Want to know how someone with a small email list still landed in the Top 10 of one of the biggest affiliate launches of the year using a single social media network? In this episode, you’ll hear directly from a social media pro who leveraged Instagram — not ads, not email — to crush it on the leaderboard.
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Manu’s Instagram – @YourSocialTeam
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
$5.7 Million Affiliate Launch Secrets: How Justin Demers & Sara Temte Climbed to Second Place
$5.7 Million Affiliate Launch Secrets: How a Beginner Earned $18K on Their First Promo
$5.7 Million Affiliate Launch Secrets: How to Create Irresistible Opt-in Offers
$5.7 Million Affiliate Launch Secrets The Affiliate Playbook Part Two
$5.7 Million Launch Secrets Revealed: The Affiliate Playbook Part 1
$5.7 Million Affiliate Launch Secrets: Top 10 on the Leaderboard Using Instagram
Matt McWilliams: Want to know how someone with a tiny email list still landed in the top 10 of one of the biggest affiliate launches of the year using just a single social media network? Well, in this episode, you’re going to hear directly from a social media pro who leveraged Instagram. Yes, Instagram. Not ads, not email, Instagram. To crush it on the leaderboard.
Let’s get started. Hey, welcome back. We’ve got an amazing interview in this series that we’re doing on the secrets of the $5.7 million affiliate launch. And today I’m talking with Manu Muraro, who is a social media strategist who teaches entrepreneurs how to grow sales using Instagram. And here’s what’s wild though. This is what so just blows my mind because I’m not, I’m not big on Instagram. I don’t know a lot about it. You know, I admit, like, that’s not something I really know that much about, especially the freestyle, like, I know ads, I know how to run ads on Instagram, but I don’t know anything about the other side. This is what’s wild.
She finished in the top 10 in this $5.7 million affiliate launch despite having a ridiculously tiny email list. So much smaller than probably anybody else in the top 20, let alone top 10, and still finished up, I think eighth or ninth place, like, just amazing, right? All using Instagram, basically. And so in this interview, Manu shares some of the, the strategies that she used, the bonus content that she used to on Instagram. So cool, right? She also opens up about, you know, kind of bouncing back from some burnout. This is something we didn’t plan on talking about. I kind of wanted just the strategy, but we got into it and I was like, you know, that’s, that’s pretty good.
Let’s leave that in. Really cool. Just, you know, she was kind of burned out and came back from that. Why listening to your audience is one of the most overlooked. So skills for affiliates in one of these big launches. So if you’re not using Instagram in your affiliate promotions, and I’m going to tell you right now, this got me thinking, or if you’ve ever felt like maybe your list was too small to compete. This episode’s about to flip that mindset upside down. So let’s jump right in to my interview with Manu, and she’s got a really cool story that maybe we can get into a little bit today.
But we’re going to focus on one of her affiliate promotions and maybe even a little bit of a second one because she was just schooling me on some, like, social media stuff. Y’ all know, insiders, you know, social media just ain’t my thing. Now I’m all for it. How it can, you know, it can work. And it works great for some people. We have clients who are huge in the social media space, like Julie Solomon and, you know, Kim Walsh Phillips, and, like, they’re huge in the social media space. I don’t understand any of it. And that’s okay. So you come to me for email stuff and then I bring on guests like Manu to help you understand some of the social media stuff. So manufacturing. Welcome.
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Manu Muraro: Thank you, Matt. I’m excited.
Matt McWilliams: I got your name right twice, and then I called you Manu because I am from the South.
Manu Muraro: You have a bonus point now that you can mess up my name in the middle of an interview.
Matt McWilliams: If you are in fact a redneck from North Carolina, you get away with calling. And I always joke, like, I had a Spanish teacher growing up and she was from east Tennessee, and it was like, hey, Pablo, como estas? And I’m like, oh, that’s bad. Wow. But that’s how. That’s what she was. So thank you. This is going to be awesome. I’m so excited because I know I’m going to learn from you. And selfishly, one of my favorite things about our membership affiliate Insider monthly is I get to interview people and I get to take notes. Then if it’s about social media, I get to go tell my team, go do this. If it’s about something else, I get to do it. So I’m excited. So we’re going to talk first of all about the tribe promotion back in April. For those of you watching way off into the future, April 2021. And this was a really great promotion. I think it was. Was it the first time you had promoted tribe or had you promoted it before?
Manu Muraro: I believe first time I promoted tribe. Yes.
Matt McWilliams: All right. So you’d been in tribe for a couple of years at that point, Right?
Manu Muraro: I took tribe the year before.
Matt McWilliams: Okay. All right.
Manu Muraro: Then I came back last year and.
Matt McWilliams: All right, cool.
Manu Muraro: Promotion.
Matt McWilliams: This is my first time promoting this Product and you killed it.
Manu Muraro: You are right there.
Matt McWilliams: Like, where did you end up finishing? I forget, was it right in 10th place?
Manu Muraro: It wasn’t. I think it was like 8th or something. I don’t remember exactly.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah, it was awesome. And I love interviewing people like you, who, who you know, I know you’ve done other affiliate promotions, but at least in our world, in Stu and Matt world, Manu was not in our expected top 10. And yet you finished there in like 8th. 8th. 9th place. Somewhere in there did awesome. And you were. The thing is, you were right there the whole time. This was not like Manu came in and did great the last day and finished in 8th place. No, this was like she was between 5th and 11th or 12th place, like the entire launch and did awesome, guys. So we’re going to learn from her today. So I just want to start with like, you know, first of all, why did you promote Tribe? What was the attraction there for you other than you’d been through the course?
Manu Muraro: So to me, what I do is I help people with Instagram specifically. Right. But I’ve always kind of like went a little beyond because I really don’t care how many followers you have. The only reason I want to help you with Instagram is to grow your business. Like that’s the focus. Right. I teach people how to be salesy on Instagram. So to me, in my community and I have a membership as well, obviously that’s why I was in Tribe. To me, the goal is always to help people learn how to grow their small business. And Tribe did tremendous to me as growing my business. So I thought it was super relevant to people because, you know, my members that are in my social media membership, they’re like, so how did you do a membership? So you think membership is good? You prefer course. Course. And they’re always interested in those things as well. So I knew that my audience would definitely benefit from Tribe and that’s basically why I chose to do the affiliate campaign for first two.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah. And that’s rule number one. You pick products that are going to serve your audience.
Manu Muraro: And that, you know. Right. Like, I know, I know it adds value in it. I trust it.
Matt McWilliams: So yeah, that’s awesome.
Manu Muraro: That was kind of a no brainer. Yeah, yeah.
Matt McWilliams: So you said you help people with Instagram before we get into this affiliate promotion, like help people with Instagram. That’s. I know that’s a broad thing. What does that mean? Because I, I’d be the first to admit I don’t know a whole lot about Instagram.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. So I. So there’s many sides to Instagram. Obviously, my focus is people who have a business. It’s not an influencer or even though they can take some advantage of the things I teach. But my focus is businesses or social media managers or social media agencies or social media experts. Like, those are the people that I’m focusing on. What I do is I teach them how to get more engagement, obviously grow followers as well. But you know very well it’s the same with email, right? If people are not opening your email, how does it matter the size of your list? So if Instagram is the same, I’m like, I don’t care if you grow a bunch of people, if they’re not buying from you, or if they’re not taking your calls to action, join your email list. So that’s what I help with. Not just be like, oh, how to grow Instagram, but how to get the most out of Instagram for your business. And I, you know, every now and then I talk about email marketing, I talk about affiliate marketing, I talk about, you know, memberships and courses. So that’s basically how my focus is on. And I. And I really focus a lot on helping women be more salesy because we have a problem, Matt. Oh, my gosh, I’m glad you’re saying that. Not me.
Matt McWilliams: But statistically, when we’ve studied this, like, objectively, you know, not. Not like I think, but statistically, the studies have shown it’s. It’s. It’s very, very true. Um, yeah.
Manu Muraro: And we hear, even today, I mean, we get it, right? It’s ingrained in our culture. It comes back from hundreds of years just saying, like, maybe women shouldn’t work or they can make more money than the man, or they can’t, you know, talk about money, or they can. There’s a lot of that. So I understand all that. But up to today, women are sharing those messages of, like, how to sell without being salesy, how to sell without being sleazy. So why are you sleazy if you’re selling? Why are you salesy if you’re selling? You know, and that’s still what I try to, like, really work on with people. Because I’m like, no, you don’t do posts on Instagram for your business. And you’re putting all this time in just to put a cute photo of you and your trip. Like, no, you have to promote your stuff, you know, like, effectively. Many, many times. It’s the same work you do with emails, right?
Matt McWilliams: Mm, no.
Manu Muraro: Like sending one cute email about how I started my business with no call to action. Yeah, it’s great here and there, but it’s not gonna do much in the long haul, so.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah, exactly.
Manu Muraro: Work on the other side. Yeah. That’s basically like what I focus on.
Matt McWilliams: That’s awesome. And that’s a powerful message. I mean, in and of itself. Right there, that’s a powerful message. Like, there should be a call to action. You need to tell them to do something, you know, whatever. It doesn’t have to be buy something necessarily. It could be download something or go read this post or even just leave a comment. You know, something that tells them, like, we talk about conditioning our audience. We want to condition them to Absolutely. Some sort of an action and not talking about that.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. We have a weekly live room that we do on Instagram, so the four of us, like four Instagram experts, just talk every week about things. And we’re talking about this today. It’s like, it’s not just like, okay, I have a product to sell, so go to the link in my bio. If you’re not telling them, asking them questions, telling them to download something, giving them a freebie, telling them to go to Stories to check out this tutorial you put there. Whatever thing it is, you have to have people used to talking back to you. Right. So by the time you actually have the call to action that is going to sell something, people have that relationship with you. I was joking today. I was like, yeah, if you have a friend that every time you meet up and you have ice cream, you’re going to expect ice cream the next time you meet up with them. The same way, if you are used to having this call to action relationship with your audience, they’re going to always expect that and look for that. So I think that’s very important.
Matt McWilliams: That’s awesome. So I would love at some point in this conversation maybe to talk specifically about Instagram, but I want to get back to you promotion. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of that in here. So you decided to promote Tribe. You did great. What were some of the things that you did that you look back and go, that is something that worked? It worked really well. And I’m going to keep doing that. Like maybe one, two, three things that you’re like that. Those are good strategies that worked for you.
Manu Muraro: So a super specific thing actually is that I shared a graph of my membership before and after Tribe, and it was very visual. I actually shared a few times. I share an email, I share an Instagram post, and I Actually share the slide. When I had a live with Stu, before Stu joining my join my live on Instagram, I put a slide up when I was introducing him and I was showing like, this is before tribe, this is after tribe. And it was very easy to see. Yeah, no, it was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. I think I started like for, you know, eight, nine months. I had like, I think I was making like 2,500 on my membership monthly. And after tribe like to spike to 10k a month.
It’s ridiculous. So it was very visual and very easy to see. And I think even if you don’t have that spike as big, even if you double it or something, which you may very well do, I think if you have any results to show from yourself or someone else that is in the program, I think the visual really gets people going instead of just going through the oh, here’s the problem. You have the advantages. Of course you have to say all these things, but I think if you have something visual to show, it makes a huge difference. And the other thing I learned something from you that I kept for myself and it has worked pretty well for everything so far is the three emails on the last day.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah.
Manu Muraro: Three meals the last day because I always did two. And you know, like, try not to be salesy or sleazy. I don’t have that problem. But we’re always a little concerned. That’s too many emails. The third email on the last day gets. Got me another like 20 sales or something. It was, it was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. And the last day. Yeah, and the last day is when people buy the most. Right. So they’re like, oh, it’s going to close. I need to join now. They stop what they’re doing. Which they had done. They hadn’t done that the last few weeks you’ve been promoting because they knew that time was not running out. So that last email and then countdown for me is really big too. I think the countdown, the end really helps as well.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah.
Manu Muraro: I did not add, did I add a bonus to try Blanche. I’m like now I’m thinking about it. I, I did think I did add a bonus. I added a bonus. I have this product that I do which is like a done for you campaign on Instagram to promote any launch or sale. So that comes with captions, canva templates which would be like your visuals that you can just change colors or put your own text. So everything kind of pre done for you and the whole strategy too. There’s a 30 minute video that explains to you when you should post all these things and how many posts, how many stories, what you do. And then it has captions for business that have services and for product based business. And I gave that as a early bird bonus as well for the people who joined tribe in the first two or three days. And that worked really well. Yeah, that worked really well. It’s a great product to launch your membership. So I think because it was so relevant to that specific offer, they made.
Matt McWilliams: A lot of sense and that’s super important. Like, the bonus has to fit. I see a lot of people that are like, hey, go buy this course on say gardening and I’ll give you this bonus of like this puppy. Like, it’s like, what does that have to do with gardening? What does that do with membership sites? There’s no connection. Yeah, and I think a lot of.
Manu Muraro: People, yeah, and a lot of think, I think a lot of people give like credit or something like, oh, if you buy this program, you get 50% off on my store. And it’s like, that doesn’t people have to still spend money to get any benefit from that? You know? It doesn’t.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah. I love the graph because the one thing I do know about Instagram is it’s 99% visual. You know, and the thing is like, you know the old saying, a picture’s worth a thousand words. I don’t know about that in this case. But immediately when you see, you know, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, you go, especially to your audience of business owners, what do we immediately associate with? I mean, immediately we got, we got, what happened? What did she do? What, what was it? It could have been email list, it could have been revenue, it could have been number of employees, it could, you know, amount of time off doesn’t matter. I want to know what made it go like. And so I immediately have to read this post and then I find out it’s your membership. So now I have to know, okay, how did she do it? So I love that. And then, yeah, last day. Oh, go ahead.
Manu Muraro: Yeah, no, I think the graph was really nice because, you know, like you said, one thing is it’s visual and people are like, wow, this really happened. Also they have the dimension, right. Of the change and also they have proof. So I think all that really helps to be like, oh, she’s not here, just, you know, talking it up.
Matt McWilliams: And yeah, I love that. The other thing about, I thought about this the other day, actually. The thing about the emails on the last day is, you know, number one, if you are giving them an opt out to opt out of the campaign. Then you know, the example I shared with you is like, I mean again, on that at the last day, 8 o’ clock at night, they are sitting on the fence and it’s like if they haven’t bought or they haven’t opted out, there’s only two explanations for why they haven’t bought or opted out. Number one, they’re not opening your emails.
Manu Muraro: Yes.
Matt McWilliams: Okay, so by sending them another email, it’s not like it’s a big deal. Or two, they are going, I don’t know what to do.
Manu Muraro: I don’t know.
Matt McWilliams: Something you say in that third email that just, it triggers with me. Like you said you made $16,000 on that last email. That’s pretty cool. And what we’re ultimately doing in email, I feel like, is we’re in a constant battle for the top spot. And most people organize their emails. I studied this a while back, like 96% of people organize their emails. Newest to oldest. If you go to my, just click on my Gmail, you can’t do this, but if you do, it’s, you’re gonna see the most recent email. You know what dictates whether or not you get the top spot or not? Dumb luck. Because I could email, you could check your email at 7:01 and I could email you at 7 and two other people, their emails just happen to go out 30 seconds later. And now I’m all the way down in the third spot. And so it’s dumb luck. But here’s the thing.
Manu Muraro: I love that third email.
Matt McWilliams: If you send three, four or five emails, you know, three emails, you have a 50% chance, greater dumb luck chance of just being towards the top of their email and getting seen.
Manu Muraro: Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: And making, you know, in your case an extra 20 sales. So I love that.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. And I think also on the last day or last couple days, one thing that I always do on my lounge is on the affiliate and affiliate promotion as well is that I always have one or two emails or I invite people to email me back. That can be a lot of work, especially depending on your list size. But I think if it’s something, you know, the commission for tribe is pretty high. So that justifies that extra time that you put into talking to people. But one of the things I do is like, so if you’re here, you’re still debating and you might not know if this is right for you. So what, you know, what are your questions? I am just responded to this email.
Let me know what your questions are. Because I can figure it out with you, whether this is for you or not, because I don’t want you joining if it’s not the best idea for you right now. So I always try to make them feel like, yeah, I don’t want you to just join just to get a sale. Like, I wanted to join if it’s going to be a success for you. So I did get quite a few emails on that last day that I talked to the person and maybe they’re like, oh, I’m about. There’s a girl that. She was like, I’m about to move to Europe and I’m having a baby. I’m like, not the year for you to join right now. Don’t do it. Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: And you know what? Your. Your audience, I mean, this particular person will love you for that. I did that with. I did that with PLF. When we. When I promoted PLF in 2019, it was actually funny. This lady was just on all. All of our members will know Gwen Morasco in 2019, she. She messaged me and said, Should I purchase PLF? And I responded back and said, no, you are going through. I think she was going through tribe, and I know where you’re at in your business, and I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to buy PLF and you’re going to sit on it for a year. So guess what?
Manu Muraro: It’ll be there by next year. Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: I said, if I thought it would be like three or four months, I would. I would tell you, go ahead and get it and have it in three or four months, but you don’t need to do that. And so, sure enough, a year later, she was like, okay, when. When does it open? When does it open? When does it open? I’m ready. And she bought it and she’s a huge fan of it. And me, because I was just honest, of course.
Manu Muraro: And I think also, you know, we’re thinking of our business long term, so just try to force a sale right now because that’s what you’re promoting. You know, it’s much better to actually work in the best interest of your audience and then have them, you know, trust you for the future and continue being with you.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah, but I love that you invited those questions, Manu, because, yeah, you said it took some time, but the reality is you might have paid five or six sales. Just look at the pure financial side.
Manu Muraro: Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: I know that where you finished was one spot higher. You know, if you’d made five sales less, you’d have finished one spot lower. So that’s, you know, about 1,000 bucks. So you made an extra thousand dollars in bonuses. Yeah, for those five sales, plus, you know, the 4,000. So you made 5,000 bucks extra. You know what? You just have to ask yourself, and if you do make $5,000 an hour.
Manu Muraro: Like, consistently, I’m at 49.99.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah, I don’t. But I’m saying, like, if you look at total amount of time that I work in a given day and what we bring in, news flash, y’. All. I don’t make $5,000 an hour. Yeah, no, I’m doing all right. We’re good. And we’re having our best year ever. Right. It’s going to be amazing finish to the year. But I’m not making $5,000 for an hour of work.
Manu Muraro: No, I think it’s like 20 minutes.
Matt McWilliams: 30 minutes, and I make five sales.
Manu Muraro: And I do something on Instagram, too, because that’s my place, you know, And I’m talking about that. Well, so one thing that I always do in all my campaigns is similar to the email. It’s all the same strategies kind of adapted to the different platform. So I do something on the last couple of days and a bigger launch like Tribe, which is longer. I do that a few times, actually, but especially like before an early bird ends or before the cart closes, I always do something where I ask people questions in a poll in my stories. So when they answer a poll, you actually get a list of people with a direct link to their DMs. So if I say something about, you know, like, whether you’ve considered a membership?
Sometimes I ask things that are not as specific but are, like, are you maxed out on one on one time and you’re looking to scare your business, but you don’t know how is the ceiling looking? Really low or whatever. And people would say yes, like, would you like to know more about memberships? Or something like that? And people are like. Or, you know, like, are you interested but not sure it’s for you. And when people ask yes, like, I’ll not like more information, I hit them up on dms. So actually, on the last day or the last couple of days, I free out my time a lot because I have all these people to talk to via DMs, and I have all these people to talk to in email and on DMs, I actually send them a voice memo instead of just sending a text first. It’s much faster if I’m already there for it and also because they already answered to a poll welcoming more information. I think it’s not the same as like cold voice messaging someone, you know.
Matt McWilliams: Sure.
Manu Muraro: So I always do that. And sometimes people are like, oh, that’s so cool to respond to get a message, a voice message or whatever. And when you have someone in your DMs to ask the questions they. That they have, that really helps too. So that always helps converting as well.
Matt McWilliams: I think the key there, this would be the lesson is you intentionally set aside time on that day.
Manu Muraro: Yes.
Matt McWilliams: This is not one of those things where you hoped you had time or you did it for five minutes and 10 minutes. No. You knew this one day out of the entire calendar year. Cart close day for tribe.
Manu Muraro: Yes.
Matt McWilliams: 20, 30, 40 sales. It could be worth 10, 15, $25,000. That maybe you should put it on your calendar.
Manu Muraro: Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: And I think I love that because.
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Manu Muraro: That card closes at night or something. I said to my husband, I’m like, go take the kids. Like, you know, I’m going to go keep working. He’s like, yeah, keep working tonight. I’m like, do you want me to base the kids or you want me to write this extra email that may make us like another $3,000. Like write the email. I’ll take the kids.
Matt McWilliams: Exactly. Yeah. And that, that’s such an important thing, like whether you’re running a launch. You know, my family knows that. Like, you know, again, I went to bed well after midnight that night. I was up like DMing with affiliates at 1:30 in the morning about strategy. You know, I remember, yeah, my family knows that those last two days, especially that, yeah, I’m probably going to miss dinner or I’m going to have a quick dinner. And the kid, as much as we hate it, the television might be the babysitter for, you know, it’s fine.
Manu Muraro: They need a little downtime as well.
Matt McWilliams: And things like that. Right. And that’s important, like just communicating and in your case, putting it on the calendar, being intentional about it. Like, this is a big day. This is not your average affiliate promotion. This is a big day. Every sale is worth $800, $798.80. Every sale’s worth a lot of money. Not to mention, you know, I mean, you know, the difference between 10th and 5th and you were right in that like the, the difference between 10th and 5th was like 15 sales total.
Manu Muraro: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: And that was like the difference between like a $10,000 bonus and a $200 bonus. You know, so all this stuff is up for grabs. And you were intentional and put that on your calendar, which I love.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. And. And on Instagram, I went live a lot, too, and I went live with Stu twice, but just without Stu. I just went live, like, a couple of times. And even the lives I did with Stu, because I think Stu has, like, a little. Maybe a window of 15 minutes or something to going live, which is great. But when you’re live on Instagram, when you go live, that’s when people start being told that you’re live. So even if you put, like, a countdown, which I usually do, that people can save and be notified. They need to be on the app to be notified, you know, so the longer you stay, the more people you can reach.
So what I would do is I would start. Get Stu on, and then continue. So I had that longer live where I would just kind of. I would start a little before Stu, give a little intro, then Stu will come in. We’ll just start the discussion, say all the good things. And when Stu is gone, like, I’ll say, okay, so I’m staying here. I’m answering questions. I’m showing you guys, you know, more what happened behind the scenes, what you get, blah, blah, blah. And I just kind of stay there longer because if I’m live for 40 minutes, I have a lot more time for people to be notified that I’m live and then come to the Live and the lives.
Like, when it comes to Instagram, the lives you get people to join, it’s not a huge amount of people, because think of your audience plus the amount of people that actually are on the platform at that point in time and that are free to watch your live right now, better than before, because people are more working from home and all that, but it’s still like a big funnel in your number of. In your audience. But what happens is that even if I’m live and I’m talking to, like, 40 people, every time, you get, like, five sales out of the Live, because you’re there, you know, talking to that person, and they can see your enthusiasm. They can see what’s doing for you, and it’s. I find it super helpful. That’s why I don’t think a lot of people watch the long replays of Alive. But I think going live a few times, you’re able to get more people just to join you live, even if it’s a few at a time.
Matt McWilliams: That’s. That’s powerful right there. I mean, I love. Yeah, that’s super smart based on that kind of the way that works. And the algorithms and things like that, like it’s super, you know, go live for 10 minutes or so. You bring the guest on. So you tell them, you know, okay, you get on at 4:35, you go live at 4. That’s a weird time. Go live at 4, 20, whatever. Yeah, you go live for 10 or 15 minutes. Then they come on right. Kind of the height when you’ve got a lot of the people on, then you, you know, you wrap up and then they might not want to watch. Like you said, they don’t watch the 45 minute replay. But if at the end, one things that I’ve done that’s worked really well is, hey guys, if, you know, if you missed the part where Stu was on, go watch. Yeah, the replay will be up, skip ahead to about minute 14. That’s when Stu comes on.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. So what I, what I do with my lives is two things and it helps a little bit. You still get some view after. One is that I put a top, a list of what was talked about. So I don’t necessarily put time stamps because that’s kind of, it’ll be a lot of work for me. But I definitely put like a bullet point and say, this is when we talked about starting a membership. This is when we talked about finding a niche. This is when we talked about, you know, the details of tribe this year or whatever. And then I also say, pro tip, listen to the audio only in your car when you’re driving or something like that. Put your headphones on and just listen to the audio like it’s a podcast. So I always put that in there too because I think that helps people be like, oh yeah, I don’t need to be holding my phone to watch this because I mean, we’re pretty mad, but they don’t need to be seeing our face like the whole 45 minutes.
Matt McWilliams: This is good stuff. Oh my God, this is like a masterclass in Instagram. Okay, so I want to go back. So we’ve always taught, because this is what the statistics have shown. Now this, this is a self fulfilling prophecy though. Okay, this is why I want to talk to you about this. Because we’ve always taught like on social media, focus on the free. So what I mean by that is use your social media to get them to Stu’s workshop. Use your social media to get them to Stu’s webinar. This is something they can register for for free. And then they get on, they get tons of valuable content and then Stu sells them and they buy Yay we make a commission. But I’m hearing, like, you’re using your social media directly to sell and try.
Manu Muraro: Much heavier than the work.
Matt McWilliams: You’re bucking the trend of what the statistics say so that, you know, you’re an outlier here. Let’s talk about that now.
Manu Muraro: Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: So how are you doing that?
Manu Muraro: Yeah, so I think that’s this whole thing. I think so. Here’s a little history. Instagram history, right? Instagram started 10 years ago. It’s over 10 years old. It’s almost 11 years old. So it’s not new. However, when Instagram started, it was one thing for people to connect with each other and share photos and stuff like that. So there wasn’t a business aspect to it.
So when business and brands start being a little more serious About Instagram, maybe 2015, 2016, that’s when Instagram did a business type of account with business features, with a lot more ads and just made it a platform for small businesses and for businesses in general.
So But people continue thinking, because when businesses join in 2015, they thought they had to kind of like, put the mustache, glasses and disguise in the middle of the lifestyle bloggers, you know, and be like, oh, no, we can’t just be like, buy this. We have to be like, oh, here’s a girl on top of a mountain. You know, And I think that’s a really old or dated strategy because people follow brands. Like, people go and click to follow brands that have a logo. I have a logo on my Instagram. It’s your social team. So if anyone is watching and wants to check it out, I have my logo. I don’t have my face or my name in it. It’s a brand.
So people buy from Instagram. Like, a lot of people buy from Instagram. That’s, you know, there’s all data about this. So to think that, no, people don’t want to see our, you know, promotions in here. They don’t want to see, know about our, you know, promotional, like, content, our offers, our sales, our course. It’s an old story. Like, I, you know, obviously I’m an expert on Instagram, so I have a little bit of an advantage there. But I just adapt strategies. Like, it’s the same marketing strategies from elsewhere. So to me, it’s the same as my email. Like, you push a bunch for the workshops because they’re there and they’re free and they’re great and still can do it. But if you want to sell more, you have to push for the sales. So I actually think I pushed for the sales. Harder on Instagram than I did for the workshops.
Matt McWilliams: Interesting.
Manu Muraro: Yeah, no, I’m all for being salesy and people are buying. So there’s this whole thing like, oh, don’t be salesy. People don’t want to see your messages. No one would be shocked that a business is selling like, good point.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah, I talk about all the time like crazy businesses monetize hobbies, give away content for free. And if you want to run a hobby, Instagram, you just want to go right ahead. I don’t have a problem with that. But if you’re a business, you walk in the door, they build a Costco in your neighborhood. It opens tomorrow at 9am you walk in the door at 9am, everything is for sale. Now they have free samples. They have free samples, but they have free samples for one reason, because they’re addictive and they usually taste really good. And then you end up with a. Is this just me? You end up with a freezer full of like appetizers. I don’t know, maybe that’s just me.
Manu Muraro: That’s exactly what people do. I think you know all the other content you do. You do helpful content. That’s for them to know your knowledge and then come buy from you. Not just because that’s what you do with your time, you know. So I would challenge you the next year for your affiliate push for tribe to change that just have people pushing for the actual course as well because they’ll see a lot more sales.
Matt McWilliams: Love that. So I want to shift gears for just a moment. What didn’t work? What is something maybe that you either tried or whatever like with the tribe promo and you look back and go, wow, that did not go as I thought it would.
Manu Muraro: I got burned out at some point and I think I thought to other group, I’m like, Matt, I don’t know. Like I feel like I did too much for the workshops and I feel like I abandoned my business. So I think that’s the one thing. I think that’s maybe partially why I burned out. I’m having a really excellent year in sales, which is a great problem to have. And I sell low ticket price stuff. Right. I sell Instagram templates like captions pre made for you and content like visual canva content pre made for you for Instagram and as well as memberships, you know. So my templates sell really well. And of course if I’m just talking about, I’m telling you, I’m sales you on Instagram.
So And on my email. So if I’m only talking about tribe. Obviously I’m not promoting my stuff and not seeing sales on my stuff. And at one point I got like, wait, am I going to do a month and a half of this? Like, how do I, you know? So I think having. But that was also my first year, so it’s not even something that I’m like, oh, that went wrong.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah, because you learned from it.
Manu Muraro: I learned from it. And I also, when that happened and I think I talked to you about this, I’m like, well, I have to balance it because I also have my own business to promote and sell from. Obviously I’m making more money doing the tribe affiliate, so it’s okay to have a lot less sales on my business at that point in time. But I kind of took a step back and it was okay. And I remember, like, I was much higher on the, on the list of the affiliates. And then at one point I’m like, it’s okay. I know I’m going to drop. It’s all right. Because I felt like I needed to tame myself a little bit from, you know, imbalance better between my own business. I think for next year what I would do is I would set up more aggressive ads for my own business as tribe is going on and then I can. I don’t have to be the person selling my own stuff.
Matt McWilliams: That’s a good idea.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. So I think that was one. But that was. That was the biggest thing that happened to me during the lounge. I’m like, wait, I’m used to shorter campaigns. You know, like my campaign system is like eight days, nine days. That’s something that I do. So for a tribe that is a much longer one, I didn’t even think about it. I was like, I just went all in sprinting. And then I was like, wait, I cannot run this fast for what was it, like a month and a half.
Matt McWilliams: I mean, if you really like warm up your audience and yeah, I mean, it can be about a five or six week thing. And I think the lesson there, and I know I shared this with you, but I think the lesson there is you can actually the. One of the ways to pace yourself is to start sooner. And what I mean by that is as much as you can do. Let’s say you’re going to promote for five weeks, you know, as much as you can do 10 weeks out. Scheduling that first week or two. Yeah, that’s number one. And like you said, you know, like you just said, if you start Talking about it eight, 10 weeks out, you don’t Feel like you have to, you know, sprint from that first week. You can pace yourself. It is, it really is a marathon, not a sprint. And then, you know, the second thing is I tell you this all the time. We talked earlier, you know, that last day. Yeah. The husband takes the kids out that last day.
Manu Muraro: Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: You don’t watch your favorite show that last day. You know, there’s things that I don’t do. I maybe, you know, I go up and I give the kids a big hug and a big kiss and then I’m back to work. That’s one day. The other days you have to pace yourself, you know, and it’s, you have to do those little things, those self care things. You have to get outside.
Manu Muraro: Yeah, I think things like for me it was like I didn’t plan my side of the business as well as I was doing that. I’m like, wait, still your social team still, you know, needs to keep going. And I feel, I feel like I’d abandoned a little too much and I would have felt better if I had a better plan for it. So definitely doing more of that next year. But I also, it was something that it’s okay, like, all right, if I have a few more, less sales, I still did great and I was very happy. So. But I think definitely for next year it’s something that I’m going to pay more attention to. Being like, this is how I balance this content throughout, you know, this period of time.
Matt McWilliams: That’s awesome. So if somebody were going to, well, just, let’s just say tribe, you know, we’ll just use that as an example. If somebody said, you know what, I’m going to promote Tribe. I’m a first time affiliate and you know, I’m going into this in, you know, April 2022 and there’s maybe one or two big tips you could give me. What, what would you tell them?
Manu Muraro: I would say lean on the reason why you’re doing it too. You know, especially if you have an experience with Tribe that was good for you and for your business. For me, one of the things I did is I actually did and I don’t remember if that’s something you recommended or not, but I felt like it was right for me and I did a page on my website all about my experience with tribe.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah.
Manu Muraro: And the links to join, you know, the, the workshops and all that because I’m like, if I’m here and I say like, oh, just go to link in my bio and they go to Stu’s world, that’s great. And Stu obviously has great marketing and, you know, is all set up perfectly. But my audience knows me.
They don’t know Stu yet. So I felt like they needed, like, this is what happened to me. This is why I’m telling you to do this. This is free. You’ll have nothing to lose here. So I use that same website for the workshops and then switched to when Tribe was on and I kept sending people there. I know it’s one more click.
So there’s always a balance, right? Between a benefit or not. But I think if you have a strong story, I had a really strong story. I wanted people to see that graph, you know. So if you have that really strong story I told students, like before I took tribe, now it becomes like a tribe commercial. But before I took Tribe, I did not see a way of scaling.
I had like a nice salary, you know, my business was a nice salary. And this year my business has grown like four times. I don’t know how many, probably eight times. So it’s insane. So I had such a strong story and a strong reason why that aligned with all my values while sending people to Stu. So to me it made more sense to do it that way.
And then the other thing I’m doing this year, so that might not be so much a tip for the first timers, but what I’m doing is that I’m keeping track of all the people that join tribe to me through me. And also I had people that started memberships without even going to Stu’s workshop just because I talked about membership so much. So I had a couple of people who did that.
I have a couple of people who started memberships just doing the workshop, the free workshop, which I doubt that they. I mean, I’m sure that they will join Tribe next year because they already made much more than tribe costs. And so because of that, I made a form on that same page. I just kind of changed up that page on the website, made a form and I called it like the tribe check in form or something.
Asking people where they are, what that means to their business. Like when did they start if they took tribe or not, if they took the free workshops or not. I even put if they use my eight day campaign or not to promote it. So now I’m starting to get all this data and what it meant to so many people that I have all of them to tell their stories next week year.
Matt McWilliams: That is so awesome. I want to go back to what you said about that page though. Here’s why that page actually does work.
Manu Muraro: Okay.
Matt McWilliams: And We’ve. We’ve studied this extensively.
Manu Muraro: Awesome.
Matt McWilliams: Why these bridge pages work so well is the biggest thing that we see. Affiliates. The biggest mistake they make is so the beginning of the promo, they go, go sign up for Stu’s workshop. And the person signs up for Stu’s workshop, and they go, good, because, like, you’re in Stu’s world now. Like you said, here’s the thing. This is like. Like you’ve known this person for a year, two, three. You’ve been in their inbox three, four, five, six times a week. You’ve been in their feed every day for two years. They see Manu Marado and they go, I know her. And then they open it, or they choose not to maybe, you know, but they see that name and there’s a history. They sign up for Stu’s workshop, ask him the next day who’s who this workshop is with. Half of them will say, it’s with Steve. You know, McFarlane don’t even remember his.
Manu Muraro: That’ll be a workshop.
Matt McWilliams: So we have to keep reminding them. It’s like. It’s why we actually. When we send out the email that says the workshop starts today, we go register. Go register. P.S. if you’ve already registered. Awesome. Just consider this your reminder. The reason why we still send that out to everybody is precisely that, because half the people who signed up don’t even remember later.
Manu Muraro: Don’t even remember later. Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: Like I said, they think his name’s, you know, Sal or, you know, Steve or something. And so we want to remind him. Now, this page, what it does is there’s a reason why it’s called a bridge page. And this is not where the term comes from. But the reason why I like the term bridge page is it’s bridging the gap between you and in this person, and it’s making that connection of, oh, yeah, Stu. Stu McLaren, you know, like, now it’s the guy they’ve been through a couple days of the workshop with, and they pretty much know his name, but you’re reminding them. I’m not just sending you to this guy and saying, go register. And, you know, peace out. Right? You’re bridging that and saying, here’s my story. And now click here and that extra. Click. We actually. We actually tested this in multiple campaigns about four years ago, back in 2000, actually, 2016, we tested this, and we found that the use of that bridge page actually increases sales by over 8%.
Manu Muraro: That’s amazing.
Matt McWilliams: Awesome.
Manu Muraro: Good to know. Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: Extra, you know, sale instead of 10 sales you’ll make 11. You know, it’s a pretty big deal.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. And also, I think, just makes more sense to your standpoint. Right. You’re explaining why you’re not just like, here you go. For me, there’s also an audience thing because I really focus on women and diversity. And I think I even joked, I’m like, if I’m promoting a white guy, like, he’s good, because, you know, for my audience, it’s different. I don’t go live with dudes. Like, you know, like, I really focus on women and giving women a platform. So if you have that bridge, you’re explaining why, like, here’s. This is.
Yeah, this is a white dude we’re supporting here, but he’s helping so many women and so many, you know, diverse groups, like, just go for the business. So to me, that page was really, really important. And then the other thing, we keep going to Instagram, obviously, but I think just reminding them of, you know, from the workshops, to try being open and all that. I think that’s another benefit of promoting on social as well, on Instagram as well, when Tribe is actually open. And the other thing that I was doing is after every workshop, I would go live and just chat about the workshop. So I did that, like, the three days I went live after the workshop and chatted with people, like, for 40 minutes about what they saw in the workshop. And so it was pretty fun.
Matt McWilliams: That is a killer strategy. We’ve used that very, very well in the past. And it. Yeah, again, it’s bridging that gap. It’s like, your audience wants to know, what did you get out of the workshop? Your audience wants to know in the fomo, Right. Your perspective.
Manu Muraro: Yeah, because I had all these people that went. And then the other. And they’re like, what is your best takeaway? And then I’ll talk about the takeaway. And people be like, oh, you thought all this.
Matt McWilliams: I don’t know if you. If you do this on purpose, but, like. And this kind of sounds sinister because it’s not. There’s. This is healthy. What happens is it’s just like, you go into a conversation. All right, so, yeah, there’s. There’s six people in a group. They all watch the same show last night, and you come into the conversation and do what? I don’t even know, like, who’s. Who’s that character who. I don’t even know what. You know, like, you feel, like, totally left out. So what happens is you’re not in the cool kids club.
Manu Muraro: Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: So you are interacting with the 37 people on live who. Who were there and there’s 24 who weren’t. They’re going. I mean, this sounds really interesting. What?
Manu Muraro: Well, you can still join. Yeah, yeah.
Matt McWilliams: It’s a very. It’s a healthy fomo, like you said.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. And I invited people to, like, I invited people via email. I’m after the workshops, we’re going to do the chat online on Instagram. So I had the people that actually attended the workshop just join again because I think everybody, like, in my world, everybody leaves the workshop for a couple hours and they go straight to Instagram.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah. It conditions them to point back to you and it bridges that. Bridges that gap as well. So as we wrap up here, Mina, first of all, thank you so much. This has been amazing.
Manu Muraro: Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: It’s going to sound like the dumbest question ever, but I’m going to ask because this will show you my level of understanding of Instagram.
Manu Muraro: It’s great. It makes me look smarter. So it’s perfect.
Matt McWilliams: There’s like Manu’s level of Instagram and then there’s mine, which is right above, like, my mom’s probably. So is there a way for people to be able to see some of what you did promoting Tribe on Instagram.
Manu Muraro: You know, this past year? Yeah. So they can DM me and I can point them in the. Like, just share the stuff for them because the lives are saved and the posts are there too. So I could just send them one post and be like, look at the ones around that, you know?
Matt McWilliams: Yeah.
Manu Muraro: So, yeah, anyone wants to check out some of the stuff, just let me know. DM me on Instagram at your social team. Your social team on Instagram. And then I can put that below.
Matt McWilliams: This video as well, just so we’ll put a link to that so nobody gets confused.
Manu Muraro: So I’m happy to share some of the content.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah. Make sure you go follow, you know, Manu on Instagram first of all, at your social team and then just shoot her a DM and she’ll share those, which is going to be cool. And you’ll get to see some of the. The stuff that she did and pick. I mean, there’s like another 20 lessons just in watching her do it, I’m sure. So you guys are going to love that.
Manu Muraro: We can. I can also give you a couple of links to things that if you might want, link somewhere, if you like, on the show notes or something.
Matt McWilliams: Hook those up with me. We’ll put them. Put them below this Video. So you kind of just answered my last question again as a. As a thank you for, you know, speaking to our members today. I want them to be able to connect with you. So what is obviously at your social team is a great way to connect with you. Is there another way that they should connect with you?
Manu Muraro: I mean, you’re at your social team. You have a good idea of what I do. If you want on Instagram, my website is yoursocial Dots team, so pretty easy as well. I have two memberships, so I have a training membership for Instagram, and then I also have a membership that just sends you Instagram templates twice a month via email.
Matt McWilliams: I love that.
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Manu Muraro: I love it. It’s the second membership I started this year. It’s called your template club, and it has its own Instagram account. I’ll send you some templates for you to try if your team met.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah. Thank you.
Manu Muraro: We have really good templates because we start from strategy, and I already tested. I already know what performs, so it’s not. I think most templates you see out there are from a design standpoint, but design for Instagram and what really performs is really different than just. Just what’s beautiful. So our templates are really, really good. So we have those two things. But, yeah, your social team on Instagram is a great place to connect. And if you want to check out the website is your social team.
Matt McWilliams: Yeah, well, we’re. We’re hiring somebody probably the beginning of next year for. To kind of ramp up our social media stuff.
Manu Muraro: So that’ll be awesome.
Matt McWilliams: Something we’ll check out. So, guys, here’s something Manu and I were talking about before we went live, and we didn’t even get a chance to talk about it today, but she’s actually promoting something, like right now. So when this goes live in aim, she’ll probably have just wrapped it up or maybe like right on the tail end. So great time to connect with her. Go follow her and just keep following her because you’re going to see how she promotes well tribe in 2022, and you’re gonna see how she promotes other stuff throughout the year. She’s a great person to learn from. I know there’s a lot of people that do really well in affiliate promotions. Just they have a huge list. Yeah, that’s awesome. I love having affiliates who have that. I really especially love watching people who are kind of scrappy and make the best of their. I mean that in a positive way.
Manu Muraro: Yeah. No, my list is not that big. Yeah.
Matt McWilliams: In the top 10 of one of the biggest affiliate launches of the entire calendar year. So guys, go watch what she’s doing. You’re going to pick up so much stuff and be able to learn from modeling her. So Manu, thank you so much. This has been amazing.
Manu Muraro: Thank you so much, Matt. So fun to talk to you anytime.
Matt McWilliams: What an awesome interview, right? I just, I loved her approach. It’s simple, smart, scalable, it’s repeatable. I loved, you know, again, like I said at the top, the transparency that she shared about the burnout, the highs and lows of these big affiliate promos. And so if you want to see how a social first strategy can work for affiliate promos, this episode should give you a ton of ideas to test out. So if you need to go back and listen to it, hopefully you took good notes. Go back and listen to it.
If you have any questions about today’s episodes or anything that we, you know, I’ve been sharing in this series on the 5.7 million dollar affiliate launch. You can just text me anytime at 260-217-4619 and I’m happy to answer any questions you have and share your feedback as well about these episodes or any episodes. Again, 260-217-4619. Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the final episode in this series. We’ve got more affiliate secrets coming your way. And the next episode, well, I, I saved the best for last. You know, I saved the best for last. It’s actually the very first return guest we’ve ever had. And you know, this person finished in the top three and did some pretty amazing things. So you’re gonna want to be here for that one. So make sure you hit subscribe. I’ll see you then.
See you soon.