Inbound: Before Your First Sales Funnel

My thoughts on how we have to drive traffic in the very near future.

On today’s episode Russell talks about what platforms he is now putting content on and why he is doing it that way. He also mentions what he believes the future of the internet means.

Here are some things to listen for in this episode:

• Why Russell thinks that Google will change the way you can put up content within a year.
• Why he thinks now is the time to change, rather than wait until you are forced to.
• And find out some of the things he’s doing differently now, and how you can do it too.

So listen below to find out how to change how you can get content online, and why it’s a good idea to be there first.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone! This is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to Marketing in Your Car.

Hey, everyone. I hope you have been having an amazing time. We’ve been pumping a lot of content and having fun with it. I hope you guys have been enjoying it. If you haven’t seen it and you’re like, “What are you talking about, Russell? All I know about is your podcast,” go to blog.dotcomsecrets.com and you will start seeing all this stuff.

We got Periscopes happening during the days. We got Marketing in Your Car in the morning. We got cool blog posts. We got a whole bunch of value we’re giving out to the world because we want to change your life, your company, your business and help you touch more people. So that’s kind of our game plan and we’re having fun doing it.

And today, I want to talk about, “Russell, why are you doing all this content? What is the point? What’s the purpose? Why in the world are you doing this?” And I had a conversation with one of my friends last night. He was over wrestling in the wrestling room. So as you know, I just built my own wrestling room at my house. So we were wrestling. We’re having a good time. And we’ve been talking about stuff afterwards.

And he runs an Amazon business and he just got the Amazon slap. And I was kind of joking about the slaps that I had gone through since I got started 12 years ago. The initial Google slap crumbled almost everyone I knew. Then you got like 18 different SEO Google slaps, Facebook slaps, merchant account slaps. I’ve been through quite a few slaps in my day. So now when they happen, I’m just like, “Yeah, all right. What’s the next thing?”

So this year, like we were killing it with Facebook stuff and then boom! We got the Facebook slap. And we are still doing well with Facebook but it’s not like it was pre January. So, it’s just kind of those things that most people, it happens and they freak out and they run away because it’s like the whole world is coming to an end.

But for me, because I’ve been on the cycle enough times, it’s kind of like sitting in the ocean, the waves go up and down and up and down and there’s the ups and the downs and you’re just going to ride the wave and not give up and keep your eyes open for like what’s the next trend. What’s the next thing happening? Where do we need to be focusing our time, energy, and all that kind of stuff?

And I really think, and I’ve kind of mentioned this before but, I think that the future of marketing online is… and I hate saying this because my friend, Justin Brook has been telling me this years and I keep telling him, I just keep teasing him. But unfortunately, he is right. I look at what the advertising platforms want. That’s what we’re going to look at because we want to be leveraging their audiences and we look at what they want.

Now what we want is we want to drive people to registration pages and opt-in pages and things like that, right? That’s our goal. Their goal is not to allow us to do that. Their goal is to deliver an amazing experience to their audience. They want us paying to show their people amazing content, which is funny. Anyway, it’s just kind of funny.

So right now with Facebook, we’ve seen that. We’ve seen that with other networks like Google, like – and you see the kind of the more native advertising networks nowadays which are all like you’re driving to content, to articles, and things like that. And I believe that within a year from now, not everywhere but for most places, it would be very, very difficult to drive directly to a registration page. I don’t think that’s going to be the model anymore.

I think what the model would be is we have to find our voice. This comes back to everything I talked about in the DotComSecrets book, creating your attractive character, figuring out your voice, learning how to communicate with your audience, and putting those messages out there and finding kind of your style and then becoming a prolific content writer or if you’re not a writer, it can be videos, it can be Periscope, it could be audio, it could podcasts. You do whatever you want.

And I don’t think that most people should do like 50 different platforms. I’m just doing a lot because I’ve got a big team so I’m able to do more than most people. But for most of you guys, like you should pick a platform and say, “I’m a video guy. I’m an audio guy.” Whatever you are, pick that thing and start producing consistent amazing content and then use that content as a tool to wrap people back to your core offer. So push people to your registration pages, you push people to your opt-in forms, your applications, whatever it may be because that’s where they will allow you to buy ads.

I believe that – my guess is that within a year from now, it will be next to impossible to get anything approved in Google unless it’s you promoting a blog post. That’s it. I think that’s the future.

And so knowing that now, man, like why in the world would I wait until that happens? Now is the time to jump on that. And so, that’s why we’re doing it. And so my goal on my side is I’m trying to do three blog posts a week and three podcasts and then a Periscope five days a week. And it has given me the ability to create stuff and touch people in different ways. But the cool thing is, not only am I just doing that to put it out there… like I’m adding content to the blog which is one thing, but now I’ve got the ability to take that content and promote it out through a lot of places.

If you look at the way we structure our blog, when I do my blog posts I have this really cool sketches, similar to these sketches that were inside the DotComSecrets book. Now, I can leverage these sketches on Facebook, I can put them on Instagram, Twitter, all these things like that. Now, I’m finding each of the platforms like how they want to accept content and then I’m using the content I’m putting out there in that way, if that makes sense.

I read about kind of this concept a little bit in Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, I think it’s Punch, Punch, Jab or Jab, Jab, Punch or I don’t know, something like that. But he talked about looking at – what does Facebook want? What does Instagram want? What do all these different networks want? You got to figure out what they want and you got to tweak your content to match that and then put it out there. And then when the content is in that native platform and you’re able to promote it and drive traffic and all those kinds of things and you get people to then raise their hand and click and listen and participate and then eventually come and push them to what you really want them to do.

And so for me, I’m looking at – I think in the future is I will never be able to promote a webinar registration page. But I will promote amazing content which will drive people to opt in and then my entire opt-in sequence where we push people to the webinar registration. Like in my mind, that’s the future. That’s where everything is going. And so now, not tomorrow, not six months from now, now is the time to start that path. And we have started it. We’re moving forward and that’s where our focus, our energy, and our money and our time is going into.

So, it’s interesting. If you listen to some of the past podcasts, I talked about funnel stacking. If you look at my business, I’ve got my book funnel which then leads to my webinar funnel which leads to my high ticket funnel. I’m stacking multiple funnels together. But I look this content thing as like a pre-funnel.

In fact, I have this little diagram, I’ll probably have a blog post about it soon, but it looks like… I have my little value ladder but then it drops one step down from the value ladder and it’s like one rung lower then where most people normally start, and that’s the content site. That’s putting those things out there to then get people in and then start sending them up through your value ladder.

So, that’s kind of cool. A good cast study of it is, yesterday I did a Periscope during the middle of the day… talking about the new coaching application funnel I just built out and how I’m kind of excited it was done and how we are giving away $25,000 to somebody for building out their breakeven funnel, and I kind of just talked about that…

In Periscope, I clicked the button.  I’ve never put it on a Periscope. I didn’t even know how people find out about my thing. I think it’s Twitter-based but I’m not positive. Yeah, probably.

So anyway, so I had a hundred people show up on Periscope which was awesome. And then I started talking and I just showed the application form on my phone. Next thing we knew, we got about ten applications almost instantly, which for me we average about between $1,300 and $1,400 per application. So I just made $13,000 with me doing a really quick Periscope post.

But then I took that video and we then put it on Facebook and then started promoting it. And then this morning, we got another around 10, 15, 20 applications from that and it was me promoting a Periscope, which then led back to my other offerings. So it was kind of interesting I think.

And again, that’s where we’re going. So create cool content. Inside the content, you push people back to the front of your value ladders into the, whatever you want to call them, the welcome gates, entry gates, the step one into entering your world. And that’s kind of how it works.

So anyway, that’s what I’m doing. That’s what I think you guys should be doing. And hopefully, that will help give you guys a glimpse into what I believe the future is and where we’re putting our time, our energy, and our money and our effort because I’ve been doing this rollercoaster ride for a long time and I think that’s where the shift will be for the next two or three years. And so, I want to be there first and I want you guys to be there first as well.

So that’s what I got. Hope you guys had an amazing time. By the way, if you would like to be one of our – if you like to have the chance to win the $25,000 with our funnel build out contest, go to DotComSecretsIgnite.com. You can see a video of me talking about a breakeven funnel. I’ll be talking about how we’re going to be doing a 10-week program helping you build out a funnel. And the winner is going to win $25,000 cash prize. It’s going to be awesome.

So, that’s it. Check it out. And I will talk to you guys all again tomorrow.