Michael: The tool that the internet is used for is delivering your message and delivering samples of your audio recordings and handling orders—it can’t be matched –it’s a most efficient thing and yes —you need a website for it—you really do.

Michael: So did you have a different niche, you’ve changed your niche and what are you trying to do? How are you going to get going?

Shane: My niche at this point is church marketing. So I’ve developed that niche because my old niche was too broad.

Michael: What was the old one?

Shane: I just wanted to be a marketing consultant for small business owners and that was too broad.

Michael: I can relate. I understand. Okay. So before you wanted to do this general marketing consulting to businesses and now you want to specifically target for churches. Who is the head guy, the church pastor?

Shane: It depends on what church it is Mike. My niche would be Church of Christ and that would be a minister.

Michael: Alright. And you want to create information product for these ministers?—to show them how to get larger congregations? Or do you want to show them how to make money? Or what’s the promise, I guess?

Shane: It’s going to help their church get new members and keep the members they have.

Michael: Okay, great! Have you done anything as far as creating the product or is that where you are at right now? Trying to decide what you can create as a product to sell to these ministers?

Shane: Oh that’s where I’m at right now, Mike –just products out there right now that I did a research and already are in it.

Michael: How much stuff are out there?

Shane: There are several downloads several e-books and a couple coaches out there currently.

Michael: Yeah. And from your observation, how does the marketing look?

Shane: The one site I liked a lot because its website is very Dan Kennedy-like

Michael: Do you remember the site?

Shane: It’s church marketing.

Michael: Church marketing? I wonder if he’s a Dan Kennedy student.

Shane: You know it could very well be.

Michael: Okay – so under church marketing – experts church marketing – church marketingsucks.com

Shane: (Laughs)

Michael: Did you see that one? Shane Yeah I’ve read that one, I’ve read their blogs and I’ve read their group.

Michael: Is it the church marketing solutions? Churchmarketing.com?

Shane: I think that’s one and that’s what I’ve been considering .

Michael: That’s okay.

Shane: I think that’s one that I’ve subscribed to their newsletter as well and they send out the A. Webber file.

Michael: Have you seen any audio interviews in any of these guys?

Shane: Not one.

Michael: There you go. I’m just thinking as you’re talking – you know, these are some of the best spam marketers in the world. You know, these big congregation are the ones who are doing well. They are incredible direct marketers and general marketers. There’s no doubt. I mean, I’m wondering if you could line up interviews with some real successful even—medium-sized, small-sized congregation –some that have great retention and bring in a lot of donations or tithes or what you call it. But I can see ministers who are really benefitting from interviews – I mean, of course I’m biased to interviews but do you know what I’m saying?

Shane: I think you’re a hundred percent right –I’m writing that down so you see.

Michael: You don’t have to become the expert—you know—I had a great call with a lady who is just so caught up in developing her site, and her blog and her articles—positioning herself as an expert and it was just a big a-ha moment when she realized she didn’t have to do all that if she could let go of her ego of being the expert- -her passion was in food and nutrition and health and the dangers of the microwave oven and chemical preservatives in your food—stuff like that – she’s real passionate about. She would naturally tell people about it but she didn’t have any credibility and she came off sounding like a cook –you know?

Shane: Yeah.

Michael: And – you know- I said you don’t have to be the expert so you don’t have to prove yourself—all you’ve got to do is find experts – you heard about this stuff from somewhere but there’s got to be people who’s been spending their whole lives studying and researching the chemicals and the food additives and the dangers of the microwave – just interview them and bypass all that. It was such a relief and that’s one thing I try and stress to marketers –don’t be the expert. Let other people become the expert. You just be the one who interviews the expert and that’s going to be good enough for an information products business.

Shane: That would be great because It gives you instant credibility.

Michael: Yeah it gives you instant credibility—you’re leveraging off their expertise. I mean interviewing a minister who’s been operating the marketing activities of a church for 20 or 30 years and has one of the largest congregations and whose area, or town, or city or state – I’m sure you can do the research on this and find that and if they’re really true to what they’re doing, I’m sure they understand. I don’t know for sure but I could see them really being willing to share some of these with other ministers and other pastors from all over the country and different parts of the world.

Shane: You’ve mentioned that Michael, and that’s what actually – because there was a church – I live in South Carolina, we travel in North Carolina for different Bible camps. There’s a church in Charlotte everybody in North Carolina and South Carolina – they know they’re really up and coming for the past ten years

Michael: Oh really? What’s the church called?

Shane: Providence World, Church of Christ

Michael: How big a congregation is it?

Shane: Oh…500 members in their youth group are larger than our church’s. They have a youth group of 250+ kids – they’re pushing a thousand.

Michael: and they’re really up and coming and doing very well?

Shane: Very very well, yeah. That’s what they are doing currently and have community Bible

Michael: I’m at their site right now. And you’ve looked over their website and seen some of their marketing?

Shane: I don’t even know about their marketing. I’m going to be working with them with their VBS in August. They come down and they help us with our Vacation Bible School and my wife and I are the youth minister in our congregation for young kids. So we know them real personal but I wasn’t doing marketing last year – other than from my own company.

Michael: Okay. So I wonder who’s heading up all the marketing of their operation?

Shane: That wouldn’t be hard for me to find out, Michael. I’ve never even thought about digging into that.

Michael: Yeah I’m looking into their site – they’ve got a lot of stuff about PR - - they do their press release—what is the church mission and vision – the call leadership, related links or schools or facilities, publications – yeah you know you have to find out who’s running this thing. Would it be hard to find. You know, you call them and say –hey who’s handling all of your marketing over there? Yeah..And if you find someone who’s got a system in place and you might find a guy who’s doing the marketing – or the team that’s doing the marketing, they maybe outsourcing it – you have no clue – or they may have hired someone who has a lot of experience with previous churches. You have got to find out what’s the reason for their success and who’s behind it and certainly, you may have someone who’s really an expert about the marketing of churches and youth groups and if you find one expert good enough –like you’ve seen some of the products on my site like the business guy Art Hamill, and Richard for the HMA Marketing Consulting – all my products are other experts where I just either have a licensing agreements with them then market them and they’re the expert, you don’t have to interview a ton of people . You may find one great person doing it really right that you can license their intellectual property or their system and let this one guy become the expert. And if he doesn’t want to do it, I’m sure you can find ten or 15 or 50 other churches that are really doing well and all you got to do is get one to say yes and you could build the whole system around them. You know, it’s a big country – with thousands and thousands of churches. This Providence World maybe doing well from what you understand but there’s probably some doing even better and the guys in this community, the pastor, the minister – I wonder if they belonged to blogs for church marketing. I’m sure they do. They’re all looking to build the congregation and they again, could hire someone to do some research on this and find out the #1 guy, the #2 guy and then approach him. Do a little research, find out what they’re doing well and other idea is certainly finding ten of them and interviewing these top experts. That would be so valuable. Ten big states--you know-- California, Texas, and Georgia –– find some of that number one marketed congregations in these areas. You could do Christians, you could do synagogues and take them from different religions and then you increase your market shares. It’s not only the congregation of a church—you can then market all the synagogues around the country. You can find congregations or any kind of religion. Jews for Jesus. For a congregation is a congregation is a congregation. Marketing is marketing is marketing and they can learn from all different sects and how to increase and maintain profit from for their organization through their marketing – that would be a good idea.

Shane: Yeah and there are quite a few churches that I can do this with. One is the Church of Christy initially—I have been a member of the Church of Christ for eight years. You know, every church is a little bit different so I know that niche very well. I speak their lingo. Things that we don’t use as instruments in our worship assembly. We do communion every Sunday. There are some things that are different. Whereas there are some churches that are doing that’s great but I don’t like to speak their lingo. And there are markets to a Lutheran Church or a Catholic Church would be different.

Michael: Uh-Huh

Shane: The headlines that even use their lingo in the headlines You’re listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff’s www.hardtofindseminars.com

Michael: Yeah, once you have your product and you imagine a series of interviews with top synagogues, top churches, top Catholic churches, Lutheran churches – then when you have your whole product, you can market and target – this is a product for Catholic ministers or Lutheran ministers –even though it’s got a collection of interviews from all different types of leaders of congregations. And they can learn, I think there’ll really be powerful and valuable to the leader of the congregation to learn from other successful congregations what’s making it work for them.

Shane: Absolutely

Michael: Once you have the outline of your interview done, you just use the same questions with all the different experts and just ask them, record it, edit it, transcribe it and put it in a collection and then you develop your sales letter. I’d definitely recommend go digital. Digital product – just like what I sent you for the audio marketing secrets.

Shane: Right

Michael: Once you have your product and a good product and a real valuable product – the basis of it, you can build on it – the more you interview, the more valuable it gets—you know, you can start at $297, you can start at $97, play around with it

Shane: And that’s what I had to do – I thought the digital information would be the fastest one for me to do and it’s tested initially and if you look through the most websites, most of the products I found are right at $39.

Michael: Books. That’s because they’re books. Because that’s what the book sells for. That’s why using audio, it’s going to bump up the value of your product. I mean if you just wrote one book – first of all , it takes forever to write a book but the interview, you’re talking your book and if you just transcribe it, and all you did was sell the transcripts, yeah I could see you selling it for $39. But with the audio and the download that they can play it online and then they have additional interviews with other experts, you’d bump the value up. Now there’s a technique—if you find some books out there you could approach the writer of the book and ask to buy the private label rights of their book and offer to interview that expert on the book. In each one of the book you find, whether it’s on Quick Bank or you know, some of the books you found their experts, they’ve written a book – there’s a trade- you can even say – let’s make a deal. I’ll interview you about your book and I’ll edit it and create the master of that and you use that to promote it with your book for the private label rights of your book. So then you can take that book in private label rights—meaning you have the rights to re-sell and you can package that in with your product. So you just be looking for additional interviews you can do with experts to add value to your product. But I think you should keep the focus on interviewing the expert, let them be the expert, you’re just the guy putting it together. It really is easy. You just got to line up the interview and do it and then whether you format the editing or format the transcribing in the audio marketing secrets –that’s had to do all that – but you got to get your product. You got to get a product you feel really proud about – that would be valuable to any minister. Lot of these ministers, they’re going from congregation to congregation looking for work, you know. When they get the new congregation, they’ve got to perform.

Shane: Now Mike, how am I going to create a backend on this?

Michael: How are you going to create a backend?

Shane: I’ve made notes on what one might get in my whole package – the info product and the audio interviews and then that’s going to be the low end product to get them into the church marketing program

Michael: Right

Shane: And I’d do my newsletters, personal letters, and seminars.

Michael: Well if you get them all in the front end with the collection of interviews, you know, you can get them on in a teleseminar series which you could sell them which is like an online seminar and they would sign up, you can bump up the price to $599, $499 where every month or every third week, they can call in and its –more of the same. You can feature each one of the people you interviewed. You can ask them to come on and be the guest – to be able to field the questions live from any of your students. And so you can dig deeper the opportunity for your students to belong to a community and to really dig deeper and really ask the nitty-gritty questions that maybe won’t revealed in the interview. Maybe you explain to them that you’ll feature an expert every three weeks where they’re there to answer and consult with you on any other techniques and marketing – they can share resources. You don’t know if any of the experts are often doing one on one consulting but I’m sure you’d get them as a guest – so you find additional guests and as you do – let’s say you do ten weeks, or 12 weeks, every three weeks, and that’s four, five hundred bucks . And you can each record it and then you find another product and you’ve added even more value than all the people who passed on a live 12-week event every three weeks – you’ve got the recordings and then you could market that to the people who won’t even make it on the calls.

Shane: I’ll kind of model what you had – I forget the interview but there was somebody in the HMA consultants it was your one hour monthly calling kind of program.

Michael: You are on my HMA thing, I have the HMA University. I did offer that to the HMA consultants for like $399 a month after they signed up for the HMA system. IN my experience, no one took me up on it. I didn’t have any success with it. I finally increased the value of the HMA System where I said for 6 months you would get access to the HMA University at no cost, normally I charge $399 a month but when you sign up as an HMA consultant, you get a free six months. Then they would come on as an HMA consultant but after six months I never got anyone to do it. So I changed it and it said – when you sign up as an HMA consultant, you have lifetime access to the HMA system. So on my HMA System, it’s really a front-end sale - $5900, Front-end sale, and rarely do I get any backend sales after that. So I’m trading off for a high-end front-end sale, I don’t really want to push backend stuff with it. Sometimes I get additional orders for free J Abraham stuff-sometimes I get interview work where I do audio interviews for a consultant or for a client of a consultant—not very often but that happens as well. But there’s all kinds of back-ends you can create or you know, take them on through the funnels—starting off with your low-end product, and then stepping up –you know—the 12-month conference call training—I like that idea of every three weeks or every month conference call that they can participate in and dig deeper. And anything related on the marketing – you know, you might find with your expertise you talk to them –they’ve got proven ads that they were on in local publications to get people to comment to the congregation, you could put a collection of those ads together and that could become a product. Proven successful newspaper ads that bring people into your congregation. Regenerating and prospecting techniques, you know – opportunities will occur as you get going on this, you will see.

Shane: That’s what I’m looking at. As you speak I’m writing these things now—

Michael: Don’t worry about writing them down. I’m going to give you a recording of this. You’ll have it all. You can relisten to it. But as you get going, you’ll see doors will open. Opportunities will happen. Things you don’t even expect – new ideas – so your job is to really just look at that new pastor – he’s at a church he’s never been and he needs to get attendance up for the survival of that congregation and your job is to give him as much valuable and as much help and tools that can help him do that -stuff that’s been proven in different areas of the country. Or even different areas of the world and bring these ideas to him. That’s your service you’re providing. They would love to talk to ministers all over the country that have done this. They would love to have the chance to do that but you know, they don’t have the time or they’re afraid—so they’re going to give you their money because you’re going to do that for them. You’re going to ask all the questions that they would love to know just for the mere survival of their job. They have families too, this is their job. To get the attendance up, to get people in there, to create a vibrant community. More people in there, more people in their summer camps, more people on their Bible schools – it all starts with packing the house.

Shane: Absolutely

Michael: Right

Shane: Well, yeah now, talking to our minister about that myself and I told him I’m in the process to open a product, I only revealed in your 21 marketing secrets, they want you doing seminars in schools. He started laughing because that won’t work. So that’s what’s kind of going with the info product. Now when I do the interview, do I do it that way or do I do it with the expert …..

Michael: The expert you’re interviewing is an expert, so he’s been doing this for a number of years; you want to make sure that he’s good at what he does. So your job in the interview is to pick his brain – tell us, Mr. Minister, what makes you so successful but you want to prepare your questions before. You want to break down the system – how do you get people to the congregation? At the congregation, do you have a method for introducing Bible School? Where is the money made in your church? How do you handle tithing or donations, fundraising – you got to dig in like you don’t know anything about the business and I don’t know much about the business and how to operate congregations profitably but you got to dig in to these areas – you also got to dig in to some of the stuff that these guys really understand— you know—there may be a board of directors – how do you keep your board of directors happy? What are they looking for? A lot of political things – you know—issues that aren’t generally talked about –probably in that position there’s a lot of politics involved in this as well and that’s going to come with your research. I would definitely start with Amazon.com How to build a giant congregation. Look and see what books are on the subject. I’m sure you’ll find stuff on Amazon. Take a look inside the book. Look at the topics -- the chapters, it’s going to give you an idea as to what are these important things that you need to ask and dig into when you’re talking to your experts? So these ministers that have been doing this 20, 15, 10 years and if they’re doing it right, you want to ask them – what makes them so successful? What things would you teach an apprentice who is moving across the country to start his own congregation? What would you tell him to do to get his congregation going –how would you start it? And you got to just pick his brain. You got to dig in –you know—you aren’t the first person who wants to know these questions – there are ministers all over the world who want to know this information. No doubt and I guarantee you there’s books on it and you keep doing your research, you look through the sales letters of the stuff you’ve already seen and you’re going to have an idea where the important topics in the bullets--in their big promise –whatever they’re selling, whatever they’re marketing – you know – issues that they’re bringing up—you need to write all that down so you could turn all those things into questions – you know – in your research, if you talk to the minister, you may want to ask –if you had a chance to talk to an expert before you started your congregation – what are the things you wished you knew? What do you think a new minister thinks? What’s keeping them awake at night in bed?. Now what would you tell them?. So they’re going to have all your answers. You’re just the detective. They’re going to have all the answers you need. Does that make sense?

Shane: That makes perfect sense because in this large church, we’re friends.

Michael: He’s going to love talking about it. I’m telling you –his wife probably doesn’t talk about marketing a business but he knows deep down, this is the business. It is.

Shane: Yeah

Michael: And he’d love talking shop with you, I’m sure. Just get them to agree that you can record it, you want to use that for your product and –you know—he’ll be positioned as a great leader in that church community. It’s a building congregation – that’s not a bad reputation to have. If you’re going to do your best, then get the word out.

Shane: Exactly and now let’s see market research – I mean there is an info product that I saw that mentioned joint venturing. Should I go ahead and purchase that book, read through it --see what ideas they have – to buy other books on the topics ----

Michael: Sure How much is the book?

Shane: About $40

Michael: $40 Why not? If you got $40 invested and you offer the guarantee and that’s totally bad they get their money back, fine – Sure –because a lot of people had done the work before you and you can look at his outline but what you can do for free, first go to Amazon.com and search the subject and see what books are out there. You may want to check – you never know—you know the Idiots’ book? Complete idiots guide to - - it may even have something. Check how to build a Jewish congregation. How to grow a successful synagogue? There’s going to be stuff on this subject. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Lutheran, Christian, whatever – see if there’s something on the synagogue and then with good books, you can look inside the book online. They’ll allow you to browse the table of contents and that table of contents is a great format and outline for the things you need to talk about because they’ve already researched that before. You see?

Shane: Yes.

Michael: Oh yeah, that’s going to be real valuable. You don’t look inside the book on Amazon.com, look at the table of contents and that can provide you with the structure for your information product. Just like what I say—when you can take their $28 book and turn it into a $3900 information product, you can look in that table of contents and start doing audio on each one of the subjects in that table of contents and create a series of audio recordings that matches that book’s table of contents and then by the time you’re done, you’ve got a seminar. The HMA System all started with a book –that’s all, for $25 with Richard ________.

Shane: Michael, since my last date of July 1, let’s say July 1, I’m ready to get this thing out the door. What’s my first approach?

Michael: Okay you mean your product’s done?

Shane: Yeah the product’s done.

Michael: Product’s done. Certainly using the internet –promoted. I mean there’s just no way around it –the tool that the internet is for delivering the message and delivering samples of your audio recordings and handling orders, it can’t be matched – it’s the most sufficient thing and yes, you need a website for it—you really do. For automated selling— look at my audio marketing secrets product – you know – I’ve got the sales letter up, the order form and that allows me automated. But don’t get overwhelmed with that yet. I would focus on getting a great product first. Because, if you have a great product, you don’t necessarily need all that. Actually, if you’ve got a great product, and for instance, you’ve got this guy who’s got a book and he’s already got a sales letter, he may be willing to take your product and endorse it to his list and sometimes you don’t need a whole sales letter to sell it. Imagine that if you have descriptions of each of your 20 interviews – you know – what does the product contain – it contains 10 one-hour interviews with the top churches and congregations in the United States, here’s what you’re going to get –interview #1, you’ll be hearing from Pastor Marvin Henry, he’s operating the Providence Road Church of Christ in Columbia, South Carolina, you get his bio, which you’ll be able to pull on all the stuff off their website to who they are. You just tell who is the interview about, what’s his credibility, here’s what you’re going to learn, boom boom boom. That can be your sales letter –don’t get freaked out by that. Each one of my recording have a description, right?

Shane: Right.

Michael: You’re going to describe what’s this recording about and if you have ten blocks –here’s what you’re going to get for$97, you’re going to hear ten fact-filled interviews that are going to show you how to build your congregation – how to get more people on the door—how to increase your sales on summer camp – how to create a steady flow of income with Bible schools—how to bump up attendance on –you know— Thursday night Bible classes – al the things a pastor wants to know and you’re going to learn how these ten top experts in the United States – experts from Georgia, Texas, California and then you have the bio of each person and what they’ve done and how long they’ve been doing this and maybe some stats on their congregation, and here’s what we talked about in this interview and you have bullets – all you got to do is ten of those and you put them all on a webpage—it don’t have to be a fancy sales letter. It’s not going to be hard for a minister to understand the value of that

Shane: Yeah. That’s the best I’ve heard, yet Michael

Michael: Yeah I mean look, if I didn’t have a sales letter and let’s say you’ve seen all the bonus recordings and the product. Those aren’t even advertising – the sales letter—but let’s say I didn’t have the sales letter, I could say audio marketing secrets is a compilation of 15 of my most intense audio interviews on how to create and sell and market audio information products trough the internet –here’s what you’re going to

learn: Interview #1 is with Boom – and I just copy and paste those headlines and the descriptions – I could jut have those descriptions where I delivered the audio information product – they just have that there without the actual audio . I can have samples –I can have 5- minute sample clips of the interviews so they can have a taste of it, which isn’t a bad idea and after five minutes, it says, to get the full one hour interview, order now—you know--So you got to have to write a description for each of your interviews. Each one f your description of the interviews is a little mini sales letter—the reason why for the person to listen to the interview. So that can become your sales letter. It will come. You just got to get started. You got to get your product together first. You got to keep these interviews down and everything will build after that. Don’t let the full sales letter fool you or mess you up.

Shane: I guess I wasn’t worried about the sales letter – thanks to your advice but was starting copywriting now for a month

Michael: Good.

Shane: increased my other business experimentally because of it.

Michael: Good job

Shane: Now I’m thinking an odd number – what’s the average number that’s good for a product like this? Eleven interviews? Seven interviews? Nine interviews?

Michael: Oh man, you know, start with one – if that interview is really really good, you’re providing a lot of value, you could sell that one interview – you really can – start with one then go for 7, go for 10, you’re going to find it’s going to become fun and then you can ask for referrals from the people you interviewed. Do you know any other pastors and ministers who are really doing something extraordinary in their congregation that you would be willing to introduce me to? Then they’ll do it. We’ll start feeding you people. And all you’re doing is duplicating the same thing over and over again. The more you talk, the more you make. The more interviews you have, the more value there is. A minister who’s interested in building his congregation will listen to every one of them. Not once but twice, three times, he’ll thank you for it and he’ll pay you for it. So you can do a goal of ten, that’s a nice number, but who know a real magic number? If you remove the risk and deliver the goods, that’s valuable.

Shane: That’s fine. I guess I’d get started on the one.

Michael: Yes. Start with the first one. Take it all the way to the process - -do your research on Amazon first. Do your research online with the book. Order that guy’s book and come up with all the important issues when it comes to marketing a congregation. Your research is number one because you got to be answering the questions – the struggles that a minister’s having with his congregation. That’s the stuff he’s going to want to hear. So you got to deliver that stuff. That’s going to come in your research. That should be number 1. And then do the interview. Record it digitally, download it to your hard-drive. Get it edited nice and professional. Write a summary of what the interview is about. You know—put that introduction in the front. You’ll have an ending – a call to action at the end of the interview. If they want to take a look at this expert’s website, look for more information on congregation superstars, have them call you – or direct them to a website for more information. Just copy what I’ve been doing on my interviews. Just model what I’m doing. It’s the same thing –I’m just doing a different topic.

Shane: Oh perfect. Thank you Michael. I think I’m off to it and I’ll check that interview and I might get it up and rolling.