DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online

by Russell Brunson

More often than not, it’s a FUNNEL problem.

One of my mentors, Dan Kennedy, says, “Ultimately, the business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins.”

This book will also show you how to communicate with your customers in a way that makes them naturally want to ascend up your ladder of offerings and give you more money as you provide them more value.

After what seemed like hours, I wrote down two words: Who? Result? I asked myself, “WHO is the person I really want to work with?” Up to that point in my business, I had been trying to sell to anyone and everyone I could. While that sounds smart at first, it left me tired, frustrated, and empty inside. After I got a good idea of WHO I would ideally work with if I had that choice, I started to think about the RESULT I would want to give them. I asked myself, “Where could I serve my customer at the highest level?” I realized it wasn’t through a product or a service. Rather, it was by giving them a result that would change their lives. That result is where I wanted to take them.

A few minutes later, I added two more words to the board: Where? Bait? WHERE are these people? How can I find them online? What type of BAIT can I create to attract my dream client and repel everyone else? These questions eventually became the outline for what I now call “The Secret Formula,” and it’s really the first step that you HAVE to take before you can grow any company.

Question #1: Who Is Your Dream Client? The first question you have to ask yourself is, Who do I actually want to work with? Most of us start with a product idea, never thinking about who we want as clients, customers, vendors, and associates. But these are the people you will be interacting with day in and day out. You’ll probably spend more time with these people than your own friends and family. You choose your significant other carefully, so why wouldn’t you take the same time and care in deciding who your dream client or customer will be? If you’re just getting started, this may not seem important. But I promise you that if you don’t consciously choose your dream client, one day you will wake up like I did, working with people who exhaust you and wishing that someone could fire you from the business you created.

After I had successfully launched my first software company, a lot of people took notice of my success online and started asking me how I was making money. Because I saw the demand, I thought it would be fun to teach others how to start their own businesses online. The good thing was there were a LOT of people who wanted to start businesses, and we made a lot of money teaching them. But the downside was that most of them didn’t have any money (and couldn’t invest in the higher-ticket things I wanted to sell). And most had no business experience, so I had to spend tons of time on the fundamentals, and that drove me crazy (which is why I didn’t want to get out of bed in the mornings). I had so much value I wanted to provide people—showing how I had scaled my companies, teaching conversion secrets and how we structure our funnels—but 99% of my time was spent showing them how to buy a domain and set up hosting.

I realized I had overlooked some pretty important questions: Who are my dream clients? What do they look like? What are they passionate about? What are their goals, dreams, and desires? After about a week of thinking about the WHO question, I sat down and created two customer avatars: one for the men I wanted to work with and one for the women I wanted to work with. For the women, I picked a name and wrote it down: Julie. Then I listed out the things I knew about Julie. She is successful and driven; she has a message to share; she values her personal growth over money; and she’s already grown her business to at least five figures a year. Next, I wrote down the name Mike. Next to Mike’s name, I wrote out the things I knew about Mike. He is a former athlete. At some point, he has helped to change someone’s life in a small way and wants to learn how to help more people. He values growth over money, and he’s already built his business to at least five figures a year. Then I went to Google images and typed in Julie and the characteristics I had written out. Within minutes, I found a picture that looked like the women in my mind. I printed it out and hung it on my wall. I did the same for Mike, and within minutes, I had both pictures of my dream clients hanging on my wall. This may seem like a silly exercise, but it’s important that you do it anyway. Really spend some time thinking about who you want to work with. Write out their characteristics and then go find an actual pictur...

Question #2: Where Can You Find Them? The next question in the Secret Formula is WHERE can you find this ideal man or woman? Where do they hang out online? Are they on Facebook or Instagram? What groups are they part of? What email newsletters do they subscribe to? What blogs do they read? Are they reading The New York Times or The Huffington Post? What other interests do they have? Do they like sports or the arts? How about fishing or race cars? If you don’t know the who, it will be hard to find out where your perfect client can be found. So make sure you know exactly who you’re trying to attract. Then just write down a few places you think the prospect might hang out online.

Question #3: What Bait Will You Use to Attract Them? Once we know where the dream customers are, we have to create the right bait to attract them. Your bait could be a physical book, a CD, DVD, or an audio recording—anything that your dream customer would pay attention to and want. As my company moved away from selling to beginners and toward attracting dream clients, our first step was to create new bait that would attract “Mike” or “Julie.” So we created a book called DotComSecrets Labs: 108 Proven Split Test Winners. This bait worked great for us, because most beginners don’t know what a split test is. But we KNEW that Julie and Mike (our DREAM customers) would know what these terms mean and they would be hungry to get their hands on the book. Within days of launching this new offer, we had thousands of dream clients lining up to work with us. When you find out what your dream clients want, it becomes very easy to attract them. Throughout this book, we’re going to talk more about creating the right bait. Right now, just realize the bait has to match what your dream customer wants.

Question #4: What Result Do You Want To Give Them? Once you’ve hooked your dream customers with the perfect bait, the last question is what RESULT do you want to give them? I’m not talking about what product or service you want to sell them. A business is NOT about products and services. A business is about what result you can get for your clients. Once you (and they) understand that concept, then price is no longer a barrier.

For me, I knew that the best way I can serve my dream client is to send my team to their office and help build out their sales funnels, hire and train their sales team, and set up systems to drive consistent leads into the company. That is how I can have the deepest impact and serve the client at the highest level. Ideally, it’s where I would like to take all of my customers. That type of service is not cheap, but the results I can deliver at that level are amazing. To put it in perspective, for that service, my company charges a retainer and a percentage of sales, which combined equal one million dollars. I understand that many of my customers won’t be able to pay me for that level of service (which is why we develop other products and services), but understanding where you ultimately want to take the dream client is the key to this step. Imagine that your clients could pay you anything to get a desired result. What, then, would you ...

One of the first things I explain to people when I start working with them is the concept of a Value Ladder, and it’s the first thing you have to build out before you can start working on any sales funnel. If you look at how we structure it, you’ll see that on the left hand axis we have value, and on the bottom axis we show the price (fig. 2.3).

Now, on the top right hand corner of this graph, you’ll see the big $ sign. This is where you want to take your client. This is where you can provide them the most value—and also charge them the most.

Oh yeah, and just like the dentist, no Value Ladder is complete without a good continuity program. There are many ways to structure your continuity program. It could be organized around software, membership sites, or ongoing coaching, but it should be something you can bill for each month. That residual income will become the lifeblood of your business.

Now I want to pause here, because most companies I work with, even if they think they have a Value Ladder, really only have part of one. Almost always, I spend my time working with them on adding products and services to the front of their Value Ladders, as well as the back.

You might be selling a book right now on the frontend and have no idea how to build up a backend Value Ladder. Well, what other value can you provide to people? Can you be more hands-on with them? Can you offer more personal attention? Can you provide ancillary services or physical products that enhance your primary offer?

The Value Ladder is the key to building your marketing funnels and mastering everything else I’m going to teach you in this book. This system does not work if all you have is one thing—like a book or an adjustment. You need to be able to build out a full Value Ladder. Most businesses I look at have one or two pieces of the ladder, but they rarely have all four. Once we add in the missing pieces, the business can start to expand dramatically. There’s no end to the level of backend services and experiences you can add. If you keep providing more and more value, people will spend more and more money to keep working with you.

Imagine my shock and excitement the first time someone said yes! A percentage of your audience will always want to pay you the premium to get more value.

The only limit to your value offerings is your imagination. Keep thinking of higher and higher levels of service, and you can keep charging more and more money. There’s always something else you can offer.

So instead of trying to convince someone to buy the most expensive offering right away, we build a funnel that will help us to do two things: 1 Provide value to each customer at the unique level of service that he or she can afford. 2 Make money and be profitable while identifying our dream clients who can afford our highest offer.

A funnel moves people through the sales process. They enter as prospective customers (traffic), and your job is to convert as many as possible into repeat customers by selling to them at the front, middle, and backend of your funnel.

When I started to feel the pinch, I was lucky enough to have some amazing mentors who taught me the importance of building a deeper funnel with more offerings. The deeper your funnel is, and the more things you can offer your clients, the more each customer will be worth to you. And the more they are worth to you, the more you can spend to acquire them.

One of the coolest things about the Internet is the power of congregations. These seemingly unimportant groups of people gathering together in little corners of the Internet make it possible for people like you and me to get into business quickly and be successful without all the barriers and expensive hurdles of traditional media.

Now, there are three questions you have to ask yourself to find and really tap into these congregations.

QUESTION #1: WHO IS YOUR TARGET MARKET?

Because marketers are now able to target so many different characteristics so accurately, people have lost all patience for generalized, mass media messages. Consumers expect and demand that your advertising be extremely relevant to them. Say you own a local pet food company and your advertising speaks to women in Tampa who love dogs. If I’m a man in Tampa who loves cats, you might want to create a separate message for me. It doesn’t matter that both target markets can get food for their animals at your store. Consumers want and expect messaging that speaks directly to them, or they will likely ignore you.

QUESTION #2: WHERE IS YOUR TARGET MARKET CONGREGATING?

Finding traffic on the Internet really is as easy as answering these questions. Marketers try to make it complicated with all of the technology that helps direct the traffic to certain web pages. But it’s your knowledge of the people in your market that makes the technology useful. I like to think of the Internet as a huge mountain, and your ideal customer—your traffic—is gold inside that mountain. Your job as a marketer is to find the gold and mine it out. When you start mining, you’re just digging around, poking and prodding, trying to find where the gold is. You know there’s gold in that mountain somewhere, but you’re not sure where. So you’re looking around, trying this area and that area, and all of a sudden, you might dig up a few nuggets. Typically, gold clumps together in a vein running through the mountain (like a congregation). So when you find a little bit of gold, you can dig deeper and find more. You’ll soon see that the vein runs deep into the mountain. If you keep following that vein, you can mine out all the gold. It’s worth taking the time to do a thorough job in the poking and prodding stage. Because if you can find exactly where your target market is hanging out, then pulling out the gold is simply a matter of putting a relevant message in front of them and directing them to your offer.

QUESTION #3: HOW CAN YOU GET A CUSTOMER TO LEAVE THE CONGREGATION AND CHECK OUT YOUR PAGE?

How can you divert attention away from what your prospect is currently doing? I call this process the Enquirer Interrupt.

Your job as the entrepreneur is to understand the strategy behind these DotComSecrets and then hire the Facebook guy to run Facebook ads and the Google guy to run Google ads. To this day, I’ve never once run a Google or a Facebook ad, yet I’ve made millions on both platforms. I understand the strategy, and then I set up systems and hire people who are great at the tactics. In this way, we all do what we are best at.

There are only three types of traffic: 1 Traffic you control 2 Traffic you don’t control 3 Traffic you OWN

Your one and ONLY goal is to OWN all the traffic you can. That is how you grow your list and increase your sales.

Traffic you own is the BEST kind of traffic. It’s your email list or your followers, readers, customers, etc. I call this the traffic that I “own” because I can send out an email, post a message to my followers, or make a blog post, and I will generate instant traffic. I don’t have to buy it from Google or Facebook. I don’t have to do any PR or SEO. This is my own distribution channel; I can send out messages anytime I want, with no new marketing costs. I can sell things to these people over and over again, and all of that money comes back as pure profit.

Yes, we average about one dollar per month for each name on our email lists. In some of the markets we’re in, the profit is actually a lot higher than that.

You control traffic when you have the ability to tell it where to go. For example, if I purchase an ad on Google, I don’t own that traffic (Google does), but I can control it by buying an ad and then sending those who click on that ad anywhere I want. Any kind of paid traffic is traffic you control, including the following: • Email ads (solo ads, banners, links, mentions) • Pay-per-click ads (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc.) • Banner ads • Native ads • Affiliates and joint ventures

Now, I personally LOVE traffic that I can control, but my big problem is that every time I want more of it, I have to spend more money. So my goal is always to send any traffic that I am going to purchase over to a type of website we call a “squeeze page.”

This squeeze page is a very simple page with ONE goal: to convert traffic that you control into traffic that you own.

There are lots of types of traffic that I don’t control, including: • Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) • Search traffic (search engine optimization or SEO) • Guest blog traffic • YouTube • Guest interviews

Now, just like traffic that I control, my ONLY goal with traffic that I don’t control is also to turn it into traffic that I own. To do this, I try to push all traffic that I don’t control back to my blog.

the next question is, What do you do with the potential customers after they join your email list?

One of the reasons that Subway does so well is because it focuses marketing tactics around an Attractive Character. People trying to lose weight can relate to Jared. They understand his backstory, and they want to be like him. If this guy could lose all that weight just by eating Subway twice a day, then they can too. This same guy has been bringing in business for Subway for over fifteen years!

I kept seeing examples of this trend; the people who related to my stories were the ones who bought my products. So, a few years ago, I started teaching this concept of the Attractive Character. The students who implemented what I’m about to teach you here totally transformed their businesses. All of the major success stories from any of our coaching programs got results by building huge brands and platforms around an Attractive Character.

There are three components to creating an Attractive Character: • Elements • Identity • Storylines

1. Backstory. Every good Attractive Character has to have a backstory. It’s essential if you want results. If you turned on the TV and saw Jared sitting there eating a sub, what would your reaction be? You’d probably think something like, Who’s that annoying skinny guy just sitting there eating subs all day? Without knowing his backstory of amazing weight loss, you would be unable to relate to him. He’d just be a dude eating subs.

You share your backstory because you want people to see where you came from. If they can relate to where you came from, then they will want to follow you to where you are now. If they don’t see the backstory, potential customers won’t follow you or listen to you. You’ll seem untouchable; you won’t seem real to them. However, if they see that you were once in a similar situation, then they instantly identify with you and will follow you. Your story has provided a hook. You can then lay out the path, and they will want to follow that path. The key is that the story has to relate to the product you’re selling somehow. If you’re selling a weight-loss product, you want to talk about a weight-loss backstory.

Now, if you don’t have a backstory that relates to your product, that’s okay. You can find someone else’s backstory and use that instead.

2. Attractive Characters Speak in Parables. Parables are little stories, easy to remember, that illustrate a relevant point.

A parable is a story about something that happened in your Attractive Character’s life. Most people let life pass them by, and they don’t stop to take note of the interesting things that happen to them. But you’re different. You have the ability to use the things that happen throughout your life to teach and inspire others—as well as sell products.