Horatiu Manea is a Romanian entrepreneur and founder of Brandify. Brandify uses Horatiu’s unique and revolutionary system for building brands for products, services, and companies, based on Horatiu’s nearly 18 years of experience in the field. The results from Brandify’s proprietary brand-building system are amazing, most businesses 10-15x their revenues in just 90 days or less.
William Vanhout sat down with Horatiu recently and had him spill all the tea about his 30-day campaign that added nearly 3000 highly-motivated leads to their email list (2324 direct leads and 658 referred leads.)
Even more impressive, those 3000 leads lead to sales of $150,000 over the course of a year.
“There are Only Two Models in Business for Success”
In Horatiu’s experience choosing the right business model is not the biggest obstacle entrepreneurs face to create revenue. It’s all about creating a memorable brand for your business.
In the words of Horatiu:
For instance, if you think about electric cars, many companies make them these days. Yet one company springs to mind when you talk about electric cars –Tesla. If you’re looking for a vacuum cleaner, you have thousands of options, yet Dyson is perceived as the cream of the crop. Even a product as mundane as ketchup is synonymous with the Heinz brand.
Market leaders like these companies don’t happen by accident. Brand awareness is built by repeated exposure and education about why a business’s product or services are the best solutions to their customer’s problems. That’s why list building is critical to move a business to a brand everyone thinks about and turns to for solutions.
Horatiu says:
He adds, “But before you can make that sale you need to find an audience for your offers. If no one knows you exist, it’s impossible to make sales. People have to know that you have a product and idea that can solve their problem.”
That’s where UpViral comes in for Brandify and their clients. UpViral contests and sweepstakes create instant buzz and brand awareness, help companies gain social media followers and shares, and build their lists at lightning speed. There is no faster, easier way to expose prospects to your company’s offers than through an email list.
Because most businesses start to work with Brandify after experiencing a significant downturn in revenue, rapid list-building is a must. Businesses need warm, responsive audiences to make sales.
That’s why UpViral proved to be the perfect choice to promote Brandify’s book giveaway.
The Book Giveaway
Many businesses are recognizing the value of promoting their businesses with a book, and Horatiu and Brandify were no exception. A book is an excellent way of providing value, establishing expertise, and winning trust with prospects. Social media and blog posts just don’t have the same perceived value as a book does.
The book Horatiu and Brandify promoted “Brand Secrets: How to Create a Million Dollar Brand for your Business.” The book’s content was based on Horatiu’s 17 years of experience helping businesses build brands that have racked up over $40 million in sales.
The landing page was simple (see below), but it contained an element that made it nearly irresistible: social proof.
Horatiu says that it’s not enough just to put up a landing page with an offer. To get people to take action you must “sell the button.” That means you need to convince people to enter their name and email and click the submit button.
Convince your audience that your lead magnet is exactly what they need to solve their problem, and they’ll happily give up their email in exchange.
Lesson: Don’t Jump Straight into Paid Ads
Instead of immediately creating a paid ad for the giveaway, Brandify posted about the giveaway in their Facebook group and on Instagram. This strategy was used to grow organic interest in the contest, as well as get likes and shares. It paid off as the post received over 500 Facebook shares, 400 Messenger shares, 300 shares on WhatsApp, and 100 shares on LinkedIn.
More importantly, the strategy allowed Brandify to capture comments and use them for social proof on the giveaway landing page. Once the organic posts took off, Horatiu created paid ads to get even faster results with his giveaway. Since there was already so much social proof from the organic posts, the paid ads came in at a reasonable cost.
Total ad spend was $800, an approximate cost of $3.75 per lead. While not inexpensive, the total revenue of $150,000 generated through contest leads made the cost of lead acquisition more than worthwhile.
Horatiu noted that as well as generating direct and referral leads, the ads also served another purpose. The nearly 13,000 visits to the landing page created new Facebook audiences to use in future advertising.
Waiting to build organic buzz before launching his paid ads wasn’t the only trick Horatiu had up his sleeve.
A Milestone Twist on the Classic Giveaway
Most lead magnets are a simple exchange of the prospect receiving a download in exchange for their email. Horatiu knew that he could get far more mileage out of his giveaway by gamifying it with an UpViral contest.
He set up a contest on the thank you page that offered a branding consulting session valued at $1000 for the person with the most landing page shares.
Horatiu played it even smarter by adding a milestone campaign element to the contest. People who opted in only received the first ten pages of the book, then accessed additional pages by sharing.
This was smart because it is less daunting for someone to consume ten pages at a time than it is to consume 60 pages all at once.
This twist of releasing a limited number of pages at once increased the number of shares but also had another important function. Sharing enough times to receive the entire book self-segmented the individuals most eager to work with Brandify.
The Contest Share Page
The incentive for the share page was value-packed: a one-hour live branding session from Horatiu valued at $1000. The contest had two eventual winners.
The share page told new subscribers the exact audience they needed to share the book with (entrepreneurs) and how many points they needed to be eligible to win the branding session.
Custom actions also featured prominently on the share page and helped to get more followers on Brandify’s social media pages.
Keep Leads Engaged
Throughout the 30-day contest, Brandify emailed the leads to keep them engaged and introduce them to the Brandify ecosphere of products. One of the first emails new leads received was an invitation to join a three-day brand-building challenge.
This email not only kept the leads excited about the contest, it also helped them to know Horatiu and Brandify better. Providing immediate value to new leads increases their trust and confidence in making purchases from you.
Horatiu’s Top 3 List for Campaign Success
Before Horatiu left the interview with William, he generously gave his three best tips to master your lead generation campaigns.
The first thing to consider is what kind of value you’re giving prospects. They don’t know you, so they’re bound to be a bit skeptical about what you’re offering. Provide proof of the value of your opt-in gift. What kind of results can they expect, and in what time frame?
The second item on Horatiu’s list is to create an irresistible hook for your opt-in gift. What can you say on your landing page that will make people stop in their tracks and sign up for your offer? Be clear, concise, and creative!
Lastly, have a viable back-end for your offer.
The end of the book included a “Super Signature”, that included multiple call-to-actions outlining all the ways a business could start working with Brandify, from group coaching to year-long $1000/month masterminds.
If you’re a business coach or consultant, you should have both low-ticket and high-ticket offers. The first offer in your funnel should be free, then lead to low-ticket challenges, group coaching, paid mastermind subscriptions, and for those with deeper pockets, one-on-one coaching from you or your team members.
If you’re selling physical products this could translate into luxury versions of your core offers. If your offer is SaaS, offer tiered levels of features at different price points. You could also offer related coaching to help your subscribers get better results with your products. The possibilities are endless. The main thing is to give people the options they want.
Ready to Create Your Own Killer Book Giveaway?
Thinking about creating your own book giveaway? Then consider this.
UpViral is Horatiu’s tool of choice for fast and cost-effective lead generation. The first time he saw UpViral, he was convinced of its worth: “We chose UpViral for one single reason. How can I spend the same advertising dollar to get more leads? How can we get people to share even more of our stuff? Because if we are not incentivizing people, they will not share our message.”
So how about following Horatiu’s lead and creating your own unstoppable UpViral lead generation machine? Get started today for only $1.
