DotCom Secrets - Russell Brunson

Partial Excerpts (antilibrary)

What This Book Is About (and What It’s NOT About)

If you are currently struggling with getting traffic to your website, or converting that traffic when it shows up, you may think you’ve got a traffic or conversion problem. In my experience, after working with thousands of businesses, I’ve found that’s rarely the case

More often than not, it’s a FUNNEL problem.

The problem is you can’t spend enough to acquire a customer, and the way to fix that problem is to fix your sales funnel,” I replied calmly. One of my mentors, Dan Kennedy, says, “Ultimately, the business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins.”

This book will also show you how to communicate with your customers in a way that makes them naturally want to ascend up your ladder of offerings and give you more money (stair-step)

Introduction

Whatever they were selling, the process was the same. They would place a small ad asking people to contact their company for a free report. After you contacted them, they would send you a sales letter, disguised as a free report, selling a low-ticket information product. When I purchased the product, they would send me their “system”—along with another sales letter selling me a high-ticket product

MY FIRST ONLINE BUSINESS One late night during my sophomore year in college, I was lying in bed—way too tired to turn off the TV. So instead, I flipped through the channels, and one commercial caught my eye. It was explaining how people were “making money online with a website.”

My websites looked similar and the copy on the pages was similar, but for some reason, my efforts made very little (if any) money. I was frustrated because I could see others making money successfully. What was I doing wrong? It took almost two full years of studying, researching, and interviewing successful marketers before I realized that what I was seeing online wasn’t the full business. The people who were making money were doing it through steps and processes invisible to the naked eye.

1. Everything I Show You in this Book Is Evergreen

2. I Don’t Just Teach This Stuff; I Actually Do It

3. Image Recall.

simple little diagrams

Secret #1: The Secret Formula

A few weeks later, I found myself in front of a huge, blank whiteboard trying to sketch out why I was feeling this way. Something was wrong with my business, and I wanted to figure out what it was. After what seemed like hours, I wrote down two words:
Who?
Result?
I asked myself, “WHO is the person I really want to work with?”
After I got a good idea of WHO I would ideally work with if I had that choice, I started to think about the RESULT I would want to give them.

two more words to the board:
Where?
Bait?

These questions eventually became the outline for what I now call “The Secret Formula,

THE SECRET FORMULA

Question #1: Who Is Your Dream Client? (ideal customer)

You’ll probably spend more time with these people than your own friends and family

Who are my dream clients? What do they look like?
What are they passionate about?
What are their goals, dreams, and desires?
After about a week of thinking about the WHO question, I sat down and created two customer avatars: one for the men I wanted to work with and one for the women I wanted to work with.
For the women, I picked a name and wrote it down: Julie. Then I listed out the things I knew about Julie. (persona)

Next, I wrote down the name Mike. Next to Mike’s name, I wrote out the things I knew about Mike.

Then I went to Google images and typed in Julie and the characteristics I had written out. Within minutes, I found a picture that looked like the women in my mind. I printed it out and hung it on my wall. I did the same for Mike, and within minutes, I had both pictures of my dream clients hanging on my wall.

Question #2: Where Can You Find Them? (distribution)

Question #3: What Bait Will You Use to Attract Them?

So we created a book called DotComSecrets Labs: 108 Proven Split Test Winners. This bait worked great for us, because most beginners don’t know what a split test is. But we KNEW that Julie and Mike (our DREAM customers) would know what these terms mean and they would be hungry to get their hands on the book. Within days of launching this new offer, we had thousands of dream clients lining up to work with us.

Question #4: What Result Do You Want To Give Them?

A business is NOT about products and services. A business is about what result you can get for your clients (outcome)

To put it in perspective (why not customer value?)

for that service, my company charges a retainer and a percentage of sales, which combined equal one million dollars.

Imagine that your clients could pay you anything to get a desired result. What, then, would you do to help guarantee their success?

Secret #2: The Value Ladder (stair-step)

I had come in for a free teeth cleaning. And in less than an hour, I walked out paying over two thousand dollars for my whitening kit and my new retainers

on the top right hand corner of this graph, you’ll see the big $ sign. This is where you want to take your client. This is where you can provide them the most value—and also charge them the most.

just like the dentist, no Value Ladder is complete without a good continuity program. There are many ways to structure your continuity program. It could be organized around software, membership sites, or ongoing coaching, but it should be something you can bill for each month. That residual income will become the lifeblood of your business

WHAT DOES YOUR VALUE LADDER LOOK LIKE?

chiropractor

I was working with a group of wrestlers who were training for the Olympics. Each week a chiropractor came in and adjusted all of the wrestlers. One week, the regular doc couldn’t make it in. So, instead of waiting for a week, one of the athletes jumped on YouTube, typed in “how to give a chiropractic adjustment,” and watched a few videos until he felt like an expert. Then he walked into the other room and quickly adjusted everyone on the team.

I want to teach you something really powerful. You went to college for years to learn how to be a chiropractor—yet, within thirty minutes, one wrestler was able to learn EVERYTHING that you currently do in your clinic

I’m curious, while you were going to school, did you learn anything else besides adjustments?”

“I spent years learning nutrition and natural healing. I can help stop fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, and . . .” And that’s where I stopped him . . .
“Have you ever provided ANY of these services to your clients? Or do you stop giving them value after the fifty dollar adjustments?”

Almost always, I spend my time working with them on adding products and services to the front of their Value Ladders, as well as the back.

Ultimately, he created a new wellness program, for which he could charge five thousand dollars

we still had to find an attractive frontend offer to get people through the door

decided that a massage would be a good thing to offer as the frontend of his Value Ladder. People love getting massages, and it’s bait he could use to get people into his clinic.

give free massages to get people in the door

what other value can you provide to people? Can you be more hands-on with them? Can you offer more personal attention? Can you provide ancillary services or physical products that enhance your primary offer?

My very first information product was a DVD on how to build a potato gun. (And that just goes to show you can sell anything online!) But I figured out how to build a Value Ladder by also selling “Do It Yourself” plans and physical potato guns to our customers.

The Value Ladder is the key to building your marketing funnels and mastering everything else I’m going to teach you in this book.

I remember paying twenty-five thousand dollars to be a part of the Bill Glazer/Dan Kennedy Titanium Mastermind program

later that night the group (yes, the SAME group that had already paid twenty-five thousand to be in the room) was offered a chance to be in the movie Phenomenon with Dan Kennedy for an additional thirty thousand. And nine out of eighteen people in our group bought the offer! That was when I realized that there really is no end to your Value Ladder

WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE A VALUE LADDER?

Often times, companies have a frontend product but nothing more to sell on the backend. For that, I love to look at what else they could bundle together. Could they offer a coaching program? How about a live event?

Secret #3: From a Ladder to a Funnel

Now it’s time to bridge the gap between a Value Ladder and a sales funnel

we build a funnel that will help us to do two things:

• 1 Provide value to each customer at the unique level of service that he or she can afford.
• 2 Make money and be profitable while identifying our dream clients who can afford our highest offer

at the bottom of this funnel, a handful of people will appear who can afford—and may be willing to purchase—my high-end services. These are my dream clients

Secret #4: How to Find Your Dream Customers

One of the coolest things about the Internet is the power of congregations

For most people, the word congregation brings to mind a church

A church is really nothing more than a group of people who gather together based on similar beliefs, values, and ideas.

So, if I were selling a perfect product for Mormons, where would I go to sell it? Of course, I would go to the Mormon Church

now, thanks to the Internet, those five or six kids in my high school can congregate with others all over the world to play Magic: The Gathering online. They can hang out on forums and play games with people half way across the world. Now, if I have a product to sell to a congregation of people who love Magic: The Gathering, it’s easy and economical to go online, find where they are, and get my message in front of them.

Not sure where your congregations are? Just go to Google and type in your keywords plus the word forum

QUESTION #1: WHO IS YOUR TARGET MARKET?

Because marketers are now able to target so many different characteristics so accurately, people have lost all patience for generalized, mass media messages. Consumers expect and demand that your advertising be extremely relevant to them

To create hyper-targeted messages, you have to know your target market inside and out.

What are their pains and passions? What do they desire? What do they think about, and what do they search for online?

QUESTION #2: WHERE IS YOUR TARGET MARKET CONGREGATING?

Where do they hang out online? Where do they spend their time? What email newsletters might they subscribe to? What blogs do they read? What Facebook groups are they a part of? Are they even on Facebook—or do they prefer Instagram? What keywords are they searching for on Google? What books are they buying on Amazon?

QUESTION #3: HOW CAN YOU GET A CUSTOMER TO LEAVE THE CONGREGATION AND CHECK OUT YOUR PAGE?

the Enquirer Interrupt

You are trying to engage someone who is already checking email, Facebook, and his cell phone at the exact same time. You have to interrupt potential customers long enough for them to click on your ad and visit your website

YOUR ROLE AS THE ENTREPRENEUR

Your job as the entrepreneur is to understand the strategy behind these DotComSecrets and then hire the Facebook guy to run Facebook ads and the Google guy to run Google ads