DotCom Secrets

by Russel Branson

  When I’m driving traffic to a website, I need to know the first page the potential customer will hit. I need to know the second page he hits and everything he will experience while he’s engaged with my business. I need to carefully engineer the process (or funnel) each customer goes through. And different types of people require different treatment (and different processes).

  Lots of people talk about the lifetime value of a customer, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the path that you take your customers down. I’m zeroing in on the variables in each step that can be manipulated for maximum monetization—all while keeping a relationship so that the customer will continue to ascend your Value Ladder. A person might be with me for a few minutes, a few hours, or dozens of years. The money you make in your business depends on how well you manage the experience of every person who comes in contact with you—no matter how long they stay.

  Your goal, of course, is to get the prospect to stick around and become a regular client or repeat buyer. The longer you can keep them around, the more likely they’ll buy from you. The way you keep them around is by managing the experience throughout the process. I’ve broken the customer experience down to seven specific points in the funnel. At each point, you can test, tweak, monetize, and build your business to whatever level you want. Once you know these seven points and how to maximize them, your life will change. It’s awesome!

  IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PRE-FRAME

  Before we talk about the seven phases of a funnel, you need to understand the concept of a pre-frame because each step in a funnel is a pre-frame for the next step. That is why it’s essential to optimize these steps—not only for monetization, but also to build relationships and get visitors to continue to buy from you, someone they know and trust. One big mistake many marketers make is focusing 100% on short-term conversions or monetization. They sell so aggressively, focused on the sale at hand, that they lose the respect of their customer. This mistake will cost you the long-term relationship that can be worth ten times as much as the money made through the initial point of contact.

  Experts in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) talk a lot about pre-framing to gain the outcome you desire. A pre-frame is simply the state of mind you place someone in as they enter into the next step in your sales funnel. Changing the frame of mind, the mindset, can profoundly change the answer to a question or the experience you have with someone or something.

  People do this all the time without realizing it. For example, if I want to ask my wife a favor, I might pre-frame her by saying, “Wow, you are looking beautiful today. Thanks so much for all the great stuff you’re doing with the kids tonight. I really appreciate you spending the evening with them.” Then I might follow that up with, “I’m just curious, do you mind if I go hang out with my buddies tonight?” Because I started with the pre-frame, it’s more likely that she’ll respond the way I want her to. I set up a positive frame of mind before I asked the favor.

  My first Internet marketing mentor was a guy named Mark Joyner. I remember him saying that not all clicks are created equal. That struck me as odd because business owners always talk about traffic and how to get more clicks to their websites—not a certain kind of click. Wasn’t a click just a click? But Mark made me understand that what really matters most is where those clicks are coming from and what that reader experienced before he got to your site. He even went so far as to say that the frame people enter your website through is probably the most important thing you can know.

  He used me as an example: “Consider a person came from a website that said, ‘Russell Brunson is a scam artist. He stole my money. He’s unethical. He’s a liar, and I don’t trust him. Click here to see his new product.’ What do you think will happen when he clicks through to see the product?” The pre-frame was terrible. That visitor is probably not going to like me, and I will have a hard time getting them to buy anything.

  On the other hand, what if the person comes from a site that says, “Russell is an amazing person. I had a chance to meet him; we talked for an hour, and what he taught me changed my business and my life. My company was able to go from nothing to a million dollars of revenue a year. Click here to see his new product”? The chances of converting that potential customer on my site are much, much higher. I can sell more if the visitor enters my website through a good pre-frame. The frame through which he entered my website completely changes what can happen on the actual page. So the trick is to figure out how to control the frame that your traffic is coming through.

  In the book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori and Rom Brafman, I read about a fascinating study that took place at MIT, demonstrating the pre-frame principle in action. It went something like this: One day, a class of seventy economics students were told they would have a substitute professor for the day. Since this professor was new, each student was to read a short biography of the teacher. The bios handed out to all the students were identical—except for one phrase. It praised this teacher’s graduate work in economics and listed various fabulous accomplishments. Then half the bios described the professor as “a very warm person,” while the other half described him as “rather cold.” That was the only difference—one phrase.

  After the lecture, each student was asked to fill out a survey to see how they liked the teacher. The ones who received the “warm” bio said they loved him. They said he was good natured, considerate of others, and sociable. The students who received the “cold” bio didn’t like him at all. They said he was self-centered, formal, irritable, and ruthless. These students all sat through the same lecture, but the pre-frame changed their perception of what they witnessed. This study is such a cool example of the pre-frame principle at work.

  How to Pre-Frame Your Presentations for Higher Sales: The first time I witnessed this concept in action was back when I first started speaking at events on Internet marketing. Event coordinators would invite me to speak, and afterward I was allowed to sell my product at the back of the room. Obviously, I wanted to make lots of sales, so I tried to craft my presentation in a way that would deliver such great value that people would want to buy a coaching package from me at the end. I travelled around the country, speaking once or twice a month. Often I would test different pitches to see which method people responded to most.

  I remember one event that had a profound effect on me. I was working with a big event promoter named Armand Morin, who had done tons of events all around the world. He was also one of the best stage presenters around at the time. I remember he pulled me aside and said there was one deciding factor that would affect how much money I made at the event. “It’s all about how I introduce you,” he said.

  He asked me to look back at the last ten or fifteen events I worked and remember the events where I did really, really well in sales. Then he said, “Remember back to how the person introduced you before you got on stage. Most promoters do a horrible job. They get up there and say something like, ‘Hey, this is Russell. He is great, and he’s going to teach you this cool thing. Everyone give him a round of applause.’” When that happens, sales are kind of flat. But this promoter crafted my introduction in a way to pre-sell my credibility as a speaker and get the audience prepared to buy. He had some of the most successful events because of this simple strategy.

  I thought his suggestion was really interesting. When I spoke next at his event, I sold more product by far than at any other seminar. Going forward, I paid attention to what happened when promoters introduced me. Sure enough, there would be a drop of energy in the room if the introduction was bland and uninspiring. Everything was different, and it affected my sales. Finally, I decided to be in charge of the pre-frame. I didn’t want to run the risk of the promoter screwing it up. So, I made a three-minute introduction video. It featured Tony Robbins recommending me, outlined several success stories, and included the testimony of others who declared I was a great guy with a lot to offer. Before I went on stage, I had the promoter in
troduce the video. The video played, and then I came up on stage right afterward. The video was the pre-frame, and because I now controlled the frame, I started seeing consistently higher sales almost every time I spoke. Pretty cool, huh? If you speak and sell after each event, give this strategy a try. You’ll thank me for it.

  Now that you understand pre-framing, you’re going to love how powerful the seven phases of a funnel truly are.

  HOW PRE-FRAMING WORKS

  Many online marketing and conversion trainings start teaching conversion on the landing page. They show you how to split test different designs and how to tweak your offers and your funnels. But I’ve found there are three critical steps before the visitor even gets to the landing page that have a huge effect on your conversions. There are also several steps in the funnel that happen after someone leaves your landing page. These also have an enormous impact on your conversions and your bottom line. If you understand all seven points in the funnel, your business will likely explode without any additional traffic or tweaking. So, let’s go through the phases one at a time.

  Phase #1: Determine Traffic Temperature

  The first phase to examine is the mindset of the traffic before it reaches your site—or, your traffic temperature. You may not ever think about it, but there are three levels of traffic that come to your website: hot, warm, and cold. Each group needs special treatment and individualized communication. Each needs to come across a different bridge to arrive at your landing page. Yes, that means you may even need three different landing pages, depending on how you’re driving traffic. Trust me, it’s worth taking the extra time to set this up correctly.

  Here is a quote from Gene Schwartz that helped me to understand hot vs. warm and cold traffic and how you must communicate differently with each type:

  If your prospect is aware of your product and has realized it can satisfy his desire, your headline starts with the product. If he is not aware of your product, but only of the desire itself, your headline starts with the desire. If he is not yet aware of what he really seeks, but is concerned with the general problem, your headline starts with the problem and crystallizes it into a specific need.

  Fig 10.2: Start your copy wherever your prospect is at the time.

  You have to figure out where your prospect is along the product-awareness continuum: product aware, desire aware, or problem aware. Where they are determines the temperature of the traffic. If you have cold traffic, they will probably be aware of the problem they are having, but may not be aware of the solution. For these people, you need to focus your copy on the problem because that’s what they’re most aware of. Traffic from your blog may be aware of the solution because you presented it in the blog post. So for these people, you want to focus on the solution. Hot traffic from your email list probably knows you and your product, so they would be the most product aware and would respond best to product-based copy.

  Hot Traffic is made up of people who already know who you are. They’re on your email list, they subscribe to your podcast, they read your blog—you have an established relationship with them. You’re going to talk to these people like they’re your friends (because they are). You want to use personality-driven communication. Tell them stories, share your opinions, and let them into your private life a little bit. Remember the Seinfeld email examples from the last chapter? They each brought me over one hundred thousand dollars because I had hot traffic, and I knew how to talk to them.

  Warm Traffic consists of people who don’t know you, but they have a relationship with somebody you know. This is where joint venture (JV) partnerships work well. Affiliates or JV partners have relationships with their lists, and they endorse you or your offer to their subscribers. They lend their credibility to you so their followers feel comfortable checking out your offers.

  Direct mail companies have used this pre-framing technique for decades. Different companies have their own house lists, and sometimes one company would mail out a sales letter for someone else’s product. Just like joint ventures today, the companies usually split the profit 50/50. To achieve a positive pre-frame, the company that owned the list would add what’s called a “lift letter.” This was just a personal note saying something like, “Hey, I like this product. I endorse it. This company is great; you won’t be sorry if you order from them.” Lift letters increased (“lifted”) response dramatically because the person reading it had some sort of relationship with the writer or the company giving the recommendation. One good pre-frame can make a page convert like crazy, but when you try to drive cold traffic to it, it bombs.

  Cold Traffic is made up of people who have no idea who you are. They don’t know what you offer or whether they can trust you. These may be people you find on Facebook or who click on your pay-per-click ads. Maybe they stumble across your blog somehow. Most likely, you’re paying for this traffic somehow, so it’s important to pre-frame them correctly to get the highest return on your investment.

  The first step is to figure out what temperature your traffic is so that you can build the right pre-frame bridge.

  Phase #2: Set Up the Pre-Frame Bridge

  The second phase is your pre-frame bridge. This might be a pay-per-click ad or it might be an article in an email or a blog post. It might be a YouTube video. It’s a bridge that pre-frames people before they get to your landing page. Different types of traffic need different bridges.

  A Hot Traffic Bridge is typically very short. You already have a relationship with these people, so you don’t have to do a lot of credibility building or pre-framing. You can probably just send out a quick email with a link to your landing page, and that’s about it. Or maybe you write a blog post or record a podcast encouraging people to go check out your offer. These people will listen and do as you suggest simply because they already know, like, and trust you.

  A Warm Traffic Bridge is a little longer than a hot traffic bridge, but not much. All that traffic needs is a little note of endorsement from a person they trust; then they’ll be in the right frame of mind to go to the landing page. This is where the lift letter or personal email from a JV partner comes in. This bridge could be an email, but it could also be a video, article, or some other communication from the list owner, endorsing you and your product.

  A Cold Traffic Bridge is the holy grail of online marketing. If you really want to scale your business, you have to learn how to convert cold traffic. Most people I know just can’t do this. They can convert like crazy with their own list or a partner’s list. But when it comes to converting a cold list, they’re stuck. They just can’t make it work. If you learn this one skill—converting cold traffic—you’ll know the secret behind growing seven-, eight-, or even nine-figure businesses. This bridge is the longest. You need to do a good bit of preliminary work to get the prospect into a desirable frame of mind before he hits your landing page. Let me explain.

  Let’s say you’re at the food court in the mall, and you walk up to people waiting in line at Panda Express and say, “Hi there. I’m selling this product that teaches you how to build a list and drive traffic to it. It’s great! Would you be interested in buying it?” What do you think they’re going to say? First of all, they don’t know you, so the chances of them saying yes are pretty slim. But in addition to that, you’re talking in a language they may not even understand. Do these strangers know what a list is? How about traffic? They might think you’re talking about highway traffic. This is a huge mistake, and I see businesses make this misstep online all the time. They talk to cold traffic in the wrong language, and nobody buys. To fix this, you need to make your offer more general. Talk in terms that cold traffic will understand.

  For example, I have a membership site called ListHacking. It teaches people how to make money by building a list and driving traffic. For our cold traffic, I knew we couldn’t talk in terms of “traffic” and “lists” right off the bat. First, we had to explain those concepts so the reader would know what we were talking about. My team developed a differ
ent funnel for cold traffic that started out saying, “Who wants a free money-making website?” Once they got the free website, we sent them to a bridge page that said, “Thanks for requesting your website; you’ll be receiving it shortly. While we have your attention, do you know how to get people to visit your website?” (Notice I said people, not traffic.) Then the page goes on to explain that in online sales, potential customers are “traffic.” We further explain that in order for them to make money on this new, free website, they must learn how to get traffic to the site. We continue explaining the topic of traffic and lists on the bridge page. Now, when the “cold” visitor does cross over to the membership site offer, they are perfectly pre-framed to understand the offer. That understanding makes them more likely to convert. I bridged the knowledge gap using a pre-frame.

  For hot and warm traffic, the ad or email generally serves as the pre-frame. There’s no need for extra steps before those people understand your offer. They already know, like, and trust you. But for cold traffic, you often need a whole separate page that they go through (the bridge page) before they hit the offer page. As I just explained, this separate, pre-frame page educates people, enabling them to better appreciate the offer and making them more likely to convert.

  Here’s another example from my supplement company. One of the products we sell is a supplement to help with neuropathy pain. If I have a list of neuropathy sufferers, it’s pretty easy to convert them. But what if someone on my list doesn’t have neuropathy as a common characteristic, or doesn’t know whether they have it? Many people know they have nerve pain, but have never heard the word neuropathy. So our cold traffic offer helps people with nerve pain, a simpler, more relatable term. My pre-frame page states, “If you have nerve pain, it’s probably caused by neuropathy.” Then the page goes on to explain a bit about the unfamiliar term. Then, when the visitor gets to the funnel’s landing page, all the language suddenly makes sense. They now understand that the nerve pain is due to neuropathy, and our supplement can help. What happens when we do that? Our universe of potential customers expands exponentially! Whatever product you’re selling, it’s critical that you match your message to your traffic’s temperature and knowledge. This awareness will help you determine the kind of bridge required to take them to the landing page.