the key moments that, what that buyer journey looks like, let's say, so the first idea that they had in their head would, before they even bought your course, or if you can track that.

Let's say that somebody's going to buy again, using the same example of work productivity. A course on how to be more productive at work. What is that first moment? Like, right, so maybe they, they need to read a blog post about the importance of being more product productive, or things that are keeping you from being productive. So is that a blog post? Right?

So think about a blog post at that level, and then go a little bit, one step deeper. And think about after they read that blog post, what is something that they, they're going to do to improve their productivity? Are they going to use a worksheet? Are they going to use checklists? Are they going to use a timer?

And then take it one step further, it's like, well, what's the next step after that? That's probably going to be buying your course. So I would, you know, for each of those steps, if we call the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel, I would create content or at least create an idea of what type of content you would have to create at each stage. And the funnel really has to map to the buyer journey.

And after that, what you want to do is start creating your, your journey page. So you can head over to nerddigital.com, there's a guide on there on how to get started. Because really what inevitably, what will happen is as you create your journey page, you will start to think through what type of content is basic, what type of content is intermediate, what is more advanced, so that you have the right content for, for your user, to convince them and show them that you should be trusted, and that you're helpful. And probably buying a course from you would be a good idea so that they can get more in depth information.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, cool. That makes a lot of sense. So one question that I have. And I know some other people will ask this because I get this question all the time, is how do you decipher what content you should be putting on, say, your blog or on your journey page, versus what would be in the course?

So let's use your example, I have a course on work productivity. And it goes through all my steps and phases of how I would do work, work productivity and teaching that and now I want to create organic content. Maybe have a blog and put some content on there. And I want to create content for this stage of the funnel. How do you tell what to create on your blog versus what you would create, say if it's already in your course?

Marcio Santos
Yeah, that's a very tough question. That's a, that's, that really depends. But I'll give you an answer. One thing that I've just started doing with this, this new, this new offering, right, so working with course creators, specifically, is I've taken the approach of thinking conceptually, and not tactically. And so that might just sound like a bunch of nonsense, but after doing SEO for so many years, I noticed that a lot of the times when I was essentially just writing content about SEO keywords and breakings and backlinks, for example, or having those conversations, I ended up just having these technical conversations, right?

And I think for, for me now, what I'm really learning is that to sell strategy, and to get that, because that's what I sell, I really have to speak about strategies. And so, you know, I've made a shift now where I essentially only write about strategies and not technical things. And so that is one approach, I think as a course creator that you can, you definitely want to use is think about the concepts and the frameworks. And the, the the bigger ideas that your course solves.

So in terms of productivity, what are, what is like a productivity framework that you can either design or adapt that already exists? And a framework is simply a way for you to think through. So you could have an easy way to, to do this is to take an idea and draw it. If you can turn it into a drawing, you're halfway there to turn it into a concept, because you then explain the drawing. And not just the technicalities of it. Right? So the concept should be something that is somewhat abstract, but it applies to your, to your problem.

So to give you a more clear example, in terms of productivity, there's the Eisenhower matrix. Right? And so the Eisenhower matrix, I'm going to actually pull this up on my screen. So I don't say some silly. So the Eisenhower matrix has been for around for quite a long time. And essentially what it is, it's, it's a doubles, it's a double sided matrix. And so you have urgent or not urgent on the top, and then you have important and not important on the left hand side. And so in that matrix, you want to decide, you know, do I do this first? Or do I schedule this? Do I delegate? Or do I avoid this?

So you could write this from a technical perspective and go down to the nitty gritty, fine, finer details of all the tasks and how they make decisions. Or you can come up with a concept like this matrix, then to, to help you make those decisions. When you do this, this completely changes the conversation, because people will view you as an expert. As soon as you come up with some kind of concept or some kind of framework. People will say, "Wow, how did you come up with that framework? or How did you come up with this idea? This is like a unique IP." And in doing that, it's very effective, especially for course creators. So that's something that you know, we've done very effectively with with RadReads.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's great. I love that, I started implementing the same information by, while watching Russell Brunson do the same thing. So when I started creating courses, it was a lot of technical, how to use Photoshop, you know, really diving deep. And now, now the stuff that I teach is with a whiteboard. And it's the same concept that you're talking about, if you could draw out the overall strategy, and explain that people just seem to get that so much better.

So we have, we have our strategy, we want to create content for our website. And the the content is really just helping drive traffic to the course. Correct?

Marcio Santos
Correct. So it does, it does usually three things, right? So the content, it drives the traffic to your website. But once people land on your website, it helps to build trust with them too. So it helps educate them. And what it should also do, is help to monetize that traffic. So you always want to keep those three things in mind whenever you're creating content. So you want to attract, you want to teach, and then you want to monetize the traffic that's coming in.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, let's, let's go through each one of those actually, I think would be great. So when we're talking about, let's say, the first one, the attracting phase. Of course, we go back to SEO, that we need to use SEO to get that content to rank on Google, but someone might still be kind of confused out there on how that actually works. So how are you actually using SEO to attract customers through your content? What does that look like? What is, what is Google looking for? What are the things that you can tell us that we can implement on our own blogs, our own websites that will help get us to rank and attract those customers?

Marcio Santos
Okay, a good question. The first thing I would do is I would look at related blogs, to figure out what is it that other blogs are writing about that are of interest? So I would start my topic research there after I do my user research. So again, if we go back to the productivity course idea, so if you're a productivity course creator, I would go to other productivity blogs, that's what I, that's where I would start. And then I'd go to the top ones, and look at what the most recent topics that they are writing about? Is it about using an Apple Watch. Is it about using wearables? Is it about AI? What is, what are the topics that they're writing about? And I would use that as my source of research, let's say as my seed words.

And then from there, I would go a little bit deeper, and I say, "Okay, what, what specific angle can I put on this content?" Because if you just simply write about wearables for productivity, that's too broad. You'd probably have to, you know, give it, give it a little bit more, more specificity. And so that's what I would do, I'd go one layer deeper, and I would try to break that topic down into, let's say, seven to ten helpful tips. So this is, is an easy way to create your first blog post is, let's say, you figure out, I actually, I could do this live with you.

So if I go to Google right now, and I type in a productivity, blog, blogs, we'll see a bunch of results. And the type, the top one here is lifehack.org. So I go to lifehack.org. And I'm looking through total productivity blogs, smart people read. So this right here, these are productivity experts. So that's, that's an angle right there productivity experts. And of these productivity experts, what I would do is I'd then go to their websites and see if those, those people have a specific angle. And then I would explore that. So you really have to find an angle. Because if you just write about something broad, you're never going to be found, like, it's, it's just never going to stand out.

The next step in that process is writing your content, right? So you're going to develop your content. So let's say you found a solution on this, this productivity angle, you break it down into two, let's say 11 steps. And then once you've, now that you've done your research, and you know, the blogs that are writing about these experts, you reach out to them and say, "Hey, look, I saw that you're writing about this topic. I think your topic is great. And I added, you know, just a twist to it, which I think is relevant for your audience, if you want to check it out. Here's a link." And by doing that, I mean, there are, you know, nuances and levels to the game. But by doing this, what you'll do is you'll build more traffic, you'll get more awareness, and eventually you build backlinks back to this content.

So by doing all of those things that I just said, that's essentially like what an SEO professional does on a daily basis. They research topics, then they validate, is their search volume inside a keyword tool, like ahrefs, right? So they'll put the topic in there, they'll see Okay, is there search volume? Is it very difficult to rank for this? Then they'll transform that into a blog post, then they'll promote it. And then after they might optimize it. So then after that, maybe like step number four or six in the process to go in and say okay, what other keywords? Can I maybe add some more keywords in here that are, that are relevant? Can I use some tools to help me optimize this better to have my title tags in order? Is the page optimized for speed? Do I have, Is the layout really easy to, for people to, to browse through the images? Are my headlines compelling and interesting? So those are, you know, some boilerplate type of tips that, you know, everyone should, should be implementing today.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, awesome. So I kind of like this strategy. So you're going out, you're finding relevant articles and information that's already talking about your topic, you're putting a twist on it. And then you're reaching back out to the people who posted those, and asking them to basically add yours in which you said creates a backlink. So can you just briefly describe what is a backlink and why it's important.

Marcio Santos
So a backlink basically is someone placing a link on their website, so on their blog, or on their homepage on their lineup page anywhere from their website, pointing to your website. That is what we call a backlink. And in terms of, again, inside the SEO world, what this shows Google, or what we believe that this shows Google and the, the algorithm is that someone out there gave you a vote of confidence, someone trusts you enough, trust your content enough to link to it.

So they're, they're saying, "Hey, I'm writing about this topic, I found this resource and here I'm placing a link, link to it. So go and check it out." Or I, you know, I found this resource and I've got my numbers from this source, you know, you can go and check out my numbers. So getting that's essentially a backlink. And as you can tell, it also fossils follows a very similar social dynamic that we use in society. If somebody says, you know, gives you a referral, you're going to trust that referral, a lot more. And so the backlink kind of works like that for the algorithm too. If a lot of people say that a source, a research is good, then it probably is.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, cool, perfect. So that is the method of attracting, getting people to check out your content, come into your world. You have these backlinks coming in where people were referring you and saying, "Hey, this is a great website, you should go check it out." Google sees that. And they say, well, we trust this website, and it moves you up in the search rankings. And then the second phase that you had in here was to make sure that your content teaches and builds trust. So how would you recommend someone do that? What do you mean by, the content needs to build trust?

Marcio Santos
Yeah, good question. So when it, when it comes to, to building trust, that is based on a psychological trigger of different psychological triggers that when activated, people instantly trust you more. And one way to do that is, I guess, with your content is, is by making it look more authoritative. And an easy way to do that, is just to make it longer. The moment your, your content is longer. Usually what happens is, where you know what some research was done on this, content that appears to be longer, instantly triggers this idea that, "Hey, this, this is something well researched, this is something well written, and the person that put this together knows what they're talking about." So LinkedIn itself can create this, this sense of awe, and that can help you build trust. So that's, that's one easy way that, that you can, you know, build trust and authority inside your, your marketplace or in the topic that you want to own to help you sell your course.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And it seems like it would connect very well back to the first step, which, if you have longer more in depth content, it seems like people would be more willing to put your link on their blogs and use you as a resource.

Marcio Santos
Correct.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, cool. And then the the final step here was to monetize the content. And this is probably the one that people are really interested in. We have people coming into our content, we have good well written thought out content that's building that authority, building that trust. Now, how do we monetize the content? And in terms of course creators, how can we make that leap from someone reading your blog posts to purchasing your course?

Marcio Santos
Yeah, that's a great question. So right here, I would go back to the first part of the conversation, when we, when we talked about the buyer journey. You want to go back to the buyer journey and map the content to, or just not the conversations that you want to have with somebody. Right? So if they're a beginner, what is the first conversation, the second conversation third and fourth conversation, so that they eventually buy?

Let's say, this is the first conversation, they read a blog post. Maybe the second conversation is, well, "Hey, you read this blog post? Why don't you download this resource? Or why don't you take this quiz? Or why don't you use this template to help you figure out where you are in your journey." So, for example, we have a quiz on our website nerddigital.com. You can visit the website, and there's a course launch quiz. And the quiz really is designed to help you as a course creator, figure out how ready are you, ready to launch? Right? So are you super ready or not ready at all? And quizzes have been known to do really well, in terms of converting visitors into leads. And part of monetizing, is, is converting them, right? So we have to put a name to a face or we have to put an email to to an IP, to a visitor. And so that big part of, you know, making money or selling your course, is transforming as many visitors as you can into leads, and then having more conversations usually through email to help sell your course.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. What software are you using for the quizzes?

Marcio Santos
Oh, I use this, you know, sometimes I use Typeform. I really love Typeform as a tool. But I personally use this WordPress,WordPress plugin, which I can't even remember the name. Just to tell you how good their branding is. But I can't remember their name. It was, it was, it was terrible to use. So I'll probably retire them soon.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, so your, you have a quiz on the site. The quiz will help people make a decision based on who they are or what, where they need to go in their journey. And that's capturing the leads. And then what's the, what's the next step? Is it you capture the leads, and then you offer the course?

Marcio Santos
Right. So in my case, I don't have a course ready. But what, what I would recommend for somebody that, that does is yes, you could, again, this also depends on what price your course is at. If this is something that's let's say, below $1,000 and it's an evergreen course, then, you know, a natural funnel that you can think about this, for this course is, you attract them to a blog post and the blog post attracts somebody to a quiz and then the quiz sends them to let's say a webinar that you can send them automatically or through email. From that webinar you give them a you know, a lot of ideas, teach them a lot of concepts, get them warmed up to what, what you have to offer. And then on the webinar itself or through email, you can then follow up with, with the offer.

So the offer can be an expiring offer, which usually works very well. So something that expires in the next 24 hours, or 48 hours or 72 hours, is usually incentive enough to get somebody to convert, again, if you've done a good job in the previous steps, and your offers compelling and content can give that user transformation. That simple funnel that I explained to you has been used to great effect by a bunch of marketers out there to make a lot of money.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, awesome. Yeah, that sounds awesome. So we have our content, we're attracting people in. We're using organic methods and SEO to rank on Google, use backlinks to move up the Google ladder and get people in. We're creating good well thought out content. And then that content is just providing the next step in the journey to maybe a lead magnet or quiz and then your offer at the end. Is there anything that we missed in that process?

Marcio Santos
So I would say that, no, you didn't you didn't miss anything. But there is, you know, what we do now with our, with our course launches is we have a little bit of a more sophisticated flow. And so the way we, we break down our current flow right now is we have, again, essentially three phases, we have this attract, we have excite, and then we have this profit phase.

And so in the attract phase, we combine not only SEO, so blog posts, but we also use YouTube, and we use amplifiers. And so the amplifiers are those people, those owners of blogs that I mentioned in the first previously, but those can also come from people that let's say, own a YouTube channel or like you, Jeremy that want to podcast, right? So doing some work with some amplifiers is super important. And having the strategy there is effective.

The next step in terms of excite, that's when you can offer, let say a mini course, which we can get to into later, because that really builds excitement for what you have to offer. And then the last phase is this profit phase. And this phase is where you, you know, you develop offers. This is where you have your, your landing pages and your upsells and things like that. So in terms of course launch, I would break it down that way.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, very good. Yeah, let's talk about the free course strategy real quick, because I know that, I always get people on both sides of the fence. Some people who love free courses and say they're great for attracting leads, other people who don't like free courses, because they say, people who get a free course won't buy your main product, because they just want free things. So what's your opinion on using a free course as a lead magnet? And how do you set that up? And what does that look like?

Marcio Santos
So the idea here for the free mini course, is to do it live. That's the biggest nuance that I would say, is to do it live and to do it over a few days. And the reason why this is effective, actually, let me just give you a number first. Well, through RadReads, they organized a mini course, before launching. And that mini course converted 4.6% of people that participated in the mini course into $1,000 offer. Right, so for 4.6%. And that number right there is already very encouraging. So if it's simply we just increase the number of people into mini course, we're gonna make more sales, everything else, if everything else stayed the same.

The way you do this is, you have to put in a little bit of work. So oftentimes people you know, we dream of full automation, or just sitting at home and making money with, in your sleep and things like that. And yes, they're, you know, money will come in, and you'll, you'll leverage your time and things like that. But in terms of this mini course idea for what we did, we did it over five days, and we did it live to, to his audience. And so that was super effective. And a strategy that I would recommend to anybody.

The nuance there is, because you're obviously thinking, "Well I don't want to give everything away," what you do is you have to really break this down into, to a basic concept, a basic entry level type of idea, that maybe just gives your user an overview, or just takes them to one small transformation. And so I'm working with another client right now who's selling a financial product. And the simple course that we're designing for her is to simply create a financial plan, right? Simply create a financial plan just for this year. And then on the back end of that there's going to be a course offer. So the course is related to investing in Bitcoin. So that just gives you an idea of how you might use a mini course to do that.

Jeremy Deighan
Perfect, awesome, well, Marcio thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It's been just great hearing all these different strategies. And hopefully that gives someone out there some really good ideas on how you can use organic methods to kind of just increase your business, get more people to your world, and hopefully make some course sales and help more people. That's, because that's why we want to do it right?

Where do you see yourself going in the future? So it sounds like you've got clients that you're helping out, and you're working and consulting and coaching others on how to implement these strategies. But in the next couple years, where would you like to see your business go? What are you trying to achieve?

Marcio Santos
Oh, that's a good question. So I have this, this belief that course creators are some of the most important people out there. And they're going to be even more important as we move forward because of the complexity of work. And because of the speed of change. I think that you know, things are changing so quickly, in every market, that we need to learn faster, and we need help. We just can't do it alone. We're sitting at home, you're trying to figure it out, trying to buy courses all the time, we're trying to, it's just not enough. It's just too difficult to do everything on your, on your own.

And you're going to have to transform multiple times in your career. Long gone are those days where you'd have one career and you just, you know, retire. Nowadays, you're going to have to reinvent yourself over and over and over again. And so I believe course creators are going to have a pivotal role in helping people during those transformations. And so I want to be there to help course creators create institutions, create schools, create movements, great groups that help people transform.

Jeremy Deighan
That's amazing. Well, I just wish you the most success on your journey and to helping us course creators out. We all appreciate it. And I know that there will probably be a lot of people listening who would love to learn more about you and your services and how you can help them out. So where would be the best place to send people so that they can find out more about you and what you have to offer.

Marcio Santos
The best place to go is nerddigital.com. Just visit that website, and we have some resources to get you started again, we have the course launch quiz that you can take today to give you an idea of how ready you are to launch your course today.

Jeremy Deighan
Perfect. Well, thank you so much Marcio, for coming on the show today. And I just look forward to talking to you in the future.

Marcio Santos
Awesome. Thank you, Jeremy.