The Buzz Behind The Birthday Announcement

Have you been watching the buzz that we’ve been creating? Listen in on my thoughts about what we’re doing and why.

On today’s episode Russell recounts how an announcement he’s making on Clickfunnels’ 5 year birthday got so much buzz. Here are some of the exciting things you will hear in this episode:

How so many rumors about an upcoming announcement came from a simple two minute video. What some of the rumors going around about Clickfunnels 5 year birthday announcement are. And how studying the story of P.T. Barnum helped Russell see why creating buzz would be a better way to make announcements.

So listen here to see how so much buzz was created around this announcement, and don’t forget to watch Facebook Live on Monday to find out what the announcement actually is.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody? Good morning, good morning. This is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I’m going to be reading the second half of the Traffic Secrets book.

Alright, so I’m not actually reading it on this podcast. That’d be the longest podcast of all time. But I finished the Traffic Secrets book, did I tell you this already? We’re back from Fiji, and right before we went to Fiji we submitted the final manuscript to the publisher and then they have their editors go through and then send it back to us and we have to do our last edit. And then next Friday, a week from today, I have to submit it and at that point I can never touch it again.

So I was kind of freaking out about it because when I read the Dotcom Secrets, and Expert Secrets books, when I finished those, after I got done I went and I remember I recorded the audio versions of them. And as I was recording the audio book versions I found all these mistakes and errors that I hadn’t found even though I read the book like 100 times through. But because I was publishing those through a smaller publisher I was literally able to make the audiobook, make changes, send it to them, and they changed it last minute and then we started printing them.

But with this book, the book doesn’t come out until May 5th so it’s like, I don’t know, 7 or 8 months from now, which makes me sad because I want to start selling it tomorrow, because that’s what I do. But we have to wait for forever. So my audiobook I’m probably not going to record until next march or something. At that point it will be too late to make edits and stuff. So I was kind of freaking out, so I thought, I’m going to just do a live reading of it, that way I can read it out loud and I can edit it. So that was the plan. Then I was like, maybe I should invite my traffic team so they can hear my thoughts on traffic to make sure we’re all in alignment. So I invited the traffic team.

And then we’re like, wait a minute, if we’re doing this anyway, we might as well record it because who knows, maybe something cool will come from it. So we’re like, if we’re going to record it we should set up a big set, it’s kind of like that book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. So then we set up the big set, and we’re like, this looks amazing. We should sell access to it. So basically for anyone who bought a Funnel Hacking Live ticket by right now, gets to come and listen to me read the Traffic Secrets book live.

So I read the first half of it yesterday, it took like 8 hours. It was really tiring and exhausting. But I did it. So we did that first. And then when that was, so then today I’m reading the second half. So that’s what’s been happening over here. And it’s kind of fun actually reading it that way. It’s interesting, as I’m reading it, for the most part I’m liking all of it. There’s a couple parts I’m just like, ugh, this reads really weird. Or I don’t feel it here. Or I’m getting bored reading this part. Or this part was really fun and exciting. You know, there’s definitely different parts.

And then it’s also funny because I found things that the editors edit, and I’m like, I don’t like how that was said, or I don’t like how this thing…you know what I mean? So I gotta change this back, or I gotta add in my voice back in here. Anyway, I remember my grandpa, my grandpa was a professor at BYU, a history professor, and he wrote like, I don’t know, 10 different books on like Columbus and all these old history things that he obsesses about. My grandpa obsesses about history like I obsess about marketing.

Anyway, I remember him telling me back in the day when I was a kid, he’s like, “Yeah, when you write a book and send it to the publisher, when you get it back from the editor, you won’t even recognize the book, it doesn’t even sound like you anymore.” I remember him saying that and I’m like, that doesn’t make any sense. But then I totally see that. And luckily for me my editors have been really good at, they’ve kept my voice in and for the most part they’re just cleaning up punctuation and things like that, and things that I say, when I’m saying things repetitively. But it’s just funny because there’s some things they keep changing, and I’m like, “I’m not changing that. This part has to stay in the book.” Anyway, so it’s just kind of fun.

Anyway, so today’s lesson has nothing to do with what I just talked about. As you may or may not know Clickfunnels is having our 5 year birthday on Monday. So we are making some changes and having some fun things. So we thought well, we need to get people to come on a Facebook live so I can announce these changes. And we thought, we’ll just do a Facebook live, but if we did that, who knows how many people would come on?

So we decided, I wanted to make it more of a formal presentation, and there’s some big changes and some updates and some things happening. So I made these, talking about these changes and now we need to get people to show up and be excited for this thing. So how do we stimulate growth and excitement? And it’s fun because I’ve been studying over the last year a lot of P.T. Barnum’s life. And P.T. Barnum, if you haven’t seen the Greatest Showman, the movie is amazing, but if you study P.T. Barnum’s life, he is the king of publicity and shows.

In fact, two days before he died, he wrote his own obituary and published it to the newspapers, that he had died and told this whole story. And people messaged, came afterwards like, ‘You’re still alive. Why did you publish your obituary?” and he’s like, “Oh, I thought that the news of my death would help sell tickets to the circus.’ Or something like that. He’s always about creating the buzz and the story and excitement and whatever to be able to sell more tickets, or deliver the message, or whatever the thing might be.

So for us we were thinking, how do we cause some noise, get some excitement? Let’s make this not just like, “Hey, Russell’s doing an announcement, you should show up.” Because then no one’s going to show up. Like, we need people to get excited.

And what’s happened, it’s been a show. We could write a whole book on what happened. So what happened is initially we’re like, “What if we got people to start rumors? We got people to go post on Facebook, ‘oh did you hear the rumors that CLickfunnels is selling?’ or things are happening.” So we were thinking about that, and it’s not really as good. So instead what we did is when I was in Fiji I recorded a video, and the video if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s on Facebook and YouTube, but it’s me kind of talking about some of these changes. And I’m obviously nervous about it, and I didn’t try to hide that, and I made this very vague, very cryptic announcement.

And I talked about what some of the rumors are. Some people have rumors that we’re acquiring a company, some people, some rumors are that we’re selling, we’re going public, or I’m retiring, all these things. And I haven’t been able to tell anyone, but I’m going to tell everyone on Monday.

So that’s been kind of the thing. In fact, I think this podcast will probably go live today, so if that’s the case then you know about it now. It’s happening on Monday. So Monday the announcement will happen and I’ll tell you guys about what it is afterwards, and if you’ve been listening to the podcast you have some hints and some updates. One of the big one’s is that this is just one part of a three part announcement. One part we’re announcing right now, one part we’re announcing at Funnel Hacking Live, and one part we’re announcing on my birthday, March 8th.  So these are three big, fun, exciting things that are happening.

So anyway, the reason why I’m telling you this is because what’s happening has been crazy. I’ve been watching people online meltdown, I’ve been watching people post on their own page, “What’s happening?” People taking bets, like, “I think Clickfunnels is selling. I think this is happening. I think Russell is doing this. I think this.” And everybody is speculating like crazy. And it’s causing all this buzz.

And it’s been insane to me because I’ve been getting text messages from all my friends, people I haven’t heard from in a long time. People texting me, “Good luck on the news. Good luck on this. We’re nervous for you, we’re praying for you.” all these things. Today I got in the car to take my kids to school and I pick up these other kids in the neighborhood, and when the kids jumped into the car, again, these are kids that go to school with my kids, the first thing he asked was, “What’s your announcement that’s happening on Monday?” I’m like, “What, what?” and my kids are like, “What dad? What’s happening?” I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this has gotten all the way to the neighborhood kids.

They’re like, ‘Yeah, my parents were talking about it last night for like 30 minutes trying to speculate what they thought was going to happen.” And it’s like, oh my gosh, this is so cool.

So I hope you guys are watching this because there is a real announcement that is happening, there are multiple announcements happening over the next couple of months. But we could have easily just gone and told people, “Hey, we’re making an announcement about blah.” But instead we talked about, we’re making an announcement and it’s not these things. And by talking about what’s it not, we didn’t say it’s not about these things, we said that “people are speculating that it’s about these things, but I’ll tell you exactly what it is.”

And by saying that and saying what people are speculating, then it caused people to really speculate, and it’s caused all this controversy and all these people talk9ing about it, and it’s just been one of the most organic. fun, cool promotions we’ve ever done.

So it’s got my mind thinking, man I don’t want to ever speak or do a Facebook live or do an announcement without this kind of buzz behind it. How do we craft this, how do we choreograph this, how do we create this when we have a new webinar coming out? Or we have a new thing? How do we make it so we get this kind of buzz behind it? Because it causes it, you know, we get people talking about your business and creating speculation and all these things. It’s really, really fascinating. It’s been crazy.

And I’m excited to see on the Facebook live Monday how many people actually show up. I don’t think it’s going to be a few, I think it’s going to be insane amounts of people. Just from the amount of people who have texted me personally, people who I haven’t heard from in years, people who are all in the middle of this. The neighbor kids and their parents talking about it, you know online seeing people posting on their own social profiles, and people you know, just causing this controversy and it’s been really fun to watch, and a really interesting marketing lesson.

So for you, I’d start looking at your business like what’s an announcement you could make, or you should make? And then how do you cause the buzz behind that? It also makes me think about that for any new webinar I do, or any new announcement, or any new product, or any new whatever, how do you craft that much engagement?

 Stephen Larsen when I was at his Offermind event, he talked a lot about how a lot of people think it’s just the offer, or just the funnel. It’s like, no, those are parts of it. You have to have an amazing offer, you have to have an amazing funnel, but then it’s like, the campaign you create that causes the buzz that pushes people into that funnel. That’s a whole ‘nother art and science, the art of creating campaigns and creating buzz and doing these kind of things.

And it’s interesting, if you watch the people that are great at this, I’ve been watching, as I’ve been writing the book and editing the book and things like that, every once in a while my brain has a lot of pain. So I’m like, I gotta take a 20 minute break on something. So I’ll go and I’ll watch different things, things that are short though.

So like, for example, I was watching the Connor McGregor/Khabib fight, which all my UFC fighter friends and wrestlers would know this. But it was this big fight that happened a couple of months ago. So I watched that. But I was watching all the pre-stuff that built up to the fight. It wasn’t just two dudes stepped in a ring and started fighting. It was like, no there’s campaigning, and trash talking, and pre-weigh ins, and the stare down, and trash talking.

And then after the match there’s Khabib jumping over the side of the cage, and all these things that caused the drama, it’s all the campaign build up that makes us care about this fight. Because if two people just jumped in a ring and started fighting nobody would care, it’s what’s the campaign ahead of time that creates the buzz and makes people want to know what’s happening.

So that’s what I want you guys thinking about with your businesses. It’s like, what are the things I can do? A really good book to read, probably the best book to read on this, Joe Vitale wrote this book called, There’s a Customer Born Every Minute, and it’s the life story of P.T. Barnum, through the lens of how he did his marketing.

I sent this two years ago to all of the Two Comma Club X students. I was like, “Read this book, you guys. It is so good.” But P.T. Barnum, like I said, he lived back in the early 1900’s and this is before the internet and everything. So he had to go and create this buzz to get people to come to the show. And again, if you watched the Greatest Showman, you saw a glimpse of it. But if you study his life, especially that book, that book is really good, There’s a Customer Born Every Minute, by Joe Vitale.  If you read that book, you’ll see how he created all these things. He called them humbugs. We need to create a humbug, which is like a fake story to cause buzz. And back then they didn’t have FTC, they didn’t have the legal regulations. Most of the stuff that P.T. Barnum did back then would probably be illegal nowadays.

But he did these things to create buzz. Stephen Larsen at Offermind was showing, he did this campaign where it was like, I can’t remember what it was, it was like a mermaid-monkey or something. But basically it was like a big fish and a monkey and he took the corpse of it and sewed it together so it looked like it was a monkey mermaid, or something like that. I can’t remember. He put these ads in the newspaper showing the picture of this monkey-mermaid, and it was literally he just took a dead monkey and a dead, huge fish and sewed them together, but used that as publicity to get people to come to the circus and come to his museums, and all these crazy things.

So I just want you, I hope you’re watching this campaign. I hope that you’re paying attention. I hope you’re thinking about, what can I do in my business to stimulate growth and controversy and people talking? Because man, this is the best viral, free, organic exposure of anything we’ve ever done. And it all started with a two minute video I filmed in Fiji, telling the story about the rumors people have been throwing around. And if I’m completely honest, there were no rumors. I caused those rumors. So there you go, just for my Marketing Secrets friends, you guys know behind the scenes. I’m the one. There was nobody saying, ‘I wonder if Clickfunnels is getting bought or sold or going public or going, if Russell’s retiring or whatever. None of those things people were saying, but I said, in my video I said, “There’s been whispers of this.” And it was, I was whispering about it with my team. But by putting those things out there, it caused the whispers, it caused the things.

Anyway, it’s fun. It’s exciting. I think you guys all are going to enjoy it. So hopefully you’re enjoying the show. Come on Monday, again, depending on when you get this, Monday we’ll be making the first of three big announcements, and they are big announcements, each one progressively bigger. And then there’s one, there’s one thing I can’t tell you guys all yet. Even on these announcements that I’m excited for. But I did buy, just so you know, I bought bootstrap.com, and my next book is going to be called Bootstrap.com and it’s going to be telling the Clickfunnels story. And in that book I’ll be able to tell you the full story.

Anyway, there’s reasons I can’t explain it all right now, that will make more sense when you read the book someday. But yeah, that book I’m excited for. It’s going to be my first non-how-to book. It’s going to be just the story, the story of Clickfunnels. How did this come to be? How did all the weird characters meet together to create this thing, and the movement and the ups and the downs and all the stuff?  So how many of you guys are pumped for that book? I’m excited. 

Anyway, with that said, I’m going to bounce. I appreciate you guys all for listening. I hope you have a good day, and if you do get this before Monday, I’ll see you on the Monday announcement. And if you get this later, that’s totally cool, my next podcast episode will probably be recorded, or one of the near future ones will be talking about that and what came from it. So we’ll go from there. Thanks everybody and we’ll talk to you soon.