Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - CRAZY! They Will Pay You To Drive Traffic To Your Own Funnels...

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

I'm checking in from the high seas on a cruise ship with my family. But I've just had a realization. See, for years I've been all about paid ads, but they're getting pricier by the day. That's why I've had a change of heart. Inspired by folks like Rachel Hollis and Cathy Yoder, I'm shifting my focus to content. And my plan is a game-changer! So expect some big shifts on the Marketing Secrets Podcast and everywhere else! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing Secrets of Success Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, money is a thing, but it's not everything. I think you really look at the importance of what are you doing with your time. The conversations that we've had with our financial advisor is very much building what that framework looks like that helps support those important things. The places where you're investing your time and your resources, your family clearly, and those closest to you. Edward Jones. We do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. Welcome to the Marketing Seekers Podcast.

My name is Russell Brunson, and I'm what you call a serial entrepreneur, but with a twist. You see, 50% of my time, I'm the CEO of ClickFunnels, helping over 100,000 brands to grow their companies with funnels. And the other 50% of my time, I'm actually in the trenches using ClickFunnels to grow the startups I believe in. During this podcast, I'll take you behind the scenes and show you how we are bootstrapping ClickFunnels and my other businesses from startup to nine figures and beyond. Welcome to the show. What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson.

Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I am messaging you from inside of a cruise ship. My family and I just went on a, we're still on the cruise actually, so don't forget. We've had three days on shore and today's a boat day and we're all just kind of sunburned and tired and hanging out. So I thought I would jump on and say what's up to you guys. Also, it's kind of fun when you're on vacation and you're not constantly in the middle of the day-to-day grind.

Your mind starts wondering about other things, and I feel like your subconscious mind is able to give you more ideas and more insights, and so it's been a fun trip. A lot of cool things in my head. I also had a chance to read both of Jesse Itzler's books. One is called Living with the Seals. Like for 30 days, he lived with David Goggins. That book is amazing.

It's one of my favorite books of all time. And then part two is Living with a Monk. The Monk one was good, but the one with him living with David Goggins was insane. It was such a good book. If you're looking for a fun one, yeah, check out that book. Anyway, I actually want to talk to you today about something that I have fought for 20 years.

And I'm finally repenting of my ways and changing my mind. Mostly because I think we're in a situation where we kind of have to now. Let me explain. So, obviously you guys know that I am a big fan of paid ads. We spend, you know, multiple million dollars a month on paid ads. And forever that was great. Like we spend a million dollars and make five million or whatever, you know, like it was awesome.

But over the last few years, ads have gotten more and more expensive to the point where it's like even our business, and I have a deep funnel, I've got a lot of back ends. We've got continuity, we've got high ticket, all these things like, getting harder and harder and harder to, to make the numbers all work.

And it's been fascinating. It's the people I know that are, that are winning right now are people who are really good at the content game. Um, in fact, um, in April, I'm flying out to go see two of them.

both of these guys are killing it. One of them, one of them, one was doing eight figures a year, doesn't pay any ads. One was doing nine figures a year, doesn't pay for single ad. All sort of just organic content. I fought it for a long time.

I was like, you know, not that I'm fighting organic content. I'm all for that. But to really focus on it, I didn't understand it. In fact, it all started with a conversation i had with rachel hollis and you know rachel when she wrote her book girl wash your face she blew up and she was the biggest celebrity on the internet for a couple years and it's crazy she was doing you know like the russell brunson stuff she was doing events and speaking and and you know on world tour anymore

but like just crazy busy and she even you know if you listen to her podcast or talk to her, she was, there's a lot, it was a lot to handle. And anyway, a couple of years ago, things kind of slowed down for her and she was changing things around. And she told me, she's like, I've looked at all the stuff I was doing. And she's like, I think I spent the least amount of time on my podcast, but things make me the most money with also my podcast. And so she's like, I decided just to double down on that.

And so, and I'm not going to lie, I didn't really understand that. Like, okay, like, I decided just to double down on that. And so, and I'm not gonna lie, I didn't really understand that. Like, okay, like how are you making money off your podcast or how much, like how, anyway, I didn't really click on my head

because for me, a podcast is a way to generate traffic to my funnels, right? Like everything for me, all content I put out there, the goal of it is to generate traffic to funnels, right? And so she wasn't,

she's focusing on that. I'm like, okay, that doesn't make sense. Like she doesn't really, she doesn't have a lot of offers out there. She wasn't she's focusing on that i'm like okay it doesn't make sense like she doesn't really she doesn't have a lot of offers out there she wasn't in events anymore like this doesn't make sense but that's kind of all it was then fast forward to a couple months later we had mastermind of paradise in mexico with all the two ccxers and inner circle members and um that was awesome and i had kathy yoder speak. And Kathy, she's someone who has a YouTube channel focusing on air fryers, how to cook with air fryers. And initially I saw her doing that and I knew she had some air fryer recipe books.

And I was like, oh, she's driving traffic from YouTube channel to Facebook. And I was like, do you want to come speak at Mastermind Paradise showing how you're doing that? She's like, sure, I'd love to. So she came to Paradise and she showed the thing. What I wasn't expecting is not only was she showing how much traffic she was getting through her funnels from these YouTube videos, she was showing the revenue that YouTube was paying her. Now, the

time you have to understand, like, I had turned off revenue on all my YouTube videos because I'm like, no. And in fact, I always tell people this. I'm like, this is Russell now humbling himself. I'm like, if they can make more money off my audience than I can, then I don't deserve to be a marketer.

In fact, I remember people trying to buy ads. My podcast back in the day, I'd say the same thing. Like, if they can make more money off of my listeners than I can, then I don't deserve to be a marketer. And so I would never let people buy ads. Which is, anyway, probably dumb. Definitely dumb. But at the time, it seemed right, right?

So I'm watching Kathy Yoder. She's showing showing the thing she's making these videos in her kitchen and that she's you know do you use an air fryer and she showed like month one i made like 50 bucks month two made 300 bucks but four made a thousand you know like i've got up and then got a point where i every video she's posting she's making like 30 to 50 grand for every video she was posting. And all of a sudden I was like holy cow. She posted a video. Instead of buying ads to get people to watch it, she posted the video for

free. It gets, you know, a million views or 200,000 views, whatever it is. She got paid 20, 30 grand for that video, plus the video still drove traffic to her funnel. And I was like, that's so fascinating. Right now, everything I'm going to do is I spend money and I get people to my funnel.

She's producing free content. She gets paid for that content, and then it sends people to her funnel. It seems like a better way to do business. I hear her say that, and I'm like, that's cool, but I don't really, I don't really, I don't know. I don't really do much. Right. So back at photo hiking live, she comes back and she speaks and does the same presentation. And once again, I'm like, I need to start my YouTube channel.

So I decided to go all over YouTube. Actually hired Daryl Eves. He flew out for a day and traded me on some YouTube stuff, which was awesome. And we started doing our YouTube channel. And we, you know, if you follow me on YouTube, in fact, if you don't go to youtube.com, it's sir, Trestle Brunson and go watch a bunch of my videos. But we started, you know, consistently producing videos. And so we, um, we went and spent a whole bunch of time filming them.

And we got like, I don't know, 15, 20 videos in the queue. And then we launched the channel. And so we launched it in, um, January. We launched four videos, February. Anyway, it's funny because January, I only made, I think it'd be a thousand dollars. And so we launched it in January. We launched four videos February anyway. And it's funny because January, I only made, I think I made $1,000. Like, ooh. But we got a bunch of traffic to our funnels, which is good.

So I got paid, got traffic to our funnels. February, it doubled to $2,000, right? $2,000 of ad revenue, bunch of people at funnels. Like, okay, this is working. And now we're in March right now, and it's gone up even more. And this is similar to Kathy's. She watched hers. It was like little bits and all of a sudden like within five or six months it was like it was crazy money right at a point where i used to post more videos you should post two videos a day or two videos a week then three videos what's up everybody this is russell brunson i've

got something really cool for you today from my friend taylor wells and taylor spoke at our last funnel hacking live because i wanted him to share a really cool concept about what he calls the revolving pricing method. And today he decided to sponsor the podcast to give you guys more access to this super cool strategy that you are going to love. It's something we've been implementing into our high-end coaching program as well, and it is amazing. But to kind of give you some context about this offer he's making for you guys, as you may or may not know, a few years ago, JPMorgan Chase did a study, and guess what they found? They found that the average small business only has about 28 days of operating expenses in reserve. That's right, less than a month of cash on hands. Now, if you're like me, the idea of your business being one bad

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Do not miss out. Hey, this is Russell Brunson, and I want to jump in really quick to share with you a new assessment I found out that is insanely cool. You guys know I'm obsessed with personality profiles and assessments, but this one is different because not only does it help you understand yourself,

but more importantly, especially for us who are entrepreneurs, it helps us understand our employees, our teams, and get people sitting on the right seats in the bus so they can get more stuff done. I just had a chance to interview Patrick Lanchoni talking specifically about this new assessment they created called Working Genius. And the Working Genius is awesome. Like this test, I had actually blocked out an hour to take it because I was so excited for the new assessment.

And it only took me like 10 minutes or less to get it done. Yet, even though it takes only 10 minutes, like you can actually apply this immediately. I took it for myself. I had my team take it. And what's cool about it is from there, we figured out exactly what people's working geniuses are. And that's important because if you're building a team or a company, you got to make sure that you have first off the right people, but make sure the right people are sitting in the right seats on the bus. And this is what this assessment will teach you how to do. Now, normally this assessment, you can go to workinggenius.com and there's two G's in the middle, workinggenius.com, but I got you a 20% discount on the assessment, which is only $25. So don't stress. It's not

an expensive test at all. But you get a 20% discount off when you put in the keyword secrets at checkout. So go to workinggenius.com. Again, two G's, workinggenius, two G's in the middle, workinggenius.com. And then use promo code secrets, S-E-C-R-E-T-S at checkout. You get 25% off. But then we'll take the test. Again, it takes you 10 minutes. But even in use promo code secrets, S E C R E T S at checkout, get 25% off. Uh, but then we'll take the test again. It takes you 10 minutes. Um, but even in a 10 minute session, you will get something that is so insanely valuable to help you understand yourself, to make sure you're working in a spot. It's going to be the most joy number one, but then number two, um, it's going to make sure that you are, uh, with your teams, getting them in the right seats as well. So, um, anyway, I love this assessment. Go check it out at workinggenius.com and enter the promo code secrets for 20% discount.

Take this test for yourself and for your team. And I promise you, it'll change the working dynamics amongst everybody and help your company to grow. Anyway, so we go to YouTube. So, and I'm still not quite getting it all, but I'm like, this is cool. Like, you know, I'm making money to get traffic as close to paying money to get traffic. And so anyway, so we're doing a YouTube strategy and focusing on it. And then I look at, I talk to one of my friends.

I can't mention their names. I'm going to talk about their stats. But they have a really good podcast. And one of their sponsors alone was paying them $80,000 a month for this person. I'm going to be careful. I don't want to get in trouble disclosing them or their income. But $8,000 a month to mention them

on their podcasts once a week. I was like, what? How is that even possible? So I asked this person and they said, oh, well, here's an agency.

You know, there's a lot of them out there but you hire this agency and they will sell ads for you. I'm like, okay. So I hired this agency or I talked to the agency and I'm still kind of fighting it a little bit. You know, I got my podcast which is, you know there's a lot of them out there but you hire this agency and they will sell ads for you i'm like okay so i hired this age or i talked to the agency and i'm still kind of fighting it a little bit you know i got my podcast which is you know most episodes went 20 minutes long and

there's no ads ever and and they made this proposal for me and i looked down like i didn't want to get it and then the owner of the company very wisely made a video like russell let me explain to you how this works you obviously have a thick head they explained this whole process and so showed me so look right now um they basically be like the person whose podcast i'm not going to mention the name of they were getting i think like 800 000 downloads a month right which is awesome um that's like in my mind gets i don't even know a hundred and something thousand downloads a month right so one eighth of the other person they said well a couple problems number one is your podcast only 20 minutes long and so we can't sell many ads in there. So you have to

increase it to at least 30 minutes. Cause then we could have like a pre-roll ad, a mid-roll ad, and a post-roll ad if you're at 30 minutes. And they said, based on your numbers right now, you know, if you increase anything, you, you know, you'd make, I can't remember what it was like, I don't even know, 15, 20 grand, 30 grand, something like that, 20, 30 grand a month or something. I'm like, oh, yeah, Mike, that's not, you know, it's not horrible, but it's something to, like, get y'all excited about. But then she said, no, look, right now you're doing once a week. Now, if you were to go and do it twice a week, all of a sudden you go from 100,000 downloads a month to 200,000 downloads a month and you just doubled your income by doing two podcasts. And so now each of your podcasts is 30 minutes,

which means we only have those three ad spots. But if you were to increase it to 60 minutes per episode, if you increase 60 minutes per episode, now also we can sell, you know, whatever, so six ad spots or five ad spots and now your income doubles again. So from going from one 20-minute show to two 60-minute

shows i go from remember 30 grand yeah i remember the number i had but like 220 000 a month um from the podcast and that's like if i don't grow it and say now let's say you focus on actually growing the podcast and buying ads too and do all these different things then you go from because if you go from 100 000 a month and go twice a month that's two hundred thousand or twice a week sorry post that's two hundred thousand downloads you start buying ads so it's like four hundred thousand downloads um and then also it's like the revenue starts going crazy i'm like oh my gosh and also like the the things start clicking my head i was like that's what rachel hollis is doing i'm like she went from having a podcast once a week um it was like you know 30 minutes to now it's an hour but she does hers five days a week um there was like you know 30 minutes to an hour it's an hour but she does

hers five days a week now i was like five days a week that means she's able to get five times the impressions and the people who are buying ads are buying based on impression then rachel also launched a morning show she has a 30 minute morning show and an hour long afternoon show she has two shows a day happening right and um and all that's happening she's getting paid on the cpm for all these ads and i have no idea how many downloads gets, but I'm doing the math and she's probably making, who knows? I have no idea. But my guess is seven figures a month or more just on ad revenue from the podcast. She records probably one day a week and she records all of them.

And I was like, oh my gosh, I missed it. That makes so much sense. And then I started just thinking about that. I'm like, and that's my podcast, right? Now if I start focusing on that, if I'm getting, you know, four or five hundred thousand downloads a month, it's all traffic now that I can be pushing back in my funnels, and I'm getting paid for that. Right? No longer am I paying for these ads.

I'm getting paid to create stuff, right? Like, how's that change? If all of a sudden instead of me going out and spending 30 grand this month on podcast ads, instead I get paid 30 grand to promote and then do my podcast. How's that change the metrics of your business? Like, it changes them dramatically. Like Hermosi. Hermosi spent two years building up his organic traffic. And then when he did his first virtual event or whatever, he had 500,000 people register for free.

Like, that's crazy. If I was to pay to get 500,000 000 people register for free like that's crazy if i was to pay to get 500 000 people to register for an event i mean i'm looking at you know three to five bucks per per opt-in probably more than that times 500 000 like it it's a it's a four or five million dollar ad spent to do what he did for free because he'd spent two years doing this organic free content and focusing on it. I started getting it. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's the key. And so I'm looking at it now where it's like YouTube, I want to produce. I said one video a week.

I provided two videos a week. I provided five videos a week. I'm looking at one of my friends, Andy Elliott. He posts a video every single day, day after day after day. And you look at that with the CPM that's happening, it's crazy. With Smartwater's pure, crisp taste, there's nothing to overthink. So while you may be spiraling over double texting your crush, whether your skincare routine is working because you look the same or is doing nothing because you look the same and whatever the heck red light therapy is. It's definitely not bad.

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Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Forest Lane's part, I didn't understand this part, but advertisers pay for CPM, right? So if you have 1,000 listeners, that's an M, right? So cost per million, or cost per 1,000, CPM. And so that was always the thing that I struggled with. I was like, well, who would pay to be on Marketing Secrets Podcast? Who would pay to be on whatever?

It's like the brands that are on here, if you listen to them, it's Geico, it's Apple Pay, it's Lexus, it's Tesla. It's these big brands who aren't direct response advertisers. They're just looking for CPM. And so if you've got the right demographic and the right numbers, they'll pay you for it. So to hear it, they have this work. It's like go and listen to Rachel Hollis' podcast. Go listen to Tom Bilyeu's.

Go listen to' podcast. Go listen to Tom Bilyeu's. Go listen to, just listen to his podcast and then notice, like, Tom Bilyeu's, he'll start with, like, two minutes of the ad roll at the beginning of the podcast

and in the middle of the podcast there's ad roll and at the very end and listen to companies who are buying it. Like, they're all big companies who are buying on CPM

and if, you know, you get the CPM, they pay for the ads and it fills it all up, right? You look at, on YouTube,

you get more targeting where people are buying based on different offers and funnels a lot of times but still at the same time there's big brands that um your ads are showing up on um and so that's kind of the that's kind of the the key with it so anyway it's really fascinating so for me my whole focus now is like how do i how do i get paid to do i see so even our email newsletters companies now we're finding that you can put a block inside your email newsletter and um and then um they'll literally just like place the ads in your newsletter

for you the same thing in cpm so it's like based on how many impressions you get that's how much you get paid for every you know for the for the ads in the newsletter it's crazy so i'm looking at like flipping everything around for me buying ads on facebook google instagram you know all the stuff we're doing to like how do i feel around how do i get paid on the podcast how do i get paid on youtube how do i get paid in the email how do i get paid and everything so that i'm getting paid to produce these things versus me paying to place them out there does that make sense um anyway so it's kind of a fascinating thing i want you guys to to think through it's a big mindset shift that i'm at at my side and obviously it takes more time like facebook

ads you flip a switch and i'll see you get it you know youtube be like you've got to build audience you have to spend some time you got to keep putting things out there but if you're consistent for six months a year two years like imagine what's possible right again like hermosa spent two years he went from owning gyms like very small following just gym owners to two years of really hardcore content and now you're looking at his followings all these things and it's it's it's crazy right so anyway that's just something i think about like getting paid to get to run ads versus paying to run ads um when i was in college i bought a domain name i don't know if i still have it up but it's called sellingspace.com

i remember i was sitting in college thinking about like i'm in this classroom and i had to pay to be in class i'd pay for my for my books. I had to pay for everything. And I remember looking around the walls. All the walls in my classrooms were empty. There was, like, white walls. I was like, you could pay. Like, after I was paid, Taco Bell would pay to put a banner ad in here. So all the kids that are hungry and in lunch want to go Taco Bell.

Like, you could sell space. And I started thinking, like, you sell space anywhere. Like, on your website. Like, you have a blog, and there's this side spot where they sell that space. And so like I was going to do a course way back 10 years ago called Selling Space, but I never actually created that. But same concept, like you create eyeballs and then you sell space inside that eyeball. Like that's the big aha, the big takeaway.

So anyway, you're going to notice that the Marketing Secrets Podcast in the very near future will shift from a 20-minute show to probably a 30 or 60-minute show you'll notice i'll be going from once a week to at least twice a week and maybe eventually more depending how well it goes and these are the reasons why because geico wants to pay me to share some stuff with you so i'm gonna share some stuff with you right and so focus more time and energy rachel said like now like the podcast becomes the main focus

because of that. Like it's just fascinating. YouTube videos become the main focus. All these things become the core focus. And so I'm going to spend more time and energy

and effort creating this content and really producing it so that I can get more CPMs and get more I've all shown and I get free traffic and get paid for that traffic. I think it's better than free traffic. You can pay to drive traffic to your funnels,

which is insane. So anyway, I think this is the biggest, for me personally, biggest insight on traffic I've had in the last 10 years. Like it's just crazy. Um, you know,

traffic secrets, I should write a bonus chapter, part two or something. It's like how to get paid to get traffic. Like, like just going back in time thinking about that like like what an important thing that I missed all these years so anyway thank you for all the people who are smarter than me who've been doing this for a long time thank you Russell for finally paying attention to it I'm really excited especially for me I don't know about you but like I've got to be company

tons of staff so when I do stuff like I don't get paid that money directly goes into my company and then i get paid you know at the end of the day but with these things i shift around where it's like i like i'm the content producer i should get paid up from so the revenue coming from the podcast revenue coming from youtube videos should come to me directly after paying the cost of the people who are producing all this stuff right becomes me and that like gives me incentive for me to focus on creating really good content, right? Like, whenever you get paid, so we're going to focus your time. So I'm getting paid the money

from creating courses. I'm going to create courses. I'm going to get paid for webinars. I'm going to get paid to create content. Like, it's no longer going to be an afterthought.

It's going to be the thought, right? It's going to be the core thing. Like, man, if I get paid 20 grand to make this video today, like, I'm going to go make a really good video. I'm going to make two videos. You know what I mean?

So that's the thing to start focusing on and thinking about. So anyway, there's a big insight. Hopefully it helps you guys. That's where my mind's at right now. And I'm so excited. I can't sleep. I'm so excited about this whole concept. And I realize for me, it's going to be, you know, probably a year period to really build

it up to the spot where it's significant revenue. But in a year from now, that'll be coming to me because I'm creating content, because I'm driving traffic to my funnels. It's crazy. And so, yes, maybe it's going to take you two years. But, man, think about two years ago, where were you at? If you would have started this two years ago, like right now, imagine getting paid all this money

for producing the content that's driving traffic into your funnels anyway. It's insane. It's exciting. Anyway, so, selling space. People call's insane. It's exciting. Um, anyway, so selling space, people call it that. I don't even know.

I hope this helps you guys out. And, um, yeah, I'm excited to do a podcast episodes. Um, I'm also launching a second podcast cause you know, might as well. And,

um, I recorded the first two episodes before we left on the cruise and they, they are awesome. I'm really excited for them. Ah, anyway, so much really excited for them. Ah, anyway, so much fun stuff going up. So,

all right. Appreciate you guys all. Thanks for listening in and, um, talk to you guys all soon. Bye everybody.