EPISODE 80 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
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What if your customer experience didn’t begin after someone bought from you, but with the way you designed your offers?
In this episode, I’m joined by offer strategist Ceels Lockley to explore a topic I don’t think gets enough attention in the online business world: the experience your offers create.
We dive into why many offers don’t actually have an offer problem at all. They have a messaging problem.
We also explore why constantly creating new offers isn’t the answer, how to design an offer ecosystem that naturally guides customers from one stage to the next, and why AI still falls short when it comes to building meaningful, differentiated customer experiences.
Along the way, Ceels shares the thinking behind her festival-themed business, her unique approach to offer ecosystems, and the intentional customer experiences she’s built into every part of her brand.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your offers are working together or simply sitting next to each other, you’ll love this conversation.
What we cover:
Why poor messaging often gets mistaken for a bad offer
The biggest mistake business owners make when an offer isn’t selling
Why your offers need time to evolve instead of being replaced
The difference between an offer ladder and an offer ecosystem
How to create a customer journey that feels natural instead of forced
Why themed customer experiences create more memorable brands
The thinking behind Ceels’ festival-inspired business model
How exclusive experiences can strengthen customer engagement
Why AI still struggles with nuanced offer strategy and positioning
How to build offers people genuinely want to buy
Soundbites:
Ceels Lockley: “My best advice for your offer strategy, is first of all to ask yourself this question: Do I have a differentiated set of offers that position me as an expert in my industry? And the second thing I would look at is what is your headliner offer? Once you get that right, the rest of your ecosystem can be built organically.”
Nadine Nethery: “Did you find having that RSVP process increased show up rates?” Ceels Lockley: “Yeah, I think it does help increase show-up rates. I found it really did help to say, we have to have eight RSVPs for this to go ahead. we usually got 10, 15, 20, and then we’d always have enough people to make it run.”
More about my guest, Ceels Lockley:
Ceels Lockley is a UK-based Offer Strategist and Business Coach helping service providers, coaches, and experts design and sell premium offers with confidence.
Host of the Sold Out Offers podcast and creator of Dreamium, she’s supported over 300 entrepreneurs to position themselves as industry leaders without the overwhelm.
Website: https://ceelslockley.co/
Podcast: https://ceelslockley.co/podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ceels.lockley/
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@its.ceels
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Episode Transcript:
Nadine (00:00)
hello, and welcome back to another episode. This week I was somewhat selfish. I have connected with someone who, by coincidence, popped up on my Insta stories, and everything about her approach, her philosophy really resonated with me.
the online business space seems to be super obsessed with what happens after someone buys. But what if the customer experience actually begins with the offer?
itself and your offer lineup. So today’s guest has built a business around helping online business owners create premium offers that feel obvious to buy into. But what caught my attention, as I mentioned, on Insta stories wasn’t just her expertise around offer creation and offer strategy. It was the incredibly intentional experiences that she’s built around
the offers in her own offer lineup, from language she uses to the rituals that she’s created for her community. I’m super excited to dive into how all of that shapes the broader customer experience with today’s guest, Ceels Lockley. Welcome to the show, Ceels.
Ceels (01:11)
Thank you for having me, Nadine.
Nadine (01:14)
Super excited. As I mentioned, I love my podcast because it gives me the opportunity to connect with so many cool people and get a deeper look into their business, into their thought processes, and we’re going to touch on something super cool that you have unfortunately continued discontinued as of yesterday. but the concept and the thought process behind it is really intriguing and fascinating to me. So we’re going to come to that.
later. But why don’t we start with a quick intro to who you are, how you ended up where you are today, because often that’s really interesting as well and really educates your thought processes and your approach in business today.
Ceels (01:56)
Thank you. Well, yes, I’m Ceels Lockley. I’m an offer strategist and ecosystem consultant. And my work really is based around helping service providers and coaches in the online business space to create clear, profitable offers, not only that feel exciting to sell, but also are going to work together as an ecosystem, as a buyer journey. And that’s a really important.
important thing in this stage of of business in the world of business in 2026. And you know, I’ve been in this space for a very, very long time. And never has it been more important for our offers to feel very experiential and more like we’re buying products rather than just boring services. And so a big part of my job is helping my clients to understand how they can make their offers
Exciting for their dream clients. And to answer your kind of second part of the question there around how I got into this, so it’s a really interesting journey. My background is in marketing, digital marketing specifically. and I started out in the world of AdWords, writing, you know, keyword banks for Google AdWords, like lit literally 20 years ago, like a long, long time, over 20 years ago.
And I worked in the space probably in every single job you can imagine. I’ve worked my right way through the ranks of agencies, I worked with big London agencies, I’ve worked with big brands, I’ve worked with small businesses. I have, I think I’ve probably touched every corner of the digital space. And I landed in this job because I had spent, I think, 10 years freelancing, then
I spent a few years fucking around and finding out. And I landed on this idea that I just really wanted to help people, other business owners, with building their businesses, but not just business coaching, really specifically helping them with their offers, their pricing, their packages. Because everyone I was mentoring at the time, this is like four years ago, they were I don’t know what to do about my offers. And I’m like,
There’s no real like thing here to go and do. There was nothing really around. And there are a few of us in the world that offer strategists, but we are few and far between. So I thought, you know what, there’s a there’s a nice opportunity here. And so I just went all in. And that’s how I ended up doing this. And I’ve been doing it now for over four years.
Nadine (04:17)
That is so cool. Again, I’m obsessed with the founder stories and how people end up where they are today and so often where we start out has nothing, almost nothing, to do with where we are today, but everything builds on top of each other,
I funnily enough, I had a pricing strategist on the podcast previously, Jasmine. I’ll link up the episode below.
Ceels (04:38)
yes,
please do.
Nadine (04:39)
But I feel
I feel like, you know, while pricing is important, there’s so much more you can do with your offers. And as you said, the experience, the human element and that journey that your customer goes on in the bigger picture beyond setting the right price for your offers. And as someone who is with customer retention, having this beautiful lineup of offers that works together.
And creates a long-term relationship is just really, really fascinating to me. So I can’t wait to dive into so many of those aspects as part of this episode. So let’s start with probably the first conversation you usually have with your customers. I suspect when they track you down, they usually have realized that they’ve got, you know, disjointed offers. For whatever reason, their signature offer.
most likely is just not selling. While it looks good on the surface, you know, they’ve got all the deliverables and the pricing looks right and for whatever reason people aren’t buying. What’s the first step you take or that first thing you look at as the offer strategist?
Ceels (05:43)
This is a really interesting question. I think that it’s very tempting to think, well, it’s because the offer isn’t any good. But the first
Nadine (05:51)
Mm.
Ceels (05:51)
place I always look is messaging. Because you can fix a really great almost like a great offer that has great potential with good messaging. But if you have a great offer that has poor messaging, it’s never gonna sell. So if something isn’t selling, the first thing I’m gonna do is just get on that sales page and see what the words are saying about the offer.
Because very, very often if there’s nothing good to buy, no amount of good looking, great marketing, sexy branding is gonna make that offer sell. It might pique people’s interest, you know, there might be some launch hype around it, but the offer itself has to be something that people want to buy.
And it has to have a really tangible, really clear, really specific outcome that actually represents what the offer’s dreamiest clients desire. And they have to want that urgently, right? there must be consequences to them not having that outcome. That it feels more costly to not do the work and it’s more inconvenient to not do the work.
And so very often, if an offer isn’t selling, that part is missing or it’s just not compelling enough. for example, I can tell you about an offer for one of my clients. We we were working on some offers, and she really wanted to create an offer that felt like it was just complete no brainer. And this is a great example of a no-brainer offer. So she is a content strategist, she works with mostly businesses like myself and other service based business owners.
And she has a prompts membership. Now her dream clients every single week are sitting down to work, go on their Instagram, and they’re like, I don’t know what to post. I’m too overwhelmed. This is this is taking up my time. This is stressful, right? There’s the inconvenience. Yeah.
Nadine (07:43)
Sounds like me.
Ceels (07:45)
there there’s there’s the inconvenience, there’s the stress, there’s the frustration. And her offer isn’t a library of content prompts
it’s what the fuck to post every week it’s so brilliant and her name is Jess Bruno deliver it give her little plug because she’s amazing and she lays out word by word frame by frame post by post what to post so she’s taking the pain away for her clients and she’s solving that urgent problem and the way that her offer does that is it’s so tangible. It’s like well of course I need that.
And the price point is is again a no brainer. So that’s a really good example of how we get the messaging and the positioning of the offer to feel like that thing that people just really have to buy.
Nadine (08:31)
As someone who works a lot with messaging, especially nowadays with AI, it’s just so easy to come up with middle of the road messaging that you can whip up in five minutes, max via Claude or Chat GPT, whoever you like to converse with, rather than doing that research, having those conversations with
perfect fit customers to get the messaging right and making it super sticky. So I love how fixing the messaging can often solve the bigger offer problems because offers often aren’t the problem. It’s the packaging, as you said. do you feel, it’s super tempting to bin an offer and just
start from scratch. Is that what most of your customers are intuitively leaning towards?
Ceels (09:15)
It’s so common.
it happens all the time. I’m in constantly coaching my clients on this and often neglect. I call it offer neglect. It’s absolutely everywhere. It’s it’s tempting to start something fresh because it feels easier in a way.
It’s not very comfortable talking about an offer that isn’t selling. It’s not very comfortable sitting with the same offer.
Because our brains are like, bored I want to do something new. this isn’t working. And we immediately want to fix the problem by creating something new. But the best piece of advice I can give you, and the greatest gift you can give yourself as a business owner, is to remember that your offer is going to feel like a piece of shit for a long time before it actually feels like a really
great offer. And I’m speaking from experience, I built
a group program that two years ago I thought was a piece of shit. I was like, this is no good. Nobody wants to buy this. You know, I was making two sales,
five sales. And that program has now made me over six figures. That program is the reason why my business exists And is thriving. So I really believe that we have a problem with impatience, lack of grit,
lack of resilience.
People get so hung up on things working straight away, like instant gratification. No, your offer is not like Uber Eats. You can’t just order success. You have to you have to work for it. And your offer needs time to winter. I call it like the four seasons of your strategy. Like winter is where you’re letting your offer bed in and grow and evolve, and it’s going to feel very cold and bleak at times. And then
You can have the spring and the summer, but you have to go through the winter with your offer. You have to go through the messy middle and the people aren’t buying this and why isn’t this working? People haven’t had enough time to learn about your offer. People haven’t had enough time to understand what it is. And if you take it away too quickly and change
Nadine (11:16)
Mm.
Ceels (11:16)
it for something else, well then you’ve got to start the cycle all over again.
Nadine (11:21)
And repetition. we feel tired talking about our offers, but let’s face it. our subscribers on social media, like how many posts do you remember that you saw two or three weeks ago? if you are sick and tired of it, chances are you’re
audience has maybe seen it once or twice and keep going on about it. And very important too, keep learning from every conversation you have with people who are interested in your offer. Even if they’re not buying now, they have so much valuable insight for you that you can use to refine your offer, to refine the messaging. One example I’m just gonna throw in here
my membership retention lab, I have an exit survey question in the cancellation email. So once someone has cancelled, just one question, what’s the biggest reason beyond budget that made you cancel? And this particular person answered that she doesn’t have enough customers to focus on retention, which
Is that catch twenty two, Like chicken or egg, when do you start looking at retention after you’ve got the customers and lost them? clearly that was a gold mine for my messaging and for content. To make it crystal clear that retention lab, yes, it’s designed to keep people in your orbit, but that retention process doesn’t start after the purchase. It starts after that first click. When people find out about you, every single interaction after builds up to that first.
And next purchase. I could have gone, how annoying, people don’t get it. Rather than giving up, being frustrated, doubting myself, I’ve just gone, thank you. That is perfect. Let’s turn it into tighter messaging, emails, content, podcast episodes. as painful as it can be to have an offer that maybe has teething problems or people don’t get on the surface straight away. Everything is just opportunity.
If you feel like things aren’t clicking, have a look at, what people have told you, and then potentially incorporate that into your messaging, into your pre-launch to make it tighter for next time. So I am, as I said, obsessed with your bigger approach to offer ecosystems where every offer
speaks to the next and takes people on that journey. Do you want to touch on your approach to offer creation and creating that beautiful universe around the collection of offers?
Ceels (13:40)
Yeah, so my lineup analogy is basically the way I describe this ecosystem design that we work on. And I use the analogy of a lineup at a festival and my whole brand is festival themed, it’s a whole thing.
Nadine (13:55)
Yeah. If you haven’t
checked out Ceel’s website, go and have a look. it is visually stunning.
Ceels (14:02)
Thank you. so yeah, so really thinking about your offers like this lineup. So I just always like to explain it like we’re going into the festival of your offers, and your job is to is to take people on a journey. So there are various different types of offers within that lineup. So we start with the pre-hype. This is where we’re getting people through the door, and that’s your freebies, your lead magnets. Then we have the warm-up, which is where we’re like, okay, we’re in the festival, we’re just going to grab a drink and you know, watch the warm-up act.
This is like the first offer that people might buy from you. And not to be confused with like what I call a sideshow, which is more of a DIY offer. This warm-up offer is kind of the first offer that you might sell somebody. So like an audit or maybe some kind of little sprint if you do groups, that’s your warm-up offer. Then you have your headliner offer, which is your main offer, your signature offer, your pièce de la résistance, the thing that people come to you for, the thing that you’ve built your reputation around.
And then you have more offers after that. So you might have like an encore, which is a retainer, you might have your sideshows, which are kind of around the edges. you might have an after party, which is like a one-off service. And the intention behind this lineup is to really help simplify what type of offers to have in your offer ecosystem because we’ve all been taught this really toxic and unhelpful system of an offer ladder, a low, mid, and high ticket offer.
I mean, how unhelpful is that for our customers? We’re treating them in that model like they are little lennings jumping up a ladder. That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t want you to come into my offer ecosystem and then feel like you have to just keep giving me more money. That shouldn’t be how it feels. It shouldn’t be that, I guess, cynical. It should
feel more organic. And so the lineup really helps to foster
More of a natural pathway.
Nadine (15:55)
I love how you’re talking about it as a festival, which touches on that human experience, right? Like dealing with your brand should be joyful, it should be flexible, you should be able to come in via, different tents, different entrances, and have different aspects of a brand experience, depending on what you’re after right now. So super, super cool.
Is there something about your own customer experience that you have very deliberately designed where it might feel like it’s accidental, but it’s very strategic and intentional.
Ceels (16:30)
Yeah, so every quarter I run a sales sprint. And this is a little bit of a curveball to offer design because that’s my main jam. But these sales sprints are actually very intentionally designed to get people into my world. Because quite often we think, I just need to sell my offer. I just need to I just need to talk about
my offer more. And actually you do need to talk about your offer more because you know what? When you talk about your offer more, you’ll realize where it has gaps.
But the only way you’re going to work out whether it has gaps and if it’s not selling is by talking about it. So I run these sales sprints as a kind of gateway drug into my festival. and it just is a really great way for people to get in my world. It’s relatively low risk for them. You know, they’re not having to invest four figures. But then what’s really interesting and what quite often happens is people come into parade, they’ll do the sprint.
They’ll get into my world, they’ll like it, they’ll feel like they want to do more, they want to work on their offers, and then they start saving up my program. And I’ve had multiple students come from parade very organically into my headliner offer, which is my signature program dreaming. That happens because I am creating this journey of catching them at the right stage with their offer, helping them with one part of it, and helping them naturally learn and realize that there is another gap.
in their own journey, in their buyer journey. And it
works, it works very, it’s very deliberately designed. It feels really natural.
Nadine (17:57)
And by giving them this mini experience, you’re introducing them to your world, hooking them on your drug.
and then they can’t help but go off for more and come back for seconds. That is so
Ceels (18:08)
Yeah.
Nadine (18:08)
cool. do you have a process that you take your clients through to design
this bigger world, like in your case, the festival how do you develop this theme or this bigger picture?
Ceels (18:19)
So every single client is very individual. Some of my clients
come to me, they already have a theme, they already have their own world, and it’s just a case of perhaps polishing a few signs if you like and making a few different new spaces or changing the furniture. but
Nadine (18:35)
Yeah.
Ceels (18:36)
most of the time we start with that lineup and that’s the process. It’s it’s getting to understand, okay, what have you got in your lineup?
what offers are available to your clients and what are these telling your clients about what you’re selling? Are they representing you and position you your offer ecosystem is your positioning? So if you have just a random bag of offers that don’t connect to each other, that don’t feel like they all make sense as a journey, then that’s going to be saying something to your clients about what you do. You might be selling skills like you might just say I’ve got a copywriting package.
And I’ve got a SEO package and I’ve got a I don’t know a blogging package. That’s not a customer journey, that’s just you selling skills for money. And
that’s where we start. We start with, okay, what story is this telling your clients? And how can we thread together a journey? And how can we also make these offers feel completely individual to you? My big thing is I want you to have an ecosystem that is uncopyable because we live in a world where everything
is just available to us. We can ch chat GPT, claude away all of our problems like, create me an offer ecosystem, Claude. Okay, great. Here you go. Off you go. I’ll create you the sales pages. Would you like me to write all the copy for you? Yes, okay, press the button. It’s so easy to go do that, but what you’re gonna get is not great. It’s generic, it’s
boring, it’s basic. So I will never create anything with you which is AI generated.
I work based on my experience of the market and understanding how you and your business works as an individual entity.
Nadine (20:15)
Chat GPT, brainstorming offers. my goodness. I had a go a few months ago. and it told me to bin everything, relaunch this, completely pivot. it can really make you doubt yourself rather than it is, yeah.
Ceels (20:28)
It’s dangerous. It’s dangerous. It’s
it’s giving it’s giving crap advice. I ask it things all the time. I do use AI to help me with my thought process. I don’t listen to it half the time. I’m like, tell me what you think about this. And it honestly, half the time I’m like, no, don’t agree with you. But it’s so interesting because
Nadine (20:43)
Yeah, yeah.
Ceels (20:47)
it helps me to stay in touch with what my clients might be guessing from these tools. And sometimes
I just sometimes I just play around with it. I’m like, okay.
Build me an ecosystem for this and then every single time
it lacks nuance, it lacks context, it lacks taste.
Nadine (21:02)
Yeah. And I bet a lot of your clients would have got to the point where they’ve realized AI is not the best
Ceels (21:08)
Yeah.
Nadine (21:09)
brainstorming companion for offers or for anything bigger picture in your business really. getting an objective human perspective on your business can be so valuable.
as I mentioned before, make sure you check our Ceel’s website because it’s just such a masterclass in theming And
might just spark your first ideas for how fun offer creation and running an online business can be. And I reckon
theming your experience might just give you new energy, particularly if you feel like you’re in a slump,
I totally can see how
infusing fresh energy into your offer lineup can re-energize yourself
offers we could talk for hours obviously what I mentioned before and touched on is this super cool side show maybe shall we call it that side show side experience to your brand
And your customer journey that I I don’t even know how I found it. But at some point
Ceels (22:01)
Yeah.
Nadine (22:01)
you invited me to this concept called the secret set. you can probably explain it better than I can. if you could give listeners an overview of what the secret set is and how it works and where the idea came from, that would be awesome.
Ceels (22:15)
Mmm, yeah, so the secret set is effectively a hidden area of my ecosystem, which I don’t really advertise it, don’t really talk about it. it is currently having a break, but that’s not really related to the structure of it. The structure of it actually has worked really well. But effectively what this is is a monthly networking call. It’s a really, simple concept.
it’s been running for a few years and that’s why I’m taking a break. But the secret set came out of this idea that actually one of the best ways I think to get your people interested in your world is to give them something to do. give them a project, give them a reason to keep coming back. And I’m a big fan of having some kind of monthly or quarterly round table or a networking or a bringing together of your ideal clients.
So, how can you get your ideal clients in one space? well, in my world, my ideal clients, they just want to like chat to each other about all their business problems and they just want to like know
that they’re not alone. And so the secret set really was just this networking call. And as I say, it ran for a few years. originally was called something else, but the secret set was this themed area of my festival, this sort of side tent, and the messaging around it was quite intentional.
making it feel a bit mysterious, a little bit like
you’re stepping into something that’s not obvious. And we played with that messaging because we wanted it to not be this sort of straight up boring experience. and yeah, it’s been a really great way to get people into my world as a free option to come in and see what it’s all about.
Nadine (23:47)
as I mentioned, I was so intrigued. I signed up for it. I think you had to opt in and then also very
Ceels (23:53)
Yes.
Nadine (23:54)
strategic, you had to then RSVP to the event to indicate you’re coming to obviously make it worth your while. the way you talked about it and presented it and made it super exclusive.
by opting in to begin with to receive the invitations. And then RSVP I thought was super clever because by that time you’re super emotionally invested. You RSVP’d, so you’re yet skin in the game. and
yeah, the exclusivity was super clever.
Ceels (24:23)
Thank you.
Nadine (24:24)
You could obviously have made this super public on Instagram, inviting everyone who is remotely following you or comes across your stories. What made you decide to go with this exclusive format where you had to almost double opt in to to get a seat?
Ceels (24:38)
There’s a lot of free stuff available in the world of business, and one thing that I I’ve experienced is people will sign up for stuff and then they won’t do it and they
won’t have committed. So I really created this for the people that had got further enough into my world to find it, but then also the people who are like, yeah, no, I’m really interested, I’m gonna commit.
Even though RSVP is a commitment, it’s actually still very much a soft commitment. So it’s not like we’re
saying, if you don’t come, I’m gonna charge you or something like that.
Nadine (25:13)
Yeah, yeah.
Ceels (25:15)
so it works really well to create that sense of, I’m I’m doing something special for me. And
I think that that’s something that we don’t always experience in people’s offers. it’s either really loudly thrust in our faces.
and it’s like everyone’s invited and it’s very it’s very loud or it’s it’s a paid offer. So I was trying to create some segue
in between.
Nadine (25:40)
Did you find having that RSVP process increased show up rates? Could you measure that at all? Like if you were running a free webinar where people just sign up compared to
This secret set.
Ceels (25:53)
Yeah, I think it does help increase show-up rates. We never used
to do it. We used to just send an email reminder I think it definitely has made a difference.
one of the things that you’re always going to experience is you’re going to have a little bit of initial interest and then people come one or two times and then they’ll not come back again because they got busy, like they scratched the itch.
And that’s okay. And I’m that person. I completely admit it. I sometimes go to things once, then I’m like, do you know what? I’ve been I’ve been to that thing. I’m good. Like, not
Nadine (26:21)
Yeah.
Ceels (26:22)
that I didn’t enjoy it, but like we only all have so much bandwidth. And I found it really did help to have eight RSVPs for this to go ahead. And so we usually got 10, 15, 20, and then we’d always have enough people to make it run. So it
Nadine (26:38)
Yeah.
Ceels (26:38)
definitely helped.
Nadine (26:40)
and that’s probably the sweet spot too for attendees where it doesn’t feel like a crowd, but it’s not
Ceels (26:44)
Yes.
Nadine (26:45)
too small to be awkward. I know you said it’s not about necessarily selling people into something, and more about that human element. But did you have any way you were measuring success? were you looking at, how many people showed up?
How many people ended up buying long term? Like, were you measuring anything about it?
Ceels (27:04)
Yes, yeah. So I I
kept a list of everyone who attended and I tracked who was converting. because I’m not running this group just for shits and giggles, right? I’m doing it because
Nadine (27:16)
Yeah.
Ceels (27:18)
I’m creating an entry point into my ecosystem. Like sure, I love hosting a networking call for my clients, I’ll do that, but I ha it has to convert and that’s one of the reasons why it’s taking a break.
Because what I was finding was that I was getting the same people coming back because they really liked
being in the room with me, but there wasn’t enough people converting into the paid offers. There was some, but there wasn’t enough. And that percentage needs to be higher for me. So it was only at around 25%. And
this is why our offers have to work. We have to tweak them.
There could be other things I could be doing within that experience to convert people better, but
reflecting on it all, I was like, No, it needs to be it needs to be higher for me.
Nadine (27:57)
So are you going through your own process at the moment? Refining, tweaking, seeing what’s next for the secret set?
Ceels (28:04)
not just for the secret set, Nadine. I’m having a bit of a mid-year reset actually. It’s really exciting though.
I I just wrote an email yesterday to send to my list this morning about this. Like I just think sometimes we do need to just re-reck the pool table, you know?
Nadine (28:20)
I just love how you’re following your own process. revisiting, looking at what could be better. And you
Ceels (28:24)
Always.
Nadine (28:25)
probably work out too what still lights you up, what doesn’t, what might have to evolve. So yeah,
it’s a bit like messaging and CX and audience research. Nothing’s ever set in concrete, unfortunately, in online business. But I feel like that’s the fun part. That’s what keeps us challenged and
Keeps us on our toes, right?
Ceels (28:44)
Yes. And your offers are never ever finished. They are
living, breathing, you know, evolving things. And this is again the mistake. It’s like, my offer’s done, it’s ready, it’s finished, and you just think
Nadine (28:56)
Yeah.
Ceels (28:57)
it’s gonna keep selling. You know, I’ve been selling
the same offer for two years and I’ve had to keep evolving that offer and I’ve had to keep changing it with the market. I I can’t sit still with the same offer, otherwise it won’t sell. And
Nadine (29:09)
Yeah.
Ceels (29:09)
when we treat our offers like an ongoing project rather than a one and done, that’s when we see more success because
we’re not just making them once and then expecting them to work forever.
Nadine (29:20)
Yeah.
one final question because I know we could talk for hours. We could diagnose
and you know, brainstorm. But if my listeners now want to have a look at their offer lineup and start optimizing, reinventing, potentially creating that bigger.
themed world around things, where would you advise them to start?
Ceels (29:43)
My best advice for your offer strategy, starting out, looking at your offers, is first of all to ask yourself this question: Do I have a differentiated set of offers that position me as an expert in my industry? Even if you don’t feel like an expert, even if you’re just not even like quite there yet as like an industry leader, you want to set yourself up as if you are. Why? Because we want to make offers.
That really position you for the future. And the second thing I would look at is what is your headliner offer? This is the center of your offer ecosystem. If your headliner offer isn’t clear, if you don’t know what your main offer is and it doesn’t feel, even if you’ve got one and it feels clear, if you don’t like doing it, if it doesn’t feel joyful, if it feels heavy, if it’s overbearing, that’s where I would start because everything else falls around your headliner offer. Once you get that right.
rest of your ecosystem can be built organically. People make the mistake of starting with, you know, membership sideshows, little freebie like, don’t start with that stuff. That’s not gonna make you money. Start with the stuff that makes you money.
Nadine (30:54)
Have to earn a living, right? Unfortunately. Yeah.
Ceels (30:56)
Absolutely. What are we doing here?
Nadine (30:58)
also one question I ask all of my guests is this one. What is one burning customer experience question that you have specifically around your business and how you are serving your customers right now?
Ceels (31:11)
I think this is a really interesting question to ask, particularly to ask for my like myself. I’m like, when you when I saw this one in your notes. So I actually have an application
Nadine (31:17)
Yeah.
Ceels (31:21)
system for my group program. This is quite a new thing. We used to do live launches
and we’ve switched to Evergreen. And I think I would really love to know within that journey of like going to apply, what is going on in people’s brains from the point where they are seeing my stuff, they’re
taking it all in, what’s the point where they go, I’m ready to apply. And like of course I ask them on the on the application, like what made you apply?
Nadine (31:46)
Yeah.
Ceels (31:47)
But people don’t really tell me like exactly why.
Nadine (31:50)
Yeah.
Ceels (31:51)
so I’d love to understand more about the journey that they’ve
been on. what what makes you go, right, I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go, I’m ready to spend three thousand pounds on a program to sort my offers at like
What makes that journey happen? I think that’s fascinating to me.
Nadine (32:06)
you need like a little mystery shopper that follows them and watches every step, right?
Ceels (32:11)
I did actually have one person who it wasn’t a paid offer, but they told me, no,
it was a paid offer, it was parade.
this client gave me a blow by blow of exactly her journey. And I was like, wow, thank you so much. She was like, I saw this Instagram post and it piqued my interest.
Then
I unfollowed you for a while because you annoyed me, which is quite often what what people do by the way, because I get triggered by the things I’m talking about. I’m totally cool with it. And then she was like, but
Nadine (32:33)
Yeah.
Ceels (32:34)
then I heard about you through somebody else and I thought, actually, I should probably go check her out. Then I did this, then I did this, and she just literally took me through all the things she’d done. And then she was like, and then I realized I probably should work with you. And I was like,
Nadine (32:45)
Cool.
Happy ending. Yay. So good. I wish everyone was like that. Because customers just go. Yes.
Ceels (32:50)
I know, I was like, You’re a gem, you’re an angel.
Nadine (32:53)
Thank you. Well, Ceels, that was awesome. I am really hooked on themed offer worlds now and I need to put my thinking cap on.
but obviously I want my listeners to check you out. So where can they get more of your genius and also have a look at your super stunning website?
Ceels (33:13)
Thank you. Yes, so my main website is ceelslockley.co. that’s where you’ll kind of learn all about me and have a little walk around the festival, as it were. and then another place to probably hang out with me is Instagram. I’m on Instagram at ceels.lockley And that’s really where I tend to tend to sort of hang for the most part these days and and share what’s going on in my world. But if you do want to get more more in the world and more in the festival,
one of the best ways to do that is to go and listen to my podcast, which is called Sold Out Offers and I share a fresh episode every Tuesday on offer strategy and just really getting to grips with your lineup and all the many nuances of that experience.
Nadine (33:55)
Awesome. So why don’t you Go and subscribe to Ceel’s Podcast, check out her website, and yeah, start thinking about your own offer lineup.
thanks so much for being on the show Ceels. I had an absolute blast. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, I would love you to share it with your business buddy, anyone who could do with some tips around their offer lineup. And yeah, I will be back in your airports next week.
Ceels (34:22)
Thanks, Nadine.
