Low-Lift Launches and Savvy AI Strategies with Prerna Malik

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
Do you ever have a person that you stalk online because you love everything that they're doing and you just want to be nosy and be in their world? Well, today's guest, Prerna Malik, is on the show today because I love what she's doing with low-lift launch strategies and how she's creating exceptional client experiences for her community. So we're going to get into that and more in today's episode, but first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all-in-one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio and the It is like chef's kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their Magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself, resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click.

Andréa Jones [00:01:00]:
It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The link's in the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA at checkout to get 15% off your membership. Prerna, welcome to the show.

Prerna Malik [00:01:19]:
Hey, I'm so excited to be back and to be chatting with you about, yeah, how to enjoy making more sales without adding more stress to our already overcrowded schedules and calendars. So yay!

Andréa Jones [00:01:35]:
Yes, yes please. And this is why I love following your content, because I see a lot of what you post on Threads, and I'm on your email list. And just the way that you talk about your work and kind of even how you've evolved with AI and everything has been so admirable to me. I'm always like, oh, that— like, I'm always inspired when I look at your content. Um, so I would actually like to start there. Like, can you tell us a little bit about how you approach creating content when it comes to Threads or email or anything like that?

Prerna Malik [00:02:06]:
Oh, well, first up, thank you so much. And, um, secondly, I really, really love writing. So you and I, you know, we kind of go way back, right? I started online, uh, writing online in 2008, like as a new mom blogger, you know, like blocks Blogspot blog and all of that. And then that evolved. We started our business. When I say we, my husband and I, this is like 2011 is when we started. And writing has always been a big, big part of who I am and how I kind of, you know, just process things and how I want to express what's going on in my mind. So even with something like threads or Instagram or LinkedIn or our emails, you know, I use them essentially to not only form a connection with people reading it, but also strengthen that connection.

Prerna Malik [00:03:06]:
I, I look at these as ways for us to have conversations. And I know AI is huge and, you know, we do a lot, lot with AI in our business. But the one thing that I continue to hold on to very obstinately, I may add, is writing. I write all our emails. I write all our social media posts. And that's because I feel even with AI, it can be a both/and situation, right? You can use AI and you can choose to write your own content. So for me, writing a social media post, writing an email is a way of both forming a connection with the person on the other side and strengthening that connection.

Andréa Jones [00:03:50]:
Yeah, that's beautiful. And I love that you're not shying away from AI use. I find that it tends to be one of those unspoken things in the role where some people are like all for it or all against it. And I, I kind of land somewhere in the middle where I'm like, well, I like it for some things, but some things I don't, you know? Um, and so I love that you found your own path with that. So I wanna talk about specifically how you are in 2026, creating these sales strategies that are low lift, are you using AI for them?

Prerna Malik [00:04:21]:
So yes, and also no. So depends on the strategy, depends on the client. So for a lot of our clients, AI works in the backend to improve student experience, to improve client experience for, you know, people in their courses or their coaching programs, or to support their internal clients or their employees, you know, because I always feel like team members are your internal clients. So improving their workflows, processes, and all of that, and also for testing out their offers. So we, we actually, in AI, with AI, I started by not by, you know, like using it for writing. Like I said, I don't use it for writing even now. I started using AI by building audience focus groups. So that was one of the first things that we started doing is building audience focus groups for our clients, where they could test out their copy, they could test test out offers, uh, you know, get some validation from a group of their most perfect customers at different buyer mindset levels.

Prerna Malik [00:05:25]:
So that was how I started with using AI, and that's been a big part of improving client experience for both our clients and for their clients too. For low-lift launch strategies that are working in 2026 Specifically, some of our clients are using AI and we're building their custom marketing teams to implement those strategies. But for many others, they're choosing to either work with us to write assets involved with those. So it's basically a mix of both depending on the strategy and on the client itself.

Andréa Jones [00:06:02]:
Okay, I need to go back to this customer focus group because what— I've never heard this before. So you're telling me that you train your AI to act like a group of clients? How many?

Prerna Malik [00:06:15]:
Like, yeah, so it generally depends, but for most clients we find a 4-audience group tends to work the best, like a 4, uh, 4-person focus group. But we've also had clients, for instance, we've had clients in, I would say, the lifestyle niches, so gardening, homesteading, crafting, where we've had a slightly bigger and a wider group. So about 6 to 7 different personas there. And with each group, our focus is to cover— because you can have, you can have one customer, right? We all know that. That's like Marketing 101, like speak to one customer. But within that one customer, there are different layers, there are different seasons of life, there are different stages of awareness. So once we know that, we tend to kind of build a focus group based around those. For most clients, these focus groups involve customers at either— we go with stages of awareness.

Prerna Malik [00:07:12]:
So someone who's really cold to your brand is like very new to it, doesn't know much about it, versus someone who's been on your list for a while, has bought a few products, is like, you know, one of those early adopters. There's that approach. And then the other approach we take is with the buyer mindset, which is, is this buyer a skeptic? You know, is this buyer a discerning buyer who's going to do a bunch of research, has like, you know, the comparative analysis and pros and cons and all of that? Is this buyer a budget-conscious buyer? You know, so we look at either buyer mindset or stages of awareness, and, and also, of course, then the audience profile, because some of our clients do have more than one persona that they're serving. So they may have someone who's a complete beginner versus someone who's, you know, say, middle or even seasoned at whatever it is that they're teaching. So you can't really speak the same way to them. And similarly, the same offer needs to be kind of messaged and marketed differently to these segments. So these audience focus groups were our very first foray into offering AI-built services to clients that then kind of evolved into building AI marketing teams and then setting up for clients who didn't want like a full marketing team. It was more, okay, can you set up our LLM, like set up our Claude project with everything that we need for them? So yeah, that's what an audience focus group does is you can test your copy with them.

Prerna Malik [00:08:51]:
You can validate your offers with them. At the end of the day, however, what I tell all our clients and I would want all your listeners to know is AI at the end of the day is smart and it's fast and it can give you some great insights. But you're the superior brain. You're the CEO in charge and the final decision always has to be yours. But what our clients have loved is that it's helped them see gaps and holes that they otherwise would have missed because sometimes we're just too close to our product. We're just too close to our brand that we tend to make assumptions and that can cost conversions, especially now because people are being very careful about what they're investing in. Mm-hmm.

Andréa Jones [00:09:36]:
Oh my gosh. I have to say, this is one of the most unique ways that I have seen AI used in a marketing business. Like, my mind is spinning with so many ideas because not only are you kind of using the data available to you to create this AI tool, but then the use cases of how you're creating flexible environments based on the clients and what their needs are is so fascinating to me. So I'm curious too about how you're using this in your business. I'd love for an example of how maybe you had an idea and then you used your client persona thing. So like, I just want to hear an example, you know.

Prerna Malik [00:10:19]:
Okay, I— all right, so you are going to love this. I have a free AI audience bot that you can kind of sign up for. It's at contentbeastar.com/skeptic. So this one assesses your copy through a skeptical buyer mindset. You'll obviously have to give it information so that it can kind of get into that mindset. And then once you give it your copy or your offer, it'll give you— it'll tell you, you know, exactly what would make it— make its eyes roll. So that's a freebie for anyone who's listening. But In our business, so we have 4 different audience profiles built for our ideal customer.

Prerna Malik [00:10:56]:
And so one is, of course, the skeptical buyer, which is— which we absolutely wanted to work with because, yeah, AI. Second is the budget-conscious buyer. The third is the more seasoned AI learner. And the fourth is the discerning buyer, or the one who's you know, looking at everything that's happening in the market and comparing options. So we have these, uh, this, this group of 4 buyers, and I had been wanting to do a workshop on, on using Claude for the longest time. And I saw that everybody's doing these, you know, workshops, and I was like, okay, these are— so one of the things was like, part of me was like, yeah, you know, everyone's doing these workshops about, you know, how to use Claude projects and how to use Claude Cowork and Claude Skill, but Everything felt like I could like teach this in my sleep. I've been using Claude since 2023. You know, most people in fact just started using Claude and I was like, I should do this.

Prerna Malik [00:11:51]:
And then I put my outline together, the, you know, the standard Claude 101 workshop, which was like, okay, yeah, you know, this is what you'll learn. You'll learn how to kind of move from ChatGPT to Claude, etc., etc. And both my discerning buyer and my skeptical buyer were like, yeah, why would I want to pay you when I can learn all this? Like, this is like basic stuff. Why would I want to pay you for this? And when both of them were, you know, the budget-conscious buyer was very straight up like, yeah, she was like, yeah, I would not want to pay $147 or $247 for this. But that was a money thing. So I knew, okay. But the other two were like, How is this any different? Yeah, you know, and so my uncle and I went back to the drawing board. I was like, yeah, you know, how is this different? What could I teach that would be unique to me, focuses on my strengths and skill set, and yet would help our audience walk away with complete clarity and confidence in using Claude as a strategic partner? And that is when we started brainstorming.

Prerna Malik [00:13:03]:
Like, we completely scrapped our original idea, which I would have honestly launched with because, hey, everybody was doing it, right? Like, if there was demand for it, I knew people were like, you know, there were so many people offering it, so I knew, you know, people are signing up. So that's like what I was saying is like, you're too close to your business sometimes and you need— so we went back and we came up with the idea of using Claude for conversions, which actually then just became the name of the workshop and showing our audience how they can use Claude to create a completely gen funnel in a matter of hours, from building a business intelligence library project to running a complete workflow in Cowork to come up with the opt-in idea, the concept, the outline, the, you know, the opt-in page, thank you page, and the emails to go with it. Over, you know, a couple of 4 hours. So 2 days, we're spreading it over 2 days and it's like just implementation-based. So it is now no longer a Cloud 101 workshop. It is— and the response has been great. Like we just, we just opened it up to, you know, a small segment of our list who opted in to know more about the Cloud workshop. In fact, my opt-in page still says, you know, like I'll be walking you through the different parts of Cloud because that was my original plan.

Prerna Malik [00:14:23]:
Until my audience focus group decided to go like, yeah, no. And the response has been great. You know, we've already had— I think we've had like the first 10 seats already gone. We opened it up only to 50 seats. We'll open it up to our whole list, uh, tomorrow. So that is what I'm saying. When you validate an offer instead of— and you know, I could have, again, I could have gone into Facebook groups, I could have done a lot, but this barely took me any time. And, and I was hearing from people who fit our ideal client persona, like people, an AI audience based off of people who have bought from us, who have invested in us.

Prerna Malik [00:14:58]:
So yeah, that was like my most recent example.

Andréa Jones [00:15:03]:
Okay, y'all, I'm about to do this myself. I'm gonna go download the Skeptic Bot. I highly encourage you to do the same. All of the links we talk about will be in the show notes, onlinedrea.com/402. But if you go to Prerna's World, you, you'll find it as well because this is Amazing. And I'm like, my mind is like so many ideas. And I love that you talked about how much time this is saving you to actually focus on creating an experience that is exceptional, because that's what you're, that's what you're known for, right? Is these client experiences that kind of stand out a little bit. And I love that you're using AI to help with that.

Andréa Jones [00:15:39]:
So with this launch, let's say you have this workshop, it's a great example of this. Talk to me about how else you're, you're kind of building anticipation and how you're actually doing this in a low lift way?

Prerna Malik [00:15:53]:
So I would say one of my favorite little strategies is to use a waitlist, and you don't need something complicated for this. You know, you can just— like, mine is just a simple opt-in form. The reason I prefer to have people opt in to a waitlist is because I've, over the years, I've seen higher conversions when people actively opt in and know what they're signing up for. I'm always very clear that it would be a paid workshop. I usually give them an indication of what the price is also going to be. So I keep a lot of things upfront. That makes it very easy for me, and it keeps it really easy for the customer as well, right? Because they're going in eyes wide open, and it's a great experience, and it also makes it really easy. So like I said, like, for instance, for the, like, the first 10 seats, like, we've just sent 2 emails.

Prerna Malik [00:16:42]:
That's 2 emails that I wrote based on what was, you know, what I wanted people to know. And it's not complicated at all. So a waitlist is a really great low lift strategy to start leaning on early on, whether you're launching something or whether you've got something going on evergreen or you're thinking about something too. You know, you could— it takes barely takes 5 minutes to just put up a landing page and just, you don't even need to put it on your website. You could just use the pre-built templates that your email service provider offers. That is number one. The other is if you are on social, I would highly recommend you use either— if you're on Instagram or on Threads, use either one of them to start talking about what you're thinking about, what you're planning. I started off as a social media manager, so I know there are a lot of people who don't really use a lot of social, etc., but for me, social has always been my go-to strategy and I I personally do find it a very low lift strategy because I again like to think of it as my way of connecting with people.

Prerna Malik [00:17:48]:
So it doesn't really feel like a lot of work for me. I know I may not be the norm, but yeah, that's how— that's like, I love social. So I use Instagram stories a lot to talk about, you know, okay, this is what I did with, you know, because in the lineup to the Claude, lead up to the Claude workshop, I was like, okay, this is what Claude's building for me this week. And I would like literally show them exactly what it's doing, you know, everything that I've worked on over the years, the fact that I, I would share screenshots of like the fact that I've been using Claude since 2023 and not so establishing authority, establishing expertise, but doing it in a way that just kind of feels very easy for me. So I don't have any complicated edits. Like I would show up like this and talk to camera, or I would just take photos and put photos with text on them. If you go to our Instagram, you'll see most of our posts are very simple, but they tend to do well. I do use a ManyChat automation, which I highly recommend, another low-lift strategy, because then you're not personally like kind of messaging people.

Prerna Malik [00:18:51]:
Um, it just kind of adds that level of automation to the mix. So waitlist, social, um, and with social, again, like I said, you don't want to use Reels, you don't want to make complicated posts. So carousels work really well and stories work really well on Instagram. And the other low lift strategy that I would highly recommend is never forgetting people who bought from you in the past. So think about like if you have an audience of customers, and I'm sure all of us do, like even whether it's like 5, 10, 50, 500, really doesn't make a difference. If you have past customers, give them first dibs on whatever it is you're launching, as long as it's a good fit for them. And that's what we did. You know, even with, um, we do it, we do it with all our, all our offers, but even with this.

Prerna Malik [00:19:39]:
So don't forget, forget about your past customers. I obviously have like, this is for like this, you know, like a simple like kind of a workshop that you want to do. But if you have courses, whether you're launching them live or you're launching them evergreen, I would highly, highly recommend looking at setting up behavior-based automated sequences, um, for your audience. So this could be a behavior-based upsell sequence that kicks in anytime someone's completed a course. It could be a, a behavior-based newsletter. Oh, this was like one of the most popular services that we sold all of 2024, 2025, even 2026. We were like kind of working with on 3, 3 clients on this is the behavior-based nurtured for sales newsletter sequence for non-buyers. So when people sign up for your webinar or your challenge or whatever it is, your launch mechanism, right? You'll always have a percentage of people who've signed up but not bought.

Prerna Malik [00:20:47]:
Instead of dumping all of them into your generic newsletter sequence, you can send them that, but then you can also add in a very specific nurture sequence that continues to engage with them in a very course-specific or a subject-specific way. So that has been one of our most effective conversion strategies for non-buyers for our clients across the board. I'm a huge, huge— like, anytime I talk to clients and I'm consulting with them strategies, the first thing I ask them is, okay, what are we doing for your non-buyers? Because most Most people end up forgetting about non-virus and just kind of putting them into the whole launch sequence or the evergreen funnel, you know, ends after a time and then they're like, yeah, they get our newsletters.

Andréa Jones [00:21:37]:
Yeah. Oh my God. That's amazing. And I bet you could use your audience personas to assist you. I'm seeing all the pieces come together now on like, how do we talk to people who are skeptical or they're seasoned? Or they're beginner, beginner, right? And so you can kind of layer that into the newsletter sequence. Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay.

Andréa Jones [00:22:03]:
So I love how all of this is coming together because I do think sometimes as business owners, especially creative people, we tend to create our own problems. Like we create too much and we create in a way that's actually complicated. And what you're suggesting is kind of work hard once, create the thing and then let it run. Right. But I'm curious too. At what point do you allow people to just be the freebie seekers? Because what I get a lot, uh, the pushback I get a lot from my clients and customers who we're doing all this marketing and we get those people who just like to collect free things, they will never buy from you. And at some point you kind of just have to just be okay with that. But what is your perspective on those people?

Prerna Malik [00:22:46]:
Yeah, you will always have people like that in your audience and Depending again, depending on the niche you're in. For instance, we have a client who's in the homesteading niche. There, the subscriber to buyer conversion period right now is 12 months. Wow. Just really long by all standards because, you know, they have a membership. So it's not really like not selling them into a $5,000 program. So it's, it's a membership, but It's a niche. It's an audience segment that we know is naturally very high on skepticism, very high also on being frugal and budget-conscious.

Prerna Malik [00:23:28]:
So the conversion period is longer and we are comfortable with that. So you've got to kind of understand your audience. We are obviously trying actively to reduce that, you know, the period, but we know why it's in place. However, the idea here is that You and your audience should at no point forget that what you're doing is running a business, which is why this was something that I learned really early on. It was a hard lesson for me is to not feel really sad about unsubscribes because when you're starting out, you know, you're like kind of building your email list and you're so excited about every little, every subscriber, you know, every little piece of growth that you're getting on your email list and unsubscribes hit you really hard. But learning to accept that some people would— you're not for everyone. Some people would never want to buy from you. It's okay.

Prerna Malik [00:24:22]:
You know, that's all right. Some people would want to take years before they buy from you. That's also okay. But as a business owner, our job is to do two things. One, to obviously increase sales, and two, to increase sales in a way that feels good to us and good to our audience. So my goal as a core sales strategist, as a conversion copywriter, and now a consultant is quite simple: looking at how can we increase these sales, but how can we do it in a way that aligns with who our client is and who their audience is? So yes, we will continue to sell, um, and yes, there will be people who will just wanna download everything that's free and that's their choice, right? Our choice is to continue to look at ways to serve them and sell our offers.

Andréa Jones [00:25:19]:
Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. And what I love that you're kind of shaping here is you're still finding a way to use this in an ethical, like you feel good about how you're leveraging these tools. Cuz at the end of the day, to me, AI is a tool. It's just one tool. One tool that we can use.

Prerna Malik [00:25:36]:
100%. Yeah.

Andréa Jones [00:25:38]:
And there's so many different ways, like in the, in the hands of good, it'll be good. And in the hands of evil, it'll be evil. Right. So I love that.

Prerna Malik [00:25:44]:
Exactly.

Andréa Jones [00:25:45]:
But one of the things you said that I want to follow up on is creating these experiences so people feel good about the sale. And I oftentimes bump up against this feeling of some people feel regret when they buy something. So talk to me about how you're continuing that client experience after they, you know, put their credit card in, they hit buy. Then what happens?

Prerna Malik [00:26:06]:
Excellent. So a few things. The client experience would need to start way before that. So the first thing that we've started doing with all our clients is being very upfront about the fact that if it's a free webinar, they will be invited to join a program. It is absolutely their choice not to join the program. They would definitely be walking away with these clear, tangible outcomes, but they will be invited to join. So there are no, you know, especially in the personal development and like I said, in the lifestyle hobby niches, there are no surprises like, oh, I thought this was free, but now you're going to be selling me into this membership. And you know, that just kind of creates one, friction, and two, it creates like that unpleasant experience.

Prerna Malik [00:26:47]:
So we don't want that. So we were very, very clear about the fact that they will be invited to join something. And again, totally their choice. The second is, and this is something that I see a lot of creators sometimes miss the mark on, sadly, is the confirmation email and your thank you page. They have a job to do. They are not placeholders. Your confirmation email, when someone signs up for even a free event, should build that connection, build that relationship with them. So including a video, including a, you know, an intake form, including something that gives them something tangible to do, to know, to walk away with, even from just a confirmation email is great.

Prerna Malik [00:27:33]:
Like, oh, here's some free work for you before we meet. And not just pre-work, like, you know, the workbooks from the webinars that used to happen in 2019, which is like, yeah, but it could be, this is like a bonus resource, you know, that kind of a thing. And the thank you page, the thank you page, both post-sign-up for a free workshop and post- post-purchase is, I feel, a highly overlooked piece of online real estate and an overlooked opportunity to deal with the buyer's remorse or that, you know, the, okay, what have I really done kind of a feeling. So using your thank you page again to get to know your audience better, you know, showing them what's next, being very clear about the next steps, helping them see exactly what to expect, and having a proper student onboarding sequence in place walking them through when's when, where to find what, how can they reach out to you, setting expectations about responses or access and all of those things. Those are like, really, again, they feel like a lot of work. But once you set them up, you probably don't have to touch them for a really long time. And they do a great job of creating a really positive onboarding and you know, post-purchase experience. The other thing that I would, which is not again something that a lot of people do, but something that we've been encouraging our clients to do, is do the unscalable.

Prerna Malik [00:29:08]:
So this could be sending voice messages to people who are joining in. So it just kind of depends on our client and of course again their audience. But some of the strategies that we've tested out that have worked pretty well is sending voice messages to people who joined, recording personalized videos, welcoming them to the community. It's amazing. Like, people have responded. People are like, oh my gosh, did you actually just record this for me? You know, that delight. So the goal is to keep up that excitement, help them see that they made a right decision, introducing them to students. You know, it's like an alumni meet and greet.

Prerna Malik [00:29:47]:
So, hey, now you're part of the community. Here's this. I got this idea actually from our daughter's school. Like when she joined, they had a buddy system where they paired her up with a student who'd been in the school for, you know, a longer while and who could kind of show her around the school and help her get to know. And I was like, why aren't we doing this for our online courses? Like, you know, someone new joins and we just kind of like expect everyone to kind of, yeah, just go along, figure it out themselves. So just kind of You know, having a buddy system that we've tested that out with a couple of clients and that's worked really well. People really like having another person to kind of, you know, ask questions to that they feel that they may not, you know, because they're new, they're a little hesitant, so they don't really know where to find something. So that's been, you know, a really good strategy.

Prerna Malik [00:30:34]:
So essentially your goal is to not just pour your energy into the pre-purchase experience, but also the post-purchase experience. You have to start thinking about that. Um, right when you're thinking about, okay, how do I get them to buy, you want to think, okay, what happens after they buy? Hmm.

Andréa Jones [00:30:51]:
Oh my gosh, I'm like so motivated after this conversation, y'all. I hope you're taking notes. This is one you're going to want to re-listen to. Prerna, if someone's listening and they're like, okay, I need it, I need to be in your world, like, well, give, give me the details.

Prerna Malik [00:31:05]:
Yeah, so I would love for you to— I have two freebies for you, of course, like the first one I shared earlier. If you are curious to see what your most skeptical buyer would think of your offer or your copy, head over to contentbeach.com/skeptic. That's S-K-E-P-T-I-C. I'm sure I will drop the link, but it's contentbeach.com/skeptic. And the second freebie that I have for you is if you want to use more low-lift strategies to sell more courses or memberships without live launches, evergreen funnels, ads, or affiliates, head over to contentbistro.com/5x for a 5-part email course that walks you through. Um, quick, um, word of like, like a heads up, we are in the middle of a rebrand. Uh, so Content Bistro will soon be profitably yours. Um, so if you head over to contentbistro.com/skeptic or, uh, 5x, you know, Um, and you see Profitably Yours, don't be confused.

Prerna Malik [00:32:12]:
It's just us. It's just a new name, new home.

Andréa Jones [00:32:16]:
Well, congrats on the rebrand and oh my gosh, I'm going to get this course immediately. Um, all the links will be on onlinedrea.com/402. We'll put all of the social handles as well, so you can connect with Prerna online. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Prerna Malik [00:32:32]:
Thank you so much for inviting me. This was so much fun.

Andréa Jones [00:32:35]:
Yes. Thank you. And thank you, dear listener, for tuning in to another episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I got another episode coming at you next week. In the meantime, make sure you rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcasts, and that's all because of your support. I'll see you next week with another episode. Bye for now.