TC 021: Todd Brown – Creating The Ultimate Funnel Plus 5 Tricks You Can Use Today

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Interview with Todd Brown

Sweeney: Hey guys! Sweeney here and welcome to another episode of the TriggerCast. Today we have on Todd Brown from Marketing Funnel Automation. Now, Todd really focuses on building funnels using proven direct response to strategies and building them A-Z. Yes, he has different tactics and he’s up on the latest tactics but he’s more about getting it right. Todd, thanks a lot for coming on today!

 

Todd: Thanks for having me man! I love your Podcast dude! The opportunity to be here is fantastic.

 

Sweeney: Thanks a lot! I’m most happy when I hear from other high level people that they actually listen to it because you have a lot of good guests and we’re interested.

 

Todd: Yes man, you got great episodes. You are one of only probably like 3 maybe 4 top Podcast that I listen to pretty regularly. It’s a good job!

 

Sweeney: Thank you! I’ll take it. I got to say I’m impressed because out of a lot of the people I’ve talked to, you’re probably one of the few that actually went and saw like, “Man, he has a blog and he writes regularly and he has good content. This is crazy.”

 

Todd: Well, thank you! I appreciate that tremendously as well. Thanks!

 

Sweeney: So, we’re going to start just so listeners know. We’re going to start a little bit more in the beginners space so people are more getting started. Some of the theory and the foundation aspects. Then later half the interview, we’re going to jump in to some of these more advanced and high level tactics. If you have an offer currently, you have a funnel, you’re going to move/interchange some of these in there and start creating more revenue. First, let’s start with the foundations. Let’s get it right as you say. We have a few different subjects here. The product and the single most important marketing lesson. Which one we will probably start first, Todd?

 

Todd: I think the best place to start for the new and novice marketers looking to build their first successful profitable funnel is to really spend just a little bit of time talking about the big idea. Really, the thing that I want everybody to get is that before you think about the tactics of your marketing funnel, before you think about should I start with a low priced offer or high priced offer? How many up sells should I have? How many down sells should I have? Should I send them to a 4 part video sequence? Should I send them to VSL? Before you even think about that and before you even think about any copy, writing a headline or anything like that, the first thing that you really need to invest time and thinking about is the idea behind your marketing funnel message. What I mean by that is what is it that you are going to say? What is it that you are going to convey? How is it that you’re going to say it? How is it that you’re going to convey it to the market to grab their attention to show them that what you’re going to say to them through your marketing funnel is new, unique, different, fresh, exciting, has a benefit and is something that they can grasp immediately. Sweeney, we were talking about before we went live this whole idea like marketers really need to understand that before somebody request your Lead Magnet, before somebody decides whether they’re going to watch your video, before somebody makes the decision to engage with what it is that you have going on your website, you have prevent what’s called Mental Opt Out. An opt out is one of the prospects hits the first entry point of your funnel. Let’s call it a squeeze page or lead capture page. Mental opt out is when they come to your page, they read your headline and they say, I’ve read that before, I’ve heard that before, it’s more of the same, I think I’ve heard that before. What happens is they immediately experience mental opt out and they’re gone. The whole idea, the whole premise behind your marketing funnel needs to be something that grabs their attention. It’s exciting, compelling and again it’s new, fresh, unique, different, timely, has a built in promise. To wrap up this little discussion, it starts with understanding what have competitors already promised to your prospects. What if they already promised? What if they already said? What are the competitors talking about? What are competitors promising? If you come out with the same type of promise, the same type of hook, the same idea, you’re going to trigger that mental opt out. The way you design a big money marketing funnel is I like to call it first and for most, developing a big idea behind your marketing message. Does that make sense?

 

Sweeney: It makes a lot of sense. The mental opt out is an expression that I understand and it makes a lot of sense. If people are hitting your page and I never agree with the idea, your opt in are never going to be much and your sales are obviously horrible. Is there specific was? I talked with Justin Brooke about this a little bit and he called it a million dollar question. As far as differentiating and trying to make your idea and you want fresh, is there some sort of hack or trick to that? Or is just doing the research by sorting out the competitors and going how can I spend this in a different direction?

 

Todd: I don’t know if I would say there’s a hack but I will tell the process in order to come up with the big idea. First of all, in order to come up with the big idea you’ve got to generate lots of ideas. It’s not about sitting down and consciously trying to come up with one single idea and make that one single idea a big idea. You’ve got to come up with a lot of ideas then you’re going to set through ideas. When I say ideas, this is really far from hack but this is kind of process that you have to go through. You have to look for connections between seemingly disconnected concepts, disconnected things, things that the average marketer doesn’t see a connection between. Let me give you an example. One of the most successful marketing campaigns to ever come out on the financial publishing industry was a promotion a couple of years ago that came out from a research. It was called the End of America. It was about like a 75 minute VSL. 75 minute VSL. So, for all of you guys out there listening, you have to keep your VSL below 15 minutes or 18 minutes. It was over an hour long. This thing generated over $250,000. It was arguably the most successful marketing campaign ever to come out of the financial publishing industry. Now mind you that this hour long presentation was designed to sell a simple investing newsletter. I think it was $49 a year subscription to a simple investing newsletter. How does that tie in with this whole concept of End of America. Well, the premise/ idea behind this promotion was that whether you believe this or not, whether you’re into this or not, it’s about the lesson. The idea was that the dollar is eventually no longer going to be world’s reserved currency. Because of the debt that US piling up, US isn’t going to pay back it’s creditors. The US economy is going to come crashing down. Because of that, you need to have your money in the right investments. The connection is in the US dollar is out of control, it’s going down, again it’s years ago. This concept of what is something that I could say to the prospect that would immediately grab their attention that nobody else is talking about. That is connected to the idea or the dollars, the End of America. It was a connection there that you don’t necessarily see on the surface. The other thing that I want to say that I think is extremely valuable and is extremely important is that it’s no longer this idea, screaming a bigger promise. One of the things that you see today is a lot of marketers when they start to think about their marketing message, what they’re going to communicate in their funnel regardless of what their funnel looks like, they think that the answer is a bigger, bolder, more hyped, more exaggerating promise than their competitors. It’s 5 minutes abs. You’ll lose 30 lbs. in 24 hours. The reality is and this is something that Eugene Schwartz talked about in the greatest marketing book of all time which is Breakthrough Advertising. You talked about how market prospects progressed through the 5 different levels of marketplace sophistication. What that is just ask prospects are exposed to more and more marketing and advertising messages, they become less responsive to those similar types of messages. Most markets today are act like a level 3, level 4 where those hyped up promised just do not have credibility anymore. They’re not believable anymore. What do you do? You don’t make a bigger promise. You come out with a bigger idea. An idea that will first grab their attention, keep their attention and get them to say, “this is something new, different, unique. I’ve never heard anybody talk about this. There was an implied if not explicit promise being conveyed”. That’s the first most valuable thing that I can teach any marketer as it relates to building a successful funnel. Is that cool?

 

Sweeney: Yes! I love the example of the End of America especially it’s a 75 minutes long. I don’t know if that can be considered educational VSL. The education aspect, the entertainment aspect, if they were able to hold someone’s attention for 75 minutes, they did something right.

 

Todd: Yes! Let me say this. Let’s talk about that for just 2 minutes then cut me off if I rumble. First of all, I think the idea that people only watched a video for 15, 18 or 20 minutes is ridiculous. Not only it has been proven wrong with this one example alone and many others. In fact, when I was running the marketing strategic profits, we had a webinar that I still think is used a little bit today. That was 3 hours and it was producing out at it’s peak, $82 per registry. Imagine a webinar that’s 3 hours, not 60 minutes, not 45 minutes, not 90 minutes, 3 hours. It was producing $82 per registration. The idea that people don’t watch videos longer than 15, 20 minutes. People watch movies and TV that an hour long, 2 hours all the time. The fact is, it needs to be compelling. It needs to be interesting. It needs to be entertaining. There needs to be value that prospect feels they are getting from it. The other thing that I want to mention was you reference this idea of the content being educational. That’s one of the core principles that I tried to teach to all my students and clients. The idea that every marketing funnel legitimately is built on what I called EBM Content or Education Based Marketing. To really just give some application to listeners and viewers, you’ve got your idea, now it’s time to start to the side. What am I going to say? What’s my marketing funnel consist of in terms of my messaging? At that point that you’ve got to ask your question, you’ve got to ask yourself this question. What do prospects need to believe at the end of your funnel in order to buy? Let me break this down a little bit further. I want  to take step back and I want to give you something that it’s worth it if you get and pay attention. A lot of marketers don’t understand that there is a huge difference between marketing and selling. It was Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management gurus of all time said, the job of marketing is to make selling superfluous, to make it unnecessary. When you talk about you, your product, your product’s features, benefits, advantages, your offer, your bonuses, that’s selling. When you talk about the prospects and their situation and the best solution for their needs, that’s marketing. The bulk of your funnel is marketing meaning your talking to the prospect about their problem, their situation and what is the best solution for them before you even talk about your product. Our job is through our marketing which I will get to the EBM Content in a second. Our job is through the marketing to get the prospect at the end to say, Sweeney is right. That’s what I need to do. That is the perfect solution. Now I just need to know how to get it. At which point, you introduced your product which gives that solution and now they’re thankful putting out your offer in front of them. With that being said, what do you say when you’re marketing? You have to ask yourself what is it that prospects need to believe in order to buy? What do they need to believe about you? What do they need to believe about your product? What do they need to believe about themselves. It’s your job through your marketing funnel, through that portion which is your marketing message, education based content to educate them so that they have those beliefs. We do that by making claims and then offering proofs. The analogy that I like to use is think of yourself as a prosecutor. Your job as a prosecutor is to get the jury to find the depending guilty in the end. There are certain things that the jury needs to believe before you ask them to decide their verdict. Before you give your closing arguments. So, there are things that they need to believe. As a prosecutor, you present those points. You present a proof for each of those points leaving them to hopefully know other conclusion than guilty. In your case, it’s leaving to no other conclusion than that is the exact solution that I need. I get it, thank you! That was valuable, you proved it, beneficial. Now I know what I need. You roll it out to them and you offer to them and they buy like crazy.

 

Sweeney: So, a lot more work is convincing them of the idea than it is to offer.

 

Todd: Yes, because that is really the difference between selling and marketing. That’s why this particular company is brand which is just about 2 years old with strategically named Marketing Funnel Automation, not sales funnel. When I talked about funnels, I always, talk about marketing funnels not sales funnels. Sales funnel is really funny too because along those lines what most marketers think is a sales funnel is when they think about sales funnel or when they taught sales funnel, they think my sales funnel is a $47 product that then goes to a series of emails. If they buy it goes to an up sell. If they don’t buy then down sell. If they take the up sell then it will go to another up sell. That’s what they think is the marketing funnel. That’s really just the offer sequence that comes at the end of the marketing funnel. Marketing job is to create a desire demand for your specific solution. So, 2 things; it’s certainly having an irresistible killer offer. Right that is one of the big leverage points in any funnel. Even before you present the offer, the better the job you do at marketing, creating that desire by establishing those beliefs, by making claims, the more people are going to take advantage on your offer.

 

Sweeney: I’m curious, how does this factor to the better performing campaigns that you’ve seen? The more you say this, the more it makes me think why the people that have let’s say the product launch formula by doing the content, by building the desire, by getting them to believe in the idea than the actual launch of the product. It seems like more people are focused on getting them to sales funnel rather than getting them into the marketing funnel? Does that make sense?

 

Todd: It does. I completely agree with you. I think there are a lot of factors with Jeff’s product launch formula. Certainly there is a lot more education going on. When I say education, I don’t mean education for the sheer sake of educating prospects. I mean, educating them in a way where we are furthering the sale with everything we say and everything we teach them. If you look at product launch formula, you dissect a series of 3 videos. Let’s say the typical today product launch is a series of 4 videos. What do you really have? 3 of the videos are educational, EBM content if you will. Then the 4th video is the offer video. The 4th video is where the selling takes place. The 3 videos are all of the marketing takes place. What’s happening through those videos? There are a series of beliefs that are being established in the prospect’s mind. There are questions like does this work? Does this work for people like me? Will this work for me? Does this work in my niche? How fast does it work? Is it easy? All of these questions that have to be answered in the mind of prospects so that at the end, once they have all those beliefs that they need to have then it becomes easy. When you make them the offer, they already bought into it. I think that it goes back to a lot of marketers online blending in their own mind, selling with marketing and not realizing that it’s different.

 

Sweeney: That makes a lot of sense. It’s one of the first time I’ve heard it, put that way in. I’m curious with that being said, how do you feel about the Lead Magnet, Tripwire core offer method? I know for example, I just recently wrote a sales page for Tripwire. Part of the sales page is making claims, making proof. Part of the sales page, I feel like you’re almost doing the marketing and then the very bottom we ask them to buy. Does that overlaps sometimes and intersect?

 

Todd: Yes, absolutely! It goes to this question that I’m asked all the time at least 4 times every week by new client. I’m asked, how long should I funnel big? It ties in with what you just said. The reality is that there is no one perfect length to a marketing funnel. Just like there’s no perfect link to a sales letter. Sales letter should be as long as necessary to get the job done, no shorter no longer. The same thing holds through for a marketing funnel. However, there are couple of things that I see. One is the more complex the product is, the more pieces, the more benefits, the more features. Typically, the more you’re going to have to communicate because the more beliefs you’re going to establish to get them to buy. To add one other thing on top of that, same thing with price point. Typically when you are selling higher price product, there’s going to be more than needs to be communicated to create that desire. There are going to be more beliefs that need to be established at the end in order to get them to buy. When you’re talking about a low priced front end offer. Let’s call it $10 report, you can have the very simple VSL or even a short form sales letter. The beginning of that sales letter really is the marketing. At the end when you present the offer, the product, features, benefits, advantages, the guarantee, bonuses, that’s the selling. You are able to do the marketing and selling right on that page. So, you’re absolutely right. The way to simplify this a little bit is imagine if all you did was bring a prospect to a web page that all it did was just say this is the product, these are the features, these are the benefits, this is the price and this is the guarantee and that’s it. That’s only selling. There is no marketing. There is no creating desire. There is no establishing value. There is no claims and proofs that you are presenting. All you do is just selling. When you are presenting your case for why they need your product. Why is the perfect solution for their situation, that’s marketing. We’re talking them, their needs, their situation.

 

Sweeney: Gotcha! It started out something simple and I think anyone would have got that a lot of advance. Now, we also have here the product ladder. I think that fits well and how to build out your products and where to start.

 

Todd: That’s a great topic. One of the things that I think that gets talked about often that I first bought into myself many, many years ago before I was taught differently. A lot of people are taught today to start by building out your back end. Just for the new folks that are listening, in the world of direct response marketing, the biggest most successful direct marketing or direct response companies, they view their marketing in 2 categories. There’s what we call the front end which is all the marketing that you do to prospects to turn a prospect into a new customer. All the marketing that you do to generate the very first sale. Back end marketing is all the marketing that you do with existing customers to generate the 2nd, 3rd and 4th purchase. The purpose of the front end and we are talking about this very briefly before we got in, this is the way that most successful companies do this. I’m sharing with you the way the most successful companies are offering. The goal and objective of the front end, all the marketing that you’re doing to your prospects is to generate the maximum number of new customers at break even. That means if you invest $1,000 in Facebook advertising or $500 or $100 or $50, your goal is to generate $50 worth of new customers. You invest $50, your objective on the front end is to acquire $50 worth of new customers. Before I go on to the back end, let me just explain something. For those of you like where do I make money to generate a profit? First of all let me share something with you. In the direct response world, the profit is in the back end. The profit is in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th transaction that you generate with an existing customer. On the front end, if you break even you invest $50, you get back $50 worth of sales/customers. Understand, it was investment. You invested the $50, you got it back. You’re not at the same spot you were before. Now, you have X number of new customers that you’re going to put through your back end marketing where you’re going to generate your profit. You have a handful of leads, of prospects that you didn’t convert via that first funnel. You have the ability to follow up, make additional offers, affiliate offers and monetize over time. So, you’re in a great position. You’ve just acquired customers for free and appreciating asset. An asset that’s going to be worth more money to your business as you put out more and more offers over time. The back end is again where you’re just marketing additional products and services and offers that are going to be a value to your customers. The thing that most marketers have been taught is they’ve been taught as I was, start with your back end. Build your big back end products first. Build the big thousand dollar home study course if you’re in the information business or build the $500 gig. Then break it apart so that you’ve front ends. The way that biggest companies in the direct response world do is that they do it reversed. They start with the front end. The reason why they start with the front end is because it allows you to maintain a pulse in the market. It allows you to find out very quickly what resonates with the market, what excites the market, what is the market willing to whip out their wallet, their credit card and buy. Once you see that then you build out your back end products accordingly. You don’t start with the back end and extract out down to the front end. You start with the front end. You identify what’s resonating with your market because you can do it very quickly. If you’re using an extremely low cost front end offer like $10 or some people call it Tripwire. You could create those quickly. You could have those created very quickly to find out what really resonates with the market. Then you’ve got the ability to build out a whole sequence, a whole ladder of products. You see this all the time with a lot of companies. Some years ago, GKIC with Dan Kennedy, I remember he launched his book. It’s on shelf behind me but Outrageous Advertising.

 

Sweeney: There’s a lot of book there.

 

Todd: I think it was Outrageous Advertising. It was an awesome book by the way. From the response and I think it actually started with a presentation that he gave. He built out like a whole big tremendous live event around outrageous advertising. There was a whole continuity program. He built out a whole back end based on the response that he got. Imagine building out the whole back end and then realizing that what you just built out doesn’t resonate with the market. Savvy marketers and marketers that have been at this game a long time that have in the market, it’s likely that I know what the market wants. For the new marketer, you start with the front and you build out the back once you’ve identified what resonates with the market. Does that make sense?

 

Sweeney: It does! I guess the problem is it runs against what everyone else is traditionally taught even if with the “Tripwire” or “Lead Magnet” training. It’s a little bit harder to what can we do with the Lead Magnet then how can this lead into a Tripwire and then we can get this to an actual product.

 

Todd: The idea of splintering the back end into a core offer and then into a Tripwire and ultimately into a Lead Magnet. It’s a cool friendly concept. I’m not saying that it can’t work and I’m not that it doesn’t work. Ryan is a good friend but the issue is that if you missed the mark with the topic then you can invest the tremendous amount of time, creating a bunch of products that I just off the mark. I could tell you from experience. Having done that on more than one occasion is not fun. It’s costly. It sucks up a tremendous amount of time. So, the other thing is let me throw this out. Even the whole idea, there are lots of different ways and I said this the other night on some webinar. We could line up 10 different very successful marketers. We could look at the tactical set up of their funnel meaning one guy starts with the Tripwire then one guy starts with the Evergreen webinar, one guy has free shipping offer, one guy has an application process. You’ll see that they’re all successful with those model. First and foremost, there’s not only one model that works. To look at the Lead Magnet for one second, it’s funny because the whole Lead Magnet concept really came from the offline direct response world years ago when they were using 2 step marketing. A 2 step marketing was when they run an Ad. They would say call this toll free number to request your free information. Then the person would call the toll free number, leave their contact information and then they would get something in the mail. The way the idea of the Lead Magnet today differs from that world, differs from the way it was done, was that back then was the marketing and sales vehicle. There was no separate Lead Magnet. There was no piece of content that they offer just for free to build the list. There was no piece of software that got create just to entice people to jump on the list. Oftentimes especially if it’s not done correctly, what that does is load up your list with freebie seekers. It loads up your list with poor quality prospects that we’re only interested in the freebie. The way it was always done was that the information that got delivered was one of the same as the marketing and sales material. The thing that they delivered was the marketing and sales material. Today for example and really an essence if we’re talking about product launches, when somebody opt ins to a product they’re opting in to get series of 4 videos. What is being delivered is the marketing and sales. It’s not something disconnected. Does that make sense?

 

Sweeney: It does. I thought what you’re going to say is in the old days would be to test an offer before they build out a product and to see how warm the response.

 

Todd: Certainly! That’s a great point. The point I was really trying to meet. A Lead Magnet can be very effective. I don’t want anybody to think on discounting that at all. I’m just saying that the mistake that marketers make is when the Lead Magnet is disconnected from the marketing funnel. It’s not the first piece of the marketing funnel. At a bare minimum if you use Lead Magnet should the first piece of the marketing funnel. Whether it’s one 1 video or 2 videos or pdf or whatever it may be. Does that make sense?

 

Sweeney: It does. I think it’s a kind of different way of looking at it to a degree. I’m thinking about one of ours when we have a case study video. It’s like how can we re frame so that we’re giving them a little bit more information or being a bit more educational. We’re also showing them this proof and then at the end, it’s like if you want this blueprint, grab it. Rather than having disconnect between here’s the Lead Magnet and here’s the Tripwire and blending them a bit more.

 

Todd: Well, it really becomes hopefully I’m going to assume that case study demonstrates success that somebody had with the process or system that you’re selling in the Tripwire. Then it becomes very easy because you can have a video that is a combination case study and education by explaining why the system is so effective. Using the case study as the proof element to prove that it is effective and explained why it’s the process that they want to use. So, here’s the thing that really recognized that. I know this is probably bigger picture stuff than what your folks are accustomed to but hopefully everybody’s getting value from this. Case studies, testimonials, those are really proof points. When somebody says like this was incredibly simple. That is a proof point that you use that this is incredibly simple a tond anybody could do it. You don’t even need technical expertise. For example, listen what Bob said. He said it was the easiest thing he ever did and he loved it and this is something that you can get. You can triple your money in 24 hours. For example, let me walk you through this case study. The case study serves as the proof point to back up what you just said. I just want to make sure everybody grasp because the majority of marketers, they will stop their presentation with testimonials and case studies almost at times. There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s not strategic placed. Testimonials, case studies are proof points from what it is that you’re saying. A case study video fits perfectly with education based marketing content.

 

Sweeney: Alright! Now, let’s shift gears here. You’ve literally have a product called 26 Advanced Marketing Tactics. So, let’s shift gears and go over a few of these tactics. I have a few written down from one of your post.

 

Todd: Sure!

 

Sweeney: First, let’s go over to once that you talked about. You talked about a time stamp video and resumable video.

 

Todd: All of these are fairly simple video. This one is brain dead simple. It’s the use of what’s really now being called resumable video. Resumable video is just really what the title implies. It gives a prospect the opportunity or the ability to pick off in your VSL where they left of. Another words, let’s say you’ve got an hour long VSL hypothetically. Somebody watches 30 minutes of it. Now, what happens in most marketing funnels is you’re going to follow up with these people and ultimately you’re going to drive them back to that video. If that video is done the way most videos are played, the person has to start over. Of course, if you have controls on there that’s a totally different ball game. We don’t use player controls however when you use resumable video, they come back to the page and on the video it says start over or pick out where you left off. They press pick up where I left off. They’re able to start at that 30 minute mark and finish it without having to go back. What that means is that you are going to get a lot more of your prospect and we internally retract this. I’ll tell you the tool that you can use to try this for free in just a second. You’re going to get a heck of a lot more of your prospects to go back and finish your video and see the offer. There are couple of different applications that you can use. There’s one from digitalkickstart.com. He’s a buddy of mine; Mark Thompson. He recently launched the product. But the one we used internally is Wistia. Wistia has features that will do that for you for free. I think if I’m not mistaken Wistia has..

 

Sweeney: 6 videos or 10

 

Todd: Yes, something like that. If it’s 10, that’s a lot of videos. You can have on there. Get 10 free videos with Wistia and just use their resumable feature and watch what happens.

 

Sweeney: You don’t have any stats by any chance?

 

Todd: Yes, not in front of me. I could give that if you remind me after we’re done. I’ll dig them up for you and give you some.

 

Sweeney: It’s one of those weird thing. When you hear someone doesn’t do a lot of their abandoned carts. You don’t have resumable VSL and trying to plug one in. It’s the same kind of thing. We’re not over that 30 minute market at least with this video. I can imagine any video over 15 or 20 minutes, re watch that if they don’t want to and click start over by all means.

 

Todd: Absolutely! I think it’s worth mentioning. You really just mentioned an area of a marketing funnel that even though most marketers know there’s a massive shopping abandonment rate. Most marketers don’t have something in place to follow up with those folks. That can be a game changer. If you really want, I’ll just throw this out. #1, you should be tracking your shopping cart abandonment. When you have VSL let’s say and somebody clicks the Add to Cart button and they go over to your order form. You should absolutely have a follow up process in place for those prospects the same way that you follow up with the prospects who never finished your video and didn’t click the Add to Cart button. Those are individuals that finished watching your video. You have that follow up process. I think you mentioned Justin Brooke. I had a client come in for an entire day. I brought Justin in for an hour to meet with the client on his media buying. One of things that Justin said and I’ve shared with everybody is that you should also be re targeting off of your shopping cart abandons. That’s a tactic if you will right there to implement.

 

Sweeney: Shopping cart abandonment obviously people easily reach out to me if you’re listening to the show. I would hope you’ll be able to find my email. It’s really not that hard. If you aren’t doing any shopping cart abandonment regarding 2 step check outs, phone calls. Those are the big ones that if you’re not doing anything to reach out and get you set up. Here now we also have the Dynamic Exit Direct based on time on page.

 

Todd: Yes! There’s actually a plug in. Again, I’ll get you the name of the plugin so everybody can pick out. There’s a plugin I think it’s $20 or something like that. I can’t remember what the name is but it does exactly this. This idea is that you’ve probably seen a lot of pages where you go to leave a VSL and there’s an exit redirect that pops up. Oftentimes, it will let’s say redirect to a long form sales letter. Let’s say your prospect goes to VSL. They click, redirect long form sales letter. This tactic is you have the ability to redirect to different destination pages based on time on page. Let’s say you’ve got a video.  If you have the a typical exit redirect, they’ll be redirected to the same page whether they see the offer and bail. This gives you the ability to have different redirect. Let’s say for somebody who bails before the offer, somebody bails after they see the price. Now you have the ability to put out a pin point targeted message to the prospect based on when they are bailing in your message. As simple as that.

 

Sweeney: I like it! #3 here, we’ve got Second Chance Offers for Up sells and Down sells.

 

Todd: This is one also that just money being left on the tables. I don’t remember where I first learned this principle but here’s the deal. When a lot of marketers present an up sell, they will present the up sell or the up sells as one time offers. I remember the time when OTOs were huge and they were big. Going back, it’s this principle because it’s an OTO, it has extreme scarcity. It’s a scarcity driven and urgency driven. You’re saying if you leave this page, you’ll never see the software again like it’s now or never. The reality is first and foremost, for a new customer it’s not the most pleasant way to start a relationship. Again, when you recognized that the money is on the back end and the profit is on the back end. You’re trying to acquire an asset that’s going to increase in value. You want to start that relationship right. You don’t want to do something that makes them feel uncomfortable before they even have an opportunity to dive in and go through your product. They don’t know yet that you deliver the goods. They don’t know that your product is phenomenal and what not. Here’s the thing. I don’t recommend that you present your up sells as OTO. What it allows you to do is it allows you to go back to those prospects that skip that offer and make them a second chance offer. Typically what we do with clients and even our own funnels is 48 hours later. We will go back. Let’s say we only have 1 up sell and they skip that. They bought the main front end product and then they skip the up sell. It gives up the ability 48 hours later to go back after they have a chance to see the product, see that we deliver the goods, see that we over delivered, see that there are unadvertised bonuses that are neither gotten or on their way, see that they had the good buying experience. Now we go back and we give them a second chance to take advantage of that up sell. When we do it, we had the best results with changing up the offer. Depending of what type of funnel you’re running, sometimes if the up sell was originally $97 we make the second chance offer, it’s 2 payments for $49. The other thing that we do is they are also one click. I know that CRM can do that but there are lot of applications today that you can do that really simple by the process. You will see a bump opt in 8%-15% in revenue just by adding in those second chance offers. Again, recognize the psychology people see that you deliver the goods so that’s how second chance offers work.

 

Sweeney: Gotcha! Now, time wise. I know we’re kind of getting there. I have a few small tactics that I would like to go over briefly if you’re ok with that? So we have 3 and I will call it sexy instead of cool; 3 sexy conversion tactics. First one is animated gif imaging email.

 

Todd: I think, I stole that from Ryan Deiss to be honest with you. You know that the right image in email correspondence can do a lot to capture attention, can do a lot to break up copy and make it more easier on the eye. So the animated gif is just that. It’s an image that is animated. It almost has a feel of snippet of a video. Oftentimes, we’ll take a video and we’ll have 3 stills taken from the video. We will have that turned into an animated gif. There are even free sites that you can use. If you just go to Google like free animated gif maker, there are even sites that allow you to upload a video like a 1 minute video. They’ll create an 8 second animated gif, write in to year email responder and yes, it’s definitely getting attention for sure.

 

Sweeney: We’ve been liking gifs and trying to use them more as well. Now, #2 we have this pretty cool. A countdown timer within your email messages.

 

Todd: Yes! A buddy of mine Jack Born. He’s actually the creator and founder of AW Pro tools. He has worked with Perry Marshall. He created an application. Also, I’ll get you the link for this if you want to check it out. I think it’s like $10 or something like that. It allows you to create dynamic countdown timers that you can just paste right into your email auto responder. You can have it display a close message. You can have it just countdown to zero. You could change the destination once it counts down to zero. If somebody clicks on it will go to a close page. It just adds another element to the email to grab attention. We have heard the Marketing 101, attention into desire action. The very first thing you got to get attention. Some of these little things, there are just little tricks, little pattern interrupts from the norm that get attention, make it pop and get you to engage. So, that’s one of them.

 

Sweeney: Then the 3rd one, I remembered resumable video sales letter. You also did talk about and this will be the last one we go over the educational VSL method or I call it the native VSL.

 

Todd: Yes, that’s a great name. I like that name better. I should have renamed it that. This was a great tip and I don’t do this enough to be honest. This was a great tip that I got from Mark Ford. He’s the brains behind Agora. He said that they deliver more and more content videos that look identical to their sales videos. Most of the videos that they used, the sales videos that they used are your typical ugly video sales letter, text white background. So what he said when you are delivering your content videos in a completely different format where it’s a traditional PowerPoint or Keynote theme. When it comes to your sales videos,a it’s white background and text, you’re training your market to be able to immediately identify when this is pure content and this is sales page. You’re training them over and over. When you utilize your pure content video in the same exact format, you’re training them to consume those videos. You’re training them to engage with all of your videos. When done right, a lot of times they will even realize it’s a VSL to sell a product until you’ll get to the point where you’re going to segway into the offer because they both are educational. Just because one is educating a certain way where you’re building desire and furthering the sale, it’s not they’re aware of that. You’re establishing these beliefs through education. I said, I get it. That is freaking brilliant. You do it the other way. You’re training them to like the whole principle of the pattern interrupt. If you study any of John Benson stuff, he talks about at the beginning of the VSL using some pattern interrupt. Something that the prospect doesn’t expect and something that they weren’t anticipating. Say something. Show something. Do something at the beginning. When you use the typical PowerPoint, when you’re selling, you’re teaching them sale-content.

 

Sweeney: I like it! Are you still using the conversion cast bump offer for recurring revenue or not as much?

 

Todd: Yes, we actually test everything. I tell everybody also like they need to test. I could tell you that something work really well in our market. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to work well in your market. The last thing that I will say is such a great point for everybody to think about and that’s really weird for me to say it. Nevertheless, if this is another point when it comes to testing. Just because you test something, let’s say you test in your market for your VSL on your front end product whether it’s a Tripwire or whatever. Let’s say, the display at the cart pulls better. That doesn’t mean that nowhere else in your marketing funnel should you test that Add to Cart button. In other words, there are times that on the front end offer, you do better at the delayed Add to Cart button but the very first Ad or up sell offer might not. You not only have to test these things for your own funnel, with your own product in your own market, you need to test these differea nt elements at the different stages in your funnel. The prospects have different psychology. When they going to your VSL, there are prospects. They haven’t yet accepted to that hope. They’re afraid, they’re going to left out. Once they make a buying decision, there’s a different mindset. You’ve got to test these different elements and different stages for your funnel.

 

Sweeney: Very good point though. A good way to close out the tactics. Todd, thanks a lot for coming on. Way to really run a few home runs out there. I appreciate it. Stay on for a second afterwards. I got something to show you.

 

Todd: I will! Like I said again no joke. Good job man! You put out a great Podcast. I don’t remember how I stumble on it. There were many times, this is no joke, when I said, “Wow, this dude is pretty solid!” So, kudos for a great product, a great Podcast and doing a phenomenal job!

 

Sweeney: Thanks a lot! I appreciate that. Guys, everybody, listeners, Todd Brown- Marketingfunnelautomation.com. He has a lot of good blog post. I’m legitimately impressed. It’s very to read. They all have images, different subjects, seriously impressed. It’s worth reading, worth checking out especially if you enjoyed this interview. Thanks a lot Todd for coming on.

 

Todd: You got it. Thank you Sweeney!

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