Episode #49 – Marcus Lucas on Putting Your Video Marketing on Email Steroids

John: It’s John McIntyre here and I’m here with a very special guest, his name is Marcus Lucas. Now, I met Marcus in 2013. I was in Lithuania, of all places, a tiny little country in almost Eastern Europe, I don’t know if it’s quite Eastern Europe. And anyway, I met this guy Marcus Lucas, and it turns out he is the, from what I hear, the Tim Ferriss lifestyle design guy of all Brazil. So he’s helping people in Brazil build Internet businesses and create that four-hour work-week lifestyle, and as he’s being doing that, he’s been doing, you know, e-mail marketing, and video marketing, and all sorts of stuff. So he was telling me a bit about it and I thought it would be cool to get him on the show to talk about that.

So, he’s around and it’s his first broadcast, so I think he’s a little bit nervous but I think this will be just fine. I’m going it real relaxed. How’re you doing today, Marcus?

Marcus: Fine, man, thank you for having me.

John: It’s good to have you on the show, man. Are you nervous?

Marcus: I’m getting better now, man, after, like, all the information that I exchanged I’m much more comfortable. Thank you very much, McIntyre.

John: Man, it’s good. Before we talk about the video stuff that we discussed on Facebook, tell the listener a bit about who is Marcus Lucas, and what does he do?

Marcus: That’s a very complicated question, man, because … Yeah, I graduated from university in Japan. I took my masters there. And after I realized that working 10 hours a day, some times I was working on week-ends and I didn’t get a raise or anything. But I was really sick and the economy collapsed and I saw people getting fired. And that’s … it’s one of the worse sensations that you can feel, like seeing everybody you work with getting fired. So I went back to Brazil, and I just had in my head, okay, like I’ve got to do this business, automation, on-line businesses, like training courses, like platform, whatsoever. And I start building this business from my bedroom, but literally from my bedroom. I had no other options. It got to the point that I was actually fishing to get some food in my fridge, because if I … I didn’t have much money, so if my money ran out from like rent and all this stuff, I’d at least have something to eat.

And that’s basically how it started. First I launched a product called “GraduateinJapan.com.” And I sell an e-book on how to get the scholarship to go to Japan. And one day, like I launched the book and started making money, and I went to a convenience store. And I was talking to the lady and the lady was, like, “What do you do? Because like you come here like 3 am, sometimes 2 pm, like it’s just weird for me.” And I was like “I’m making money on-line now.” And she was like so happy, she’s like “You gotta teach me because I make $200 part-time job like here in the convenience store.” And that’s like-

John: $200 per month.

Marcus: Yeah. So, that was when I decided to actually start teaching people on how to build products and how to market them. Like not the shady marketing, like, just the honest kind of marketing they can have.

John: Honest marketing, I like the sound of that. So you’re doing … you’re doing Internet … it’s all Internet marketing stuff, but you’re doing it very legit. I’m looking at graduateinjapan.com right now, it’s a pretty cool looking site.

Marcus: Yeah. Like this site, actually I surveyed 210 people that got the scholarship. So, I bought all the profile that they had, like their grades in school, if they did research, university, if they worked, how many hours, so like everything is like broken down so people can read this e-book and follow the steps of people who actually got the scholarship.

John: Right. Okay, okay, nice. Nice work. So then what happened? So you’ve been teaching people in Brazil how to make money. And you have an e-book, you have a training program, tell me a bit more about that.

Marcus: Yeah. The training program, the problem was, like most marketers or people that are teaching this kind of stuff … And I really don’t like the making money on-line thing, because you know if people don’t make money they’re going to get frustrated. So you need to depend more on how to build your business, and everything depends on who is good in business, right? You can give all the tools to someone and some people will not use it because they’re scared about something. So like what I did, I created this training program that has like right now four modules that goes to the basics, like non-paid advertising, to paid advertising, to squeeze pages, to relationship with lists, plus how to build their own product. But the thing was, I noticed like a lot of people are teaching that, so what I did was I put the tools inside the membership area. So if one is afraid of squeeze page, you don’t need to know HTML or anything. You just like type in the header, all the information, the opt- in code at 05:03 and it generates for you. So it’s really easy for like anyone to use it.

John: Okay, okay. Interesting. So you’ve been doing the marketing, the Internet marketing, all that stuff. Now, and recently, it was like about a week ago we started talking on Facebook because you’re doing something different, where you’ve been testing out a bit of video strategy or video/e-mail, it’s kind of a mix of both strategy that you’ve been doing for … I think it was a conference, right?

Marcus: Which conference?

John: Maybe I can’t read. The e-mail is written in Spanish, so I’ve got you doing, it looks like you’re creating some cool videos …

Marcus: It’s Portuguese, man.

John: Portuguese, then. I’ve never been to South America, sorry about that.

Marcus: No worries.

John: So what were you promoting in that e-mail?

Marcus: Yeah, I’m going back to Brazil in May, and a Portuguese guy from Portugal, he is going to host a conference in Brazil for 1,000 people and he wanted me to go to this conference for one year now. And like some times, like, I don’t want to go back, you know, like I have so much stuff to do, and like going back it’s two days’ trip, plus ticket, plus all the expenses that I have, so he was saying that if we can promote the event it’s also going to be good for me and like for everybody who’s going to attend. So I was promoting the event and giving a discount, and everybody who buys the coupon, the ticket, from me, I’m going to be spending one hour with everybody after the event, we’re going to be sitting together, like a small mastermind to bring more value to my promotion.

John: Right.

Marcus: So that’s basically like how I do right now. Sorry?

John: Right, I was going to say, because you copied and pasted the e-mail here, how’re you … because … so you’ve got an e-mail list. How are you getting, how are you telling people about this discount? It looks like you’re using video marketing, right?

Marcus: Yeah. So, normally what I do on e-mails is, I try to keep it really short, because a lot of people don’t have time. And if they have like this longest e-mail, they’re going to read just half of it, or they’re going to get bored of you. So like what I do is like normally a short e-mail with three links to a landing page. And inside the e-mail, too, like I put the image of one special moment of my video. So, I think like one that I sent you, I’m not sure if I was sitting on a crocodile.

John: No, I’ve got the one where you’re looking … it looks like you’re at a beach, you’ve got sunglasses on and a red shirt, and you’re looking off into the horizon.

Marcus: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The opener was normally like I was sitting on a crocodile, or there’s a tiger, or there’s a python, or there’s like something really weird to grab attention. In this one I didn’t use it. Like normally I put the image because some times people are going to open your e-mail and if they see that there’s an image they’re more likely to click. That’s from my testing, like what I realized.

John: Interesting. So, even, fine, you’ve been telling … how do you get people, I mean G-mail’s changed this recently. How do you get people to enable the images? How did you … did you find that matters? Or you just put the image in there and it just works better?

Marcus: Yeah, like I put the image and what I do in the HTML code I put like width and height, so like if they cannot see the image they’re going to see that there is an image because there’s a frame around it. So they’re probably going to get curious and click on “enable the image” to see and they’re going to click on it to go to the landing page. And on the landing page, normally my strategy is, I have a graphic of something really weird, like on a crocodile, can be a tiger, I’m going to have one like eating a scorpion, so that’s like bringing the personality to the business. Because if you’re going to talk about business, like nobody wants to see a corporate guy any more. Like, same as you, like your profile picture was like you sticking your tongue out, right?

John: Right.

Marcus: Because like people resonate with, you know, different experiences, and life is all about experiences. So the grabber is something like really cool, like sky diving, bungee jumping, so people are going to see like I’m real, and you know, like I get out of the comfort zone.

John: Okay. So you put this picture on the landing page with a headline? Or …

Marcus: I put the picture on the e-mail and on the video there’s like ten seconds of video-

John: Oh, okay. I see it. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. I can see it. It’s first when the video opens up, that’s your grabber.

Marcus: Yeah, exactly.

John: Okay.

Marcus: You normally can have like a headline, like “The Secret of …” I’m going to explain like where I leave. And normally like on the e-mail I say “I never like showed anyone before.” And I didn’t even publish my Facebook link for everybody, but I think it’s very important for you to know this information, so like check out the video and you can contact me too.” And at the end of the video I gave my Facebook link and what happened was I had dozens … no, I had like hundreds of people adding me on Facebook to know more about lifestyle and how to make money like passive money on-line and live anywhere.

John: Okay. So, you mean they added your Facebook page or they added you personally on Facebook?

Marcus: On my personal account.

John: Okay. And you don’t mind … you don’t mind doing that? You don’t find that you get a whole bunch of messages that then you have to reply to, or do you like doing that?

Marcus: I think that for now I’m going to do a little bit more until I get fed up. But the feedbacks were great, you know, because like sometimes like if everything’s automated and you … you’re making money, like last time I came to Thailand and it was one year just like scratching my balls and making money at the same time, so like you don’t … you didn’t know that you had like some cool feedbacks, you can’t all like see live people thanking you. So that was pretty cool like having some people saying like, “Oh, you’re the reason why I start building my business,” you know, like, “You’re an inspiration,” and all that stuff. And it sounds silly, but for me, like I don’t see them much. So it really like boosts my confidence helping people.

John: Yeah, I can vouch for that. I have, you know, with the e-mails that I send out to my list I often ask for people to reply. I’ll send out, you know, an e-mail, I’ll say, “Quick question,” you know, “are you enjoying these e-mails?” Or, you know, “What’s your feedback on this?” You know, I recently … I’m launching a new community this month and I sent out an e-mail saying, “Do you want to name my community?” And then I got people to reply saying, you know, “Give me ideas for names.” And it’s incredible, and it feels really good too. And people send you e-mails and they interact with you, and, you know, they see that you’re a real person, and you see that, you know, you’ve got a list of … instead of just like numbers on a spreadsheet or on an Analytics account, they’re real people.

Marcus: Exactly, exactly. And what happened to me too was that like people were adding me on Facebook and they’d say, like, “Oh, I bought your course and I really like it.” And a lot of people have like different kind of barriers. Some have like emotional or mentality barriers, and like just talking to them for like five minutes on Facebook, they always say, “Thank you for your time,” you know, like “We appreciate it that you helped me, let’s try for more.” And the funny thing was that two of them, they were like really excited. They said, okay, I’m going to go back to Brazil for this conference. And I have a project, the mansion project that I talked to you before, that I want to give a very like focused training course for five or ten people in the huge-ass mansion from the beach.

And I was telling some people, and they’re saying, like, okay. And it’s going to be expensive. It’s going to be like around $2,000, I think. And one of the guys, you know, said like, “Who do you want me to bring to this conference?” And he was saying some things like, “Yeah, I can bring this one, this one, I can bring some international people, and do you like this guy from Traffic?” I said, “Oh, yeah, I love the guy.” He said, “I can bring him too.” And he was like, “I confirm right now, just get my spot.” It’s going to be like $2,000 and he like confirmed on the spot on Facebook with me.

John: Okay. So, that’s interesting. So the idea here is that people sending e-mails like if you’re trying to have a connection with your audience, try including your personal Facebook link in an e-mail and to see who adds you and what questions they have. It’s kind of another way, I guess you might say it’s customer service, but it gives you … I mean for a small business this could be huge because everyone’s on Facebook. And so you send out an e-mail with a link to your Facebook profile you’re going to get clients, potential clients anyway, or prospects, even customers adding you and talking to you. And that might be annoying, but yeah, like you said, it gives you that connection.

Marcus: Exactly. And the thing that you need to realize is that like Facebook is not personal any more. If you have a business you’re going to have thousands of clients, like just like all the pictures that you’re drinking or like having fun, or doing like silly stuff, like just delete them, you know. Like your Facebook … like I have a bunch of people adding me … they find my Facebook in different places, I don’t know how. So, like, all those like weird pictures like take it off. Take some professional pictures or doing cool stuff, because in this industry we need to try to inspire more people. And you’re not going to inspire people like drinking your ass off all the time. It’s true, right?

John: Definitely, definitely not, definitely not. Okay. So, just to jump back to the e-mail strategy, it sounds like … so let’s just … let me see if I can sum this up and then we’ll see what we can do with it. We’ve got a list of people who like you, they know they can trust Marcus Lucas. Now you find yourself in a situation where you have to get them … you want to get to do something, you want to tell them about this conference that’s in Brazil. And so the strategy that you’re using is you record a video, you have a grabber at the start of the video, which is some sort of attention-getting element. It could be a tiger, it could be anything, really, it could be a tiger, whatever. And then you basically write an e-mail, a very short, to-the-point e-mail, which has a bit of copy about the video, and then an actual picture of the video with a big “play” button on it, and then if they click that they go to the landing page with the video and then a button that takes them to the sales page, and then there is also a link to a Facebook link.

So this is a great way, it sounds like, to really generate some … what’s the word … to really pre-sell, it’s a great way to pre-sell people on buying the product. So instead of just saying, “Hey, this is a great new product, click here then go and buy it,” you record a video instead and then you tell them about it and then they go buy it.

Marcus: Exactly. And also, on the e-mail you never say exactly what the video’s about. You give … okay, I’ve got to teach you how to-

John: Give me an example … like you tease them, right?

Marcus: Yeah. There was one, it was saying like, “If you know this a whole new world is going to open up for you.” And then I had guys, like, “This was very important for me, for my business, and for my professional growth. And if you learn this it’s going to be amazing.

Marcus: Okay. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, so if you learn this a whole new world is going to open up for you. And I have like the picture, and then, okay, here’s your link again, like just make sure you watch this video because I might take it down in a couple of days. So like people click there, they’re going to see the grabber, and then I have a message. “Hi, guys, today I have a message for you.” I believe it’s really important for my growth to know a lot of different kind of people for international businesses, to get the best information out there in English. And it’s to learn English. Right? Because if you see the amount of information that we have in Portuguese it’s very, very limited, comparing to the amount of knowledge in English. And especially, America built the Internet, they built computers, like they built everything. So like the top stuff is going to be in English. And then I was promoting a course for people to start learning English, talking about procrastination. And I almost say, like, it’s you life, you know, like I can give you the message but if you don’t do anything your life is going to be the same.

And also, like I show the place where I am, I’m [inaudible 17:55] and all this stuff. So, yes, some people are probably not going to like it, but what I realized, when I show my face on these videos, it’s more likely that people are not going to be negative towards me, because they’re going to see that I’m a real person. Because if you have like a sales copy … a video sales copy, or like a PowerPoint presentation, and people don’t know you, they might say, oh, that’s bullshit, you know, I don’t need to learn English. Okay, if you don’t want to learn English, you’re going to be in Brazil where you know you pay three times more for a car than you pay in America. And like you’re paying 40% tax over like crappy products, over your life, like the Government is fucking you. I said fuck again.

John: Don’t worry about it. Okay. Now, can I link to this … do you mind if I link to the learning page?

Marcus: Let me see.

John: I’m at the learning page right now.

Marcus: Okay.

John: https://www.bufalosgeradoresdedinheiro.com.br. That’s good Portuguese, right?

Marcus: Yeah.

John: How do you say it? How is it meant to be said?

Marcus: [Portuguese] Bufalosgeradoresdedinheiro. But the thing is, like this name is a crappy name, man. And people are saying, like, oh, I need to have the best name for my product. And this name is crappy. It means Buffalo Moneymakers, or something like that. And the thing was, I made a mistake on the name. You know the Wall Street bull? They have an iconic statue …

John: Yeah, yeah.

Marcus: Yeah, like I was thinking about bull and I translated wrongly. It’s not buffalo, it’s like, toro. So, like I made a huge mistake on that, but it’s still selling, you know? So like a lot of people get stuck to on like finding the perfect name, and sometimes you don’t even need the perfect name to start building something awesome.

John: Yeah, it sounds like you don’t need the name at all.

Marcus: Yeah, it was a huge mistake and I just realized like six months after I was selling, because people were like giving some critiques on it. Like whatever, people are going to criticize anything.

John: Okay, okay. That’s interesting, man. So, it sounds like, I mean, this is a really simple strategy, you know? I’m going to test this out next week. I’m in the midst of a product launch right now, so I’m going to do a few videos Marcus Lucas style, do a grabber, and do some cool stuff for my videos. I like that idea.

Marcus: And one thing I also recommend is like if you’re going to promote to someone else you need to give something special for them to buy from you. Like give a bonus, like a one-on-one consultation, like whatever, you need to have because if not they’re going to see your video and they’re going to like search for another affiliated that’s giving a better bonus.

John: Right.

Marcus: So you need to find something really special that they want. And one way is like you can survey them, like be talking for 30 minutes on a topic and they’re going to help you the most they can.

John: Okay. So it sounds like, I mean, the way you’re doing it is you’ve broken this down. It’s really simple. It’s not that hard, you know, you record a video, you write an e-mail about it, and you tease them, so this is called teaser copy, and you would talk about the concept, you kind of like, “Man, in this video I’m going to tell you about the number-one thing that I learned, that changed everything. Now this number one-thing was …” you know, blah, blah, blah. And you just tease them about it like that, and you give them the video.

Marcus: Yeah, but it needs to be genuine, it needs to be honest. And like honestly, English was the main thing. I wouldn’t go to Japan, I wouldn’t go to the Philippines, or wouldn’t travel internationally for some because it’s English. So like it needs to be honest and genuine, you know, like-

John: It needs to be a real secret. It can’t just be fake.

Marcus: Yeah, because see, that was the number-one thing. And you go there, oh, learn how to do advertising on classified … electrical classifieds … what the fuck? You know, it needs to be like genuine.

John: Okay, okay. Interesting, all right. We’re right on time now, so before we finish up, though, if people want to go and learn more about you, I don’t think we don’t have too many Portuguese listeners, though. Do you have a website where people can go to learn more about Marcus? Is there an English-speaking website out there? Or can we only send them to your [Portuguese]?

Marcus: Oh, my God.

John: I’m trying, I’m trying.

Marcus: I’m going to call all my audience, okay, let’s start bitching about McIntyre, because he needs to learn Portuguese. Yeah, like you guys can probably get me on Facebook. You know, like, you know it’s not private, if you want to share some information it’s Facebook.com/marcus.lucas.silva. I don’t know if you’re going to have the link on your website …

John: Yeah. I’ll put … any links that I mention in the show will end up in the show notes at themcmethod.com. So, your Facebook link is going to be on my website, if that’s okay with you.

Marcus: Yeah, it’s fine, it’s fine. Another one is … I’m going to start a blog now, it’s in Portuguese, unfortunately, but I’m probably going to translate to English in the future.

John: Okay.

Marcus: That’s … I don’t know even if I say it because nobody is going to understand the name of the blog. But it’s [Portuguese].

John: I have no idea how to spell that.

Marcus: Yeah, like you’re going to have to put the link there, but like it means like “digital freedom.” That’s probably good. Ultimate way to find freedom, like, in my life it was how I achieved that. It’s like having freedom … trying to build businesses in different places. You know, like for people that are insecure about what they’re going to do in life, I just look around and see businesses, like business owners from like so many countries, like here in Thailand we have like British guys building companies all the time, and Chinese restaurants, like Japanese restaurants, like all this stuff, but we don’t see Brazilians. Or, like even you, if you’re in a dorm or in a room, like we can do much more, you know? Like we can conquer the world, basically, you know, let’s try for that. Don’t think locally but think globally and everything’s going start changing for you.

John: Right, right. That’s an interesting note to end on that. Just quickly, I’m curious. What … have you any big plans coming up in the future? In ten years’ time, what’s Marcus going to be doing?

Marcus: I really want to inspire more people. I think I talked to you about a non-profit organization that I’m trying to create, where I want to get this really cool team of entrepreneurs from everywhere and every year go to a developing country and pitch kids on mentality and businesses, like on-line and off-line, to really make an impact, you know. If we achieve something we can pitch. You know, that’s going to be a great experience. Plus, in the list, like Brazil, Kenya, Thailand, probably going to be India, so it’s going to be like a great, great experience and I really want to have a great impact in the world.

John: Okay.

Marcus: And I think like everybody can do that to. Just like need to shift the mentality of like serving people, and not just like me, me, me, I want to buy a new car, I want to buy new shoes, like, come on, man, let’s just make a difference and start serving more people and everything will start happening to you.

John: Okay. Okay, so, and if they want to get in touch with you they can get you on Facebook.

Marcus: Yes, sure.

John: All right, man. Well, let’s end here, thanks for coming on the show.

Marcus: Thank you, I’m really happy to be here.