Copywriting & Sales Funnel Tools
Our Top Picks For Copywriting & Sales Funnel Tools
Our Top Pick For Business Growth Courses
Why we recommend Business Made Simple: Robert and I have been applying StoryBrand to anything we write since 2018. Back then you had to go to their live events and become a Guide to be able to apply their frameworks to your business. Now you can DIY! The courses are well thought through, the homework and brainstorming questions help you figure out how to apply the course to your business.
What they could do to improve: It can feel overwhelming without a course group or coach and they keep adding courses every 3 to 6 months. I wish some of their older courses had fillable PDFs. In the meantime, I’ve made all workbooks in Google Docs so can easily review client’s work or Robert can review what I’m working on for our company.
Compared to the competition: Wow, I’ve done so many courses over the years. Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo B-school, and Tony Robbin Business Mastery they are all great. But what’s missing is having 1-on-1 accountability or a small group you check in with weekly to keep you on track with implementation. Some of those you can upgrade but it’s really expensive, however for BMS Coaching it starts at $500/mo. Anytime I go through I course I get 2-3 friends to do it with me so I make my own accountability groups.
Why we recommend StoryBrand Workshop: This 2-day workshop was great to do with your business partner. Robert worked on the BrandScript for RebelFish Local and I worked on one for our podcast. Our group of 10 got coaching for each part of our BrandScript so that by the end of the workshop we felt confident we got it right. Now they do this workshop on Zoom so it’s ⅓ cheaper and you get more personalized attention from your coach.
What they could do to improve: The content is pretty much the same as the BMSU course. Even the jokes and examples. Also, the second half of day two feels rushed. They try to teach you how to build out a whole marketing funnel and there just isn’t enough time. Plus you don’t get feedback on your ideas. This is also the time you are able to get 1-on-1 coaching on zoom with your coach so from people I’ve coached the feedback was they didn’t like leaving the main room.
Compared to the competition: Most of the competition uses live events to promote high ticket offers. So you buy the event for $1 or $97 like Suzanne Evans, Sandra Sumptner, or Ali Brown. You don’t get coaching to see if you are applying what you learn right. You also don’t get upsold into another program. So it’s nice to just attend an event. Of course you can hire a Guide to copywrite and build out your sales funnel, but it’s a super soft sell and you need to be the one to engage with your coach or another coach on ClarifyYourMessage.com.
Our Top Pick For Learning Blogging and YouTube Strategies
Why we recommend IncomeSchool: I signed up for Project24 in May 2020 and have been applying their blog strategy to both of our websites. I like that they take an SEO approach to blogging and they really want you to focus on creating awesome content that people will want to share. I love the idea that following their 2 year program the goal is to have a blog that generates $8,000 a month. Sometimes clients want to keep their blogging inhouse so I always recommend this course. Robert watched all their YouTube videos for 2 years before we finally bought the course. I wish I would have bought it sooner and did this 60-step blog strategy right when we opened our doors.
What they could do to improve: I took an intern through the 60-step blogging course and I didn’t realize there was another course focused on hiring and training your writer. So my intern definitely got overwhelmed with all the extra parts that go into deciding what blog topics, SEO, and formatting of a blog on WordPress. So make sure you follow the hiring course first! Also, the 60-steps have you pause to do the homework but then 5 videos and homeworks later you learn that you should have been doing a different strategy like around photo sizes. So then you have to go back and update your work. They are rethinking their 60-steps for blogging and YouTube so I’m sure they will be making the courses a little more easier to follow.
Compared to the competition: There are so many great free YouTubers to follow for free like Sunny Lenarduzzi, Primal Video, and Video Creators. I don’t follow any blogging coaches on there but I’ve signed up for free offers from Elite Blog Academy, Ray Edwards, and older bloggers from 10 years ago.
Our Top Pick For Email Marketing & CRM
Why we recommend ActiveCampaign: Learning about customer experience automations AKA not sending blast emails to your whole list but sending emails to only those people who are engaging on certain pages on your website, social media, or free offers has made such a difference. Applying the StoryBrand 6-email sales strategy and using this email marketing tool has allowed us to book more sales calls and re-engage people with better content that they are actually interested in. We set this up for clients and do the strategic thinking so that someone in-house can easily take over. Since I spent a whole year deep dive learning during the pandemic I see the value of every local business doing one or both of the forms of email marketing.
What they could do to improve: Setting up a CRM is complicated. So for the first 3 years I just did random email blasts. I tried to learn and read their posts. This year they started doing Accelerated Onboarding and Digital Study Halls. This has been really helpful and I finally got multiple email automations set up. Now, they don’t just have weekly office hours to ask questions but they seem to let you do unlimited 1-on-1 calls. They’ve really upped their game this year and making the user experience much easier for newbies learning the platform.
Compared to the competition: Clients come to us with Keep, Hubspot, or MailChimp. These days all email marketing is pretty good. Our team has just had to learn how to setup and manage all these platforms but if they don’t have one we always recommend ActiveCampaign. We’ve been testing out this WordPress plugin for service-based businesses like plumbers, HVAC, or window washers who don’t want to do nurture campaigns and only want to do 3-6 sales emails when someone requests a quote. So stay tuned.
Our Top Pick For Landing Page Builder
Why we recommend Swipe Pages: The builder is easy to use and the templates are good to go. I’ve used quite a few landing page builders and then just ended up making our own landing pages on WordPress over the past few years. But with selling more StoryBrand Sales Funnel packages I needed to be able to create landing pages then save the templates for the best ones.
What they could do to improve: Add more templates for local businesses industries.
Compared to the competition: Lead Pages, ClickFunnels, or Kajabi are great options too. But they are just a lot more expensive. They also do a lot more than just help you build landing pages. I do like to check out their “highest converting” templates from time to time and try them out on our landing pages.
IMPORTANT: This page contains affiliate links to BMS, StoryBrand Workshop, IncomeSchool, Active Campaign, and Swipe Pages. We earn commissions for referring traffic to these sites. While we are careful to only recommend products we actually use and like, you should know of our relationship with those companies.