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How to Make Money and Build New Revenue Streams Using Co-Kinetic
Here are some ideas of the ways you can use the Co-Kinetic subscription to generate revenue
How to use Co-Kinetic to: Deliver a free or paid for taster or introductory appointment
How to use Co-Kinetic to: Deliver a free or paid for taster or introductory appointment

We explain why you might want to offer free taster appointments, opportunities of when to do it, and how to implement it using Co-Kinetic

Tor Davies avatar
Written by Tor Davies
Updated over a week ago

WHICH Subscriptions allow you to run this campaign?

WHY would you do it?

Offering free or discounted taster/introductory appointments in targeted ways, can be a very useful strategy to help you jump-start the process of converting new prospects into paying clients.

WHEN might you do it?

Ideal opportunities present themselves when people take a 'first' action:

  • Sign up to your email newsletter (or any other lead magnet resource)

  • Follow one of your social media pages

  • Make an enquiry off your website (that's maybe a little tenuous and doesn't look like a willingness to commit to a fully paid appointment at that point)

  • Meet you, or one of your team, at a local event.

The important thing is to include a description of your offer, and a link to your sign up page, in any follow-up communications to the above actions.

The key here is to be targeted. This offer needs to be reserved for special occasions and mustn't be too freely or widely available.

I wouldn't personally recommend offering it visibly on your website for example as that risks devaluing you. Use it as a very specific offer, for a very specific reason and make people take a proactive action (like those I've outlined above), to earn the privilege.

Think of it as a way to jump-start the prospect-to-customer conversion process.

HOW might you do it? Offering a free versus a discounted appointment?

This decision is really down to you, and how much in-need of cash/customers you are but here are my thoughts.

Only offer free if it's a targeted 'first action' type of event like those I've outlined above AND you commit to promoting some kind of paid 'upsell' to the customers who take the freebie, when they attend their session.

In other words, give them a strong incentive at the free session, to commit to a paid follow-up appointment, if necessary, offer them a discount to make the jump from free to paid, easier to commit to.

Alternatively, instead of offering a free session, create a discounted offer, like a 50% discount off a particular treatment or first session, or appointment with a new therapist.

These kind of events can be extremely effective as an ad run through one or more social networks because you can make your offer very targeted and you can turn it on and off as you want to.

But big caution, again I would recommend only running this kind of event sporadically and infrequently, or for special occasions, otherwise you risk building a reputation of having loads of free time > ie. not enough clients > ie. maybe you're just not very good at your job, and that's definitely not an impression we want to give.

That said, if you know you're going to have some quiet time, make that the reason for running a promotion (and include a mention of that in your promotional copy).

Please, please, please don't just copy what other businesses are doing (however successful they may seem), if their methods go against your ethos and make you feel uncomfortable.

Transparency, honesty and feeling good about your offers, your business and the services you provide, are absolutely fundamental to a good and more importantly, successful, marketing strategy.

Here are some points to consider when running this kind of campaign

  • Free offers will get more sign-ups (so good for building your email list) but you'll probably also get a lower attendance rate ("easy come, easy go")

  • Asking people to sign up to a paid commitment will mean less people will sign up compared with the free offer, but you'll get a better show-up rate (and therefore also return on your investment (ROI)).

  • You have two options on the paid offer, you can either ask them to pay at the point they sign up (this is good if your offer is a really great offer as they're more likely to be motivated to do it) or you could let them sign up to the paid offer and charge them when they attend. If you ask them to pay upfront, your take-up will be smaller, but you get the cash upfront, and you'll have a much lower no-show rate.

  • Always test, test test. As you can see it's a case of swings and roundabouts. Try all three strategies and see which one works best for you.

  • You must have an upsell for every appointment: Regardless of whether they're attending a free or a discounted session, you must have an upsell that you can move them to next. It could be a discounted paid appointment, if they've attended a free session, or it could be a full price appointment or even a discounted package of appointments if they've attended a paid session. All these 'upsells' need to be included as part of your total campaign ROI.

  • Know your numbers. It's very important to count everything from numbers of sign-ups converting to attendee show-ups and then attendee show-ups to people who purchase your upsell. You need numbers of and therefore percentage conversion rates, as well as revenue generated. That way you will be able to predict more accurately what you can expect to generate in future when you put more people into the funnel.

  • Here's an example: if you know you can spend £20 in Facebook advertising and get 20 sign-ups to a free appointment (which by the way is 20 new email leads which in and off itself has a value as long as you continue to nurture those email leads). 10 of those leads (people) attend their appointment, 6 of whom buy your upsell to a discounted next appointment at £25 a piece, which is worth £150. That alone may seem like a lot of work, for not much in return, but if 3 of those 6 people then buy your next upsell, which might be a package of 5 appointments for the price of 4 worth £200 to you, that's an extra £600. So £150 (first paid appointment) + £600 (package upsell) = £750 for an outlay of £20 in advertising fees. That's a 37.5 times ROI, or in other words give me £1 and I'll give you £37.50 back (slightly a no-brainer hopefully!). And that's without taking into account what else that customer might end up buying from you in the future ie. CLV.

  • Knowing your customer lifetime value (CLV) is important. How much is that new client likely to be worth over the course of their 'lifetime' with you. Many people don't know their CLV, but you should do, because every time you gain a new client, you don't just earn that day's new fees or that one upsell, you effectively earn the customer lifetime value.

HOW to implement this campaign using Co-Kinetic

There are three different ways of doing this depending on which subscription you hold.

If you hold a Full Site subscription

  • You can use the pre-built campaign at the following link which is included in your subscription. This pre-built campaign includes:

    • A pre-designed web-sign up page (and sharable web link) with pre-written web copy which you can edit to suit your needs

    • Ready-to-post social media

    • A pre-designed, editable ticket/coupon you can offer as a download to new registrants

    • An automated editable email which is sent to new registrants as soon as they sign up

    • You can also choose what happens after sign-up eg. visit the standard thank you page we provide, or redirect them to a coupon/ticket you've created, or your own online booking system)

    • Step-by-step instructions showing you how to use the campaign in question.

If you hold a Patient Information Resources, Clinical Education or Social Media subscription you have two options:

  1. You can purchase access to the pre-built campaign at the following link, mentioned above which includes everything you need to initiate this campaign in less than 30 minutes OR

  2. You can use the blank customisable web page template included in your existing subscription to set up your own Introductory offer web sign-up page. You will need to do 3 things:

    1. Add your own images to the web sign-up page

    2. Write your web sign-up page copy

    3. Choose what you want to happen when your new registrant signs up (eg. visit the standard thank you page we provide, or redirect them to a coupon/ticket you've created, or your own online booking system)

What's Next?

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