The Russell Brunson Show - (MS) My 3 Best Ideas to Fill a Live or Virtual Event

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

We just had a Decade in a Day and someone asked me a question that's actually on my mind a lot right now - "How do you sell tickets for an event?" So let's get into the strategy of when to announce, how to sell tickets and what drives customers to buy tickets and when they traditionally move. Plus get a sneak peak into a campaign we're about to launch! And don't forget to grab your tickets for Funnel Hacking LIVE at https://www.funnelhackinglive.com Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing FunnelHackingLIVE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Travel moves us. 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? Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. We are officially, as of this moment, 21 days away from Funnel Hacking Live. We are preparing, we're working, we're getting everything done and having a ton of fun. Man, I'm not going to lie, it is a lot of work. Every year I forget until we get here. I'm like, oh yeah, a lot goes into it. And it's funny too, because if it was just Funnel Hacking Live, it would actually

be pretty easy. But Funnel Hacking Live, plus we're working on all new ClickFunnels 2.0 updates, which are called Click funnels 2.0 updates which is called 3.0 now the new updates are amazing um plus like i've been rebuilding the whole dashboard um which has taken me it's like 70 videos i've had to record for that uh trying to get that done before fun hacking live a new onboarding process trying to get done for fun hacking live plus on top of that my wife went to portugal for 10 days so she's gone so i'm playing full-time dad as well. I'm not going to lie.

It's chaotic. It's amazing, all the things. So I'm pumped to be able to hang out with everybody here soon. So if you don't have your tickets yet, now is the time. Go to FunnelHackingLive.com. But I actually wanted to talk today about just a thought because a lot of you guys are running events or thinking about running events. And last week I had a new program I have called Decade a Day. It's something I'm doing with all my Inner Circle members

where they come in for a day and I do about 20 of them come in at a time and then we'd spend a day and I consult everyone for 15 minutes. And it's really fun. And it's funny because last one we had three or four people who were doing events or had questions about events. And so I just want to share some of those insights with you because I thought they were interesting. The question was just like, you know, how do you – one person said, I have an event in three months.

I'm trying to get 1,000 tickets sold. How many have you sold so far? Like none. I'm like, oh, step one, plan further out. But anyway, so I was trying to give ideas. And obviously there's the core things, which is like announce that you're having an event. That gets people to go sign up, right? Announce speakers gets people to sign up.

But the one thing you'll find about events, I always tell people all the things we sell, events are the hardest Announce that you're having an event. That gets people to go sign up, right? Announce speakers gets people to sign up. But the one thing you'll find about events, I always tell people all the things we sell, events are the hardest because everything else people will buy, it's like an impulse. Like, oh, I want that thing, and they go buy it. The event, they may want it, but they go like, oh, did the dates work? Can I get time off? Can I get flights, hotels? Who's going to watch my kids?

There's like 800 other mini decisions that go into making a decision going to an event and so there's a lot more you're combating when you're doing stuff so of all the things we sell by far selling tickets to a live event are the hardest um we've done a pretty good job of it i mean we get 5 000 plus people every year from hiking live which is like this insurmountable task that always feels like not physically possible and every year somehow we do it so i said we're down to 21 days. So one thing to note is that a third of your tickets will be sold during the last like two weeks, which is the worst.

Cause I don't know about you, but the whole year you're stressing out cause you're, no one's buying tickets. No one's buying tickets. And then a third of them come in the last two or three weeks and you're like, gosh, dang it. Why didn't you guys buy them earlier? So that, that means for all of you guys who are sitting on the fence waiting, like you're almost out of time.

It's time to go get those tickets. Like make Russell sleep better tonight by getting your tickets now. Quit waiting. Anyway, so, but the other thing I was telling them is like the only way to get big pops of sales, because again, with Fun Hockey Live, it's like every day we get 10, 20 sales and it's just this consistent stream of tickets coming in.

There's never like, we sold 500 tickets tonight, you know? And so the only way to get big increases in sales are either to raise the price or to take something away. And this is the big secret, okay? Raise the price or take something away. So raising the price, obviously raise the price. But once you do that, you raise it once or twice and people stop buying tickets. So that's usually the last thing in the campaign is raising the prices, which for us probably happened next week, which means if you don't have your ticket, yeah, hurry, we're raising prices. Funnelhackinglive.com. And the second side is taking something away. So if you notice over the campaign of a year, selling Funnel Hacking Live tickets are always taking things away. So for example, at the beginning of the year, as soon as the last year's

event's over, I'm like, hey, if you want the replays, you gotta get your ticket to Funnel Hacking Live. And so that gets our first surge of sales right after the last event. It's like, if you want the replays, you gotta buy the tickets for next year. And then we have a countdown, like these go away if you don't buy it by this day.

So we take it away and that gets people to buy it. And then throughout the year, when we introduce speakers, we have speakers bring on speaker bonuses. And the only reason we bring on speaker bonuses is because speaker bonuses don't in and of themselves sell a lot of tickets. But the taking away of speaker bonuses does. So I get to a point where the campaign, right, oh, speaker bonuses are expiring and we take those away. And then we see a huge increase in sales.

We'll see 300, 400 sales in the weekend when we're taking the speaker bonuses away, right? So we're always introducing something in the campaign and taking it away, introducing something and taking it away. And that's like how we drive sales. So there's two of the biggest things we do for selling tickets to live events. And then one of the things that I just think is really kind of fun is just figuring out different hooks in different ways, like different fun things, like playing off of the questions people have in their head, like why they're not coming. Right.

And so, um, we just created an ad. It's actually just got done today. I think we're going to be promoting it today. So some of you guys may have seen this depending on when this podcast goes live. But, um, one of the guys on the team had this idea and they're genius writers and ideas and stuff. So it's actually a video. I'm going to play the audio for you, but it's actually a video.

Um, so I wish you could see it cause it's even more funny if you can see it. But, um, you know, the question is like, what are the concerns? Like, why are people not buying tickets yet? Like, so we're always trying to figure out what's the concern and how can we address it? And so this one, the idea was like, well, people have a lot of concerns, right? What if, what if, um, we, we made a video and a promotion about our excuse department, you know, and told people like, Hey, no matter what excuse you have, like, we'll take care of it. Like Russell literally sent a video to these people to somebody to get you out of a wedding or out of a funeral or out of a whatever. And so and so we put together this campaign and I'm literally going to be doing this. Like, I don't know. I'll probably make 20, 30, 40 videos.

I'm not sure yet um for people who take us up on ticket offer during this campaign but we're gonna run this for a week right now and again it's a week until you know uh tell our ticket prices going up anyway so it's kind of like this little window and it's just like trying to resolve concerns so it'll be a fun playful thing like you'll you'll have a chance to hear the ad here in a second. But the goal is to address the fact that they have an excuse. It gives us another reason to message them, to remind them of the event. And it's kind of a fun idea just to get people talking

and then hopefully get rid of some of their excuses. So right now I'm going to actually play the audio of this ad so you can hear it. And I'll come back afterwards and we can discuss it a little bit more. You want to go to Funnel Hacking Live to get inspired by some of the world's greatest marketers and meet thousands of like-minded people. But you're not sure what's going to come up during the dates between September 27th

and the 30th. Or maybe you already committed to something really stupid, like camping. But don't fear because here at ClickFunnels, we came up with our greatest hack yet. Introducing the ClickFunnels official get out of obligation service. So here's how it works. All you gotta do is buy a ticket to Funnel Hacking Live anywhere between these dates. Then email your conflict to fhlexcuses at gmail.com. And then me and my team of excuse experts here will make you a custom video recording to get you out of even your most inflexible commitments. So here's a small sample of our work.

Hey, what's up, Todd? I'm sorry, Gina's not going to be able to make it to your date because she's got a date with Destiny at this year's Funnel Hacking Live. I'm so sorry. Don't give up. Maybe next year. Hey, Steph. Just wanted you to know that Mike's aunt's second cousin's mom's brother-in-law's favorite

software company is having their birthday on September 27th, the same day as yours. So I'm not going to be able to make it, but I want to wish you a happy birthday. I hope you enjoy the bounce house. Hey, sorry, Mike. Susan's got diarrhea. So remember, there's no excuse for missing Funnel Hacking Live. Because here at ClickFunnels, we already have an excuse for you. All right, so that's the end of the ad.

Again, it's just kind of a funny thing to play off of, like, the reasons why people are thinking about coming or not coming. What's the excuse? And so instead of just, like, trying to dance around it, we just dove right into it. So just ideas for hooks hooks and so we're always looking for those kind of things so there's a campaign for all excuses but if i was doing you know events we're looking for other excuses like oh i can't come because it costs too much i can't come because of this because this and we find those things identify them and then we create ads videos webinars to address those concerns and hopefully

knock down those dominoes so people get to funnel hacking live so anyway there's some strategies some ideas for our event peeps um and hopefully it gives you guys first off um if you're if you're running events my second off if you're thinking about coming to funnel hacking live you realize oh my gosh this is russell's 5000th time warming us prices are about to go up we're about to sell out the event's happening in less than three weeks and make sure you get your tickets and get there, because it's going to be so much fun. This year's going to be insane. I can't even wait. I got a really big announcement this year, which is going to freak

some people out, but you have to be there to find out. So, that's all I can say. I'm going to get in trouble. Alright, I appreciate you guys all for listening. Thanks so much, and I will see you guys at Funnel Hacking Live. If you don't have a ticket yet, go to www.funnelhackinglive.com. Thanks, everybody. Talk soon.