A branded event goes beyond slapping your brand colors and logo on a presentation. Branded events create interactive, often themed experiences for your audience, and they sell your signature offer like hotcakes on the back end. If you're over selling through webinars, a branded event might be for you instead.
Amanda Shuman, brand designer, marketing strategist and founder of CarryLove Designs created virtual events that drew in the exact clients she was looking for, and converted them from free or low ticket attendees into booked clients for five figure contracts. In this case study Amanda breaks down the three branded events she hosted last year that generated $180,000 and the conversion rates for every step in her funnel. Find out how to make your virtual event the can't miss experience of the year while making massive revenue from a small audience.
Welcome to Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. Every Monday go behind the business and a case study style interview with the leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it, and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
Hey, friends, welcome Amanda Shuman, to the show today, Amanda is a brand strategist. And I am really stoked for her case study because it's all about creating branded virtual events to sell your own offers. And I'll let Amanda define for us what a branded virtual event is. But anyways, Amanda, thank you for being here. Absolutely. I'm stoked to be here. I mean, let's start first with your Cubicle to CEO story. You know, that's the first question we ask all of our guests. What was the catalyst that led you to being an entrepreneur?
I was fired from my job.
Oh, okay. That'll kind of make the decision for you. Is there a story to that? Or is it kind of just cut and dry?
No, no, there is a story. So I was working in corporate and I was a digital marketing coordinator. And I worked on a team of all males, all older males. And I had just recently had a baby. And my daughter, she kept getting sick. And I didn't know like, we couldn't figure out why we kept taking her to the doctor. She was getting sick. So she kept being sent home from daycare. And I like i If she comes home sick, like you can't just take her back to school the next day.
So I kept having to like, call out of work or out of work. And I don't think that, they all had wives, and they were older. And I don't think there's like a generational gap to where they didn't understand, like, you have to get home and I have to, like take care of my kid. So I had doctor's notes from all this. And of course, they from HR standpoint, couldn't do anything because as we've seen all this work, but I had doctor's notes to back it up.
Right
so they they fired me for my work quality, not being up to par. So I went to I remember, I was bawling my eyes out to my husband in the car. Like I held my head high. I did not let them see me cry. I like walked out with my my box. Like with my my dignity and
Like the movies. Yeah,
yes, yes. Just like the movies like you can picture me walk out his corporate office with like, a little box with my dignity. And that's about it. And I got to the car and I just bawled my eyes out. And I called my husband. And I'm pretty sure it was on that call that I was like, I don't want to do this. Again. I don't like corporate, I'm not cut out for it. I'm not like, please don't send me that.
And so we talked about it. And he was like you have six months like from I'm gonna be the logical person here and be like, you have six months to kind of like, get your business off the ground. And if it works out great if it doesn't like we have to be adults and like figure out another plan. So I had six months.
Wow. So I mean time was a tickin. Right? That's that's really, I think such a pivotal moment where it really is one of those things that I'm sure you reflect back on and think that sucked that that happened, but at the same time, like had it not happened. Would you have taken the leap on your own accord? Like do you think looking back you would have made that move on your own later on? Or do you think you would still potentially be working in a job like that?
I would like to think that I wouldn't. But honestly, I'm such a safe person and like the corporate job was a safe bet that I would have probably stayed I would have hated my life. And so it definitely was a blessing in disguise. Looking back.
Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes I say like the catalyst is yourself. And sometimes the universe or God knows exactly what you need, and, you know, will decide the catalyst for you. So I'm glad it all worked out. And your case study is obvious proof that your business lasted far beyond the six month timeline that you originally had. Today, we're going to be chatting about how you made $180,000 in revenue from RE branded virtual events last year, and how you creatively used these branded events to convert attendees into a high ticket service. So that's your signature rebranding experience as a brand designer.
Now, the first thing I want you to do I alluded to this is tell us what a branded experience or a branded virtual event is, because I think for many of us when we think of a virtual event, and we're like, Well, if your know if your brand is attached to it, isn't that a branded virtual event? But I'm sure you need something a little bit different. So how would you define that? And how is it different than in normal virtual events?
Yeah, so a branded event for us, whenever we talk about branded events, the easiest way to bring it to life for people is like a costume party that you get invited to.
Yeah, it's basically a themed event. So I'm sure we'll get into some more. But one of our flagship events that we do is our Find your first class ideal client at challenge. And it's first class ideal client, and it's a travel based, so all the imagery that you see has like suitcases and packing your bags and like travel destination. All of the terminology that we use in there, it's very, like, has puns and wordplay. We'll do stuff like, during the last challenge that we had, I had virtual event backgrounds. And so we did like, Guess the destination and you would win like prizes, if you could guess the destination behind me. And so it's it's very, like, full on all our, like, themed parties that are virtual events.
Very interesting. Okay, so actually a business that comes to mind when you're, especially when you're talking about the travel of theme, Sophia Amoruso. I don't know if you're familiar with the founder. But you know, she's had many successes in her belt, Nasty Gal, girlboss, etc. Her most recent venture is business class. And I've always admired how every single Now granted, hers is not necessarily an event. It's a product, but I love how her course business class is completely branded around travel, everything from like the onboarding, like you get like a ticket, right?
Your see and everything is themed around that. So the way you described, it makes a lot of sense to me. And I can see how on the consumer side, it also feels much more experiential when everything is themed. Now your signature branded event to my understanding is your brand unwrapping event.
Can you describe what this holiday themed brand unwrapping event looks like feels like? Like, I'm assuming it has something to do with the holiday season. But at the same time, I know you also hosted this event three times last year, so maybe the timing of the year isn't as relevant. Can you? Can you explain?
Yeah, so we did three branded events, actually, two of them were the the Find your first class. I know. We launched that in February in September of last year. And then we had such great results that I went to my business coach and I was like, Okay, what, like branded events for me, if you're continually marketing, it can start to feel really stale, and like, not exciting anymore. And so I was like I really branded events make everything and marketing so much more fun from the Creator side as well.
So I was like, What could we do? That would be a third of them that we could add on that's different, and just like test in this branded event, but in a different event space. And so that's when the brand unwrapping came about for a lot of our clients we serve are actually service based businesses as well. And we can feel like we are always just like continually selling, continually selling and we're just like in this sales cycle all the time.
And so for the brand unwrapping, it actually has to do with marketing yourself and actually putting together these branded events and like unwrapping of your own branded of it, so it kind of teaches people how to do that for themselves. Especially for like wedding pros. That's a big community that we serve for wedding pros. You're coming up on engagement season. And so where they're booking and for a lot of wedding pros, they don't think of themselves as like online marketers to where they have you know, we're
We're used to like funnels and launches, and they just don't do that type of stuff. Right. And so inside the brand and wrapping, we're kind of like breaking down, you know, this is what a sales cycle looks like. This is what a marketing funnel looks like this is how even if you don't have a necessarily like cart open and cart close, right, because we don't either at CarryLove Designs, we don't have a car open cart close necessarily. And so it's creating a launch without having that
I actually completely understand what you mean, because we're finding ourselves in a similar situation this year with the launch of the C-Suite, which I know you're a part of, you know, previously, it was cart open cart closed while it was in beta because we wanted to kind of have better control, I guess over the the volume of members that we were serving at a time. But once it opens evergreen, you know, people can join at any time.
But what we're planning to do is kind of almost do these mini pushes monthly, that focus on different themes, or different deal drops, or different guest mentors that are coming into our space that we can really highlight and kind of, to your point, create new excitement around something that is available all the time.
And so I would love to know between these two events, the first class client, and then the brand unwrapping events, which would you say had a better overall success to your business, whether it was revenue added or conversion rates? And then let's take that, like whichever one you want to focus on and dial deeper into some of the numbers.
Yeah, the one big difference between the two is deaf mind, your first class that we did last year both times was a completely free challenge. For the brand unwrapping, it was a paid challenge. So it was $48. For the for the brand unwrapping challenge. So that was like the one big difference between the two.
Okay, awesome. Well, in that case, I kind of maybe want to play a little bit in both because you know, I like to give people different options to choose whatever model fits best for their business if they want to borrow or implement a similar strategy.
So let's start with the Find your first class client, like you said, this is a free event. How many tickets on average did use or how many registrations however you want to call it? Did you get per event? I know you said you did it twice last year? And was there any form of immediate upsell on the back end of someone registering whether it was an order bump or some sort of VIP upgrade? Or was it truly like free all the way through until I'm assuming you pitch a service at the end?
Yeah, so for the first we ran it twice last year. So the first time it was completely free. There wasn't any order bumps or anything like that. We did have Facebook ads running the first time and we have Facebook ads running. I want to say about a year prior so we weren't coming into the Facebook ads like brand new we had some data. But we saw that Facebook ads were not they were converting to challengers signups but on the back end, they weren't converting to clients.
And so the first time we ran it, we had Facebook ads the second time we did not implement Facebook ads. So with the Facebook keeping that in mind, the first one that we ran it in February, we had 281 signups. And then whenever we got rid of the Facebook ads, we had 99 signups the second time.
Awesome. And the second time, same thing. No immediate upsells available.
Right? Yeah, no immediate upsells.
Okay, awesome. And then for the launch slash promotion window for the free challenges, about how long did you allow people to what was the enrollment window, I guess?
Yeah. So it was about I want to say about two weeks that we had an enrollment window, and it kind of ramps up, you know, the first week, we're kind of just like lightly putting it out there. We did have, this wasn't as strategized, I guess you could say, as I as I would like it to be moving forward. We did have a waitlist up for the second time. So the page was still alive and people get signed up for the waitlist to be notified. But But yeah, I would say about a two week pre launch window that was kind of ramping up the closer that we got to the challenge.
Okay, awesome. And then what was really the driving factor behind leaving the free challenge model behind and in choosing instead to charge for the brand unwrapping event and to make that a pay challenge.
Really, I wanted to test it out. I think for 2024. What we are thinking about doing is the free option with the paid upgrade. And so I wanted to test and I have never offered anything in that price point before. What we do is like five figures, it's you know, high high touch point and I was like, let's see how this like $40 offer. We'll just go over with people.
Yeah. And I mean, we found similar success in very similar price range for our pay challenge. We charge $55 on the front end, and then we have a VIP upgrade for $195. Or well, I guess you could immediately order bump that when you purchase, but also on the back end throughout the challenge as you go through the experience for your $48 paid challenge, how many tickets? Did you sell to that? And was there any other back end upsell prior to be option to actually purchase one of your high ticket services?
Yeah, so for this one, we did have an order bump to where they could have a personalized website audit sent to them, as we call it a stocking stuffer. So they wanted to stock their stuffing with a website audit. So we had 31, people sign up for the page challenge. And then we had about 25% conversion rate with eight of them upgrading to the website audit, which was I want to say $147 for the website audit.
Okay. I just wanted to pause for a moment and say, Well, I want to comment on a couple things. First off, I hope as you're listening to Amanda's case, study that you're already feeling really encouraged, because sometimes I think with case studies when you hear really big numbers, right? And we really show a wide spectrum of guests here on the show. So you may be listening, for example, to Amy Porterfield episode, where she's talking about getting 10s of 1000s of leads for a challenge and thinking, oh my god, like I don't I don't know how to realistically make that happen in my business.
But then here, you're listening to Amanda tell you 31 registrants for a paid challenge. If I do the quick math there. Let's round up to $50. Right? What is that? Like? 30 times 50? Is? Oh, geez, now I'm putting myself on the spot. Is that 1500? No, that $1,500? That's not right.
I I think it is, but I have so I the income that we made was a little over 2000. But that's because we have the website audits put in there as well.
Okay, perfect. I wasn't, I was like literally pulling out my phone calculator. Like, wait a second, I probably just made a fool of myself. But no, that's close enough. So. But the cool piece is, you know, the 2000 of dollars that you made from this actual page challenge. Keeping in mind for those of you listening, this case study is about how that brought in $180,000 in revenue. So don't feel discouraged if you're creating some sort of front end offer that doesn't bring in that much revenue because it's really all about that back end.
The second thing I wanted to comment on was how amazing of just like exemplifying the branded experience by calling your order bump a stocking stuffer like that is amazing. What other tiny details in the brand unwrapping event did you get to infuse that kind of like stayed on theme with that holiday trend.
So it actually was a pajama party. And it was best like at the one best dress for the pajama party. Then we gave out like prizes and giveaways but I love that you brought that like we don't have a large like a I think I might have said somewhere I'm like, I'm not an Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, like we don't have a large audience.
And I'm so glad that you brought that up because it can sometimes feel like unattainable where I don't have that many people in my audience, I'm not going to make, you know, a seven figure launch. I mean, that would be awesome.
But with her audience numbers ends, I love that you do bring people on to the to the podcast that show different audience sizes and expectations. But that's definitely something I keep in mind with the $48. Like it was never about the income on the front end, it's always about securing the high dollar amount in the backend.
Amazing. Just to give even further context, as we kind of expand on this brand unwrapping event. Can you walk us through the actual event high level? Like how many days what's happening on each day? And any of course, any branded moments?
Please feel free to pepper that throughout your explanation, because I love to hear that like the pajama party I got to know like, what day is that happening was that all of the days that people were showing up in their PJs was announced at the beginning that there was going to be a costume contest like tell us all the things but just walk us through so we can kind of visualize like what this event actually felt like as a customer going through it.
Yeah, so for the first class I don't client that's actually a three day challenge. And so that takes place over three different days for the brand unwrapping. It was a two hour workshop.
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Yeah, so there's a little bit of a difference there. For the first class I know client challenge we break it down into the three days the first day, we actually we call IT security checkpoint. So basically making sure that you have all the right things like packed in your bag. We have a what's called your completed like client compass. And so a lot of like wordplay is really, really fun. Day two was called perfect inflight pairings. So having to like pair the right audience with the right message. And day three was your custom itinerary. So every day is like branded in that that travel theme.
Did you get feedback in the moment from people experiencing this in real time saying like, Oh, I love like do people were were people commenting on the branded aspects? And do you feel that influenced their engagement or conversion on the back end in any tangible way?
I think that in the day and age that we are in, you might have heard this come from Ashlyn Carter before she has said, win the attention, win the dollar and so that's the main reason why I started branded events from the beginning is because we are in such a noisy online space that I wanted to do something that was out of the box in caught people's attention and made them want to sign up. So I can't think of anything like people said, that comes top of mind. But I do think that it helped in capturing people's attention and getting them inside the challenge,
right?
Of course, converts on the back end.
That's amazing. Did you have a shoot of any kind, whether it was photos or videos to actually create, like a visual of I'm just thinking like, in flight pairings? Like, did you like put together like a mock, I guess, like a plated meal that someone would get served on a flight? Or did you use visuals in any way to help capture that attention to your point?
Yeah, so for both of them, we had two different photo shoots done. So if you go on to the challenge, the challenge is, is closed right now. But if you go to the page, it will show you it's pure love. designs.com/clients is the page and you can see all the imagery, we have like maps, and luggage. And it's very much like I'm fully invested. Like if I'm going to do a branded event, like I'm doing a branded event No, like one foot in one foot out.
And so with both and then for the brand I'm rapping we did another photo shoot as well. And so we had like, Christmas decorations and like wrapping paper and slippers on stuff.
Okay, you're speaking my love language. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see I'm like beaming and nodding enthusiastically, as Amanda is talking because this is exactly why and Amanda all just like slight tangent, then right back to the case study. But I feel like you get it since you're actually in the C-Suite. I really truly believe like one of the things that we really wanted to be intentional about with curating the community in our membership is that we wanted it to be industry diverse. Because to your point, when you're in a specific niche, like we are in online business, or even more specifically in like marketing and education, it can be so easy to just become copycats of everyone else, where everyone is doing the same things.
But my best ideas always come from people outside of our industry and observing other types of small businesses. So that's why we really want to attract a diverse group of small business CEOs in our C-Suite membership. And what you're seeing here with like, getting really specific with the visuals for each branded event reminds me a lot actually of observing how some of my favorite fitness apparel brands, how they approach their like launch drops for new collections or new lines.
Like I'm thinking, you know, one of the ones I've admired from afar for a long time from a marketing perspective is Heidi's buff bunny collection, like the way they go all out. Like when they did like their Candyland collection. It was like they built a gym out of candy and like did all of their visuals that way. And that just blew my mind. Like the visuals were so eye catching. So different. So out of the box. And so, for any of you who are listening to this right now, we're going to link Amanda's webpage that she just said in the show notes. So don't worry, if you didn't quite catch that just click the link below. I bet you're gonna get so many ideas just out of observing what Amanda has built. So like, go click, go watch, go, you know, pour over the imagery. That's so so cool.
Okay, back to the case study. Thanks for letting me take that tangent the back end. upsell like the true moneymaker. Right? The service that you're pitching at the end? Was that the same service that like all roads were leading to for both the first class ideal client as well as the brand unwrapping event? Like were both of those pointing to the same service? Or were they each selling a different service on the back end?
Yeah, so they're both pointing to the same service, our signature experience, which is our four phase rebranding process that we take our clients to?
Awesome, and what is the price point of that service?
The price point is 12,000. And it can be broken down into payment so they can pay anywhere from like all of it upfront, or from 1500 to $2,400 a month.
Amazing. So you would say then that the majority of that $180,000 that we're focused on in this case study came directly from the sale of that $12,000 package is that correct?
Yes. So the $180,000 was all from contract signed. So it may not have been immediately like money in hand, but it's contracts that were fulfilling. The only other income that we made was that $2,000 From the order bumps on the brand unwrapping.
That's so impressive. So you kind of gave us the the numbers for the Find your first class, ideal client challenges, but then for the brand unwrapping. You said there were 31 registrants, if you remember. And you may not from the top your head. But if you have the numbers anywhere, do you have the actual back end conversion rates for each of those three events? Like how many converted from each of those three into the $12,000? Service?
Yeah, so I have it broken down from like, conversion from signups to consultation. So for our sales process, we do consultations that you have to book so you're booking like a decision call with us. And so from that decision call, then we'll book you because what we do is so high level and high touch point that we want to make sure that it's in good fit on both sides.
Yeah, by the way, can I just interject real quick? I have never heard anyone call, I guess what some would consider a discovery call or a sales call a decision call. And I love that I am obsessed, like, I mean, because ultimately, that is what sales is right? Helping someone make an informed decision. And I always tell people this if you remove the pressure of feeling like you have to convince someone to say yes, it's not about that. It's just helping them make a decision whether it's yes or no, it's a win, I think in either case.
And so the fact that you actually call it a decision call, I think is just again, speaks to your branding brain because it like I feel like it subconsciously sets the expectation for the person before they even book the call, like, Oh, I'm expected that the outcome of this call is going to be that I make a decision on whether or not to move forward. So anyways, applause continue.
Okay, so for the first time that we ran the find your ideal client challenge, because we were running Facebook ads, it brought our conversion rate down a little bit for the signups for the challenge. So from people viewing the page to signing up for the challenge the first time it was a 15% conversion.
And then from the people who participated in that three day challenge, and then booked a consultation call, we had a 4% conversion. And then from booking a consultation call to signing them and them saying yes, on their decision call was a 70% conversion.
Oh, wow. super high. Okay, so let's break it down into numbers. If I remember correctly, you said that first challenge was like the bigger group size. So what did you say was like just shy of 200 people who signed up? Is that right?
So for the first time with the Facebook ads, it was we had 281 people sign up for the challenge.
Oh, just shy of 300. Okay, perfect. So then of those people you said 4% booked a call. So 11 Right. 11 people, okay, great. And then of those 11, then times point seven. So time 70%. So seven to eight people ended up becoming clients. Is that right?
Yes. That is.
Ok amazing. So that okay, that funnel walkthrough is extremely helpful. I feel like and again, like you said, setting realistic expectations based on what the top of funnel audiences I think that's a part most people misses. Sometimes when you're like trying to implement a similar strategy, I think it's easy to focus on the bottom of funnel numbers, oh, man and got like eight clients to this $12,000 package. But it's like for you to meet that bottom of funnel metric, you had to hit the top of funnel like almost 300 registrants. So go ahead and share the numbers for the second event. I'm curious to see how they matched up because I know you also took away cold traffic from this second run through
Yeah, so for the second time that we were in challenge with alpha Facebook ads, our sales page conversion rate, which lists still blows my mind 48% What's Yeah, oh my gosh, that's amazing. So we had 99 signups from that for people who went through the challenge and then signed up for a decision call was 3.7%. And then once again, from those we booked 71% of the front position, call to contract signed.
Join Amanda's find your first class ideal client challenge. A three day no fluff experience designed for those ready to elevate their businesses. Perfect for service based businesses with two plus years in the game who want to tackle the root causes of booking low rate clients. Don't miss out. Join Amanda's waitlist for a march takeoff and buckle up for three days of high flying action, including daily workshops, live coaching, and a chance to win bonuses and prizes. Visit CarryLovedesigns.com/clients Now to secure your seat, let's make your business take off together. Again the link is Carrylovedesigns.com/clients will also drop a clickable link below in the show notes.
Interesting. So the, actually, the two bottom metrics, the registrant to decision call booking and then decision call booking to actual clients didn't change that much between the two like they were more or less 4% for the decision call and more or less. Now I'm blanking on what that second number was 71 though I wouldn't use 70% for the for the conversion. That's so interesting. What looking back, because I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that second audience because you didn't run Facebook ads was much warmer, maybe had more of a connection with your brand to begin with? Is there anything you would have done differently that you think could have increased those conversion rates at the bottom, like the number of people who booked a decision call or or even further increase the number of people who actually signed up to be a client.
So something that we do, because the signature experience is always open? 24/7 like you can always join. The reason why we do these launches and why people sign up during this time is because we do upgrades. So we never, we never discount. Like I always tell people, the lowest that you see the signature experience stay. That's the lowest it's always going to be I will never discount our work. But we do upgrade.
So the first time that we did the challenge, the upgrade was an email marketing starter kit. So you got like one free opt in that we did. We did a funnel, we did the copy, we did the landing page. And then you also got a strategy session, which was like a one hour like power hour where we could talk anything. It's like a business coach session.
Okay
the second time, I partnered up with a system strategist, Julie of Dallas Girl Friday in she Yes. And she offered her services at like an affiliate rate for us. And so anybody who booked during this time, they also got all of their systems overhaul. And
oh, wow,
I don't we're playing around and seeing like, do different upgrades, you know, does that a bringing a different type of clientele, depending on what we're offering, but also does it affect conversions is like something more juicy or than like another? And so I don't know if that affects anything. But yeah, that's something that we're playing around with is trying like different upgrades and seeing if that changes, any metrics.
Interesting, okay. So in a way, like basically just bonus value that you're providing them, they're not paying to my understand they're paying anything extra beyond the 12,000 to get these but it's like an enrollment bonus if they only if they sign up during this specific window. Is that correct?
That's exactly correct. And I think the other thing that I would focus on that I am focusing on more this year, during the cooling off, like non launching period is building up our email list we have so I send out every single week, our weekly newsletter called our weekly scoop, and I really I try making it like very high level, like, if you spend five minutes reading this, you're going to get something out of it. Because I want to teach people that like open our emails, like, you know, it's good quality stuff. It's not throwaway emails in there. And so I want to do more of like, email list building, but also getting our offer in front of new eyes so that we're not exhausting our audience.
Right. I think that makes complete sense, especially if you're not going to be as focused on utilizing other traffic sources, like running ads or whatnot. Oh, wait, did you go through the conversion funnel stats yet for the brand and rapping or did we skip over that?
We skipped? We can go back.
Yeah, let's go back to that. And then I'll ask my next question.
So for that one, this one was the paid challenge. So this one was $48, we had a conversion rate of 23% for signups. And then we had the same. So for the conversion rate from people who went through the challenge and then booked we had a 3.7%. And then from decision call to booking it was a 71% was old.
Okay, that is like down to the decimal 3.7%. Okay, so there's obviously some sort of consistent trend there. I would be curious to see, like you mentioned, for example, maybe playing with different bonuses and different upgrades to get the conversion rate beyond 71%. Which, by the way, 71% is already a phenomenal conversion rate. So it's not like, you know, anything you do is really the cherry on top. I feel like at this point, but I am curious, are you going to test anything to specifically incentivize booking more decision calls? Like is there any sort of upgrade per se that you provide, just for people to even book the call in the first place?
No, but that's a really, really good idea. And then one of the things that I had been focusing on is how can we get more people involved in the challenge because is looking back on people who were the most involved in the challenge. And I'm sure you have seen this for years as well. The more that people are involved, the higher likelihood they have of booking the product or the package afterwards. And so I'm thinking like, how can we get out of these, like the 100 people that sign up, you know, you might have 20 to 30 people that are actually participating. So how can we raise the number of people participating in the challenge,
right? Yeah. Do you? And do you find that pretty consistent even between the challenge and the two hour workshop? Like, were you seeing 20 to 30%? Show upgrades even for the brand unwrapping event? Or did you see a higher show up rate for that one? Because it was simply one standalone two hour event?
Yeah. So for the three day challenge, of course, naturally, we see more people show up on the first day, and then it kind of dwindles down from like, first to third day, but definitely, and that probably stayed around like the 10 to 30% range, okay? But definitely for the brand unwrapping. I would say we are probably closer to like a 40% show up rate, because it just was a two hour workshop.
Okay, that makes sense. I would love to know, the actual transition from okay, we're wrapping up our three days together and the challenge to actually pitching the $12,000 service. What was your modality to pitch? Did you invite people to a webinar that then pitched booking the decision Call? Were you just making like announcements throughout the challenge to book a decision call? How did you actually, I guess, sell that decision called both in the three day challenge and on the two hour workshop?
So for the three day challenge, it's like no secret that because it's a free challenge, like it's no secret that at the end, I'm going to be pitching. So why don't we give them a free travel guide when they sign up? Inside the travel guide is at the very end, it's basically like a sales workbook for us it goes through like case studies from past clients, I tell you that like this is not a course to where we can let 200 People in like we have a set number of start dates.
And so I have like all the start dates, and I'm like, start planning out like which start date Do you want to reserve now. So then the decision calls open up on that third day. The third day, we spend about 30 minutes like going through content. And then it's like a 30 minute ish sales pitch. Because I'll have past clients come on and talk about like their experience and results they've gotten with their rebrand and like, how it's changed their marketing. And then after that we have the cart open for them to book a decision call for seven days.
Oh, okay, interesting. And if they miss that seven day window to book a decision call, I'm assuming they could still potentially book the call, but then the upgrades would no longer apply. Is that true?
Yes.
Okay,
exactly.
Awesome. And then for the branded event, or for the brand unwrapping event. Similar format.
Yeah, it's similar format. Of course, with it being a paid event, we spend less time pitching on the back end. So it's probably like a 10 minute sales pitch. Very much less same, though. It's where like, these are all the upgrades that you receive. And so with a brand new unwrapping, the upgrade that we tried this time was three month group coaching, because the workshop was based around like marketing is basically we are creating like a three month group coaching to where we'll take you through what you just learned, we'll build that sales campaign with you. You'll have you know, Slack access to ask any questions or any hurdles, you'll have that community there that's going through the same thing and building up their funnel. And so we did a three month group coaching as the incentive for that one, right.
That's awesome. Thank you for explaining that. The same kind of going back to the one of my very first like just sparkle moments, surprise and delight moments with a PJ party. Was there any like strategy behind that? Or was that just purely like I said, a surprise and delight moment to have fun with your attendees for that workshop?
That was just surprise, delight, have fun, like, break down on the walls, like make it a fun of them. But no, and what can I do to like incentivize people to show up and to have fun. So like, with the find your ideal client, you know, we did the mystery background. And if you could like, guess where we were at, then you would get like gifts. And so we would do like giveaways and just like making it fun and giving people a reason to show up to these events.
And was that a daily occurrence? By the way, though, the location mystery? Yeah, so we did a different location every single day. That's so fun. How did you like? I'm just curious from like, the actual implementation. Was it like a blurred background? Or did you create like a visual where like one piece was missing, like, what did that look like?
So it was just like a landmark that I got from Google. And so like, one of them was Rio de Janeiro, like the Oba statute that yeah, yes, yeah. The one of the days was that it was just like what are we at and have that statue in the background? And so yeah, something just just fun.
So smart. Okay, I love these ideas. I feel like I'm sparking, like having ideas for what, you know, additional fun experiential things we can add into our next challenge, just from this conversation. You earlier you address that one of your main challenges, different definition, this time, one of your hurdles or obstacles is the small audience piece and, you know, working on growing that audience between launches and events. You also I remember, when you submitted your case study to us, you mentioned that you had some lessons on offer fatigue, and the importance of pacing, and event creation. Can you speak a little bit more to that piece?
Yeah, so something that I noticed that these challenges that I would spend time in between, like trying to grow the audience in, you know, come and do podcasts or go into different communities. But what you don't always account for is the churn. So we would have basically people unsubscribing with other people subscribing, and so it would base like balance out. And so that was something that I didn't take into account is like this natural, just like churn of the audience. And so like, you know, great, we added two people, but then it's like, oh, well, we lost one. So you're not growing as fast.
And then we did three launches last year, this year, I would like to do four to one every single quarter. Yeah. But that also, I'm like, Okay, well, we have to build up our audience and get in front of new people like in between those months. And so just like, trying different cadences different times of the year, like, this year, we're gonna launch first class ideal client challenge in March instead of February, because I felt at that time, like a lot of people were launching at the same time. And so I'm like, Okay, well, let's just try it in March, when maybe not so many people are launching and see how that affects. That's the beauty of being a marketer is just like, oh, well, let's test this. Let's tweak this, let's like, see how this works. And just like having fun with it and trying new things.
100% with moving the cadence up to four times a year in 2024? Are you planning to repeat the ideal first class client challenge three times and then save the brand unwrapped workshop for the end of the year again, during the holiday season? Or are you planning to add a new branded virtual events?
So I want to do that the first class I do client will definitely be happening in March. I have a new idea for our second launch. And so hopefully, we'll do a new one. And then the fourth one will probably be the brand unwrapping again.
Okay, awesome. And do you feel that having the variety in the branded events is important? Or do you feel like there is something to be said about choosing I guess, one flagship event, and just continuing to iterate and scale that alone?
Both
live in an and world? I love it. Let's hear it.
I like having the one flagship event that people can come to know with like Maria's B was it B, skip B. School. Yeah. Marie Forleo's B School launch? Yep. Yeah, it's like you always know that that's going to happen every single year and having like, one launch that is set in stone that people can look forward to or anticipate.
Yeah.
But then from a marketer standpoint, and just having fun with it and testing new things and keeping the variety, keeping it fresh with your audience. I think that it's important to not be a one trick pony, so to speak.
Absolutely. Do you consider the Brand unwrapping event your signature event or is the first class ideal client challenge your signature event, your flagship event?
The first class ideal client challenge, which we're continuously I mean, even with our signature rebranding experience, we've been offering that experience and that's like the only way to really work with us. It's we don't do like 103 brands, we don't do websites by themselves like that is our flagship, like main offering. Right? We have I've been offering that for five, six years. And it is just like continually getting better it is a well oiled machine at this point. It's just like, Okay, this is top notch, how can we just like oil and grease it up to make it even better? And so with that being said, that's like, why I want to have that one main like flagship challenge is, right. Okay. We've done this two times. Now, the third time What did we learn? What can we just keep like greasing up and making this run better and better?
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, our live challenge we've run 10 times and I will say we learned something new every single cohort but it does make it easier to honestly deliver a better experience for the students when You have actually, like operated or facilitated said experience so many times.
So I love that you kind of get to have the best of both worlds, like you said, play a little bit with testing new themes, new ideas and strategies, but also really having that flagship event that people can anticipate and look forward to that in and of itself. And you'd probably agree is a branding moment, right? When people associate you or your brand with like a specific event or occurrence almost like we know, Christmas is going to be you know, December 25, every single year, it's like that same idea that it's kind of like built into their mental calendar of what to expect from you.
Exactly. And one thing that I did want to mention I forgot to mention earlier, which I know might be interesting for some people is with our free both our free challenges the first class IO client that we ran in February in September, that email converted better than social media for those but then for the brand unwrapping whenever we did the $48 Challenge social media actually converted better than email.
That's fascinating. Why do you think that is?
I honestly, I think one of the things that we implemented in between those two from the September to the December launch, it wasn't many chat, because I still like going in there and like individually responding to people and doing like voice messages and being like, very personalized. But we were using that manychat type of like, comment party and will message you in the DM, which is one of the upsides of having a smaller audience is I'm able to go in there and like personally like chat, and like personally invite people and make a connection. But we did add in like that, quote, unquote, like manychat style, which I think helped in conversions.
Yes, absolutely. And you know, it's funny, just speaking in a broader marketing, you know, landscape, it's funny to see that style of like, comment a certain word, and, you know, we'll send you whatever, really coming back into like, the spotlight, I guess, I would say, for so many online businesses, because I remember playing with manychat back in like 2018, or 2019. And I kind of thought it almost of it as like an old strategy, because it's been around for so long. So I don't know what exactly like, reinvigorated, you know, just this process of doing that like common a word and will respond. But I do think, if anything, it just speaks to people really value convenience. And the more that like, you can, I guess place the onus with a burden on yourself or your team to like initiate conversation or to send them the direct link rather than them having to like click over to something else and find the link out of all the buttons on your page or whatnot. Just an interesting thing I observed. I don't know if you have additional thoughts there as a marketer. But
of course, I have additional thoughts.
I think too, is that sometimes you want to take action, but like, you don't know. I'm trying to give like a really tangible examples. I feel like well book a consultation call with us. And they're like, Well, do I go to this form? Do I like him? You do, what do I say? And so giving them something that's like very, like, say this one word in this as what will happen that it's a very like it takes all of the what ifs out of it?
Yes, yes, it's the let's help you burn as few burning calories as possible to get to the next step like will hold your hand and guide you through this. I agree completely. I guess to wrap up this case study, I would love to know how you feel this strategy can really be implemented for different types of industries, different sizes of audiences, just kind of looking more on a broader scope for our listeners who are inspired by this case study, say want to try hosting their own branded event, any high level tips or ideas that come to mind that you want to impart on them?
Yeah, I would say like one, understand who your ideal audience is like for us we work with a lot of wedding pros to where traveling for like the the first class ideal client like traveling is really sexy to them being a destination have been going places like for most they want to get to that level to where they can travel to like, go do something in Paris and New York and Los Angeles. But they're also like they value travel in experiences. So we brought that into our challenge. And so think about your audience, like, what do they really value and gravitate towards? Also, this really is helpful for somebody where you don't have a open and cart close. Like innately in your business like these challenges, help you put together a marketing timeline to where you are going 100% Like you are selling unapologetically whenever you don't always want that to be the case that these branded events give you that platform to, like I said, they give you that platform to sell on apologetically, and make it fun in the process.
Both excellent perspectives to keep front of mind. I didn't even think about that piece actually, how the selection of the theme itself was tied to perhaps the core desires or values, like you said, of your ideal audience, it makes sense actually, hearing that your primary demographic is, you know, people in the wedding industry, why travel? That theme would be so attracted to them? Do you have just off the top of your head another theme example tied to a different industry that either you've helped someone create their own branded event or just that you can maybe just even pull from, you know, the hat at a at a moment's notice any just to give like someone a tangible example outside of like what you have shared and experienced in your own business?
Yes. Okay. So actually, we just recently had a professional organizer, and they are a professional organizer, mainly for families. So their big thing is like managing chaos and how like having a organized house, you know, helps with like your time management and getting your little ones out the door. And so what we did was actually because with like little kids, and just like the demographic that she caters towards, we did a Taylor Swift, themed challenge. And so it was three days and every single day was a different era. And it was like tackling a different part of your house. So it was like, fearless. I forget exactly was like fearless bathroom decluttering day and she like played Taylor Swift music like while she was going through the challenge and like helping people declutter and organize and so
oh my gosh, I'm obsessed Well, I'm like, such a huge Swifty have been since I was in middle school. So like, of course, anything Taylor themed I'd be so therefore. And I mean, I will say decluttering slash organization in the home is a weak point of mine.
So I probably should like take her challenge because clearly it's meant for me that is so so creative, that just again, there's so many ideas, it feels like a playground it's like you can come up with whatever concept you want and I'm really excited to honestly have a discussion with my team now that we've had this conversation Amanda and and just think like, what can we add to our next paid to create live challenge to make it more branded and then if any of you are listening to this and you have like an aha moment or like a branded event come to mind because of what Amanda shared with you please do us a favor and share it to your stories tag Amanda will make sure her Instagram is below so that you can you know give credit where credit is due but I want to hear the ideas that you guys come up with.
So anyways, I mean it thank you so much for your time today, by the way, if you heard any roosters crowing in the background, we were laughing because Amanda was telling me there's these just like neighborhood chickens right that just like walk around. And so luckily they saved their their song call for the end of our interview, but if you hear that in the background, that is why anyways, Amanda, where can our listeners continue to connect with you?
Yeah, so definitely on Instagram. I love all the DMS My name is Amanda Shuman my handle is @CarryLoveDesigns. My name is not Carrie I get asked that all the time it's Carrie as in like the verb to carry. Yeah, so to carry love throughout everything that we do. And then you can find us online at Carrylovedesigns.com
Thank you for clarifying. I could totally see how people would probably end up assuming that I get all sorts of interesting names sometimes and especially okay this is just like an aside but like because I had my username as Miss Ellen Yin before I got married, you know, I am not going to change it because it would just be too hard now you know, all the switches everywhere but it's funny how many people especially in person events, Amanda actually think like almost like treat me like a teacher in a classroom where the like raise her hand and they'll be like, Miss Ellen and I just like die laughing every time because I'm like, I don't know what it is with these Instagram handle like people really take them seriously. So anyways,
Thats Hilarious
I feel like I'm in like a first grade classroom every time someone does that. Anyways, it's very kind. It's respectful, I'm sure but all of Amanda's links will be below in the show notes so make sure you go check it out. Thank you again, Amanda, for joining us today.
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
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