DotCom Secrets

by Russel Branson

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but Don was teaching me (and everyone else who was watching) the basics of direct response marketing, which could be applied to any company.

  Well, as you can guess, my twelve-year-old eyes opened wide, and my heart started racing. I remember getting so excited that I couldn’t sleep that night—or the rest of the week. All I could think about was buying Don’s system so I could start making money. I asked my dad if he would help me pay for it, but as any good father should, he made me go out and work for the money. I mowed lawns, weeded gardens, and worked really hard for three or four weeks to earn the money to buy the system.

  I still remember calling the 1-800 number to order. When the box showed up, my heart was racing as I ripped it open. I started reading the pages as Don explained to me the basics of direct response marketing.

  And that is where this journey began for me.

  After that, I started collecting classified ads and calling the 1-800 numbers on them to see what people would send me. I started to see that other companies were doing the same thing that Don was teaching!

  Then I started to look at magazines and saw the same types of ads. So I would call the phone numbers and send in for the free “info-kits” that these ads were promoting as well.

  Within three or four weeks, I started getting “junk mail.” (I put junk mail in quotation marks because studying that junk mail has literally made me millions.) I started getting so much mail that the mailman couldn’t physically fit it all into the mailbox. I would come home from junior high school, and my parents might have two or three letters, but I’d have a whole stack of my very own mail. I’d take it all into my bedroom and read through every letter. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was reading long-form sales letters from some of the greatest direct response marketers of all time. I saw what they were doing and how they were doing it, and it was fascinating to me.

  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 (fig. 0.1).

  Fig 0.1 The offline sales funnels brought prospects through a predictable series of steps.

  This was my first exposure to sales funnels. I didn’t know it at the time, but this process I was seeing over and over again offline would become the exact SAME system that I would use to grow hundreds of companies online.

  Now, while funnels often get much more advanced than this, look at this diagram to see what offline funnels look like, and note how similar they are to the online funnels I will be showing you throughout this book (fig. 0.2):

  Fig 0.2 Today’s online sales funnels are practically identical to the offline direct response marketing funnels I studied as a kid.

  Looking back, I think it’s funny that while most kids my age were collecting baseball cards, I was studying junk mail and learning marketing funnels. When I left for college, my mom made me throw my junk mail in the garbage, but I got this one last picture with the best marketing and sales education I could have ever received.

  Unfortunately, I was never able to afford to sell stuff through classified ads and direct mail when I was twelve. But I understood the concept. It wasn’t until ten years later, during my sophomore year in college, that I re-discovered direct response marketing and saw how I could use it on the Internet.

  Not your typical teenager!

  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.” I knew I needed to learn more. I dialed the number, got a ticket for a local event, and the next night I was at a seminar in a local Holiday Inn. That little seminar re-ignited my interest in business and direct response marketing. I remember hearing the speakers talk about how people were using the Internet to make money in a way that was almost identical to what I had learned when I was a kid. But instead of using mail, they were using email; instead of using magazines, they had blogs; instead of the radio, they were using podcasts. It was fascinating, and I was hooked from Day One.

  Fig 0.3 Blogs, podcasts, and online video are simply newer versions of the old-school offline media channels.

  I started looking at other people’s websites, studying how these businesses were making money. I decided to model what I saw. After all, if it worked for them, it could work for me. So I created similar products and services to what others were selling online. 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.

  While I had modeled the part of their businesses that I could see, there were multiple funnels happening behind the scenes that made the magic work. I found that the difference between a ten-thousand-dollar website and a ten-million-dollar company was all of the things happening AFTER a buyer came into the initial funnel.

  Fig 0.4 I was modeling what I could see happening on the surface, but the real money was made in ways I couldn’t see.

  It took me years to discover and master these DotComSecrets—but when I did, my company quickly went from a few hundred dollars a month to millions of dollars a year in revenues.

  I wanted to write this book, not because I’m smarter than anyone else, but because I think there are a lot of people like I was. People who model the surface level of what others are doing and are frustrated that they aren’t getting similar results. This book is the culmination of a decade spent analyzing hundreds of companies and their successful sales funnels. I have built over one hundred sales funnels of my own and have worked with thousands of students and clients to build funnels in every market you can dream of—both online and offline.

  I hope that after reading this book you will realize your dreams of success are a lot closer than you think. You will soon see that by providing a ton of value, communicating effectively with your audience, and building out your sales processes in a very strategic way, you can get your product, service, or message out to the world. And, you can get paid what you’re worth while doing it.

  THREE WAYS THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT

  By purchasing this book, you have put your trust in me as your coach. I know that you’re busy; I fully understand and respect that. It’s important for you to know that I will not waste your time. You have many choices in business and success training, and I’m honored that you’ve decided to spend your valuable time with me. Here’s how this book is different from other business books you may have read:

  1. Everything I Show You in this Book Is Evergreen. If you’ve tried to learn how to grow your company online in the past, you’ve probably purchased books and courses with systems that worked when they were created, but became outdated before they even got to the publisher. When Google changes an algorithm or Facebook introduces a new layout, many tactics suddenly become obsolete.

  This book, on the other hand, is a playbook for creating marketing funnels that will exponentially increase your sales online. It is an evergreen guide. It will be as useful ten years from now as it is today. I only focus on strategies and concepts that will remain the same—even when technology changes.

  2. I Don’t Just Teach This Stuff; I Actually Do It. There are a ton of people teaching Internet marketing, and the vast majority of them make money by teaching other people the Internet marketing
strategies they learned about online. Dan Kennedy calls those people “shovel sellers” because during the gold rush, the people who made the most money were the ones selling the shovels. Today’s “shovel sellers” are selling you Internet marketing strategies without actually using any of the strategies themselves.

  The difference between me and most of my competitors is that I actually do this, for real. That’s right. I use every one of the secrets I’m about to reveal to you. And I’ve tried them in dozens of different markets—from supplements to coaching to software. I also work directly with hundreds of other businesses, advising them and increasing their profitability in almost every niche and every industry you can dream of.

  About seven or eight years ago, I had the good fortune to work with direct marketing legends Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer. They work with entrepreneurs all around the world, and I was their main Internet marketing trainer for almost six years. This was a very unique situation, and I was able to work with hundreds of offline businesses, teaching them to implement the same concepts I’m about to share with you.

  I’ve also had a chance to teach these DotComSecrets at Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery seminar as well. I can tell you from experience that these strategies work for both online and offline businesses in just about any industry you can think of. Throughout the book, I’ll share examples of these different types of businesses so you can see how each strategy could work in any market.

  The book is divided into several sections. Sections 1, 2, and 3 are going to give you the core concepts that you MUST understand before you can create your first marketing funnel. Once you understand the secrets behind what makes online selling work, I will teach you how to build your own sales funnels.

  Section 4 describes the many different sales funnels we use in our companies every day. It also gives you the sales scripts you need to move people through your marketing funnel so they will purchase from you.

  Section 5 will show you some of the easier ways to implement all the technology involved. I see people get tripped up by the tech all the time. So I want you to skip the hard stuff and make it easy on yourself.

  Once you know how funnels work, implementing them is a simple matter of picking which one you want to use and setting it up. Please don’t skip ahead to the Funnels and Scripts section until you’ve read the earlier chapters, or you will miss learning the core strategies that make those funnels and scripts work. I want everything to make total sense to you.

  3. Image Recall. Throughout the book, you’re going to notice tons of simple little diagrams. At first, they won’t make sense to you. But after you read through the chapter or section, you’ll get it. I promise. The reason the pictures are so basic is because I want you to be able to look at the image and immediately recall the concepts. The graphics are engineered for instant recall. At some point in the future, if you need to remember how to structure an upsell sales letter or a two-step consulting funnel, you’ll be able to pull out the picture and instantly recall how to do it. When you need that image recall, you can flip through the book to find the pictures, if you like. Or you can go to www.DotComSecretsBook.com/resources/diagrams and print them out. I like to keep a notebook of all the pictures of funnels and scripts I develop, so I can always find the one I need. I even have some students who have certain images taped to their office walls as memory aids.

  I recommend reading through the entire book once from beginning to the very end. You’re uncovering the rest of the iceberg, and you need to understand the concepts in order. Once you’ve gone through all the material, then you can go back to the chapters you know will make a big difference right away.

  I’m excited for you to dive in and have some fun with this. So, let’s get started!

  SECTION ONE:

  LADDERS AND FUNNELS

  SECRET #1:

  THE SECRET FORMULA

  It was 11:27 a.m. on a Monday morning, and no matter what I told myself, I just couldn’t get out of bed. The muscles in my body ached, although it didn’t make sense. I knew I wasn’t sore from exercise because I hadn’t worked out. I had a sick feeling in my stomach that felt like the flu, but I knew I wasn’t sick. In my head, I was WISHING that I had a boss, so he could fire me and end this nightmare that I knew I had to face as soon as I finally stumbled out of bed.

  How had I gotten here? Just a few years earlier, I had “officially” become an entrepreneur and launched my own company. And despite a lot of mistakes along the way, I had learned a few tricks and was having success. The company I started was profitable. We were serving people and making a difference, but for some reason, I was miserable.

  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?” Up to that point in my business, I had been trying to sell to anyone and everyone I could. While that sounds smart at first, it left me tired, frustrated, and empty inside.

  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. I asked myself, “Where could I serve my customer at the highest level?” I realized it wasn’t through a product or a service. Rather, it was by giving them a result that would change their lives. That result is where I wanted to take them.

  A few minutes later, I added two more words to the board:

  Where?

  Bait?

  WHERE are these people? How can I find them online? What type of BAIT can I create to attract my dream client and repel everyone else?

  These questions eventually became the outline for what I now call “The Secret Formula,” and it’s really the first step that you HAVE to take before you can grow any company.

  THE SECRET FORMULA

  The secret formula consists of four simple questions. These are the same four questions that I ask anyone who hires me for personal consultations. At the time of writing, companies pay me twenty-five thousand dollars per day to help them understand and implement this formula and the funnels and scripts inside of this book. Now while I know you didn’t pay anywhere near twenty-five thousand to learn this information and go through this process, I recommend you treat this and all of the exercises inside of this book as if you did invest the full amount. If you do, you will get a lot more out of the process I’m going to take you through, and this book will become like a private, twenty-five thousand dollar consultation with me. Okay, let me walk you through the process.

  Question #1: Who Is Your Dream Client? The first question you have to ask yourself is, Who do I actually want to work with? Most of us start with a product idea, never thinking about who we want as clients, customers, vendors, and associates. But these are the people you will be interacting with day in and day out. You’ll probably spend more time with these people than your own friends and family. You choose your significant other carefully, so why wouldn’t you take the same time and care in deciding who your dream client or customer will be? If you’re just getting started, this may not seem important. But I promise you that if you don’t consciously choose your dream client, one day you will wake up like I did, working with people who exhaust you and wishing that someone could fire you from the business you created.

  After I had successfully launched my first software company, a lot of people took notice of my success online and started asking me how I was making money. Because I saw the demand, I thought it would be fun to teach others how to start their own businesses online.

  The good thing was there were a LOT of people who wanted to start businesses, and we made a lot of money teaching them. But the downside was that most of them didn’t have any money (and couldn’t invest in the higher-ticket things I wanted to sell). And most had no business experience, so I had to spend tons of tim
e on the fundamentals, and that drove me crazy (which is why I didn’t want to get out of bed in the mornings). I had so much value I wanted to provide people—showing how I had scaled my companies, teaching conversion secrets and how we structure our funnels—but 99% of my time was spent showing them how to buy a domain and set up hosting.

  I literally spent years serving these customers, and it made me miserable. My family suffered, and no matter how much money we made, I wasn’t happy. It took years before I sat back and actually thought about the WHO. I realized I had overlooked some pretty important questions:

  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. She is successful and driven; she has a message to share; she values her personal growth over money; and she’s already grown her business to at least five figures a year.

  Next, I wrote down the name Mike. Next to Mike’s name, I wrote out the things I knew about Mike. He is a former athlete. At some point, he has helped to change someone’s life in a small way and wants to learn how to help more people. He values growth over money, and he’s already built his business to at least five figures a year.

  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.