By the way, to figure out how to sell online, I have tried:
building an online magazine and pointing to my products
advertising with paid ads
making organic content, long form
making organic content, short form
making posts about celebrities, news, anything that's trending at the moment, and then turning that into a way to point towards my products
Here, after years of experience, what I found is the best method for selling anything online.
It's a simple four-step process, and we're going to break it down in this article.
Find who you are trying to sell to.
You need the hook. The hook is how you find who you're trying to sell to. The hook is how you discover and you get the algorithm to put you in front of the people who have the exact problem you are solving.With a hook, you train the algorithm exactly who you want to target with your content and find as your customers. With the hook, you can qualify your user or the viewer as the right customer before you even introduce your product to them.Think about how short-form content works. The algorithm's going to put you in front of hundreds, potentially thousands, if not even millions of people, and it needs to know exactly who you're trying to reach or who this content is meant for. The hook is exactly how it does that, because the rest of the content gets swiped away by people if it's not for that. Tell the algorithm who you're trying to look for with your hook. The hook is the most important.
Here Are some prime examples:
Have you ever posted a video then needed to change where you are sending your viewers to?
You can't edit a video the way you can edit a blog
Youtube has 1 massive flaw
What if you could take all the videos you ever made your entire catalogue and direct it to one offer?
Do you have an Old video but a new offer? No worries
Don't let a viral video go to waste
Each one of these hooks presents the main problem you're trying to solve and tees up the rest of your content to present the solution to the viewer. This is called direct response advertising, and it is just applied to the modern age of social media, where short-form content is the main form of content. The majority of the time, even paid advertising on Facebook and other social platforms (Meta, Instagram, LinkedIn) is also just direct response advertising. With the advent of short-form media, TikTok, and the short-formification of video, direct response advertising has turned organic to be able to be used for organic social media posts.
2. Talk From Experience (Here’s The Problem I experienced)
Next, we need to talk from experience. This allows us to build trust and rapport with the viewer. When you talk from experience, you solve your own problem, so you're gonna use a personal anecdote about the exact problem that you're solving and how you experienced it yourself.
Example:
When I had a video go viral on Tik Tok I had nowhere to direct the traffic. I lost potentially thousands of sales because I wasn’t prepared when a video gained traction.
People hate being sold to, but they love having their problem solved. The best way to bridge this gap is to solve your own problem. Talk about how you fix your own issue. Then anyone else who has the same problem will look to your same solution for themselves. You're naturally guiding them to the answer, and it just so happens to be the vehicle or the answer that you want them to try out because it benefits you.
3. Present Your Solution (Here is how I solved my own problem)
Now it's time to present your solution. After explaining the exact issue that you experienced yourself, it is time to demonstrate how you solved your own problem. The key here is show, don't tell. People need to visually see the solution. They need to see the transformation for themselves. They need to have a visual understanding of what it is that's going to fix their problem. Speaking audibly is not enough. They must see to believe. People must see to have certainty. People must see in order to purchase or buy. Always remember, doubt means don't buy, so we remove all doubt by showing them what they will get.
4. Make It An Irresistible Offer
Remove all friction towards making a purchase decision. Make the offer so valuable in comparison to what it costs that people feel stupid not acting upon it. Make it such a no-brainer that they feel blessed that the algorithm made this opportunity show up on their timeline for them.
A simple example to demonstrate I like to use is a lawn mowing business.
Imagine you run a landscaping business. You could spend $500 on a push mower that takes you 8 hours to mow a large commercial property, meaning you can only do 1 job a day.
Or, you can rent a $200/month commercial ride-on mower that lets you finish the exact same job in 1 hour.
Now, you can complete 8 jobs a day instead of 1. Paying $200 a month isn't an expense—it’s an engine that generates thousands in extra revenue while giving you way more money for the same amount of work.
This is a NO BRAINER.
The value so far outweighs what I am paying for it that I would be stupid not to act. VALUE / ROI STACK. Keep stacking outcomes, time saved, and revenue potential until the price becomes completely negligible compared to the result. That's how your offer hits NO BRAINER status.
Pro Tip: Add scarcity to encourage action now. For instance, first 50 people get such and such, buy within the next 48 hours to receive, price is 50% on first day of launch only then full price onward, etc.
5. Call To Action (Direct Them To Where You Want Them To Go)
This could be:
a sales page
a trial offer
a trial period
an email signup page
a free download of the lead magnet
The whole point is you gave them all your pitch. You showed them all the value they're going to get. Now it's time to have them act, to collect the value that you just pitched them on or that you just sold them on. You need to direct them to the places they can do that instantly, right then and there, right away. Their thought should be "the universe blessed me today with the answers to my problems", and that solution was made by you so you get paid.
To Sum Up
If you have a $50k/month ad budget, hire an agency. But if you are bootstrapping with zero ad budget and need to validate an offer and generate customers using only your phone and your experience, organic short-form direct response is the single most efficient zero-capital method I have found available today.