Sales Funnel Radio SFR 290: How To Position Content
Consistent publishing can feel like a chore. Lemme show you how I position my shows to attract future buyers.
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*SPOILER ALERT* … it’s for my new show!
ONE FUNNEL AWAY STORIES #THE BEGINNING
Today, I wanna share with you WHY I believe it makes sense for me to create another show... (or *ahem* #3) 😉
My friend, welcome back, I'm excited for you to be here.
Six weeks ago, (or something like that), I was at Russell Brunson's Inner Circle, and I was thinking to myself, "What can I teach that would be valuable for the room?"
For a while, I’ve had this theory about why ClickFunnels exploded.
So I just wanna do a quick and dirty on this to teach you my theory, and then I want you to see why it makes sense for me to create another show.
Now, I understand that One Funnel Away is 100% a trademark of ClickFunnels.
I had to do some fancy footwork and work with them in order to be able to use their logo on my show.
You cannot just go out and just create stuff with other people's intellectual property.
That's NOT what I'm telling you at all.
HERE’S MY THEORY
We all read these books like:
- Expert Secrets
- Play Bigger
- Blue Ocean Strategy
... and all these books teach that there’s a red ocean and that your entire goal is to create a blue ocean.
So, if that's true...
What is ClickFunnel's red ocean?
If ClickFunnels is a new opportunity, what was the old opportunity?
That was the question that's been on my mind for a while!
So I started asking…
- If ClickFunnels is the red or the blue ocean, what was ClickFunnels’ red ocean?
- What is the market that ClickFunnels was born out of?
I started thinking back to the stories that I had heard Russell tell, and I was like:
"Oh, my gosh, the market, the ocean that ClickFunnels was born out of was the website market."
And if you are like, "I don't know about that."
Go back and listen to the Funnel Hacks Webinars…
- These are webinars that originally sold ClickFunnels.
- These are webinars that got ClickFunnels past tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
Q: What is it that ClickFunnels was fighting against?
A: Websites.
HOW CLICKFUNNELS WAS ALMOST ABANDONED
Now, the story goes...
ClickFunnels was almost an abandoned project
(If you’re thinking, "Stephen, how does this relate to a new show?" I'll get to that in just a moment, just stick with me for a second.)
... the product was amazing, but they were still trying to figure out how to sell it because...
- Creating
- Selling
… are two separate activities.
Anyway, Mike Filsaime reaches out to ClickFunnels and says,
"Hey, you got that new thing ClickFunnels, come on my stage and come sell it."
Russell's like, "I don't know man, people aren't buying it right now."
Mike said, "Come on man, I’ve already told everyone you're going to."
So Russell agreed to do it…
This was the fifth or sixth time that Russell had tried to create a sales letter for ClickFunnels.
There’s a key lesson right there...
Even Russell's first few launches for ClickFunnels didn't work out.
#Mind-blowing.
So think about this…
Russell goes to Mike Filsaime's event; he makes tweaks and adjustments to the actual offer, and suddenly - there's a stage rush.
People are running to get an account with ClickFunnels.
Q: What made the big difference? Why did it work so well that time?
A: ...
Russells messaging had become anti-website.
He's like, "Hey, websites, I'm gonna fight against you."
And ClickFunnels starts blowing up.
On the flight back, Russell Brunson grabs his phone and says, "Hey, I've figured it out - we're all gonna get rich. The metrics are there - we're gonna do this thing."
Over the next little bit, he pretty much starts shutting everything else down to go all and focus on ClickFunnels - which blows up and becomes what it is today.
FIND YOUR NEXT MARKET?
Now, eventually, ClickFunnels started running out of dream buyers in ‘the website space’…
(Russell’s NOT trying to sell EVERYONE in the website space - he's selling to a little bit of the red ocean where his blue ocean customer exist.)
Q: So what does Russell do?
A: He goes out and finds the next market.
Q: Who else does ClickFunnels sell to?
A: ...
- Affiliates.
- Retail
- People who do software.
- MLM or network marketing.
- B2B.
I remember one particular day... (this is when I worked for him still), Russell came back into his office and he goes, "Dude!"
He’d just come from back from speaking and pitching ClickFunnels at Grant Cardone's event for the first time - so it was the first 10X event…
As he’s about to get on the plane, someone runs up to him and says:
"Oh man, you did so awesome, all these people bought ClickFunnels - the only reason I didn't buy is that you didn't say it was for B2B people."
And Russell was like, "Oh, my gosh it totally is for B2B people, are you serious?"
Q: So what did we do?
A: We added B2B to all the categories on our sales letters.
So you have to understand…
- What Russell and these ClickFunnels did.
- Why I believe ClickFunnels has exploded.
My theory is that ClickFunnels’ growth is so immense because when they started running out of traffic a market they did NOT try to find more people in the same ocean…
They didn't make the customer circle of the original market even bigger…
Instead, they just found a new source of hot, hot, hot, mega ridiculous insanely hot traffic in a NEW market!
When you run out of buyers, you don't go cooler in your messaging, you find a NEW market.
POW!
Replay that a *MILLION* times! 😉
This is a BIG lesson.
When you're running out of people to sell to, don't cool down your messaging.
Because that's...
- Very Hard
- Expensive
- Not Easy
HOW TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS
When people say, "I'm running cold Facebook ads..."
I’m like, “Hopefully, not!”
That's NOT how ClickFunnels grew.
Q: Did you know that ClickFunnels didn't even have Facebook ads running for the first year?
Instead, they made all that money, this huge amount of change, just doing EXACTLY what I'm teaching you right here...
They found somebody who had a big pot of their dream customers in different spaces…
- Affiliates
- Website
- Retail
- Software
- ...or whatever
You don't try to cool down your messaging to capture more and more of the same market…
… you switch markets.
You go and you find your dream customer who's attending a different market…
I don't wanna get too deep into this, but a market is NOT a person.
If someone asks, “Who's your dream market?”
There's no such thing.
A market is a location not a person.
You need to find your dream person who's frequenting another location - that's exactly how ClickFunnels exploded and blew up...
ClickFunnels slowly adapted their sales message to tons and tons of markets.
I dropped this theory out at the Inner Circle.
I was like, "Hey, I've had this theory, what do you think - 'cause I can't disprove it."
Everyone loved it which was great.
HOW DO MARKETS THRIVE?
Now you may be thinking..,
“So Stephen, what does this have to do with launching a show?”
Let me explain..,
If One Funnel Away has blown ClickFunnels up bigger than anything else they've ever done ever, *ALMOST*... we have to understand a few things about markets...
- A market survives when it has an ecosystem around it.
- A market survives when there's continual story that people are consuming inside of it.
The reason I'm saying this is because there's A LOT of markets that don't survive.
Let’s take the example of Beanie Babies, Pogs, or disposable camera accessories...
Q: Who wants to go in with me on disposable camera accessories? Anybody?
A: No, it's dumb!
Q: Why would you say that it's stupid to go to the disposable camera accessories market?
A: A] That market is freaking small. B] There’s no money in it. C] There's no story around it. People don't believe 'em.
You see what I'm saying?
There are things that keep a market alive and things that kill a market.
And I wanna make sure that who I'm attaching myself to is a market that is strong…
... and that's what I teach you at OfferMind.
That's why I need you to come to OfferMind next year -'cause while I lead as The Offer Guy (and I am)...
What I really teach you how to do (and what makes offer creation simple) is market positioning.
When you know how to position yourself in the market, the offer is easy.
So the reason why I'm doing the One Funnel Away Stories show, (and the reason WHY I've been forking out my own cash to go do this), is because…
- OFA has caused ClickFunnels market to grow at a speed that is nearly incomprehensible.
- Their market is getting larger and larger and larger and larger
- OFA is convincing people who were never planning on being ClickFunnels customers to be customers.
- It's actually expanding their little bit of blue market inside of the markets that they go serve - and that's NOT easy to pull off .
Most markets don't ever figure that out - which is why they die.
I'm hoping this not too much of a super techy episode, but I need you to understand why I'm doing this.
WHY THE ONE FUNNEL AWAY STORIES SHOW?
- The OFA Stories banner cost me a 1000 bucks
- It's gonna cost me about 15 grand a month to run and promote the One Funnel Away Story Show.
Q: Why on earth would I try to do this?
A: The One Funnel Away Challenge is so powerful for brand new users - so I wanna make sure that the success stories that people are having become the forefront of the One Funnel Away Challenge.
There are tons of reasons why.
- For me, strategically it makes sense - because now I am getting associated with the things in the front, (I’m being open with you guys about that).
Why wouldn't I do that?
I'm a marketer baby, my role is NOT to create noise, it is to align with where noise is.
*Put that on a T-shirt*
As a marketer, my job is to find where the noise currently is...
Q: Where's the noise?
A: One Funnel Away.
Q: Does it work?
A: Oh, yeah, (when people actually do it).
IS CLICKFNNELS ONLY FOR INFO PRODUCTS?
I just interviewed a guy who uses ClickFunnels to fill his private horse training business - (he fixes people's horses is what he told me).
I’ve also interviewed a...
- Hairdresser
- Photographer
- Coach for dads
- Personal trainer
- Copywriter
- Studio gym owner
Gone are the days of people saying ClickFunnels is just for information products.
#No! #Done.
One of the reasons why I'm doing the One Funnel Away Stories is because I wanna take the experiences of people who are doing the work we're telling them to... and share with them with the world.
The fact that I'm creating the One Funnel Away Stories is actually helping the ClickFunnels market survive with an even stronger ecosystem.
.... I'm doing it on purpose.
If no one is talking about these successes, no one would know or think that it works - so I'm gonna talk about it.
So real fast, I just wanna share a few ways that I'm creating the show - so you can see how I actually do this stuff.
I wanna share with you how I pull this stuff off.
MY CONTENT STRATEGY
Q: So, Stephen, how are you gonna create the OFA Stories show?
A: Well, first of all, I need to treat the show like a product - 'cause it is.
So I say:
- Here is the market that I'm going to serve and its name is ClickFunnels
- I want this One Funnel Away Challenge to be sold to ClickFunnels' users and new people coming in.
- So the ‘who’ is someone a little bit less educated or new in this world, (which is great, it's fine, welcome, you found a home).
- It's meant for the people who may not be total diehards yet, maybe they need a few more stories or more examples of how ClickFunnels works in their industry.
- Maybe they're not marketers and they're like, "I don’t wanna think like that. Let me go see who else is a horse trainer. Oh, check it out, here's a horse trainer pulling off ClickFunnels."
The show is NOT gonna be a One Funnel Away commercial... that's NOT what the show is.
If the show was a continual promo of One Funnel Away, that would be so annoying.
Instead, I'm taking the entrepreneurial stories of people in the OFA and I interviewed 'em (split-screen) deep on their journey and business experience.
WANNA JOIN ME ON ONE FUNNEL AWAY STORIES?
If you've taken the One Funnel Away Challenge and you’re thinking, "Hey, I'd be interested in being interviewed on that show," I'd love to have you.
You gotta reach out to Shane Larson - he’s the guy running the One Funnel Away Challenge…
(Shane, you don't know I'm doing this - sorry, buddy, you're about to get a lot of people pinging you. 😂 )
I use a template to ask very similar questions to every person that I interview.
(If you're not on YouTube right now and you're listening or reading this, I would strongly encourage you coming over to watch this one. A few of these episodes are better when seen.)
MY CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY
Here’s how it goes…
- The interview happens on video with templated questions.
- The video interview acts as the base medium and we turn it into a TON of content.
- We grab an interview image.
- We grab the audio.
- We write the blog.
- We have Instagram and other platforms.
- We obviously have iTunes and other things like that.
- Obviously, there's Facebook - 'cause they're social platforms, that's another category.
- That's obviously the kingpin and then there's a whole bunch underneath it.
There are Kingpin categories…
- Audio
- Image
- Written
- Social
Everything gets syndicated and pushed all over the place.
My role is to…
- Create a super awesome intro with a call to action
- Do the interviews
- Create a final call to action
...
...so now, this becomes the episode.
Q: And then what do I do?
A: I shove it at my audience and at all the other audiences that ClickFunnels serves - that's who I’m targeting.
Now the reason I'm sharing with you is that if you were to say,
- "Oh, this show doesn't work very well for other people in internet marketing…”
It's NOT meant for them.
- "Oh, this show doesn't work very well for those people who are this or that or the other."
You understand that, just like a product, you have to have the base questions for the show…
- The who?
- Where they're trying to go?
- The problem they're running into as they go to their goal?
And you position it so it's targeted at very specific people.
I'm gonna go for this person and then this person and then this person. I'm gonna go with these individuals, and the ClickFunnels space - that's who it's for.
PUBLISHING MAGIC
There's this magic that happens when you create content or decide to continually publish - I promise it will change your life.
...it's incredible.
The magic thing is that when you have laser clarity on who you serve, only then do you…
- Get people to listen to you
- Get the fringes.
By having ultra clarity on who I serve, I actually get people that are out on the fringes, the people that aren't necessarily the ones I was gonna go for.
If I try to target everybody I don't get anybody.
You understand how targeting works like that?
You have to be hyper clear on who you serve and who you don't.
And funny enough, people work to try to qualify to fit in those categories and they work hard to be with you.
My Best Buyers Always Come From My Content, Not My Ads
HOW MY CONTENT STRATEGY STARTED
When I first launched Sales Funnel Radio (my first show), it was just me and it was a $5/month account at libsyn.com…
I’d ride my bike into Russell Brunson's office 'cause I was still broke, (I was just out of college and really haven't any money at that point)...
My goal was to be in the seat at 6:00 AM - sometimes I was a little late (like 6:10) but usually, at 6:00 AM, I was there.
I would unplug Russell's microphone from his computer and plug it into my little laptop (which I traded funnels for in college)...
… and just started talkin' and tellin' stories.
The reason I'm bringing this up is that all this looks really complicated…
And if you're like, "I don't understand this!”
I don't want that to be the reason you choose NOT to publish.
So I'm sharing that with you because the success of the show has come out of the consistency of it and me trying to…
- Solve legitimate problems per episode
- Create value
- Get people interviewed on the show
… it’s this amazing thing.
And so, if you're like, "I don't understand this?”
I'm just understanding it myself
So think of it as like Publishing 4.0... but as I've seen these different patterns come together now I'm like:
"Well, crap. My whole role here is to know who I serve, where they're going, the problems they're hitting along the way”
That's NOT just true for products or offers, it’s true for content too.
And I was like: "Oh, my gosh, that's amazing.
Oh, and by the way, that's how ClickFunnels exploded by knowing who they serve and only doing one market at a time - holy smokes!”
I learned more and more as I went along the way.
So this is certainly more of a techy episode but I'm hoping it's shown you like, "Oh, my gosh, that's why he's launching MORE shows."
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER SALES FUNNEL RADIO GETS THE AXE?
- There’ll be a show targeted at the ClickFunnels community… aka One Funnel Away Stories
I don't know another person that's as big a fan of ClickFunnels as me.
If you go to onefunnelawaystories.com you can get on the waiting list for that.
- Also targeted at this community, and broader internet marketing community is the show that will be coming out (as soon as we finish the studio) called pursuitofprofit.com.
Yes, you can go to that show, it’s gonna be super cool.
And then also targeted this community (because we're all made up of different people and we have different likes, dislikes, tastes)...
I love my crowd here.
- We’re launching a new show called Modern Downline Radio.
Be real with me here, how many of you guys have actually tried a multilevel marketing or network marketing thing in the past?
(Which is totally fine, if it's not your thing - whatever then, don't do it.)
But if it is, I grow mine without looking at it because of funnels - so that's the focus of the show.
I’m gonna teach modern downline and product sales growth strategies.
It's cool because a lot of it's like case study stuff -'cause that's what I do right now and I don't really do any work for it...
(I did at one point but the work is perpetual.)
I’M NOT THE FUNNEL GUY!
I'm not trying to position myself as the funnel guy.
That's the other reason why Sales Funnel Radio is going away for as far as my involvement with it - the content will stay up 'cause, come on, that's part of the power of the content.
Secret MLM Hacks Radio is dropping out for several rebranding reasons, which is why the other show’s coming out.
I'm so excited for Pursuit of Profit - it's a studio show, it's gonna be side-by-side similar to Impact Theory.
I wanna fly people in and sit down side-by-side with them in a studio to ask them about their profit models.
- I wanna ask them how did you make profit?
- Show me your profit model.
I wanna know because most people are like, "What's your business model?"
But most people don't know what a business model even is.
And so I wanna ask 'em what that is and have them come in and teach that - it's gonna be super cool.
Take a lot to get off the ground on that one, but I'm super pumped about it.
We're working to launch One Funnel Away stories, January 1st, (or at least that first week-ish)...
I actually just got off of Voxer with Russell…
The show itself will probably start with Russell telling more of his story of being One Funnel Away.
We'll most likely have also Julie on as one of the other coaches.
We'll have me on here as one of the other coaches with my One Funnel Away story.
TAG ME!
Hopefully, you enjoyed the blog?
I’d love to get a review if you guys wouldn't mind - I’ve poured a lot into the show and it’s been super, super fun.
Certainly, I’m sad to part ways but at the same time, it's the natural evolution.
So let me know what you liked about the show, and please do me the favor of screenshot-ing any part of it, then tag me on social media, and say...
"Steve Larsen, this is my favorite thing about that episode."
Your feedback has actually has helped me see more of what you like than pretty much anything else.
So I wanna keep making the stuff that's helpful to you.
Thanks so much… and I'll see you in the next time.
CAPITALISM SWAG.COM
“Stephen, why do you call yourself the Capitalist Pig?”
Ahh, there are several reasons...
I had a lot of beliefs around money that were NOT correct, and eventually, in order to actually launch, I needed to change my relationship with money.
It's one of the BIGGEST steps that most entrepreneurs need to take.
So I wear this shirt that says Capitalist Pig, loud and proud, as a reminder of the power and responsibility that we've been given as entrepreneurs.
I defend my message that you should get rich on purpose, and it's NOT evil, and I am vehemently against socialism.
I believe true change will come from entrepreneurs and society, NOT the government.
In the words of Grant Cardone, "Money can't buy happiness, but broke can't buy anything."
- I do not believe that the government should take care of me, an able-bodied person.
- I do not believe in unwarranted handouts.
- I DO believe in God and I believe in helping those who cannot help themselves.
- I believe God would rather me be rich than poor.
Capitalism fosters personal growth, and God has been all along this journey.
I believe the pursuit of riches creates strength of mind.
- I can do more as a rich person.
- I can fight louder for what I believe in as a rich person.
- I can help more people as a rich person.
- I have more time to work on my weaknesses as a rich person.
- I have more power to hire the right people to help me grow as a rich person.
In the words of Mark Cuban, "I don't care what anyone says, being rich is a good thing."
Money doesn't change me. Money amplifies me.
- If I'm a jerk when I'm poor, I will a much bigger jerk when I'm rich.
- If I'm charitable, and human-oriented when I'm poor, I'll have the power to bless in a massive capacity when I'm rich.
If this is resonating with you, and you believe the same, go get your Capitalist Pig t-shirt, at capitalismswag.com.
My friends, Get Rich, Give Back.
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