Summary of Marie Forleo´s B-School

B-School´s Course description 

Marie Forleo´s B-School is a 6-week, interactive video-based training program that teaches smart, effective online marketing strategies to business owners who want more sales and more impact from their online presence.

Whether you’re brand new to business or established and ready to grow, B‑School will challenge you to execute at your highest level. It’s designed to turn your business into a force for good that fuels higher profits and your higher purpose.

Who is Marie Forleo? 

Marie has created a socially conscious digital empire that touches millions — while having a blast! 

Through her award-winning show MarieTV, world-class online training programs, a #1 New York Times bestselling book and an audience in 195 countries, she helps people like you dream big and back it up with meaningful action to create results.

You can read more about Marie here. 

Marie Forleo´s B-School´s Big BOLD promise

To make your dream business a reality. 

Get the full summary 

Get a 82 page summary of Marie Forleo´s B-School:  

Profit Clarity

Profit clarity means that you understand which products or services are the most profitable in your business.  

The goal is to find a sweet spot where you both enjoy what you do and you make money. You want your business to be fun and profitable. 

Money needs clarity. You need to understand exactly what your business model is and how it makes money. 

It’s not enough just to have an idea. You need to know how it will make money. 

You can build a business around what we really love to do and our strengths.  

Marie shows you how to do it. 

Ideal Customer Avatar

Your ideal customer avatar is super important. Without it, your marketing will be generic. Having an ideal customer avatar is what makes your videos, blog posts, and emails convert. Without it, you will just be shouting in the wind. 

Once you have an ideal customer avatar:

• Your sales will skyrocket. 
• Marketing will be easier. 
• You will attract clients you actually want to work with.
• You will reach your business goals much faster. 

Premium brand positioning

You never want to compete on price. 

Why?

• Customers who pay low prices are generally hard to deal with. They are not loyal and go to another provider if they get a lower price. 
• Competing on price will also hurt your profits (low margins), and people will already get used to you being cheap, so it will be tough to increase your prices. 
• High prices show you have more credibility. “You get what you pay for”. 
• The best customers don’t purchase if the price is too low. They want the best and they know the best is never cheap. 

How to position yourself for premium prices from day one? 

You’ve got to understand that people will pay whatever you ask for something they really want. You’ve got to find the biggest pain points of your ideal customers and solve those problems. Only then you can charge premium prices. 

But if you want to position yourself for premium pricing from day one, you need to make sure that your design, your branding, and your positioning is aligned with your premium price. 

How to eliminate competition

Be yourself. Don’t copy others. It simply won’t work. 

Yes. You can find inspiration from others. Especially if they are in other industries, as Marie does. She looks for inspiration in the entertainment industry. But you have to be yourself. 

You have to be clear on your UAP, your Unique Awesomeness Proposition. It´s Marie’s spin on USP which means “unique selling proposition”. This is what sets you apart from other businesses. 

Here’s how to find your UAP: 

• Read Now Discover Your Strengths, a fantastic book by Marcus Buckingham. After you’ve read the book, take the Strengths Finder Test online. Delegate whatever is not your strength. 
• Ask people around you. “What are my three best qualities?”. You will likely find some common responses. Listen to them. 

Make competition irrelevant

Why do you need to create a Blue Ocean strategy with your business?

Instead of focusing on a “red ocean” which is bloody from the cutthroat competition in a crowded industry. Focus on a “blue ocean” strategy and generate new demand in an uncontested market. Create your own market category and be the boss.

To know what your “blue ocean” is, you need to create a Strategy Canvas. 

The strategy canvas is a visual representation of the current state of affairs in a known industry. You’re gonna map out what factors the competition focuses on and you will map out how you can differentiate yourself. 

You can use this every time you launch something new. 

Marie analyzes how Cirque Du Soleil compares to a traditional circus from the “Blue Ocean” perspective. You can find this in the full summary.

Website Control

A website allows you to have all your marketing in one place. 

You don’t need to become a programmer to manage your website. It’s much more simple than that. 

You have two choices regarding your website:

• Update your site yourself: Build your website on WordPress or a similar system and get trained on how to do new pages, blog posts, and basic text changes. 
• Have someone reliable on-call: Hire somebody available on call or someone to be permanently on your team who can handle website updates and other tech issues. 

Choose one and go with it. There’s no other options. 

Opt-in offers psychology

Why is your opt-in important?

Your opt-in is the place on your website where your visitor can join your list. 

If you don’t have an opt-in or it’s not converting you are not taking advantage of your website. 

So one of the best ways to get someone’s email address is to give them something valuable for free. 

How to make your website a conversion machine

I believe an email list is the best way to talk to your ideal customers because emails aren’t going anywhere. 

Social media websites come and go, but emails have been here since the beginning and it’s likely not gonna change anytime soon. 

But the main reason why building an email list should be priority number one for you and your business is because you are in control of your email list. When you spend all your time building your Facebook page, what if Facebook changes their terms of service and makes it so your Facebook updates don’t end up in your fans’ newsfeeds?

With an email list, you are in control of the names in your database, you are in control of every email. If your email service provider starts to mess with you and makes it so your emails are no longer delivered, you can take your emails out and put them into a new email service provider. 

However, when it comes to social media, you can’t turn Facebook likes into Twitter followers or Twitter followers into Pinterest pins or Pinterest pins into emails. You’re not in control of that, some third party is. 

How do you design a website that converts? 

I discovered three high-converting areas of website design. If you place an email sign-up form on your web design in these areas, you’re gonna find that your same website will be able to generate more leads off of the same amount of traffic. 

The first is what I call a feature box, the second is the top of your sidebar, and the third is the bottom of your articles. 

You can see the full breakdown in the full summary of the course. 

Free content 

Between a business that has good free content and one that doesn’t have any, the one with the best content always wins. 

• Free content attracts prospects and gives them a taste of your business without you having to spend one on one time with each person. 
• Free content allows you to make a difference to your market even for those who can’t afford to work with you. 
• When people first find you, they may not be ready to buy yet, but they’re ready to consume your free content. A regular stream of free content allows you to stay in front of them so when they are ready to buy, you’ve established trust, a relationship, and given them enormous value in advance. 

Turbo charge your sales 

What is the reverse engineering process that increases sales?

Make a list of all the topics that are related to the product or service you are selling. Then create content that educates your prospects on that product or service. 

Example: 

Let’s say you sell Keto meal plans. Write an article about the 5 biggest mistakes Keto diet beginners make when starting a Keto diet. One of the mistakes could be not having a Keto plan. Boom. There you can insert your product. This is reverse engineering. You can do this for any product you are selling. You educate and then you sell. 

Blogging

Blogs position you as an expert and industry leader and are excellent for search engine optimization, SEO, and help bring new prospects to your site. 

Why does your blog exist? 

Your blog exists as a marketing tool for your business. It is there to make you more money. 

What are your blogging goals?

• Track new leads. 
• Convert prospects to customers. 
• Strengthen your relationship with existing customers to make more sales or get more referrals. 
• Drive people to your opt-in form.
• Become an industry leader or get more speaking engagements. 
• You’d like to differentiate your business from competitors, get press, or increase the understanding of the services you provide. 

Your newsletter

Why is email marketing essential?

You are showing up where your customers are already spending their time, their inbox. Instead of asking them to find you. And unlike any other form of online marketing, email can feel like a one on one conversation. 

Staying in contact regularly via email gives a natural opportunity for you to sell and make offers. 

Every online business I know that makes a lot of money uses email as an essential component of their marketing. 

I have not seen anyone who has a very robust online business who doesn’t use email to sell and market more effectively.

Psychology of List Building

Now you’re gonna use the list building strategies you’re gonna learn to attract more ideal customers to your site and grow your list

The money is not in the list.

The money is in the value you provide to your list. The more value you provide to your audience, the more they trust you. 

I’ve watched many entrepreneurs build businesses just because they wanna make money and it never works out. 

23 Ways to Build Your List

List building is not flashy, it’s not showy. It’s time consuming and there is little to no immediate payoff. 

Top 23 techniques for list building

1. Enable social sharing. Include a call to action in your newsletter and blog post to like, “Share with a friend.” And make sure you’re using sharing plugins like Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest, Google+. 
2. Consider using a lightbox pop-up. They often increase your opt-in conversions, and that’s a good thing for list building.
3. Optimize for SEO. You can learn at scribeseo.com

Get the full summary to see the rest.

Designing packages

Let’s start with why you want your customers to love what you offer 

When customers love what you offer it ignites your passion and your desire to serve more, to give more, and to make a bigger impact.

The next reason it’s awesome is that when customers feel understood, and fully heard by you, they’re gonna choose to buy from you again and again. 

Emotional connection equals loyalty. And even if you have the kind of business that doesn’t have a lot of repeat business, it’s gonna inspire people to share who you are and what you do to such a level that they’re gonna help build your business. 

Because happy customers create a snowball of good juju in your business. That means more referrals, more social proof, more testimonials, more reviews, more press, and more profit so you can charge more and deliver more value.  

The Big Secret to Selling Loads of Anything

This will help you be way more profitable because your existing products and services will convert better and your customers will want to buy more. So if you’re not selling as much as you want, it’s likely your products and services need some repositioning. 

You’ve gotta use common sense and validate your ideas with real prospects. That’s the only way you know what’s going to work and what won´t. 

Prevention mistakes top marketers know 

So if you want products and services that sell themselves, market to solve a problem for your customer vs. a general offering. 

No one pays for prevention, but everybody pays to solve a problem. 

I know you have examples of this in your own life, where something didn’t become an issue and you didn’t spend money until you experienced enough pain, you experienced enough discomfort, things got bad enough that you were like, “I need to change this now.” 

Product and Program Delivery

So, let’s talk now about online program delivery structures

There are 4 primary ways to deliver online content. 

1. Audio. Live teleseminars, recordings, audio interviews, podcasts, 
2. Text. Slides, workbooks, ebooks, and transcripts.
3. Video. Webinars, screen capture, video of you speaking or presenting. 
4. A combination of the above formats.

The format of your program is determined by what you’re teaching. What is the easiest and most effective way for your customers to consume your material? 

Infoproducts are trending towards the combo platter because it’s great for different learning styles and it allows you to easily add more features to your offering. 

Packing in too much can lead to customer complaints, people having a bad experience because they’re confused or they’re not sure where to start or how to get through everything. 

Remove fluff, just give you the actionable ideas and concepts so you can get out in the field and work. Because that’s where all the results happen. 

How to Know What to Charge

Whenever you’re pricing any product or service, you must know how it fits into your big business picture. It’s all about profit clarity. 

You need to know: 

• Is this an introductory product to get people into your sales funnel, or is it a premium exclusive offering? Perhaps it’s something in the middle. 
• How much revenue do you want to make? 
• What are the costs, upfront costs, variable costs, fixed ongoing costs? 
• And what kind of profit can you make?
• How does this relate to your big picture?
• How many units do you honestly think you can sell? 
• How much time and energy can you put into selling it? 

Why I freakin love marketing

Contrary to popular belief, marketing is not slimy, sleazy, or scammy. Marketing is effective, compelling communication. 

Modern marketing is about practicing deep compassion, heartfelt understanding, and learning how to meet other people’s needs and desires. 

So, marketing is not about tricking people. It’s not about manipulation or forcing someone to buy something that they don’t want. 

You can be the one that breaks the trend, makes the most money, and of course, changes the most lives. 

See, it’s your job to prove to people that you are the best choice. That your solution will solve their problem. That your product is the best on the market. Do not put the burden on your prospects to figure it out for themselves. Remember, it is not your prospect’s job to find you, it’s your job to find them.

Great marketing, modern marketing, is completely honest, it’s truthful, and it’s ethical. 

Copywriting 101

Why curiosity boosts conversion? 

Curiosity is one of the most powerful copywriting tools.

Our minds are wired to figure things out. When you see copy that’s filled with curiosity, you want to know the answer… so you keep on reading. 

Curiosity should be used in everything:

• Email subject lines
• Social media 
• Headlines 
• Blog post titles
• Bullet points
• Sales letters 
• Paid content

Here´s a piece of copy that sparks curiosity:  “If you can’t choose one niche for your online business, you’re probably making this common mistake.” 

• The word “this” evokes curiosity because your brain quickly identifies that there’s a specific mistake you don’t know that’s related to a big pain point you’re experiencing. 
• The term “common mistake” lets you know you’re not alone, which reduces anxiety and creates trust. 

Non-douchey sales copy

A sales letter is a page that explains exactly what you’re offering and allows your customer to make a purchase. 

Sales letters work because they give your prospect all of the information they need to know to buy from you. 

I suggest you ruthlessly edit your copy to pack as much power into as few words as possible. 

Usually, the more expensive the product or service is, the more copy you’re gonna need. The less expensive the product or service is, the less copy you will need. 

Other things that impact the length of your sales letter:

• Your brand reputation
• The relationship you have with your audience

Click here to get a full 82-page summary of Marie Forleo´s B-School.