100 New Customers in 90 Minutes: How Chris Ducker Uses Periscope to Make Sales

Tim: New marketing channels seem to be popping up daily in the modern business landscape and the one I’m asked about more than any other is Periscope. The number one question is can Periscope be used to actually drive revenue or is it just an engagement tool? Well I wanted the answer to this question myself so I reached out to my good friend Christ Ducker who is a Periscope rock star. He had some amazing news to share. He did two periscopes which resulted in over 100 sales for his new training program for entrepreneurs. That’s a hundred sales from just over an hour and a half of time. That’s pretty incredible. So I had to bring him on the show to share just how he does it and what kind of process you can put in place to make scopes work for you.

I’m Tim Paige, the conversion educator here at LeadPages and this is ConversionCast.

What’s up, Chris? Welcome to ConversionCast.

Chris: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

Tim: Yeah. I’m happy to have you here man and so I want to start off with the results. You know, you’ve gotten some amazing results from something that people are talking about more and more and more but I think it will be interesting to share some tangible results. So tell us what you were able to achieve?

Chris: So in a 45-minute walkthrough Periscope broadcast of my new membership site upreneur.com we enlisted 83 viewers live on that call.

Tim: Oh I love that. That’s awesome. Yeah, this is fun. People have been asking me every webinar can I get results from periscope, can I get results from periscope.

Chris: Right.

Tim: I mentioned to in Philadelphia that I haven’t started Periscope yet really other than just a couple of test sessions. So this is good stuff, people are going to love this. So tell us a little bit about you Chris, who you are and what you do?

Chris: Well at the very core of me I’m just a sales and marketing guy. You know, I don’t put any – I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. That’s what I’ve been doing my entire career. But I mean I am a serial entrepreneur. I have several different businesses that I run. I employ over 400 fulltime employees. I have three floors in a five story building where my facilities are in the Philippines. I help entrepreneurs find virtual stuff to bring a little calm to their own entrepreneurial storm. I blog, I podcast, I write books, I speak and do a lot of other stuff oh and obviously I Periscope too.

Tim: I love it. Good. Well that’s just a stage you know, for this. So I think what I want to hear is you use Periscope but can you walk us through a little bit about how you made this work? How are you able to make this medium which could be so clearly used in the wrong way? Tell us how you’ve used it to actually get tangible business results?

Chris: Well you know what I’ve honestly approached it just like I’ve approached blogging and podcasting. You know, when I started blogging in January 2010, I have never – like up until that point, all I’ve ever used the internet for was for my business websites, email and watching funny cat videos on YouTube.

Tim: [Laughs]

Chris: Like that was literally it. But once I started creating content and building up an audience and creating that community you know, the speaking deals come in, the book deal came in for virtual freedom, more businesses are launched and more money is getting made. So I really doubled down I think probably around about mid2012. I really doubled down on building my personal brand. I said this is it. You know, people want to do business with other people, plain and simple.

Tim: I see.

Chris: So I’m going to build my brand and that’s exactly what I did. Now Periscope oh my god, I mean had this thing been around three or four years ago, I would have been all over it like a [indiscernible [0:03:44]] literally. Like I would be right on it. I just feel like Periscope is just such an incredible personal branding platform but like you very clearly pointed out, it’s not for everyone. Certainly you can do periscope wrong. I’ve seen big influences on there just boring me to death and I’m like dude, stick with the blogging, stick with the podcasting, seriously.

Tim: [Laughs]

Chris: You know, you’ve got to have that little bit of entertainer in you I think to make periscope work well and you’ve got to be ready for stuff to happen like on the fly. A lot of questions get thrown at you and you’ve got to be engaging. You’ve got to provide value. But that’s just – that’s content creating and marketing 101 but it’s a very, very unique platform and I’ve fallen in love with it. I think it’s great.

When people tell me that they feel like they can’t make any money on it, I call a huge amount of BS on that because even prior to launching Upreneur.com, and I will state when we did that periscope that was not after emailing my list or anything like that. That was a live —

Tim: Yeah that was the question I have.

Chris: — yeah no. So what we did, okay I’ll give you the full strategy here. So about two months prior to launching Upreneur.com, we knew we were going to be launching on September 1, truth be told we could have launched a little bit earlier but we held off a bit just to make sure all the bells and whistles were working properly.

[0:05:04]

What we did is on my live periscopes in a couple of months prior and I was probably scoping four times a week something like that on average for about 30 minutes a pop. I was providing value.  I was answering questions. I was preparing and delivering content just like I would on a podcast or live on the stage. A lot of the content that I was sharing on Periscope is repurposed from my blog and my podcast and the stuff that I share on the stage.

So you know, I wasn’t sort of reinventing the wheel so to speak. Then what happened I saw that people they were wanting more, they wanted more. So we created this special URL that we were only giving out on Periscope rather. We were not putting it up on Twitter or Facebook or emailing out or anything like that. It was just one special URL just for live Periscope viewers. That URL put them into a Lead Page which then went ahead and stuck them on prelaunch list. We sent one email to that list 24 hours before and there was about 500 people on that list. I should state before we launched. So we had 500 people opt in in the space of maybe six weeks or so and doing it very passively not slamming it down people’s throats or anything like that.

Then we went ahead and emailed them 24 hours prior to the live walkthrough. I said we’re going to be inside Upreneur.com and we’re going to be showing you it a virtual tour. It’s going to be the first time ever that I’ve showed it live to anybody and I want you to come and join me. We had about 300 people sign in and view on Periscope and out of 300 we had 83, exactly 83 people in just over 45 minutes ended up actually joining and paying that $49 a month joining fee.

Tim: That’s insane. So first off, even the sales numbers aside, with you know, six weeks of Periscoping, you got 500 new leads, just from Periscoping, just from being on there. Now you provided content. It’s not like you hit the start button and you were just like sitting there patting your dog or anything. You were providing value. It was valuable content just like any other content channel that you had. But in doing that, you got people on the list saying, I want to know when you launch your next product.

Chris: Yeah and dude, it got to the point where a week out people were literally begging me for it because I was talking about it and people were tuning in regularly throughout the course of that six weeks or so and they were literally when is it, when are you launching? Stop teasing us, when are you launching. I mean they were begging me for it. Begging me for it.

So you know, we had that kind of fandom sort of type of buzz that we had created for the platform before it even launched and then actually the funny thing was we did 83. So we did it in the evening in the Philippines and this is the thing that always is a bit screwy with me because of the time zone differences right? So I’m in the Philippines, I’m doing it at night, I’m fundamentally nine am eastern time here in the United States okay.

Tim: Uh-hum.

Chris: So we go to bed. We’ve done 83 members in the first hour right of that thing being open. I go to sleep, I wake up the next morning and my wife says to me and you met my wife she’s a super smart and savvy business wife. She turns around and she says to me you need to do another scope. I said no, no, no, no, I’m done. I’ve done the launch. Let it sit for a week and we’ll email the main list and everything will be great. She said no, you need to launch because quite frankly you were taking care of Eastern Time zone yesterday. That was 9 am. That was 6 am Pacific time and looking at your Google analytics out of the 54% of visitors who are US based, something mad like 70% of those of 54% are over in California. They’re in the Pacific Time zone.

Tim: Wow.

Chris: So I was like dam she’s got a point. So I got on and I did another scope of about literally 30 minutes to just basically repeat it, exactly what I did the night before and we signed up another 40 other people.

Tim: My god.

Chris: So that was pretty incredible. I didn’t expect to do that and I did it and you know, so here we are. We’re like 24 hours in and we had well over a hundred members in 24 hours and off of just one email to just 500 people.

Tim: I love that. I love it.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: So it wasn’t like – it was based on having some massive email list that you used before. It wasn’t based on you know, anything other than the fact that you had built up that brand equity, you had these people that kind of knew that you were the real deal and you got them on. You showed them some value on a live stream and just converted them using that simple kind of strategy.

Chris: I think people over think things. You know, like honestly I mean I’m here in the United States, we’re recording this one a rare visit to the US just a couple of times a year and I’ve been to a few events since I’ve been here and I’ve got another couple I would go. Honestly man, people are over thinking. They’re over stressing themselves out when it comes to building a following. They think it’s way harder than it really is. The fact of the matter is this. Provide  answers to people’s questions, check, provide solutions to people’s problems, check. If you do that regularly, and you provide enough value at the same time and you’re making people’s lives a little easier enriching them just a little bit. You bring a little bit more enthusiasm to them, their business, and their lifestyle, you will build a following.

[0:10:22]

You don’t have to worry about doing all these crazy marketing strategies, oh I’ve got to do a webinar every week and I’ve got to spend five grand a month on Facebook advertising and all this. I call BS on it – well yes that stuff works but don’t let it stress yourself out. Just do what comes naturally to you and people you know, I believe that we should be marketing like a magnet right. I say this all the time. You got to attract the best, repel the rest. That’s retweetable I’m just saying like right there is like hold on, that’s what you should be doing. No matter what you’re doing, where you’re doing it, and how you’re doing it, you should be marketing like a magnet. If you do that, you will attract the right vibe for your tribe and that’s what it’s all about.

Tim: Chris Ducker you’re the man. Thanks so much for sharing this with us. I  appreciate you coming on the show.

Chris: It was my pleasure brother.