Last week, I introduced ​The Podcast Growth Engine model​, the framework I’ve been testing and refining for the past couple years with my 1:1 clients.

The purpose of the model is simple.

Demonstrate the assets your show and business need to:

1. Sell more…
2. With less effort…
3. Without needing to build a big audience…
4. Thus, reducing the amount of marketing your business needs to thrive.

On Friday, I shared an overview of the 6 components that make up the model.

This week, we’re going to be digging deeper into each of the components to explain how each of them enables your marketing system to work more efficiently and require less ongoing investment of, time, energy, and money from you… for better results than you’re currently getting.

If you missed the overview, you can ​find it here​.

Now, let’s dive into our first component deep-dive.

Dialling In Your (Cash Cow) Offer

We’re starting off our component deep dives with the offer.

The reason is that when it comes to successful podcasting—and content marketing more broadly—everything starts with the offer.

If we’re going to invest thousands of hours into our podcasts and marketing strategies, we want to know it’s all leading to a highly attractive, sellable offer that has the ability to support our businesses.

With a truly great offer, you can run a profitable business despite terrible (or non-existent) marketing.

The inverse is not true.

When it comes to The Podcast Growth Engine Model, what we’re ideally looking to build around is a big, expensive offer that you don’t need many customers for.

The reason is simple: Roughly 1% of your audience will convert into customers regardless of the price of your offer.

Which means that if you have an overall audience of 5,000 people you can expect 50 of them to convert into clients or customers.

With a $5,000 offer, that conversion rate adds up to a nice $250,000/year business.

With a $500 offer, it adds up to just $25,000.

Or, running the numbers slightly differently, let’s imagine you have a goal of making $250k in revenue a year.

Assuming a 1% conversion rate…

• A $10k offer requires you to make 25 sales… which requires you to build an audience of 2,500 people
• A $1,000 offer requires you to make 250 sales… which requires you to build an audience of 25,000 people.
• A $100 offer requires you to make 2,500 sales… which requires you to build an audience of 250,000 people.

The upshot is this:

• The lower the price of the offer…
• The bigger the audience you need to hit your revenue goals…
• And the more marketing you need to do to build that audience.

Said differently: Low-priced offers require you to do more marketing—which is the opposite of what most business owners and creators want to do.

And so, if we’re wanting to build the most efficient marketing system possible, we want to start with an offer that doesn’t require us to make hundreds (or thousands) of sales a year, and thus attract the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of new audience members.

In other words, a big expensive, Cash Cow Offer.

The goal of this offer is to cover a significant portion of your operating expenses and/or revenue targets, thus:

1. Easing the pressure on your marketing and sales systems and creating a generally calmer business.
2. Subsidizing your low-ticket and free offerings, allowing you to be much more generous with them and offer them at prices you couldn’t if your business relied on them to function.

The result is a Cash Cow Offer allows you to both help more people while also run a more profitable business.

A few examples of common Cash Cow Offers include high-ticket:

• Coaching programs
• Consulting engagements
• Cohort-based courses
• Membership communities
• Done-for-you / done-with-you services

For a non-obvious, outside-the-box example, I know many creators who sell $25k–$50k live consulting/training packages to big corporations… all based on the exact same material they offer for a tenth (or hundredth) of the price to their primary audiences via cohort-based or self-paced courses.

The deliverable isn’t as important as the price point and the business model behind it.

The specific price point you charge will vary based on your skill set, experience, offer mechanics, industry/niche, audience, and more.

Oh, and before you think, “My audience is cheap, no one will pay for anything expensive…” let me say this:

I have heard this sentence uttered countless times by creators and business owners in every niche imaginable.

And time and time again, they’ve been (happily) proven wrong.

Just some of the weird and wonderful high-ticket offers I’ve seen people sell include:

• The guy who sells a $10k program on mastering handstands…
• The couple who charges $30k for dream interpretation (yes, seriously, and that offer is just a gateway to even higher ticket offers)…
• Dozens of folks I know who sell $5,000+ offers to classically “cheap” audiences like students, freelancers, retirees, and new parents.

Oh, and then there’s me, who years ago thought podcasters would never spend more than $100…

But then worked my way up to a $1,000 program…

Then $2,500…

And now a $10,000+ annual program, which is the best-selling offer I’ve ever created.

Suffice it to say, there is almost certainly a way for you to charge more than you currently think is possible.

And once you find it, it will lower the pressure on every other aspect of your business, from your marketing, to your podcast, to your operations, to your sales, and more.

Now, it’s worth noting that you might not be able to simply raise your prices or roll out a new $10k offer today.

You might currently lack the credibility, the proof of results, the access to the right audience, and—if we’re being honest—the confidence.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t start working toward that Cash Cow Offer now.

Here’s how.

Start with the assumption that there is a group of people who would be willing to pay 10x what you’re currently charging, and then ask:

“What would a [Big Scary Price] offer look like?”

• What outcomes would the offer need to result in?
• How would it need to be structured?
• What deliverables would need to be included?
• Who would be willing to spend that much?
• Etc

The buyers of this offer will often be a tiny, quiet minority of your current audience—that you have no idea even exist—who currently don’t realize you can help them with their more sophisticated problems, and thus have never yet engaged with you directly.

Or, they may not be in your current audience… but could be if you knew who they were and how to reach them.

Regardless, getting clear on who precisely you’re trying to attract—specifically, the small, high-ticket buyers who you only need to attract a few hundred (or a few dozen) of a year for your business to thrum along—provides the map for the rest of your Podcast Growth Engine.

Your ideal buyers inform your show—and its concept, episode mechanics, and content strategy.

They inform your lead magnet.

Your newsletter and email marketing strategy.

Your sales process.

And more.

We’ll cover each of those in depth over the rest of the week.

In the meantime, you can ​check out the Podcast Growth Engine Masterclass here​ for the full breakdown of how the system—and each of the discrete components within it—works.