How to Use Incentives to Get More Clients w/Marco Torres

[00:00:00] J. Rosemarie: Marco Torres is the founder of marketing boost.com. He has helped thousands of business owners, worldwide boost sales, and scale their businesses by as much as five fold through the use of incentive based marketing. Listen to his tips and strategies and how a podcaster. Can use incentive to boost their business and increase sales. [00:00:26] Remember to go to marketingboasts.com/podcast. To get to get your first month membership to Marketing Boost for $1. That's marketingboost.com/podcast[00:00:43] Jennifer: This is Tools of the Podcast Trade, where you can learn about the tools and resources. You can use the start and grow your podcast tune in each week, as we talk about the help, you need to remove the mystery from podcasting. So you can become a successful [00:01:00] podcast that can reach your audience, where they are.[00:01:02] My guest today is Marco Torres expert in the power of using incentives to sell more without discounting among other things. Welcome Marco. [00:01:14] Marco Torres: Thank you for having me, Jennifer. Pleasure to be here. [00:01:16] Jennifer: Sure. Thank you for coming and talking to us today. Now my first question is always tell us who Marco Torres [00:01:24] Marco Torres: is.[00:01:25] Well, Marco Torres is also known as captain Marco. I don't know if your audience is watching the video today, but I got my fishing shirt on. I'm ready to go fishing after this call, but I like sailing or boating or fishing. So I'm always out on the water as often as I can. I've been an entrepreneur most of my life since I was the age nine.[00:01:45] Huge paper out by the time I was 12, I was featured on the front page of the local newspaper for building the biggest paper out by age 23, I owned five restaurants in a nightclub. I went on to work in the corporate world for a few [00:02:00] years as well. And back in business for myself and overall in my entire career have generated over a billion dollars in sales for my businesses or my clients.[00:02:09] What else? I've so I've been around, I've been an internet marketer since before this is 1996, so I've been a very early adapter of internet marketing, email marketing backward, and everybody had an AOL account. You know, been here since before Facebook and Google and whatever. So I've watched the evolution of the internet and internet marketing strategies.[00:02:30] So I might be able to give a few value bombs to your listeners on things they can do to grow their audience, to acquire more clients, to generate testimonials, number of ideas, like. Okay. [00:02:42] Jennifer: We appreciate that. What drives you though? I mean, you've been going at this for a very long time and a lot of first burnout, the stats is that I'm up to episode 10.[00:02:53] Most podcasts has failed. So what drives you? [00:02:56] Marco Torres: Okay, well, that's a good question. Yeah, I've I have a, I've [00:03:00] burned out a few times in my career but I've also I have also reinvented myself and come back as, you know, swinging something new. Right now when it comes to, to my current passion is we developed a business called marketing boost and launched it in 2017 and marketing boost.com is a, a tool that what we do is we help.[00:03:24] And this is my passion. I help business owners around the world. Of all kinds, all niches, including podcasters that are using our travel incentives from marketing boost to help acquire more clients. I use it for referral programs. I'll get into more of that in a moment. But marketing boost is essentially a subscription plan.[00:03:43] And that allows our members that are subscribed to marketing boost the ability to give away an unlimited amount of three different categories of incentives that we offer that can be used in a myriad of ways, which we'll talk about on the show. But essentially we offer. Complimentary hotel [00:04:00] stays and over 125 destinations around the world.[00:04:03] Three nights, days in places like Las Vegas, Orlando Branson, Missouri, Myrtle beach, Daytona beach, Miami. We offered a 30 us destination. Places like five nights in Mexico and Cancun and Puerto Vallarta Cabo San Lucas. Punta Cana Dominican Republic, five nights in Hawaii, seven nights in places like Phuket, Thailand, or Bali.[00:04:25] We have destinations all over Europe and Australia. And so we're a worldwide company now that provides these incentives for, for business owners to be able to stand out from the crowd and run contests, run engagement, promotions, loyalty programs. We also have hotel savings cards that come in increments of 100, 200, 300 and $500 discount compared to the Expedias of the world and restaurant savings vouchers.[00:04:53] So those are the three categories of incentives. And then what we do is teach our members how to [00:05:00] use those in different ways to to do the things that I've been talking about. So. Acquire lead lead generation ideas, using them on social media platforms to as viral contests, to generate engagement, to get people, to come to a webinar.[00:05:15] And the till the very end. I know people that use these incentives to get people, to listen to their podcasts of the end of their podcast show. They're giving away. If they're, especially if they're live, they're giving away the, some of the incentive, maybe an incentive for two. When they take action during the live call, for example.[00:05:34] So I can go on with Jennifer on ideas on that, but with, and without the marketing boost incentives on how to grow your business. [00:05:41] Jennifer: Okay. So you, you say that. Offering incentives, help businesses to attract new customers. Is that what you're saying? [00:05:49] Marco Torres: Exactly. Exactly. So when we launched this business, what we were trying, the reason this whole business even came about, let me tell the story a little bit, cause it might make some sense we needed [00:06:00] to generate.[00:06:00] We were in a travel space for decades and I've been in travel since 1993. And we. We when we launched our own, along with my partners and I, we launched our own travel site in 2009. And by 2011 or 12, it was really growing very, very fast, but we needed, we wanted video testimonials from our clients so that we could leverage these video testimonials on our website and show people at the resorts at the beach, at the pool, at the bar.[00:06:28] And we were like, what could we do to get people to actually film selfie, testimonials incentives? So we came up with an idea and my mind you, this idea, Jennifer, any one of your listeners that has a business of their own or a podcast, or what have you could use a similar idea to, to grow their business and what we needed.[00:06:48] We started doing a survey when we thought our clients would be the happiest, which would typically be the. You know, a few hours after check-in or the next day after checking at the hotel. So we'd send them an email and a [00:07:00] text message or right after check-in they have to check in and say, Hey, how's the hotel living up to your expectations.[00:07:06] How is, how has our service so far? Would you rate us on a scale of one to five? And if they gave us a four or five, our automated platform would send them an email and a text message saying, fantastic. We're thrilled that you're having a great time and you love the hotel, please. Would you help us?[00:07:22] Would you do as a huge favor and help us share the word about that hotel brand and about our brand? And if you would fill me video testimonial from the pool, the beach, the, you know, the, the bar, whatever is your favorite part of the resort, do a selfie video and brag about the hotel brand and our brand.[00:07:39] And we'll reward you with a complimentary hotel stay. And that took off, you know, by the way, if they didn't give us a four or five, if they gave us a three or a two, we wanted to know that as well, because if it weren't. That gave us the opportunity to let them vent with us, for us to see if we could get involved, to see if we could fix the problem.[00:07:57] And if we could, then we, then we could go [00:08:00] back and ask them for a review or testimonial again, but by only asking the ones that gave us a four or five. We were making sure we were generating, you know, hundreds of positive reviews that we were leveraging all over our website and anybody who wasn't super thrilled.[00:08:15] We had the opportunity to fix the problem before they went and wrote a negative review, because we also know that if you don't solicit reviews, You're only going to get the negative ones. Cause most people don't bother you. Not most people don't bother to read a review. They're unhappy. So what, by soliciting new, by doing the survey, you can find out who loves your brand already.[00:08:35] And then you're going to ask those people to do a video testimonial and then spread those all over, you know, all over the, you know, So with that you can control and your online reputation. Anyway, we started giving away hundreds of these complimentary hotel stays in exchange for a video review. And then we had those videos.[00:08:53] We turned into thousands. We now have over 30,000 video testimony. All over some of our websites. And as [00:09:00] those people started to raise their hand saying, Hey, we want our free trip that you offered us. Now we had to go into our pockets to pay for those free rooms. And that was expensive, but it was still worth it because of all the w we were leveraging those reviews.[00:09:12] But now we have to come up with an idea, we're scratching our head. How can we get these rooms for free? So he went back to our hotel partners and we said, look, we know you've got a problem that we can. Your hotels are never full year round. You're full, you know, 70% of the year. We know that 30% of your rooms go empty.[00:09:30] Of course, you're full on some weekends, holidays, peak season, 4th of July, Christmas week Easter. But other than that, you've got empty rooms. Most. So we convinced a few of them and especially in Orlando and Vegas, where we started to give us their, let us help them fill those rooms with warm bodies, with couples, with families that were going to spend money at the restaurant bar pools, spot casino room service, et cetera, you know, gift shop and they'd get some revenue versus no revenue.[00:09:58] And they agreed. And [00:10:00] before you knew it, we said, wow, this is great. Now we're fulfilling all of the certificates we were giving away. We thought if we could, if we could get hundreds of resorts around the world to participate with this, we could turn it into an, a whole entire business all by itself, which is what we did and eventually became called marketing boosts.com.[00:10:18] So we created a win-win win and win for the resorts because we're helping them fill rooms that would have gone in. And the client is paying or somebody is paying the government taxes because they get their cut no matter what. So somebody checks into the hotel, the government expects to get paid the tourism and hotel taxes.[00:10:35] So that's covered in what we call an activation fee. The hotel wins. The government wins. The marketing boost member wins because they get the ability to give away an unlimited amount of high value, perceived value incentives as part of their calls to action. The client wins because they're getting free room other than paying the government, Texas.[00:10:54] So we teach our members. All you got to do is give a proper disclosure. When you give away these free [00:11:00] trips, you're saying basically. I'm going to give you three free hotel state. You're on the hook for your own airfare, girl and transportation to the resort. You got to pay the government taxes and your own food and beverage.[00:11:10] And by disclosing that you've essentially covered the details. And then the client logs in, they have 18 months to travel, no timeshare presentations or anything like that. No hoops to jump through when we got into this business and if we're going to do it, we're going to do it better than anybody else, which is what we've done.[00:11:26] And now we have thousands of business owners around the world that use our service and next Jennifer, if you'd like, I can give you more specific ideas on how podcasts. Could you use these incentives? [00:11:36] Jennifer: Okay. So that was my next question because it all sounds good and travel is hot right now. So, so how can podcast specifically leverage these incentives to help them boost their revenue and audience?[00:11:53] Marco Torres: Great question. And you're right about one thing. Travel is finally back again. I mean, during [00:12:00] COVID we, we, instead of giving people 18 months to use the incentives, we extended it to 24 months to use the incentives. So that worked people continue to give them away. People continued to activate them. Yes. We had less people using them during.[00:12:13] Two years of lockdowns and stuff, but now my God, it's like, I could, I've never seen anything. Like it it's like revenge travel. Everybody wants to go somewhere. They're tired of being locked down if it's a drive to destinations. So, you know, with 125 destinations around the world, we've got options, you know?[00:12:30] So, so they're very, very popular now, better than up, more than I've ever seen you. So now's the best time ever to be using these incentives to help engage your clients now about podcasters, for example, I know one I've got one that comes to mind is a pretty big podcast named Brian Kelly. And he, what he does is he, as he announces the up and coming of a show with, you know, he's doing promotions, Hey, next week on Thursday, we're doing a live show with, you [00:13:00] know, so-and-so and he says, join this live show.[00:13:03] And he does a lot of live shows. And then. Broadcast the recording as well, but he's promoting people to join the live show where he's going to be given away five night trip to Cancun, Mexico live on the show. So don't miss the show. One of you are going to win the trip to Cancun, and then he might run contest as well too.[00:13:23] To, you know, during the show or, or even for the recorded process, Hey, if you would share this with, you know, if you'll share this show with, you know, five of your friends or relatives, you're going to get a chance to win. So you can create these, these promotions to get people, to share it with other people, to get work, to solicit a review on, on, you know, if, Hey, post a review about us on on apple podcast or on this podcast.[00:13:50] Or if you'll post a review on these three different platforms, I'm going to reward you with a complimentary hotel, stay in your choice of Las Vegas, Orlando. So these are just [00:14:00] some of the ideas you could be using to use for referrals. You might ask for, if you know, a lot of podcasters actually have other products and services to sell as well.[00:14:10] And so now that's where, when people are booking appointments, you can be using. You know, a lot of us are selling, selling something on our shows and we're asking people to book an appointment with me and no obligation phone call. And let's talk about how we're a good fit for each other. So you might use a hotel savings card or a restaurant voucher to, into, during your show to say, by the way, Book an appointment with me, no obligation appointment.[00:14:35] And I'm going to give you a hundred dollars restaurant savings voucher just for booking the appointment. And of course, showing up on time for your appointment. We all know that nowadays we're all using zoom, like crazy to book these appointments and make presentations, but then somebody books, an appointment you log in, you're all ready to make yourself an additional.[00:14:53] Nobody shows up. You're got nobody to talk to. These incentives can be used to help people [00:15:00] show up for the appointment. So you can say, I'm going to give you a hundred dollar hotel savings card just for showing up on time for the appointment you book. We know your time is valuable. We think ours is as well.[00:15:10] So we're going to reward you if you show up on time without, you know, $200 hotel savings card, and then once you've got them on the phone and you're making your presentation, you might now use the, a higher gift, like a. Five nights in Cancun, Mexico with, with a bigger call to actions such as, okay. You know, if you hire me to do your business coaching, here's what I do.[00:15:30] I, we do business coaching. We help you build your own podcast. We help you, whatever it is you do. Now, you can come back and say, it's going to take a little while to get the job done. So if you hire us for a minimum of 90 days, On the anniversary of 90 days, I'm going to give you a complimentary, or maybe you say, maybe you say, if you hire us for six months, you can cancel any time.[00:15:51] It's a month to month deal. However, if you stick with me for six months and you let me be your, your, your business coach, you let me hold your hand. You let me hold [00:16:00] you accountable. When I train you, teach you, coach you, and that at the six month anniversary, I'm going to reward you with a six day five night trip to Cancun, Mexico on.[00:16:09] So now you can dangle that carrot as the loyalty program to stick with you, you know, and then during the course of your six months, you're going to keep reminding them by the way, pretty soon, you're going to get six days, five nights in Cancun. So you using these incentives as a tool to to keep them engaged, keep them.[00:16:26] Or to generate referrals or to ask for a video testimonial there's a myriad of ideas that you can use it by the way, a membership to marketing boost Jennifer, it's only $37 a month. So this is not like a high ticket item. Like, oh, it sounds amazing. How much does it cost $37 a month? And it gives you the ability to give away an unlimited amount of these incentives.[00:16:47] Now, Jennifer, regardless of whether you use marketing boots, they do want to share this with your listeners. The key here is. Add value to whatever your offer is, whether you use marketing boost or not. I mean, [00:17:00] yeah, I've been making kind of a sales pitch for marketing books, but the key is find ways to add value.[00:17:05] In many of you can do this with your own widgets, your own boners, your own, your own additional value, such as. If you hire me for six months, I'm going to give you the seventh month free. If you I'm a, I'm a multi-level marketer. You know what, if you, if you or whatever, you're, you know, you're a gym, you might say it, you know, at the, at the, after the quick start program, I'm going to put you on a 90 day quick-start program, we're going to put you through this and that you follow the diets, we follow the exercise program, whatever it is.[00:17:34] And at the end of 90 days, when you lose that 15 pounds goals that we have for each home for you. If you hit those goals and you do everything I ask you to do at 90 days, I'm going to reward you with, you know, two more months of my service free or what have you, or you might plug in your products and services.[00:17:51] And one of the marketing boost incentives to really make that carrot sound attractive. If that makes sense. [00:17:57] Jennifer: Of course it does. I mean, I need to Berlin, [00:18:00] it's a brilliant plan using a very hot merchandise, you know, and I could see where you could use it in, on a platform like. So incentivize your, you know, your membership on Patrion.[00:18:11] So that's, that's pretty cool. I, I love it. Thank [00:18:14] Marco Torres: you. No, you're very welcome. And there's so many, I mean, I've got peoples, some people have, I've had, I've helped people that have subscription models. Listen to this story. I had a guy that had he had hundreds of people paying him $97 a month. For his team for access to his tips and when to buy and sell and trade stock and cryptocurrencies, he had a big team of God.[00:18:36] He has a big team of people in, in a, in India that, that are doing analytics of all these things. And they're coming up with when to buy and sell. They prove people, they can make a little more money with them. And so they're, we're paying them 97 a month with he, he built this big following on telegram and they started doing marketing boost promotions where he would say, Hey.[00:18:55] If you step up and pay for six months in advance to our gold [00:19:00] plan, we will reward you with your choice of three nights in Las Vegas, Orlando. And if you pay for 12 months, We're going to reward you with six days and five nights and your choice of Cameroon or Hawaii. And he had over 300 of them step up and pay for the annual plan.[00:19:18] Another 150 paid for six months plan. Instead of discounting his annual plan, he got the full price. Plus the, the bonus trip that didn't cost him. And he ended up making almost $500,000 in four days with that one promotion. Now that's part of his ongoing process after they may of 97 a month for a while.[00:19:37] And he shows that his services have value. Then he asks them to step up and pay for the six month or the annual plan to save money. And more importantly, get the book. And boom, he's re you know, generating a lot more revenue. So there's just a ton of different ways to, you know, use these to revive an old debt database, run contests, building large [00:20:00] Facebook group following by running viral contests.[00:20:02] I can keep going and going and be like, [00:20:07] Jennifer: awesome. Thank you very much. I appreciate you sharing so liberally. I appreciate it. You what is Marco Cole grateful for it? [00:20:15] Marco Torres: What am I grateful for today? It's a beautiful, sunny, shiny day in Florida. I'm happy to be above ground and I'm happy to in a little while here, I plan on getting out and going for a swim.[00:20:27] Maybe get the boat going. So, yeah, the long days of spring and summer are starting to come here where the sun doesn't go down until eight o'clock later on, on the summer, it will be till nine o'clock. So I'm grateful that such beautiful weather. [00:20:40] Jennifer: Amen. Thank you very much for sharing. And before I let you go, could you give one piece of advice to a podcaster as you know imposter syndrome is our number one disease.[00:20:53] So if you could give us one piece of advice as we move forward and monetize in our podcasts and, you know, getting a [00:21:00] service like yours to help us. And don't forget to tell us also how we can get in touch [00:21:06] Marco Torres: with you. Cool. So here's a tip, a piece of advice that I think many of us entrepreneurs podcasters, you know, we're, we're we we make the mistake of trying to do everything ourselves.[00:21:19] We make the mistake that like, well, nobody can do this better than me, so I have to do it all. Or, or you're on a tight budget. So you still feel like, well, I gotta do it all because I can't afford to hire anybody. But it's a huge mistake. You've you've got to, but to figure out a way to anything that you do over and over every day means you should be able to turn that into a business process.[00:21:46] And outsource that find somebody to help you do it, get some virtual assistance, either locally or somewhere else in the world that can help you anything from helping book, your speakers, to getting you [00:22:00] booked on other podcasting shows two to editing your podcast, trying to do it all yourself means that you're gonna, if you're thinking like a small business, And you're going to stay a small business with that mindset.[00:22:13] So you've got to surround yourself with people that are, that are smarter, better and sharper than you and hire people that are, you know, experts in different fields. And you're an expert at this. I'm going to hire you for that. And little by little, you're going to be able to look at things from 30,000 feet above looking down and manage your business, not just work for it.[00:22:34] So that's my tip for the. How to get a hold of me and find me go to marketing boost.com. Simple as that, I do have a, a offer for your listeners. If you go to marketing, boosts.com. Forward slash podcast, you can get marketing boost for 30 days for $1 marketingboost.com/podcast gets you. 30 days of Marketing Boost for $1, or you can sign up for a seven day free trial.[00:22:59] [00:23:00] anytime marketingboost.com and get a free trial for seven days. I'd recommend give yourself a free trip to Cancun first. We really just bought her brought on recently, some amazing resorts. Again, Cancun the fives they're triple eight for diamond. Just unbelievable beachfront resort, 15 bars and restaurants, super value.[00:23:19] And give yourself the trip, check this out, become an evangelist for our brand, and then use our incentives to get evangelists for your brand. [00:23:27] Jennifer: Okay, thank you very much, Marco Torres for coming and talking to us today. I really appreciate you. And don't forget that we put those links in our show notes.[00:23:35] Don't forget to check that out. Marco Torres, @marketingboost.com [00:23:40] Marco Torres: thank you, Jennifer. Thank you.[00:23:42] Jennifer: Got questions about podcasting. Do you find yourself struggling with the tools and strategies that you know will help you launch and grow your show? Why not join the New West Podcasters Club, where you can get your questions answered [00:24:00] by me or one of our guests expert the link to our next meeting is below sign up today and don't let confusion about podcasting stop you from owning your genius, whether you're an individual or a nonprofit, the New West Podcasters Club is where podcasters come for answers. Link below for our next meeting.