Pathways with Amber Stitt

The Evolution of Internet Marketing: Leveraging Incentives for Business Success with Marco Torres

• Amber Stitt

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🎙️ In this engaging episode of Pathways with Amber Stitt, we dive deep into the world of entrepreneurship and marketing with the insightful Marco Torres, founder of MarketingBoost.com. 

🌮 Tune in as Marco shares his journey from being a young entrepreneur who sold his restaurant chain to Taco Bell to generating over a billion dollars in online sales. 

💻 With a passion for marketing and an expertise dating back to the early days of Internet marketing, Marco provides valuable insights into building personal brands, standing out in crowded markets, and leveraging technology to scale businesses.

✈️ Discover the secrets behind Marketing Boost, a unique business that offers travel incentives as a powerful tool for enhancing customer engagement and driving sales. 

🏨 Learn how Marco creatively solved challenges in the travel industry by capitalizing on unused hotel rooms and turning them into successful incentives for business owners and their clients.

🤝 Throughout the episode, Amber and Marco discuss the importance of social proof, reputation management, and the power of collaboration in business. 

🗝️ Whether you're an entrepreneur, a direct salesperson, or someone exploring side hustles, this episode offers practical advice and inspiration to take your endeavors to new heights.

⏳ Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a true marketing pioneer and gather actionable insights for boosting your business.

📽️ To watch this podcast:  https://youtu.be/m9vXy79e0ks

🔗 To connect with Marco Torres:

📲 Website: https://www.marketingboostsolutions.com

📲 Website: https://www.marketingboost.com

📲 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/6101960marcotorres

📲 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Ge98RukWA28p25gPnf-eA

#pathwayswithamberstitt #amberstitt #marcotorres #marketingboost #marketingboostsolutions

📻 Thank you for tuning in to Pathways!

🔗 Connect with Amber on Social Media:

📲 Be sure to visit Amber's website:

www.AmberStitt.com

And remember, let's take action today!!!

Marco Torres [00:00:00]:
I do agree with you. There's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, or direct salesperson, or what have you. I mean, the technologies that are available, there's never been such affordable technology to build your websites, create your CRMs, your communication platforms, email, texting, voicemail, broadcasting, ways to follow up and communicate with clients. When I got involved in Internet marketing, and I've been involved in Internet marketing, by the way, since 1996, very early adapter, generated in my career over a billion dollars of online sales for either my own companies, or companies I worked for. And I've seen the whole evolution of the Internet, so. And back when I started, it was very difficult. You had to learn coding and HTML coding and all this kind of stuff. And today it's, plug and play, website builders, funnel builders.

Marco Torres [00:00:44]:
There's still technology to learn, but it's a whole lot easier than it used to be.

Amber Stitt [00:00:48]:
Hello and welcome to Pathways. I am your host, Amber Stitt, and today we welcome Marco Torres to the show today. Welcome, Marco.

Marco Torres [00:00:56]:
Hey, thanks for having me. I look forward to this chat.

Amber Stitt [00:00:59]:
I was looking forward to chatting with you because I do love marketing and I'm an insurance nerd that really loves marketing and talking about insurance to get people excited because not everyone's excited about talking through death, or disabilities, so I have to zhuzh it up a bit. And so when we can get guests on the show that can help people think outside the box and how to maybe personally brand, stand out and just work to cultivate more revenue being business owners, or maybe employees with a side business. And so I know you have quite the story to share, but this is the world you live in and you are a founder of a current business, MarketingBoost.com but that's not the only thing you've done, from what I understand.

Marco Torres [00:01:42]:
That's very true. I've been an entrepreneur since age of 9. By the time I was 12, I had built the biggest paper route that paper had ever seen. They featured me on the front page for building the biggest route. And I forgot all about that until a few months ago. I was going through my dad's...he's no longer with us...but anyway, I was going through some old files and found a file he had on me with a paper clipping of me on the front page.

Marco Torres [00:02:06]:
I'm like, "Whoa, that's cool."

Amber Stitt [00:02:08]:
Well, isn't that interesting? When you do affect other people's lives, there's things that you're doing, we are doing, that can affect other people's lives. Now, yes, it was a job for you, but there's other things that trickle down from showing up and doing your best at any phase.

Marco Torres [00:02:23]:
Absolutely. Well, he taught me that. I had a lot learned from my father's work ethics. And he never handed me out any weekly allowances. And he got me and said, "Hey, if you want to buy that Schwinn bicycle you want, you could wait for Christmas, or your birthday and maybe Santa will bring it, or you can figure out how to go earn some money and buy it whenever you want it." So he suggested a paper out. Oh, back then it was a real business. I mean, we had to...I had to deliver the paper and to sell the subscriptions, then go deliver the papers, then go back and collect the money, run a spreadsheet so that...my dad taught me that so I would know who owes me what for each week.

Marco Torres [00:02:59]:
You know, collections. And it turned out to be a fun project. I eventually sold the route.

Amber Stitt [00:03:04]:
I didn't think about that. I was always a little jealous of seeing people making money as a younger person looking out the window going...but that's really early. I didn't know you had to sell the actual subscriptions.

Marco Torres [00:03:16]:
Well, I don't know about nowadays, but back then there was no Internet for people to sign up to, or to pay their bill. I had to knock on doors and sell the subscription. And then the worst part was going back and collecting the money after you made all the deliveries and people owe you money and then you have to stop the deliveries until you can collect because they never answer the door. Oh, man, all those kinds of challenges coming. What time of day do you have to hit their door for them to show up and pay.

Amber Stitt [00:03:42]:
And so there might be some incentives of charging in advance, or a deposit. Yeah, we'll see.

Marco Torres [00:03:48]:
Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:03:49]:
So when you did this, were you out of the country at this time?

Marco Torres [00:03:53]:
Yeah, I was growing up in Puerto Rico. Good question. Now, my father was transferred to GEM with General Electric Credit to the island of Puerto Rico, which is obviously part of the United States. But I had the opportunity to grow up in Puerto Rico, surfing and what have you. It was a great youth there. And then the Virgin Islands. And then by the time I was 23, I had five restaurants in the Caribbean and a full service restaurant in St. Thomas, U.S.

Marco Torres [00:04:17]:
Virgin Islands, 4 fast food restaurants in Puerto Rico. And by the time I was 27, I had a nightclub of my own, as well. So early mover and shaker. I thought I'd be a billionaire by 35. I swore I would be, but I've never hit that, yet.

Amber Stitt [00:04:32]:
But anyway, we'll just extend that 10 year thinking out just a little bit longer.

Marco Torres [00:04:36]:
A little bit longer, yeah. Still haven't got there.

Amber Stitt [00:04:39]:
Now, what was it about the restaurants and the clubs that you left that behind? Because doesn't that sound very glamorous? Beach life?

Marco Torres [00:04:46]:
It was. The restaurants were cool. And by the way, the way we got involved in that, my older brother and I...I dropped out of college after about a year and a half and decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur and convinced my older brother and my mom, "Hey, we got to be..." we were Mexican descendants. "We have to open a Mexican restaurant here in Puerto Rico." And my dad laughed at us and says, "You guys don't know anything about the restaurant business." Again, teaching us the work ethics. He said, "If you're serious about that, I might be able to help you get the financing. But I'm not going to do that until you prove you guys really are into this and know what you want and how to do what you're going to do."

Marco Torres [00:05:21]:
So we went to live with my uncle in Dallas and we were funnel hacking, funnel hacking before there was such a thing. In other words, we went to work for every restaurant, bunches of different restaurants in San Antonio, Texas, and lots of Mexican food restaurants there. And so we worked the midnight shifts. We volunteered to do this so we could go in with cameras and take pictures of everything from the stainless steel setups to the orders, to what they would order, the equipment they use, processes, and we would compare notes from the different restaurants we worked at. And eventually we came up with our own concept of how we were going to deliver Mexican food without buying a franchise. And it turned out to be a home run. Eventually we sold. You asked me how I got, why we got out of it.

Marco Torres [00:06:04]:
You know, we had our dream of franchising this, starting Puerto Rico and then taking it to the US and selling franchises and the whole ball of wax. Honestly, after five years of this, we were burnt out, at least burned out on what it takes to be successful in the restaurant business. Very low margins. And we ended up selling and got the perfect timing to sell to Taco Bell when they wanted to come into the Puerto Rico island and get all the food court, the food court malls that we were in. So we sold 4 of our 5 restaurants to Taco Bell and the rest was history.

Amber Stitt [00:06:39]:
No kidding?

Marco Torres [00:06:39]:
We couldn't wait to get rid of the one in St. Thomas. That one eventually disappeared with a hurricane, so we never rebuilt it.

Amber Stitt [00:06:47]:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. I mean, when I'm looking at what you're doing now and just being a part of people's...I'm thinking more along that lines of the reward incentive world that you're in. We'll talk about that here soon. But just to be along for the ride and see the joy from the customer perspective in the restaurant business, you test that, see if that's your thing. But you can sell out to Taco Bell. That's pretty amazing. And I love the strategy.

Amber Stitt [00:07:12]:
So the funnel hacking is really, I'm thinking funnels, like marketing funnels. You guys were just truly doing ultra brainstorming by pulling everything together just to see how different entities are doing the process and the flow. Is that the funnel hacking part?

Marco Torres [00:07:28]:
Exactly. I mean, we didn't know the restaurant business and yet we wanted to be in it. Right. And so the message I have for anybody listening here, if you're looking at starting your own business, you better work in that industry first. So maybe it's something you've been doing all your life and now you want to branch off into your own business. That's smart. But if you're like, "Okay, I want to do this, I'd love to have my own business in photography." You should go work for another photography industry.

Marco Torres [00:07:51]:
Go work for a wedding expert, or go work for somebody who's doing this and learn everything that they do and look at what they might be doing wrong that you could improve on. But as you do it for somebody else, even as an apprentice, you're going to be getting the skills and the talent for what you're going to need to learn without having to learn it on your own, losing money in the process.

Amber Stitt [00:08:11]:
So, yeah, I feel that with YouTube and these videos that are out there, how to do things, plus actually skin in the game and having experience, that we're going to have quite some, I think, generations that are truly going to excel in entrepreneurship. Because now there's both of that. If they have the gusto to go do that and they're driven enough, plus they have other resources, there's really no excuses now to get after it, I guess, is my point. And I work in financial services, as I was telling you, and there's not a lot of people coming into my industry, and I advocate a lot for people to say a lot of the systems are outdated. We call it antiquated, essentially, where you get thrown in, take a bunch of exams, and here you go, you're now a planner. "Well, what does that mean? Am I doing a budget? Retirement planning, what age group?" So going and building a community and testing some of these positions, it's not wasting time. It's truly going to help you figure out what you might love and what you might not.

Amber Stitt [00:09:06]:
And then you can plug in where needed, where your strengths are.

Marco Torres [00:09:09]:
Absolutely. I do agree with you. There's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, or direct salesperson, or what have you. I mean, the technologies that are available. There's never been such affordable technology to build your websites, create your CRMs, your communication platforms, email, texting, voicemail, broadcasting, ways to follow up and communicate with clients. When I got involved in Internet marketing, and I've been involved in Internet marketing, by the way, since 1996, very early adapter, I generated in my career over a billion dollars of online sales for either my own companies, or companies I worked for. And I've seen the whole evolution of the Internet. And back when I started, I mean, it was very difficult.

Marco Torres [00:09:46]:
You know, you had to learn coding and HTML coding and all this kind of stuff. And today it's plug and play, website builders, funnel builders. There's still technology to learn, but it's a whole lot easier than it used to be.

Amber Stitt [00:09:58]:
You are an OG. You know what that means?

Marco Torres [00:10:00]:
Oh, God, I don't know.

Amber Stitt [00:10:03]:
You're an original gangster of marketing.

Marco Torres [00:10:05]:
Oh, there you go.

Amber Stitt [00:10:09]:
Now, I remember the coding. I remember MySpace and going, "Oh, if I want to put this song, or this whatever it was, you copy paste." And once you got it to work, you're like, "Look at me go." But you're right, there's so many ways to go about it. I think people can get overwhelmed. That's why podcasting and other community building, you can figure out what can you kind of tap into on your own with some of the plug and play tech, but then maybe outsource some of these other pieces. And that's where it's pretty amazing. You have about 30,000 regular subscribers to the what you have today within your business, is that correct? You have been evolving and innovating over time, but I think that's pretty impressive.

Amber Stitt [00:10:47]:
And you mentioned a billion dollar word earlier too, and you kind of glossed over that. So, I mean, the volume there and keeping at it with the right resources definitely helps correct?

Marco Torres [00:10:59]:
Absolutely, yeah. I got involved in Internet marketing in 1996/97. By the time 2000 came along, I figured it out and I was hitting a lot of grand slams out of the park with it and I was at email. I guess I was a spammer before they even called it spam. I'm talking about before Facebook, before Google, before...

Amber Stitt [00:11:15]:
Yeah.

Marco Torres [00:11:16]:
So it was a lot of email, all the AOL. And back then, people loved their email, you know, "You've got mail."

Amber Stitt [00:11:22]:
Yeah, yeah.

Marco Torres [00:11:24]:
But a lot of what we sold over the years was travel with a private company where I built their Internet marketing and started doing over $200 million a year in sales. And that went on until the year 2008. And it came to a crashing halt during the crisis of 2008. Found myself firing 2,000 telemarketers. Back then, if people don't remember, the Internet meant to drive people to a phone call. People didn't want to buy online in the early days, nobody would buy anything over the Internet.

Marco Torres [00:11:52]:
Nobody wanted to put their credit card in some lost space, but they wanted to talk to people on the phone and tell me about it, "Answer my questions," and then they'd buy over the phone. So we had 2,000 telemarketers that I was feeding calls to. And I think eventually that changed. Today nobody wants to talk to anybody on the phone. Don't look at me, text me, email me, whatever. The last thing I want to do is talk.

Marco Torres [00:12:14]:
But don't you dare call me. I won't pick up the phone.

Amber Stitt [00:12:17]:
So it's like, how quickly can I pick up? Be like, "Oh, that's spam! Block."

Marco Torres [00:12:21]:
Yeah, that was a mistake, exactly. So today it's obviously online, and now it's a matter of can you generate constant reviews? Can you have social proof? Do you have the social proof you need for people to believe and know, like, and trust you? And anyway, it's grown into a lot of experience that hopefully I can add some more value bombs for your listeners.

Amber Stitt [00:12:42]:
Social proof. That might be obvious to us, but let's talk about social proof and think of it like, if you answer this for us, employees can still not be a business owner, yet, but still be building out social proof of their reputation. Can you expand?

Marco Torres [00:12:59]:
What I also coach a lot on and try to do myself is provide value, free content, providing value, showing, for example, like your podcast. I have my own podcast show as well, where I'm interviewing experts on businesses of all kinds and highlighting not only my expertise, but others and showing myself as the authority, the expert in my industry. That's one way to do it. It doesn't cost a whole lot of money. Or get yourself invited on other podcasting shows about your expertise and start having that social proof, "As seen on Amber's show," and so on and so forth. People Google my name now and I'll show up with hundreds of podcasts that I've been on. And that type of thing is part of that social proof. But to tell about Marketing Boost, that's actually how we were born.

Marco Torres [00:13:45]:
It's kind of...can I go ahead and tell that story?

Amber Stitt [00:13:47]:
Yeah.

Marco Torres [00:13:48]:
So Marketing Boost was born...we were in the travel business prior to getting into Marketing Boost, which, just as a quick snapshot, Marketing Boost provides travel incentives to business owners to give them incentives that they can use to add to whatever their call-to-action is, to enhance that call-to-action with more value versus discounting. For example, the way it came about is we were in the travel business with another very successful travel website that we were building after 2010, when I got back in business for myself after the crash. And we were building this travel website, having a lot of clients selling hotels and resorts all over the world. But we wanted video reviews, we wanted more social proof, but we couldn't get anybody to go an extra mile and film a selfie testimonial about the hotel they were staying at, or what have you. So we came up with an idea to offer them a bonus vacation while they were on vacation and came up with a survey process.

Marco Torres [00:14:40]:
By the way, this is a great tip I give to anybody listening. We would do a survey when we felt our client was at their peak of happiness, which in our case was the day after they checked into the hotel. So we would send them an email and text message saying, "Hey, how's the hotel you booked? Living up to your expectations? Can you give us a star rating? Do you like the hotel and how's our service been so far?" And if we got a four or five star rating back from the client, we would send them a message going, "Thank you, we're thrilled you're enjoying that hotel. Would you do us a huge favor, help us spread the word about that hotel, or that resort? If you go that extra mile and film a selfie video review of the hotel, brag about their brand and brag about ours. If you'll do that, we'll give you a bonus trip. Three nights in Orlando, or Las Vegas." Boom. That worked like a charm.

Marco Torres [00:15:27]:
Before we knew it, dozens of these and then hundreds of interviews were coming in, video testimonials. And we knew that if we only had those, we'd leverage them. We'd publish them all over our website, our Facebook, our YouTube channels, our TV ads. And of course it was working like a charm. But we had to turn off the campaign because it was, "Okay, this is expensive to fulfill now."

Amber Stitt [00:15:44]:
Capacity!

Marco Torres [00:15:45]:
Yeah, and we have to give these people 3 nights in Orlando, or Las Vegas. That's coming out of our pocket. So then we thought, man, if we could only find a way to not have to pay for these rooms, we could keep this campaign going. So since we were a high volume travel company, we went back to those partners in Orlando and Vegas and said, "Hey look, we think we've found a way to solve a problem that you have. That problem is, let's be honest, your hotel is never full year round. Sure, you're full certain weekends, holidays, peak season, but the majority of the year you've got empty rooms, 30%, 40%, 50% of them sitting empty. Yet you still have all the same fixed cost, mortgage payment, front desk staff, maintenance crews, etc. And if you'll give us those empty hotel rooms, access to that inventory, we're going to put warm bodies in those rooms.

Marco Torres [00:16:29]:
Couples, families, individuals. They'll spend money, probably spend money at the restaurant, the bar, the gift shop, excursion desk, the room service, casino, and so forth." And they agreed. And so now we were able to fulfill all of these trips we were giving away without costing us any money. Then we thought, "Wow, if we had hotels like this all over the world participating, we'd have a whole other standalone business, which is what eventually became MarketingBoost.com. Today where we offer complimentary hotel stays as our key incentive really is complimentary hotel stays from 3 to 7 nights at 130 destinations around the world with hundreds of participating hotels, no timeshare presentations, or any hoops like that to jump through. But it allows our Marketing Boost member who pays us subscription fee the ability to give away these incentives with whatever their call-to-action might be. Like, "Hey, pay for 12 months in advance of my service and I'll give you 5 nights in Cancun on us."

Marco Torres [00:17:26]:
Or, "Buy product B to go with product A," get them to spend more money. "And if you buy product B to go with product A, we'll throw in 3 nights in Las Vegas on us." And then we have other incentives as well, like restaurant savings, vouchers and hotel savings cards. Different increments. The idea being that using these incentives to wow, surprise, and delight your clients to create additional engagement.

Amber Stitt [00:17:51]:
Well, thank you for sharing that when we first started today, in my mind, I'm thinking you get to have a lot of fun building incentives and rewards while people are at their happiest. That in itself as a product is actually pretty cool. Versus, like you said, you cut out that timeshare presentation and you're just focusing on no overhead for that and that kind of training that it would require to be a sales trainer person. In that role, you're able to build and customize product for people that are ultra happy. And it's global now, too. I see that being a lot of fun to think about what kind of reward, what kind of add-on can I build to just make that experience better? So that is a really neat business model. The other thing that I think is so smart is that they're already there at that hotel. So yes, one extra day could maximize another,

Amber Stitt [00:18:40]:
I mean, drinks, food, etc. They're going to spend more. Just like the gas station, you go there to get gas, but you're going to go in and maybe buy some other stuff while you're there.

Marco Torres [00:18:50]:
It's a good example because pulling up to the gas station, they really, most of the gas stations make very little money on the fuel. They really want you to come in. The big winners are the RaceTracs of the world, the ones who get you to walk in and they've got snacks, food, all the concessions to get you to spend a bundle at full retail pricing before you walk out the door.

Amber Stitt [00:19:11]:
So the management of reputation online, I know that you help people with that. Do you talk about that a lot on your podcast, or with clients? That's really where I feel that there is something that we can be doing online to kind of step it up a notch. And you touched on that a little bit already. But I think as we move through different pathways through our life and people that might retire into new businesses, it's never too early to start that positive whatever you want it to be, whatever story you want to tell. Some people might be more radical than others, but I think it's always something we can be working on to put ourselves out there, especially now that we're more of a global community more than ever. And you obviously are living proof of that.

Marco Torres [00:19:47]:
And there's so many ways to do that. But even for example, let's say you're an Amazon vendor and you are within their Prime platform. So that means when you sell a product to somebody on Amazon. You as the vendor, don't know who the client was. Amazon keeps that information. They ship your product to that consumer. You have no idea who they are. How do you get them to come back and spend more money with you? How do you get them to upgrade and buy more? How do you get them to write a review? So, yes, Amazon does have a system to automatically send reminders to people that post a review.

Marco Torres [00:20:19]:
But, for example, in your packaging, in your delivery, you might include a QR code, and a reason for them to end up on your website, such as, register your product with us and get a chance to win 5 nights in Cancun, or Hawaii, or Cabo San Lucas on us. One of the Marketing Boost incentives. Create a very enticing reason for them to click on that QR code and go register with you. Now, you did that, you're acquiring the client information. Now you get name, phone number, email, street address, whatever you need, and they're giving you permission. And then you can be saying, "By the way, now that you're here, will you give us a review? And if you give us a review, we're going to reward you with $500 hotel savings card just for reviewing the product that you bought, whether you liked it, or not. We'd love to hear your feedback."

Marco Torres [00:21:05]:
And especially if you do that, the way we did it originally and still do, is we do that survey first as a survey process. So we would ask them how they loved our product. Mind you, if we got a 1, 2, or 3 star, we needed to know that, then we could try to fix it. We could try to solve the problem, ship them another one, whatever the issue is. But if they gave us a 1, 2, or 3, we weren't sending them the message to post a review. We were letting them vent.

Amber Stitt [00:21:33]:
Yeah, I don't need you to put that online.

Marco Torres [00:21:35]:
You venting with me and I'm over fixing it. On the other hand, if you gave me a 4 or 5, super, now help me please tell the rest of the world about it. And that's an example of one way to help start maintaining your online reputation. Including, I've got business owners, mind you, that use Marketing Boost incentives, even for something as simple as fixing negative reviews. Let's say you dropped the ball, somebody in your team dropped the ball, you got a client all upset, so you contact them and you say, "Listen, we want to apologize. We'd like to hit the reset button if you let us, we want to fix the product. We want to ship you a new one. We want to solve, whatever it is we have to do."

Marco Torres [00:22:09]:
And then you might say, "Just for the grief and the issue that we caused and we want to apologize for, we want to give you 3 nights in Las Vegas on us or 3 nights in your choice of 30 US destinations. If we fix the problem and we gave you a complimentary hotel stay on us, would you consider taking that review down, or would you modify that review?" And you're going to have people willing to do so. That's just another example of how if you've got a little bit of creativity, you can use the incentives at trade shows for trade show giveaways, for sweepstakes online, lead generation for rewarding clients, building reward platforms in the insurance industry. Amber, here's another idea that a lot of our members, I've got a ton of insurance agents and realtors. Here's an idea that even you could implement, and that is to lead by giving and supporting local nonprofits, or fundraisers by providing them with our complimentary hotel stays. And give them half a dozen trips they can give away. But let them auction those vacations off, let them sell tickets, let them keep all the money. But what you're going to ask them to do is, "Hey, I'd like to be at the auction or at the fundraising event so that I can tell everybody the quick disclaimers about how they work. They don't include airfare, they don't include food and beverage, and they don't include government taxes and fees.

Marco Torres [00:23:26]:
I like to tell everybody how they work in case, for the winners. And by the way," you know, elevator pitch, "I'm your expert in real estate, or I'm the expert in financial planning. If you ever need to review your current situation, give me a call. I'm the expert, yada yada, or I'm the realtor, I'm the plumber, and this is what we do." You're taking your sales hat off. You're supporting a good cause, people see you as an expert in authority that can afford to give away half a dozen vacations as a sponsor of the event.

Marco Torres [00:23:52]:
And now you're rubbing shoulders with these philanthropists and you're getting leads without being in sales mode. And that means people are coming up to you, asking for your card or what have you, instead of you running around trying to be on sales mode. And everybody is going, "Stay away."

Amber Stitt [00:24:07]:
Yeah. "Salesy, here she comes." So you said something, I think pretty important. You don't wait for the...let's say in my world, the client experience, they go from buying an insurance policy, they have to get approved and then they're...you don't wait for that to be done. You would want it in day 1, or 2. Like when they're at their highest, they're excited they showed up to the hotel, or they're so excited to be taking action for their family. You want to know almost at the beginning to the middle, what's going on.

Amber Stitt [00:24:36]:
So you can use that for intel for yourself and your team. "How are we doing?" If it's great, great, let's move it to a review. And potentially beyond that, there could be even more things. But you want to kind of nip it at the beginning, right?

Marco Torres [00:24:49]:
When we expect they should be, depending upon your product, or service, you should have an idea when you should expect them to be at their peak of happiness. It could be the moment they bought it, but it's likely once it arrived, or once they've had a chance to use it, or once they'd gone through your onboarding training or something along those lines. As far as when to do a survey process, like I mentioned, in the insurance industry, by the way, there are restrictions on using incentives, so you can't, for example, as far as most states I'm aware of, you can't incentivize a transaction. You can't say, "By the way, if you get this insurance policy from me, I'm going to give you 5 nights."

Marco Torres [00:25:24]:
But you could say, "Just ask me for a quote and I'm going to give everybody who solicits the quote, whether you signed up with us, or not. I'm going to give you a $200 hotel savings card just for us getting the opportunity to give you a free quote." Or you might say, "I'm going to guarantee to beat whatever you've been quoted previously with the best product, or service. And if you don't agree, I'm going to give you 3 nights in Las Vegas on us, whether you sign up, or not."

Amber Stitt [00:25:50]:
Ooh, that's a tricky one. "But I want that price. But do I want the trip instead?"

Marco Torres [00:25:58]:
Exactly.

Amber Stitt [00:25:59]:
Then we can have a trip wire saying, "Okay, but you still went with me. Thank you. Here's a treat." I don't know.

Marco Torres [00:26:05]:
Exactly.

Amber Stitt [00:26:06]:
So fun. So I know that...is there any do's and don'ts when it comes to this process, outside of just what's not allowed by compliance?

Marco Torres [00:26:15]:
I'm not your lawyer, so there's plenty of compliance issues for different industries like real estate, like insurance, most business owners have no worries of any restrictions to worry about incentivizing their clients. But in the insurance and real estate and mortgage industries, I know there's a number of restrictions, but in our case, do's and don'ts, for example, we train our...and they're not hardcore do's and nos, but they're really, for example, with a Marketing Boost membership, you have the ability to give away as many of these incentives as you want. But we also train, just because you can give them away like candy, you shouldn't. In other words, create scarcity and urgency, make people do something to earn them. The more they do to earn the incentive, the more valuable that perceived value is going to be and they're going to actually use it. They're going to use the incentive and be grateful to your company for having provided it. So that can be, for example, instead of saying, "For everybody who signs up for my newsletter, I'm going to give you 3 nights in Las Vegas."

Marco Torres [00:27:12]:
It's just too good to be true. But if you were to say, "Hey, when you pay for 3 months in advance of my coaching business for 6 months in advance, or on our 1 year anniversary, if you renew, I'm going to give you the following rewards incentive. So you're creating...for example, I had one client comes to mind. He generated almost $500,000 in 4 days, when he found Marketing Boost. He had a subscription service and hundreds of people paying him $90 a month for his service.

Marco Torres [00:27:39]:
And he found Marketing Boost and he said, "You know what, I'm going to go back to everybody with a promo and say if you pay for 12 months in advance and become our VIP members, yada yada, we'll give you 5 nights in Cancun, or Hawaii. And if you pay for 3 months in advance, then you get, I mean, 6 months in advance. We'll give you a choice of 3 nights in one of 30 US destinations in Las Vegas, Branson, Missouri, Gatlinburg, Orlando, there's a bunch of them. So he ended up generating over 300 people paying 12 months in advance at $1200. And he had about 150 give him $600 for six months in advance. Combined he generated almost $500,000 in 4 days.

Marco Torres [00:28:17]:
And now that's an ongoing additional cash flow. And now that's part of this process. After he gets them involved at the tripwire at the $97 a month and then, "Hey, step up and pay for our gold plan and become a annual member, you get this, this, and that included some of his own extra bonuses, as well. Which by the way, that's part of what I preach, you need to have your own incentives as well as ours. Our product is not a magic bullet that's going to make you a millionaire. People have to know, like, and trust you.

Marco Torres [00:28:42]:
You have to have a real product, or service. And then mixing-in or adding-in incentives is only going to enhance, or improve that call to action for people to get off the fence and do business with you when otherwise they might have procrastinated and then forget all about you. That's where the incentives can be used to get people off that fence to do business with you that maybe wouldn't have otherwise.

Amber Stitt [00:29:03]:
Yeah, that's awesome. We talked about, you and I, just the Pathways of Peak Performance. We start with the foundation of loving what you do. The Marketing Boost can work, but you still have to have you behind...or your team, or whatever that brand message might be. So it's important for you to be able to understand your strengths, but love what you do. Then you're going to look back at this whole, say marketing year calendar, for example, this person that had the 12 month commitments, okay, how many clients can you take in one year? What do you want? How are you going to show up? So there is some work you need to do to sustain the flow because you combine a little bit of what your expertise is, along with the marketing. Promotions can be a lot of fun, but if you knock it out of the park, you have to have the resources there. So I guess that's not for us to put the cart before the horse kind of a thing.

Amber Stitt [00:29:45]:
I think if something does go out, knocked out of the park, I think some of my coaches would say hire for it when it happens. I've seen them kind of say test some things and then build a team around that if you need to. So that's probably for another day, but I know you talk about how to stand out in a crowded space. And so, if you have your subject matter expertise along with some of these incentives, is there anything to share in that regard? Cause I almost feel like the nonprofit space, you could be out in your community doing good work, but using some incentives that can trickle back to your business. It starts with you, but it also could end with the community and really, anything in between.

Marco Torres [00:30:25]:
Especially if you are offering products and services to your local community like that. That's when that leading by giving example I gave earlier, supporting fundraisers, high school football equipment drive, whether nurses or police department fundraising, anything you can be doing to participate in the community and sponsoring the event, saying, "Hey, my firm would like to sponsor your next fundraising event, and we're going to give you a number of complimentary hotel stays and restaurant savings vouchers." For example, I'm going to support the next golf tournament and give everybody who attends the golf tournament will get a $100 restaurant savings voucher from my firm and the winner of the hole in one, or what have you, whatever, the biggest donor to the fundraising drive will get a complimentary hotel stay in Las Vegas on us. But you're part of the event now. You're the sponsor, your name is somewhere in the promotions and you're there and you're supporting the community. And then, of course, there could still be additional incentives, such as, "Okay, to get that restaurant savings voucher I promised, well, you need to click on this QR code and you need to put your name, phone number, email in to get it." And we have the automation on the back end of our product, so you can create an automated system to send them the incentives automatically.

Marco Torres [00:31:37]:
And now you're generating leads from everybody that went to that event, for example, to follow up on with your product, or service.

Amber Stitt [00:31:43]:
I think that when you're looking to work through these incentive programs, you're building out something different in the relationship where it can be more exciting. And it's outside of the, the thing that you're working on. It's outside of that insurance transaction that feels kind of icky. It's outside of that, "Hey, we need to throw money at something to support a cause." Well, you're out at a community event doing it. So it makes that, I think, more enjoyable to have more fun. Besides the main thing, by using some of these incentives and picking how you want to do it, how you want to customize it. But then you guys offer the automation on the back end.

Marco Torres [00:32:17]:
Other thoughts that come to mind there is, when it comes to your value, stack your offer, whatever that is, what can you do to make your value stack, your offer stand out from everybody else's in the same industry, or your competitor's? Well, one idea that I've helped business owners do, and that's collaborate with others. There's power in networking, there's wealth in networking. And, for example, Amber if you and I were selling similar services, maybe you've written a book about certain things, or you have training course on something and I have a training course on something similar. We might collaborate and say, "Look, when you buy my product, you get a portion of Amber's course included," and now Amber is going to include a portion of my marketing course included with hers, for example. So when you buy Amber's product, you get a portion of Marco's course, for example. And then we both now are sharing in the leads back and forth and we're both providing some of our content free as part of our additional value stack. So I'm providing it to you free. But in exchange you're offering me the leads for me to follow up to offer my product upgrade, whatever that might be and then you the same.

Marco Torres [00:33:26]:
So that's one way to add value to your value stack with things that don't cost you any more money and also adds potentially a very strategic additional value add and/or using the Marketing Boost incentive. But whether it be adding your own additional widgets, maybe if you sell coaching, what you'd love for people to buy an annual plan from you, well, throw in the 13th month free. Throw in, "If you pay for 12 months, you get 13 and 14 month free." Instead of discounting 20% off, throw in more widgets.

Amber Stitt [00:33:58]:
Yes. And a lot of times outside all of that, sometimes people, what we might be discounting in our own belief system is they need our whatever we offer. So if you keep them for that 13th month, we want to have them stay in the game and keep working towards the workout, the coaching system, whatever it is, because consistency is key. So instead of going discounted, I like that you're adding additional commitment levels, but they probably need it anyway, so it's going to be good for them. I think we're going to have another episode on strategic partnership because what you just talked about there, I could talk about that for probably easily 15 minutes with you. So that might be a phase two that we have. Marco, how do people find you and get to know how they can build in their own automation Marketing Boost with.

Marco Torres [00:34:44]:
Have them go to MarketingBoostSolutions.com MarketingBoostSolutions.com and on that site there's several products and services that we offer software solutions to business owners. But of course there's a link there for Marketing Boost. Actually all of your listeners can go get a free version of Marketing Boost, no credit card required and they'll get a portion of what we offer. But they'll be able to see it with no risk at all. Send themselves one of the incentives, test it out for themselves. Or, if you just click on the the paid version, it's only $37 a month and you can get access to all of our library of incentives and start rocking and rolling.

Amber Stitt [00:35:24]:
Mmm, love it. Thanks so much for being here. There's a lot to unpack and I can't wait to see that in action on your website.

Marco Torres [00:35:30]:
Thank you.

Amber Stitt [00:35:31]:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Pathways. For more information about the podcast, books, articles, the blog, and so much more, please visit my website at: www.AmberStitt.com And remember, let's take action today! Thank you for listening!