Expanding Your Reach with Edutainment

September 27, 2012 Posted by The BVB Team

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The real power of the internet is the instant global reach.

• Turning your business into a “game” is literally explosive – Globally. Right now.
• When you create a system of rewards and points, you keep clients longer and funnel them into higher-tiered programs.
• They have a blast, and they share their results like crazy on the social web.

Today’s Big Vision expert Jim Bunch has done this masterfully. Learn about his “Ultimate Game of Life” and how you can “play” into much bigger results…

BVB: Jim, what’s working for you right now in your business?

Jim: Well, we’ve been in the life transformation business – which means coaching both groups and private, 90-day challenges, live events, products lines… And we have been re-branding as an “edutainment” company.

So what’s working is we’ve made a shift from being just a personal development company into a gaming and Reality TV company. We’re having more fun with our clients, and the transformation is on the back-end.

People have consumed a ton of information out there, but its been a lot of work for them. Making it like a game, making it fun… is attracting new people and it’s breathing new life into our existing players.

BVB: What are some of the specific results that you are having from this?

Jim: Our enrollments from our Facebook and Google ads have gone up quite a bit. For example, our last ad campaign, we put $3500 into it and had $17,000 as a return on it. And that’s just on the first wave.

These ads drive people to a webinar, introducing them to the “Ultimate Game of Life.”

Our 90-day challenge is a $500 program, but our next step up from that is a $5000 program. And we’re finding that somewhere between 10-20% of the people who have come into the 90-day program enroll into our year long programs.

We’ve noticed an increase in our international licensing and our private labeling. People want to take our content and systems and license them to their audience. For them, it’s a new revenue stream and it brings them into the game. And the international market is growing way faster than here in the US, their markets haven’t been over-saturated with transformation for the last 20 plus years.

We’ve also had a number of speakers call us and say we want to remove your brand and buy your content, systems, all your technology, and we want to build that in-house.  And those became really big contracts for us. They can replicate the company it took us 9 years to build in less then 6 months and have a multi-million dollar back-end.  This has caused a lot of innovation inside the industry.

BVB: Why do you think what you are doing is working right now?

Jim: I’m a big believer of build your bucket then make it rain.

What our research showed us after 9 years of doing this is a ton of people are making promises to clients like “follow these 7 steps” or “this program will get you these results” and that’s great, in theory, but most people in our industry are not tracking the performance of the client the same way you would if you were a financial planner.

If I got to my financial planner and he tells me how many clients he has, or has enrolled, but never talks to me about my Return of Investment, then I’m going to fire him, right? So we’ve found that in the industry we were one of the only ones that were tracking the performance of the clients and talking about that.

Our first goal was to change the conversation in our whole industry. And I’ve worked with some of the best – Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Bob Proctor, John Assaraf, and I just told them – we have to emphasize the performance – and not just  the top 5 testimonials, but every single client.

We’ve had 11,000 players that we’ve taken through a 90-day challenge, and we track their progress every day. And we have a 78% success rate instead of the industry average of 4% where there is no tracking and ongoing support.

We just started shooting Reality TV where people transform their wealth, their health, and their happiness. When you look at it from an engagement standpoint what we are doing that is unique is putting all the focus on the client… tracking, and then they are socially sharing that.

BVB: What are some how-to steps for people who may want to gamify their business?

Jim: Keep in mind, gamification means engaging clients. What type of business are you in? Let’s say you have a coaching business, or a speaking business, think of gamification as turning your clients into players.  And every one of these players has a goal. Every game has a goal, it has rewards, prizes. So what are their goals, and do they set them or do you? And then, are there levels that they achieve?

In our 90-day challenge we have 9 live webinars. We track that through our software – we can tell who showed up live, who watched the recording, and not just logged in but was actually engaged with the recording. And that gives them points. And they know this. Someone who attends live gets more points. We also have points for consistency.

In our 90-day challenge there are hidden bonuses for those who make it to 3 specific webinars live and in a row. They get an extra 500 points in their game. Plus, they get a free private coaching session from one of our coaches. There’s a value there, and we don’t tell them about it so they’re searching for this next “Easter Egg” built into this game.

So if you can make it more fun and more like a game, like edutainment, people have a tendency to want to play that.

And then, if you get to the next level, let’s say you have a team you can even gamify their performance. So marketing can ever be gamified. Sales can be gamified. Customer service can be gamified. And your own team can be getting prizes and badges and tripsfor the work that they should be doing anyway.

BVB: This is all powerful stuff Jim, thanks for sharing it with our Tribe!

How can YOU make your business more fun today?

Leave us a comment below and let us know…