Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Hard-Selling vs Soft-Selling and the Invisible Hooks You Probably Missed

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

People are getting the Traffic Secrets book in the mail today, and if you're not careful, you may miss the greatest marketing lesson of all. On today's episode Russell explains the difference between hard-selling and soft-selling. Here are some of the informative things to look for in this episode: Find out how Russell is almost constantly soft-selling his products and services and why you may not have noticed. See why when you buy from Russell you should buy slowly and pay attention to everything that happens from going through the funnel to receiving things in the mail. And find out what kind of ad Russell has that is converting best right now. So listen here to find out the difference between a hard and soft-sell and how you can use them in your own business. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/312-hard-selling-vs-soft-selling-and-the-invisible-hooks-you-probably-missed Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today I want to talk about the marketing that's invisible inside of the fulfillment of the thing that you are actually selling. So the big question is this. How are entrepreneurs like us, who didn't cheat and take on venture capital,

who are spending money from our own pockets, how do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. All right, so a couple of things. I had somebody on Instagram write me and they asked a question like, what's the difference between hard selling and soft selling? Which kind of got the wheels of my head spinning.

And then today, actually this whole week, everybody's starting to get the books in the mail. So the traffic secrets are showing up. The box set is showing up. Like, ah, it's so exciting to see everybody getting their boxes and their packages. And a couple people in my inner circle made videos of them opening the boxes and was like, did you guys all capture the marketing lesson that Russell just gave us here inside of this box? And it's fun because I don't think most people got it, but a few people did. So I'm going to let you know the

secrets just in case. Because a lot of times we focus so much on the hard selling, right? Like I'm going to go, I'm going to create my offer, my funnel. I'm going to, I'm going to like make, you know, you know, hook story off. I'm going to hook them, tell them a story, make them an offer. That's like hard selling, right? Soft selling, like all the subtleties that you're doing around everything, right? Like for example, in my podcast, in my Facebook lives, in my interviews, my everything, I'm always talking about stuff, right? Like I always talk about click funnels. Um, when, um, when I had my inner circle, when it was still open, um open if you ever noticed like the first probably 300 episodes of this podcast I was always talking about my inner circle members

don't want my inner circle member to this my inner circle member to this I was talking about these people in this tier in this group and as I did that more people were like I want to be in their circle what's in your circle I start looking for it right and that's what a soft sell is it's just like casually talking about things talking about click funnels, talking about order form bumps, talking about all these things that lead back to whatever it is that you actually sell. And so I think a lot of times people think like, Oh, I mean, there's some of my product, you're selling my product or I'm, or I'm, I'm teaching, right? It's like, no, they,

they all go together. Do you understand that? Like they're all, they all kind of tie together. And so soft selling is all the things you're doing all the time. For example, right now, what have I already done? I've already talked about ClickFunnels with you guys. I talked about the Traffic Seekers book. I talked about the box set and I talked about my inner circle. Four things just in the first two minutes of this podcast are just soft selling. It's like planting seeds and talking about it, talking about it more. As you do more and more of it, it just gets people to, to, to wonder more and to look more and, and to be more excited when the opportunity for them to purchase arises. So that's the kind of

difference between the hard sell and soft sell. Now to go deeper on that, um, this is, uh, this is what's, what's fun, right? So everybody bought the book and you went through the book funnel, right? If you haven't bought the book yet, come on now. Why are you even listening to me? At this point, if you don't trust me, you have to go buy the book. That's ridiculous. But I digress. So you go to trafficsecrets.com, you'll get the book. So you get the book, you go through the upsell, downsell, flow, you see the whole thing. From there, I invite you to come watch the webinar. Hopefully you go to the webinar and the whole funnel happens. So that's the hard sell. Now, the soft sell are the things happening now.

So in the mail, everybody got a box. And on the outside of the box, it's like, wait, before you open the box, scan this QR code. And I know a lot of people don't know how to use QR code yet. I still am just learning how to use them. But if you go to your photo app and you hold the QR code, it'll pop up on a website where there's a video from me. And the video, I just basically tell people, thank you so much for buying this book. I reaffirm their decision. You're going to love it. I can't wait for you to dive into it. And I ask them for a favor. Look, just so you know, an author like me, the biggest thing that we want is we want to be able to have people actually get the thing we create. We spend

18 months of our life locked down writing this thing for you. I want to hear your feedback. And so the thing that's being the most to me right now is before you open this box, if you actually record yourself opening the box and as you open it, go and then share it on Facebook and on Instagram and social media and tag me on it. And, and I want to see those things right now. Again, this is like, this is the art of soft selling right now. Right? So, um, massing it for a favor, like you just bought this book. I killed myself to give it to you. Now you have it. If you could do me a favor, like just make a video of you unboxing it and post and post it now obviously not everyone does and I even know like not even the majority people do like it but a good

percentage people do and it's cool is they're posting them everywhere they're posting when they click follows group to post on their own page they're posting them on Instagram they're doing their stories that like I'm getting tagged in unboxing videos everywhere now obviously we sold like I think 60 or 70 thousand copies of books so far and I'm I think 60 or 70,000 copies of the book so far, and I'm not getting 60 or 70,000, but I'm getting literally hundreds, multiple hundreds of people posting these videos. And when they're doing it, guess what's happening? Their friends, their family members, their other people are like, wait, what's that book? What's it about? And it's starting to make sales. It's the second wave of sales that are coming. I didn't do anything

for other than I just asked people to be willing to unbox. They're thinking of posting and boxing and tagging me in it, which has been really, really cool. The coolest ones, I don't see all of them because some land in my other folder, junk folder, but the cool ones I see, I share them again. It's helping those people as well. So there's a lot of cool benefits. Then inside of the book, the box you open up and there's a quick start guide. A quick start guide walks you through how to use the book. You think about when you buy a computer, you get a quick start guide. You buy software, you get a quick start guide. For a book, we don't, but we include a quick start guide. You get the quick start guide and say, okay, first thing you need to do is you read this book.

Second thing you need to do is, if you haven't read, this is part one of three, go get the other two books and make sure you read the whole trilogy and get them all. If you want the workbook for free, then here's how to get the whole box set. You know, so I'm telling about like the best way to consume the book and how it fits with the other books and for them to go get it, right? So again, it's not a hard sell. It's just saying, hey, as you're reading this, this is the best way to consume it. Just like if I was selling crackers,

I'd be like the best way to eat these crackers is with some, I don't even know what you eat crackers with, with some cashew milk or some, I don't even know, eat crackers with some cashew milk or some, I don't even know. Is that even a thing? You know what I mean? Like if I was, yeah, let's say I had a food company, right? Or a shampoo company, right? The best way to use shampoo is also use conditioner.

Also, boom, you just doubled your sales, right? It's these little things like that. And so the quick start guide is also then like little tickets to other things like tickets to webinars, tickets to all the other offers we have. So it's just like, oh, by the way, here's a bookmark you can use, but it also serves as a pretty good ad. So now these bookmarks that come in the boxes, people use bookmarks in their books, but it's pushing to the webinar funnel and this thing and just other places, their ClickFunnels trial, things like that. And so it's just so it's these little things

you kind of include in the sales process, the fulfillment process that increase a whole bunch of things, right? It gets your book or your product is to spread more viral. It gets people talking about it. It gets people sharing it. It gets people knowing what's the next step. Where do I go from here in the value ladder? What's the next piece? And so all those things as you kind of look at them, that's the magic. So anyway, I hope you guys start thinking about that. I always tell people, especially you, my people, I always tell my people, my funnel hackers, whenever you buy anything from me, to buy slowly and watch the process and look what

happens and what are the sequences that come out? What are the things you get in the mail? What is the packaging? I remember when I was starting this game back 15, 20 years ago, I'd go to Dan Kennedy events and I literally, and I still have it to this day, every single person who spoke, I went and I ran to the back and grabbed their order form. I didn't buy everyone's product, but I wanted to see the sales material and how they structured it, how they laid it out and what they did and how they did it. I listened to every single sales pitch and all these buddies are like, oh, I'm too good to sit in the room. I can sit out

in the lobby and network with people because I already know all this stuff. I'm like, you guys are so dumb. I'm not in here to learn all this stuff. I'm in here to sit in the room. I can sit out in the lobby and network with people because I already know all this stuff. I'm like, you guys are so dumb. I'm not in here to learn all this stuff. I'm in here to watch that guy sell something because he's good at it. He's got something I don't know, right? Like watching the sales process and I'm grabbing the order forms and I'm looking at all these things. I remember one of my first TNC events I went to when Ryan Dyson and Perry Belcher and those

guys, they were selling. It was before we launched. It was like we were all working on ClickFunnels, but they were selling their funnel package thing where they would help you design a funnel and build it and all this stuff, pre-ClickFunnels, by the way, so it was really hard to do back then. I remember watching them pitch it and taking notes on how they pitched it, and then I bought the videos of the event specifically so I could have a recording

of how they pitched their funnel thing, right? And then getting the order forms. I did everything because I want to see I want to understand I want to study I'm a funnel hacker I'm watching the process and so I think a lot of times you guys are going through these things and you're missing the the process and it's like man if you're paying me to learn marketing advice you you may learn as much if not more from watching the process as you do from the actual thing you paid for. So anyway, that's my look at things.

There's so many product services I bought that I've never, ever opened and consumed. People are like, well, don't you feel bad? Like you spent money, you didn't consume. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, you don't understand. Like that was like getting a box of cereal and inside there's a little prize. You pull out like, oh, like the product is a little prize. Like, oh, cool.

I got a little like, a little prize. Woohoo. Right? Like what I was paying for was the privilege to buy the person's product and see the experience and see how it all works and like watching the process and the flow and i think that a lot of times we forget that um you know it's not true for all markets but for you guys like if you're following me you're trying to figure out how to sell your products your services like like it always blows my people i get upset like oh you sent me too many emails this week. Like, okay. That that's something to be annoyed by. Unless you came to me to learn

marketing and then you're going to look at that and be like, Hmm, I had a, there's an ad, there's an ad that we're running right now. That's killing it. Just, you know, and, uh, it was, I was with my daughter and I was like, I want to, I want to film some, some ads with you. So I'm paying her a dollar per ad to help film these ads. So we did this one in my office where she has the ipad click record i'm like come here come here and i run them into the hall i'm like you know excited like showing them all the two common cause like you know come here and run around the room and run into the whole office and it's really fun right and uh we post the ad is killing it it's blowing up and man i was reading the comments today and there's some people people are annoying but like this is going on drugs and someone was like oh

yeah what kind of caffeine what kind of cocaine you taking to be all excited? And like, you're speaking too fast. And some guy, I remember this one, I should have screenshot it, but it was like, it was like, just so you know, Russell, if you really want to get leads, you need to talk slower. Like this is going to do nothing except for hurt your brand, blah, blah, all this stuff. And I sat there for a second and then I looked at our stats and it's the number one adder now. It's converting the the most leads at least amount of money and it's like people coming in like you have someone who's done this game for a while You know You may even pay him to come to his events or to buy his books or his courses or whatever and you're critiquing his ads I guess it doesn't work like okay or maybe it's killing it and you just missed the whole process

And I never would tweak someone's product. I would just step, or someone's ad, I'd step back and just look like, hmm, how did this make me feel? How did it work? But I would never, anyway, people are funny. So, all right. I hope that helps. I appreciate you guys. Thank you for listening.

Have fun with your marketing. It's such a fun game. Man, the more I can get you guys excited about geeking out about it and studying it and looking at it and trying to find the patterns and see what's working, the better you're going to be at this game. So anyway, I appreciate you guys. Thanks for hanging out today. And if you got anything of value from this, please take a screenshot on your phone and

post on social media and tag me. I'd love to see it. It does make my day. I do scroll through my feeds every day personally and I see all the stuff you guys are posting and it means a lot to me. So if you got anything, please post it and let me know your biggest takeaway you got from today. And, uh, with that said, start studying the process, watch it, you guys, cause you're going to learn. It's your, it's your own marketing education. All right. Thanks

everybody. I'll talk to you soon. Hey everybody, this is Russell again. And really quick, I wanted to invite you to join, um, arguably the best thing that we've ever put out inside the ClickFunnels community. And it is a challenge we call the One Funnel Away Challenge. You know, everyone in their business, in their life, they're one funnel away from something. Some of you guys are one funnel away from quitting your job. Some of you guys are one funnel away from getting more impact. Some of you guys are a funnel away from growing your company to the next level. And so we created this challenge to help you to create and launch your first or your next funnel.

No matter where you are in your business, this challenge is going to help you. It's going to help you understand the strategy, help you understand the tactics, help you understand all the things you need to be successful with your funnel. So what I recommend you do right now is stop everything, pause this audio, go online and go to OneFunnelAway.com. That's OneFunnelAway.com and join the next challenge. There's a challenge starting in the next few days, so go get started right now. OneFunnelAway.com. That's OneFunnelAway.com and join the next challenge. There's a challenge starting in the next few days, so go get started right now. OneFunnelAway.com.