Using Live Workshops to Sell Bundles on TPT with Melanie Battistelli

Kirsten 0:04

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the creative Teacher Podcast. Today you are in for a treat, because we have Melanie, that astellia from duxberry Digital here on the podcast and she's going to be talking about how you can host a live workshop to promote a bundle that you have for TPT. We're going to talk a little bit about how you can decide on which bundle to select what are some good ways to know if it's a good bundle to sell after the live workshop and just some steps to getting started. If you are looking to host a live workshop, and maybe just some signs to know if live workshops might work for you and some tips so that you can navigate going live in general. So there's a lot of really great JAM PACKED tips in here just to help you.

Before I ramble on, I should tell you a little bit about Melanie. She is the brains behind Duxbury digital, she helps TPT sellers and teacher business owners and just a variety of entrepreneurs with launch strategy. She also does OBM work for clients. So she has a wealth of knowledge on launching a membership or a course. So I think this is going to be a really valuable episode that I know you will love. If you're listening to this episode in real time, Melanie does have a birthday sale happening soon later this week. So if you're interested in getting some of her services or programs at a special birthday discount, make sure to check the link in the show notes. Alright, without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into the interview. All right, today, I'm really excited because we have Melanie here on the podcast as a guest. So welcome to the show.

Melanie 2:47

Thank you. It is so nice to be here and finally get to talk to you.

Kirsten 2:50

Yes, I'm excited. You're here. So tell us about yourself it for those who may not know you and your business.

Yeah, absolutely. So I am an ex teacher myself. I also taught social studies for 12 years, although I was at the high school level. So I taught mainly High School US history and geography. And then yeah, it was it was awesome. And then when COVID happened, right, as as it did, I started to think about and I was pregnant at the time with our second daughter. And I started to think about like, How can I, you know, learn to stay at home more I was, you know, nervous about going back with a newborn, you know, all the things that people were feeling that had those COVID babies. I can relate. Yes, yes, all of the COVID baby feelings. So I started a virtual assistant business and then sort of just by the first couple clients that I had very quickly, niche down or started to specialize in launch management, and online business management. And I've been pretty specialized in that now since Gosh, 2021. So coming up one. What is that? Like over two years? I've really been focused on Crazy, right? That's awesome. Management. Yeah, yeah. It's been fun. It's been a wild ride. Yes. That's great to hear.

And it sounds like you've, you know, it's always good to hear those stories of like how whatever event whether it's having a kid or COVID or just, you know, feeling burnt out as a teacher, and just the way we can just kind of pivot into something and lean into something else. And it always ends up benefiting everybody involved.

Melanie 4:33

So yeah, definitely if I mean it can, it can all work out. It's a lot of work. I mean, being an entrepreneur is a lot different than being a teacher. It's a lot less stable, I guess you could say feels less stable. I don't know if I feel that way. It just feels like it could all collapse in any time. Right? Exactly. Oh, it hasn't. It hasn't yet.

Kirsten 4:53

That's what kind of makes it a little fun. I don't know if you're one of those people who like to walk on the wild side, I guess Oh, yeah,

Melanie 5:00

no, I'm usually I'm usually not so much so that I actually did part time teaching for a whole year, like, while I was trying to make my decision. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So I really took my time my principals awesome, was, I mean, he's still awesome. But he was also when I worked there. And let me sort of like, think about it, so to speak for a year,

Kirsten 5:20

that's good that you have that option to do. Today, we're going to be talking about live workshops to sell TPT bundles, which I think will be a really fun topic, because I know, most TPT sellers out there that are listening likely have some type of bundle or flagship resource that might be a little pricier than your average $3 resource or $5 resource. And so I really love the concept of having some type of hosted workshop or live event to kind of lead people into be more likely or inclined to purchase those big bundles. So can you talk a little bit about how this strategy would work? What are the main things to know about doing this strategy?

Melanie 6:13

Yeah, so there are a lot of places we could kind of start. But the first thing I think, to think about is to kind of hone in on which bundle higher priced resource, I know some people have, like year long curriculum, that could be a good fit for this sort of strategy as well, you can attack it like three ways, I would say, looking at if there is a resource that you have that already sells well, like it's converting, you know, good, and you just want to sell more of it, right? So you could kind of lean into one of your best sellers, and promote that you could look at a resource that maybe is also converting well, but it's not your best seller, like it's not getting as many views. I know the algorithm, like to have my clients to have my OBM retainer clients, our multi six figure TPT sellers. So I know that the algorithm threw them for a loop as it did for a lot of more established sellers the last couple years. Yeah. So you could also look at a resource that's maybe not getting as many views, but converts well, like the people who are finding it are like, wow, this is amazing, I'm totally buying this, and use it for like a visibility strategy. Or if you are thinking of coming up with like a growing bundle, or launching something, you know, newer that doesn't have a lot of reviews, or maybe you're working on a growing bundle for the 2024, you know, 2025 school year, you could use it as kind of like a launch to get people excited about the growing bundle and buying it right away. So there's multiple different ways I would say to use this strategy, the first thing I think they kind of do is select, which sort of Avenue Do you want to go down? And I mean, only you can really answer that for yourself.

Kirsten 8:08

Yeah, that's a great kind of thing to start with is. And of course, you don't want to just like throw all the bundles at might, you know, you want to really hyper focus, I'm assuming on just like, one main thing to kind of lead into with those types of launches for the live, or live workshops or free training that you offer.

Melanie 8:29

Yeah, I would just pick one to start with, because when you start to get multiple variables in there, it's hard to decide, like, what's working, what's not working, if it didn't work, it's hard to like know, you know why? So I would pick like either one, you know, bundle curriculum, something higher priced, and just kind of focus on one to start with.

Kirsten 8:55

Okay, that sounds pretty easy enough. And I'm sure like, there are some listeners who are like, I know exactly that bundle that they're, you know, stands out to you. So that's always good to kind of brainstorm that. And then from there, if we are trying to, like, what are the steps as far as the if we're, you know, maybe thinking about a free like, do we have a lead magnet or some type of Zoom meeting? How can we kind of showcase this free workshop or training? What are some topics we can what do we need to think about? If we want to relate it back to that ultimate big bundle or growing bundle or whatever it might be?

Melanie 9:38

Sure, yes. So the first thing that you want to think about is, what problem is your bundle resource, you know, whatever you've picked, what problem is it solving? And then how can you lean into what problem it's solving and teach other teachers A little bit more about how to use that so that your resource is really complementing their instruction. I mean, I know like a lot of people, you're probably including, like Teacher's Guide, answer keys, like a little bit. But it's really going to be like that hands on instruction and other suggestions that you can deliver in the live, you know, workshop or training that can help to sort of make or break people saying, like, oh, I can see how to use this. And now like, I also want it. So that's what I would start to think about, like, what is the major question or problem that this resource solves. And then since it is probably a larger resource of yours, you might already have a lead magnet that attracts people to that larger resource. But if if you don't, you can also create one, however, the free training could be the lead magnet, like in itself and what you do, yeah, when what you could do is break off like a little sample, if you will, of your larger product. And, you know, your messaging could be like, sign up for this free training, you're going to get January, for example of my math centers, and I'm really going to show you how to implement that in your classroom to get the desired result, you know, that you hope for as a teacher?

Kirsten: 11:23

Oh, well, that idea how you can, it's, I mean, really similar to what we would might do on TPT. If we have it in a preview, like, some people like to add, like, you know, download the first week or first month of whatever the bundle might be. So that's a really great way to kind of entice people to go to the training, because they're like, not only getting those relevant standards or relevant resources to the time of year, you're also getting a, like a supplementary training that goes with it, to kind of help them best, you know, best practices for implementing whatever it might be. Yeah, I'm also thinking like, I'm sure we can get pretty scrappy with this. It doesn't have to be on some big webinar platform or anything like that, like, where are some places? You could host these types of trainings?

Melanie: 12:12

Oh, yeah, definitely. So you really only need to host a live workshop, you really only need an email provider, which most TPT sellers have, right? And zoom. Although if you have to paid zoom, it does usually cap it at 100 people. I mean, if you don't have a huge audience, that's no big deal. But if you do have a bigger audience, you could look in to something more like Demio or easy webinar where you can still communicate back and forth with people. And you can just pay for it basically for a month or two. And then I mean, I sorry, easy webinar. And to me, oh, but you could just you know, pay for it for a month or two, where you're setting up and launching and then cancel it or put it I think easy webinar actually lets you put it on pause, okay. And then you don't like lose all of the stuff, you know, that you've built. There's also something called stream yard that basically streams through an unlisted YouTube channel. And that has unlimited attendees. And that's very cheap. That's like something like $20 a month, there are ways to do this for very, very low cost. Or you could run if you felt like it, and you did have a bigger audience and you have the paid zoom, you could create a little bit of urgency by being like, there's only 99 spots, but maybe you do two or three trainings. But like once it's full, it's full. Yeah. So to speak. Once the registrations are full, you know, you don't accept anymore, but zoom webinar itself is pretty expensive to upgrade to Yeah, I would maybe look at another sort of route. But yeah, you can deliver it simply with something like that, and an email provider, as far as a sales page or an opt in page to get people to the free training. I mean, if you have a WordPress site, you can build it in there, you can build a quick sales page in Canva. Honestly, you can, if you've ConvertKit or flow desk, actually also you can build a longer sort of lead magnet opt in page and just have it embedded right there as well. Yeah,

Kirsten: 14:21

there's a lot of good options with that. And then on top of that, I happen to have a Facebook group for my social studies niche and a training that I plan on doing later in this month as we're recording this is like I was going to host it usually I do it on Zoom, but for this particular workshop, I was going to host it in the Facebook group and just go live in there and I you know, connecting it's pretty easy once you find what you're looking for to connect it with Zoom and then you can share your screen and

Melanie: 14:51

go back salutely So yeah, if you have a free Facebook group and you know a lot of TPT people do have a free Facebook or even absolutely hosted right nerds easy and also free. Yeah. So always bonus, always the best. Yeah.

Kirsten: 15:06

So what are some ways to know if this strategy is something that might be right for somebody listening, and they're like kind of on the fence, like they have a really good bundle that converts really well or just needs a lot of views. But they're not quite sure whether or not the live workshop component is the way to go. What are some ways to know if this is the right path for those listeners? Yeah,

Melanie: 15:30

and something I feel like that I have dealt with in the past, working with some of my launch management clients is people like, get nervous to go live and teach to their peers, which I get it like I get it, it's, it's nerve racking. So if you're really, really, really unwilling to go live, it's probably not the best strategy for you. However, I mean, you can, of course, pre record it. And you can make it like a free On Demand training where people opt in, and then you send out like the replay, so to speak, like a pre recorded video of you going through the information and sharing all of like, the knowledge and how this is gonna solve their problem, and so on and so forth. But I will say that live trainings do convert significantly better than pre recorded it just I you know, I wish it wasn't so because, yeah,

Kirsten: 16:26

I would have it my way. Just do all the pre recorded stuff all the time. And yeah, well,

Melanie: 16:33

yes. But Never have I ever in the probably now 30 to 40 launches, I've managed between my retainer clients, and lunch management, clients, like live always does better, like exponentially better. So if you can just get yourself over the hump, so to speak for the first one, it honestly becomes so much easier to do, because you're like, people just want to learn and yeah, they're there for the free thing, but they wouldn't have signed up if they didn't want to hear what you had to say. So a lot of it is sort of mindset, speak about yourself. And just knowing that, like you do have a valuable resource you did create it, you know what you're talking about, because you do, nobody can explain it better than you can. So once you get that first one under your belt, it really does become a lot easier. But that is what stops I feel like most people from doing the live training is that they like just don't want to do it, like go live like they want to, but they don't actually like really feel like they're able to.

Kirsten: 17:41

Yeah, those are some great tips, though, for managing that. I've done live trainings in the last four years and or throughout the last four years and even before and it still gives me the nerves like right before like it's I also had this the same feelings when I was doing open, you know, when meet the teacher night and the parents are all coming in your classroom. I guess he didn't have to do this for high school, but they at all, like would come in the room. And you'd have to like tell them about what you do. And I'll you know, it just it's talking in front of adults, even if it's online, it's it's a lot to overcome. But once you kind of start you on a note, there's this flow that comes in I'm and it also varies from person to person.

Melanie: 18:23

Yeah, yeah. And I think I would also say like, just try it take messy action. And if it sucks, and you hate it, then like, never do it again. It's your business, you're in charge of your life. Like you don't ever have to do it again. But like, what if you try it, and it's awesome. And you sell a bunch of bundles, and you make a lot of money and grow your audience? I mean, what's the worst? I guess that could happen? Yeah, that's a really good point.

Kirsten: 18:51

And I feel like a lot of people are very understanding, you know, when you have these little flubs, or you might make a mistake, or there's a typo. I feel like most of the time, a lot of people are understanding and they're like, this is live and we're not expecting something super polished. So, you know, that's something to also think about, too.

Melanie: 19:10

I think bottom line is if you have a bundle or a higher priced resource and an audience and you're willing to try it, like ultimately the strategy could be for you. In a nutshell, yeah,

Kirsten: 19:25

that's good to know. Yeah. As far as let's say we are like, Okay, we're gonna give this a shot. And you have it set up and everything your hosts live training, and it is a hit, or maybe it's not a hit, maybe you're just like, it goes okay, or it goes like it's a total flop. You know, it could go there's three different ways it could go. And that's, that's okay. But what are some metrics we need to track to know if what we did was working?

Melanie: 19:54

I talk about this a lot on Instagram and also on my blog. There are A lot of different metrics to look at when you're looking at a live training. If I had to pick the three, I guess, obvious ones, or maybe not so obvious, I shouldn't say that. But if I had to pick three, I would say you should definitely look at the amount of people that opted in. So how many people actually signed up for your training, versus how many people viewed the registration page. And if you're looking at this in something like ConvertKit, or flow desk, it's really easy to see like, if you built your opt in page in ConvertKit, or flow desk, like you can see the you know, the views and the opt ins just like you could with any freebie, I would take it a step farther. And let's say that you're registering people for I would usually recommend five to 10 days, like inviting people to the event, you want to take it a step farther and be really extra. And look at this and note it every single day. And here's why. Because when you're looking at the number of views and options you get every day, you can directly correlate it to what's working elsewhere in your business, like maybe you posted a reel on Tuesday, and you got 12 opt ins versus you didn't talk about it at all on Wednesday, and you got one opt in from somebody who you know, saw your reel from yesterday, or you get 50 opt ins, on the same day you send an email, those are little like boosts, also to let you know that like your marketing efforts are paying off. Because it's really easy to look back at the end of it and be like, Well, I had 200 people opt in overall. Right? Okay. But like what days, what did you do? Like, it might feel like a flop, or you can look and see, every day that you talked about on about your free workshop on stories, you had twice as many options as when you didn't. So that's an extra encouragement to keep talking about it on stories. Like if it's working, you can now see that it's working, because you've noted what you did each and every day. Okay, yeah,

Kirsten: 22:08

that's a perfect segue to the launch library that you currently have. And I'm thinking about how how laid out it is, it's like something that is super helpful, as far as you've got the tab for all the emails you send, and what time you send it and click through rates and all of that. And you can also correlate it to that tab with all the social media. And you can add in what you might have put in certain days, and you can be like, Okay, wow, this is a like a huge amount of opt ins. A lot of people clicked on this, you could probably correlate it to the copy, or you could probably correlate it to what you might have posted on that specific day. So that's something I really like about your Launch Library. Is that you basically everything you mentioned, all those different metrics. It's all laid out there for you in a nice, neat package, if that makes any sense. So yeah, you grab that. I used it. Right? Yeah, my, I had five days of social studies, surprises, I was able to use a lot of the different because there's like a lot of different things you can put in there. And so I really loved having it all together. And now looking back for next year, I can kind of see what I can reuse what I probably shouldn't do. So kudos.

Melanie: 23:23

Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah. And that's like, and the Launch Library has that extra bit for the for the live component, which it sounds like you didn't need right now. But something that you could I, yeah, so for the live besides opt ins, and then I would also look at the show up rate, which means the number of people you had registered versus the number of people that actually came live. Because what you'll see is, the more often you start to do live trainings, like the higher amount of people, you can actually get to come live, like live conversions, meaning people who buy like who attended the webinar can be upwards of 2030 40%. So if you can get 40% of the people who show up to buy, we want as many people in that room right as you can get. Yeah, I mean, honestly, though, it all it becomes launching is really it's just a numbers game. I mean, it's a numbers game spiked with marketing, and you know, good copy, and are you actually answering a need and all that good stuff, but it's really a numbers game. So the show operates important. And then the last one, of course, would be the actual like number of sales versus the amount of people in your entire audience. So that number usually is a little bit lower than like to be good. It's lower generally, what people are hoping. Like if your audience is only 100 People, I'm just using this because we both you know taught history, but if your audience is 100 people your email list is 100 people and you launch a new offer or product If and only three people buy your thinking like, only three people out of 100 baht, that's actually like, great. And it's like industry standard. So you should actually be happy about that. Yeah. And then your next goal should be just trying to get more, you know, people in your audience more eyes on your offer, because the more eyes you have, the more likely people are to eventually buy.

Kirsten: 25:21

Yeah, that's a really, really great thing to think about is that I feel like we are expecting, like tons and tons of people like, like, that's, you know, 100 people, like, everybody can buy it, possibly. But it's, it's interesting to note that it's really, really low amount conversion wise. And so if you only have 100, but I feel like the next best step is to try to grow your audience as much as possible. That would be like one of the troubleshooting like, Okay, this is what I did next time, I'm going to make sure I have a lot more people on my list so that, you know, maybe if it's, I shouldn't even try to think about math stuff, but they will then 3% is 30,

Melanie: 26:08

right? 30? Yes, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah,

Kirsten: 26:11

so that's 30 people buying my bundle instead of three people. So,

Melanie: 26:15

right. And I mean, some convert, like some industries have a bit higher conversion, and you know, you know, your audience best. So you can see, like, in your TPT, store, the little drop down over all of your conversion. So you could also kind of use that as a benchmark. And there's other ways to increase conversions too. Like, if you have ConvertKit, as your email provider, for example, you can tag people, you can do this and other places besides ConvertKit, you can tag people that click the sales page, follow up with them individually, keep a list of your leads, if you get questions from different people in Instagram, follow up, you know, with them, ask people why they were on the fence, we actually just did a we just did a finishing up a launch yesterday with a client. And you know, it didn't go as planned. It really it really didn't. And it went okay. Sometimes that happens. We sold about 200 bundles, but it was a collaboration. And, you know, we were hoping for more like the 1000 range. So it really didn't go as we hoped it did. And we sent out a survey this morning, basically, it's one question, pick the number one reason you didn't purchase this time. So we're going to take a look at that, probably tomorrow or the next day and just kind of see what people are saying. So also don't be afraid to like, admit defeat, so to speak, and just be like, this didn't work out. So why, you know, did you choose not to not to join or not to buy at this time? Because that can help?

Kirsten: 27:46

Yeah, that's good until just like following up with your audience. And and I feel like even if you do have a small list even before the by, and people are like asking questions about it or clicking on it, the smaller the audience, the more you're able to kind of connect a little bit more one on one with them. That's always that's always helpful is like the those touch points, like, just kind of to increase the conversion a little bit. I agree. Okay, so I've got a few bonus questions, just to switch things up a little bit. The first question I have, since you're a history, or former history teacher wants a history person, always a history person. So if you could travel to any era for just one day, where would you go? And what would you do?

Melanie: 28:34

I would hands down, go to the 1920s. And just, you know, just see what's going on in the 1920s in there. And it's, I mean, it's just such an interesting era where so much is changing and so much new technology, like the car or the refrigerator, like more and more people are getting consumer goods, the first credit card so to speak, we're available, making really irresponsible decisions. Like I would like to hang out there for a day or so that

Kirsten: 29:05

get those flapper outfits and I sure would. That sounds like fun. Okay, second question in the Battle of iconic comfort foods. Do you pledge allegiance to the versatile slices of pizza or handheld delight of tacos?

Melanie: 29:21

It's tough. I would pick a taco taco overall, I would because you can switch. Well, you can switch a lot of stuff out with pizza. But one of my favorite drinks is a margarita, which appears better with a taco than pizza.

Kirsten: 29:35

definitely agree. Yeah. That's kind of like our thing down in Texas is all these tacos everywhere on every corner. And that's what I love about it. So

Melanie: 29:44

are you originally from Texas? Yeah,

Kirsten: 29:47

my family is all Texas like nice generations of people from Texas. So yeah, in a ticket? Yeah. All right. Last question. Pen and paper or digital device which one do you prefer?

Melanie: 30:02

Oh, man, I was just talking with some people about that the other day I like prefer pen and paper. However, I still use like Asana as my own personal project management tool, but then I still have Have you ever heard of hustle? sanely? Just Massey? I've heard of that? Yes. So I have like, the to do list of the day, her daily notepad, which I really like. It feels sometimes like I'm doing double work. But like x teacher, I have, you know, all my flower pens, all that good stuff. So I, I feel like it's a 5050 split. I guess if I had to absolutely pick, I would probably go digital in this online space. But I have yet to actually give up paper planning.

Kirsten: 30:49

I'm kind of a same way. I've got my full focus planner with all my like, top three things to do and all of that. And then I've have clickup with everything. My life in there. So yeah, both telling me what to do for the day for work.

Melanie: 31:02

Exactly.

Kirsten: 31:04

All right. Well, this has been a wonderful interview. I'm super excited for my listeners to be able to hear this really great strategy to help sell and boost sales for bundles. So where are some ways we can learn from you and work with you?

Melanie: 31:22

Come find me over on Instagram. That's mostly where I hang out at Duxbury digital. And then we can I don't know if I sent you this, but we can pop in the link for the Launch Library if anyone's interested in the show notes. And I've got all sorts of blog resources and everything on my website all about launching to help you out.

Kirsten: 31:43

Perfect. Well, I really appreciate you being here.

Melanie: 31:46

Thanks for having me.

Kirsten: 31:51

Thanks for listening to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also follow me on Instagram at the southern teach dot designs. Have an amazing day.