An Online Marketing Tactic Powerful Enough to Move the World

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” said Archimedes. But gaining a mechanical advantage isn’t the only way to apply this powerful force. You may be more familiar with the use of leverage to get higher potential gains with an investment — borrowing funds to expand a business, for example, or using options to control a stock.

Simply put, think of leverage as a way to get more with less. In the case of online marketing, this means getting more products, traffic, and sales with less of your own time, energy, or money.

Today, I’m going to share a powerful strategy you can use to add multiple products to your product funnel. The idea is to work once to create a product, and then leverage that product into several products with different formats and price points. It’s a different approach to what most online marketers do.

Most marketers start by creating an e-book as their front-end product. Then they create a midlevel product, perhaps an audio course. Then they create a high-ticket product, perhaps a video recording of a live event. Three different products, created on three separate occasions. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a lot of work.

Using my strategy, you achieve the same goal with much less work. You start by creating a product at the high end of the funnel, then work your way down. Here’s an example…

• First, you record a video of a live event. That video is your high-ticket product.

• You then extract the audio from the video and turn it into your midlevel product, delivered through MP3 or audio CD.

• Finally, you have the audio transcribed and turn it into an e-book. That gives you a good low-ticket front-end product.

Right about now, you might be asking yourself, “Will people really pay more for the same information just because it’s in a different format?” The answer to that is “Absolutely!”

Take a look at the above example. A video of a live event can sell for anywhere from $297 to $497 — even up to $997. Keep in mind that attendees of a live event can pay five to 10 times that amount. Why would they pay so much if they can get a video of the same event for much less? Because there is extra value in actually being there.

The same is true of having video of the event instead of just the audio, or having the audio instead of just a transcript. People will pay more money for the same information if they get it in a format that adds something to the experience.

Now, let’s take this strategy one step further.

• Instead of simply selling the video as your high-ticket product, you could package it into a home study course. This would include the video, the audio recording, and the written transcript. If you wanted to add a little more value, you could turn the transcript into a “workbook.” You might call this your Platinum Level Package.

• Instead of simply selling the audio as your midlevel product, you could include the workbook and call this your Gold Level Package.

• Instead of simply selling the transcript, you could include the workbook and call this your Basic Package.

As you can see, all we’ve done is repackaged the same products to make them seem more valuable. However, we’ve still used the power of leverage by starting with the highest-level product and working our way down the product funnel.

We worked once to create the original product. Then we created three separate products, in three separate formats, at three separate price points. Now that’s what I call leverage!

By the way, there are many other ways to leverage your existing content. Here are just a few ideas:

• If you have a series of articles, turn them into an audio product by reading the articles into a microphone and saving them as an MP3.

• Take that same series of articles, combine them into a single PDF file, and make that a special report that you can give away or sell.

• You could even take your longer articles and break them down into smaller chunks to use as blog posts on your website.

The possibilities of leveraging content are really endless — limited only by your imagination. So the next time you’re thinking of developing a new product from scratch, think, instead, about how to get more from what you’ve already got.

[Ed. Note: Brian Edmondson, successful Internet entrepreneur and online marketing expert, is the Director of the Internet Money Club. In IMC, Brian walks you through the process, step-by-step, of starting and growing your own profitable online business in just six months. We just opened the class of 2010, and spots are limited.]