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The value ladder was created to help you figure out what products and services you need to add so that your dream clients move from...
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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 end, middle, and back end of your funnel.
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.
The Attractive Character is the thing that binds people to your value ladder. They come in looking for a result, but they stay because of their relationship with you.
Your Attractive Character helps you build a relationship with your dream customers.
Attractive Characters have a backstory and share it often: People won’t care about any of the success you’ve had, and they won’t follow you or your advice until they know that you’ve been where they are now.
If your chiropractor, dentist, or financial planner told you their origin story about why they were here to serve you, wouldn’t that change your relationship with them? The same is true in every business. Sharing your backstory is one of the fastest ways to build rapport with people.
I tell my stories over and over again to the point I get tired of telling them, but you have to understand that you will get tired of hearing your backstory way before your market gets tired of it, so you need to start sharing it a lot.
Attractive Characters speak in parables: The best teachers in the world teach in parables. Regardless of your religious beliefs, if you’ve read the New Testament, then you’ve seen how the greatest teacher of all time, Jesus Christ, taught almost everything during his ministry in parables. As you’re reading this book, or if you follow me anywhere else online, you’ll notice that I try to teach every concept with some type of parable, or small story, to help my ideas and concepts stick in your mind.
For example, when I teach people about the fact that they can make money selling information products, I don’t just tell them that they can; I tell them the story about how I first did it by selling a DVD teaching people how to make a potato gun. That parable now makes the concept real inside the listener’s mind and helps them remember that concept forever.
He then told me, “Russell, if I gave you that tape for free, you’d never watch it. But because you’ve paid for it, I know you’re going to watch it and learn from it.” And with that, he walked out the door. That night my coach taught me the power of investment, and he was right. Because I had made that investment, I did watch the tape over and over, and I became a better wrestler because of it.
Just know that when you stop teaching only facts and start teaching through parables, your messages will stay with an audience longer. Start building out a Rolodex of parables that you can use again and again.
Attractive Characters share their character flaws:
If you follow the history of comic books, you’ll know that the reason that the Marvel franchise has been able to dominate over DC—even though DC had a huge head start on them—is because of Stan Lee.7 He knew that characters need to have flaws for people to relate to them. While initially all of DC’s characters were similar to Superman, Stan Lee’s characters almost all started as normal humans with flaws who received superpowers later (think Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the Hulk).
No one wants to hear about the perfect person—because you can’t relate. Yet most of us try to put on a perfect facade for our audiences, thereby alienating the real men and women we are trying to reach. Conversely, as soon as you’re vulnerable with your audience and show that you’re not perfect because you have character flaws, they will start to empathize with you. They’ll like you more because you are like them: not perfect.
Attractive Characters harness the powe...
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Here’s the problem: while that sounds like the logical thing to do—appeasing everyone—the problem is that being neutral is boring. When Attractive Characters try to win the votes of everyone, they end up reaching no one.
Attractive Characters are typically very polarizing. They share their opinions on hard matters, and they stick to their guns—no matter how many people disagree with them. They draw a line in the sand, and when they take a stand for what they believe in, they split the audience into three camps: those who agree with them, those who are neutral, and those who will disagree with them. As you start to create that polarization, it will change your fair-weather fans into die-hard fans who will follow what you say, share your message, and buy from you time after time.
If you’re neutral, no one will hate you, but no one will know who you are either. As soon as you start taking sides on important issues, you’ll develop haters, but you’ll also develop a group of raving fans. Those raving fans are the people who will buy your products and services.
Most leaders have a similar backstory to that of their audiences and therefore know the hurdles and pitfalls their audience members will likely face on the journey to get ultimate results. Usually the desired result has already been achieved by the leader, and their audience has come looking for help along that same path.
The Adventurer: The adventurer is usually someone who is very curious, but they don’t always have all the answers, so they set out on a journey to discover the ultimate truth. They bring back treasures from their journey and share them with their audience. This identity is very similar to the leader, but instead of leading their audience on a journey to find the result, they are more likely to bring back the answers to give them.
The Reporter: This identity is often one that people use when they have not yet blazed a trail to share with an audience, but they have a desire to. So they put on the hat of the reporter or evangelist and go out to discover the truth. Typically, people who use this identity interview dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people and share those interviews and all they’ve learned along the way with their audience.
Becoming a reporter is a great way to start a business in a niche that you are excited to explore.
The Reluctant Hero: This is my personal identity now and typically the one that I try to share with my tribe. This is the humble hero who doesn’t really want the spotlight or any fuss made over their discoveries, but they know the information or the secrets they have are so important that they must overcome their shyness and share them with the world. There’s a moral duty that compels them to share all they know. Many of you may feel this way naturally; the spotlight is uncomfortable, but you know you need to be there. If that’s you, the reluctant hero is the perfect identity for you. Play the
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Determine which type is a good fit and build out your Attractive Character using the traits for that identity. If you’re an adventurer, tell stories of adventure. If you’re a leader, tell stories about where you’ve been and where you are going. If you’ve chosen the right identity for you, it should be fairly easy to take on that role. If you’re struggling to create your Attractive Character, perhaps you should take another look at your identity.
Loss and redemption: Loss and redemption stories are very powerful because they show the upside of going through hardship or meeting challenges. You start by telling about some level of success that you had accomplished, but then because of some trial, you lost it all. This storyline will relate to any of your fans or followers who are currently in a time of loss in their lives. As you tell your redemption journey, they will receive faith and hope that by following you they can experience something similar in their lives.
Us versus them: You want to use us-versus-them stories to polarize your audience. Who do you define as the “us” in your audience (people that do the types of things they need to be successful with what you are selling) versus the “them” (those who don’t comply with what you need them to do)? Using these types of stories will draw your raving fans even closer and give them a rallying cry against what they don’t want to become.
Before and after: These are stories of transformation, and they work great in any market. For example, in the weight-loss market, you may show your before and after pictures and tell the story of your journey. In financial markets, you could show your home before your success and then after. Every product or service promises a result, so the question is, “What was life like for you before you applied the result, and what does it look like now?” Amazing discovery: Every day on your journey to help serve your dream customer, you should be discovering new things that can help them on their
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Secret-telling: You’ve probably noticed from the titles of my first three books that this is the one I go to a lot. What secrets do you know or have heard from other people that you can share with your audience? Even as a kid, when someone told me they had a secret, it would drive me crazy until I found out exactly what it was. The same is true online; a good secret can pull someone into your story better than almost anything else you can do.
Third-person testimonial: Sharing other people’s successes with your products and services provides powerful social proof. Get as many third-person testimonials from your customers, clients, and stude...
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“You can always tell who the pioneers are because they have arrows in their backs and are lying facedown in the dirt.” I heard this quote for the first time when I was taking a college class; my professor explained that sometimes being a first mover in an industry wasn’t necessarily an advantage.
Before I build out any new sales funnel, the first thing I want to do is find other people who already have a successful funnel and are selling to my target market. If I can’t find other businesses, then I won’t continue to move forward. But if I can find others who are already successfully selling to the chosen market, then I can reverse engineer what they’re doing. We call this process “funnel hacking,” and it’s the reason people inside our community call each other “funnel hackers.”
a quote I heard from Tony Robbins, in which he said, “If you want to achieve success, all you need to do is find a way to model those who have already succeeded.”
Oftentimes people confuse modeling with copying. I did not copy his product; it was my own product. I did not copy his sales letter; every word was mine. I modeled the page structure and layout and pricing strategy because he had proven that buyers in this market responded to that style. Where he had a headline, I had a headline. Where he placed his software box, I placed mine. Where he had a bulleted list of features and benefits, I added my own list with my features and my benefits. Copying is illegal and is not what I am talking about here. Funnel hacking is modeling a proven process or
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Whenever I am going to create a new funnel, I first figure out what type of funnel I’m going to create (and I’ll show you the 10 most common funnels in Section Two). Then I try to find as many examples of these types of funnels in my market and in other markets so I can see the framework. Finally, I create my own funnel inside of that framework.
I look for funnels to model in one of these three ways: Direct competitors: A direct competitor is a person or company selling something very similar to yours to the same people. Indirect competitors: These are people or companies selling something different than you but to the same demographic. People selling through the same funnel type: In many markets you will not be able to find someone who is successfully selling through a funnel, but that’s okay. If you know that you are going to be using a webinar to sell your product, you can funnel hack anyone using a webinar. If you’re selling
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To funnel hack someone, you’ll need to go through their entire sales process to see their hooks, stories, and offers on all their ads and funnel pages.
start by pretending I am a normal customer, and I go to Google and type in the keywords that I’d search for if I was looking for that product. I then start looking for paid ads that I can click on that will lead me to a funnel. I go to Facebook and start searching as well. I will “like” pages that are related, hoping that Facebook will start showing me ads with similar products. As soon as I start seeing ads, I make a note of what the hook, story, and offer are for that ad. Then I click on that ad and see where it takes me. Sometimes it’s a presell page, other times it’s a landing page trying
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How are they using hooks to grab my attention? What are the stories they tell to get me interested and to create value? What is the offer and what things ...
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You will need to make better hooks, better stories, and better offers so that your dream customers will come to you instead of your competitor.
When I started to buy things online, I was even more sensitive to how I felt. Sometimes the sales process or funnel they took me through was frictionless. Other times, I had to jump through so many hoops, I usually ended up just walking away from the purchase, even though I really wanted the thing I had come there to buy.
The better you can make them feel at each step in the process, the more likely they will keep progressing with you through your funnels.
From the moment your prospects are introduced to you, help them have a great experience at each step so they’ll continue moving through your sales process.
I told you that one of the rules of direct response marketing is “a confused mind always says no.”
Each step will typically have its own hook to grab their attention, its own story to build perceived value, and its own offer (one call to action). If you try to get them to do more than one thing at each step, you’ll essentially be putting up a brick wall in your funnel that will stop most people from progressing.
I read about a fascinating study that took place at MIT, demonstrating the pre-frame principle in action.10 They tell a story about a class of 70 economics students who were told they would have a substitute professor for the day. Since this professor was new, each student was to read a short biography of the teacher. The bios that were handed out to all the students were identical—except for one phrase. All the bios praised this teacher’s graduate work in economics and listed various fabulous accomplishments. Then half the bios described the professor as “a very warm person,” while the other
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One big mistake many marketers make is focusing 100 percent on short-term conversions or monetization. They sell so aggressively, focused on the sale at hand, that they lose the respect of their customers. This mistake will cost you the long-term relationship that can be worth 10 times as much as the money made through the initial point of contact.
Mark made me understand that what really matters most is the frame that someone goes through before they actually get to your funnel. He even went so far as to say that often the frame people enter your website through is usually more important than what you actually say on that page when they get there.
