I need to get something straight…
Most entrepreneurs have it ALL wrong!
What if I told you that when you run campaigns your goal should NOT be to make money.
Sounds crazy, right?
The irony is that having this goal is actually what STOPS most entrepreneurs from making any money at all!
But if that’s not the way to do it, then what should you be doing?
Well, there’s actually a little-known marketing secret that some of the world’s best entrepreneurs and marketers use to build their million-dollar businesses.
In fact, this secret even allows them to find customers for free, and in some cases they even get paid to find their own customers.
Heavyweights like Russell Brunson and ClickFunnels use this daily. As does Ryan Deiss and DigitalMarketer, Todd Brown too, and even Frank Kern.
They’re all building multi-million-dollar businesses on campaigns that lose them money.
How are they doing it?
Let me show you…
The Secret To Getting Paid To Find Your Own Dream Customers
First things first, you need to know two concepts to understand how this works.
The first is my Skyscraper System (read more about that here).
This is simply a marketing strategy you can use to turn people who have no idea who you are into raving fans chomping at the bit to buy from you over and over again.
I think it’s something EVERY business should be using.
Next up is something called a frontend funnel.
Your marketing strategy is essentially separated by a frontend and a backend (explained in more detail in ‘The Skyscraper System’ here).
The biggest problem entrepreneurs have is that they focus what they think their money-making activity is on the frontend.
What this means is that they try sell high ticket items and core products to cold audiences (people who’ve never heard of them before), through things like Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, Instagram Ads and so on.
This is an amateur move. Only amateurs focus on the frontend like this.
Its kind of like proposing marriage on the first date. Take a guess how that works out?
Essentially a frontend funnel’s job is to simply bring people into your business, or what marketers like to call “warming a prospect up”.
You make them aware of your company, who you are, the products you sell and so on.
The backends job is to then sell them all the good stuff you have to offer (all of your core products, services, high ticket offers and so on).
Coming back to our relationship analogy, the backend is like the multiple dates you then go on, and all the stuff you do to grow that relationship (dates, moving in together, getting a dog etc).
The backend is where the real action is though, this is where you make money. This is your bread and butter.
The frontend simply exists to feed the backend.
Nice and easy, right?
So, the frontend is comprised of two things, lead generators and trigger products.
Lead generators can be anything from lead magnets to webinar signups, free reports, coupons, content upgrades, free trials and so on. Anything that exists to generate an email address or lead.
They exist purely to bring people “into” your skyscraper (IE your business) and to start “warming them up” to your brand, who you are, your products, and so on.
Now trigger products are low dollar offers whose job is to simply change the relationship between you and your prospect. Think of them as ‘relationship accelerators’.
They do this by turning your prospects into buyers, and when this happens the psychology of that prospect is immediately changed.
They are now more open to purchasing from you again. In fact, studies show that people who have purchased from you before are 70% more likely to buy again. That’s what makes trigger products a secret marketing weapon.
I call them trigger products because they trigger something called a ‘buyer frenzy’.
When somebody buys from you, and they’re immediately open to buying more from you again, they go into this trance-like state where they’re open to immediately spending more money with you (if you put the right offers in front of them).
And that’s the real secret here.
You’ve got their attention with something that seems overwhelmingly worth their time (the low dollar offer), and then you get to immediately put a few one-time offers in front of them during the process.
A good example here could be a free-plus-shipping book (this is the trigger offer).
Naturally a free book sounds awesome, so people click on the ad and land on the page that offers them a free book where all they have to do is cover the shipping.
Once they’ve purchased that book a few “one-time offers” are placed in front of them, before their order is complete, selling them things like courses, programs, memberships, and so on.
This is essentially a sales funnel. It exists simply to increase the amount of money people spend with you (what marketers call ‘Average Cart Value’) whilst they’re in that ‘buyer frenzy’ mode.
Somebody might have come into this funnel because the book was a great offer, but they could walk away having spent $400+ on all the other stuff.
All that money they’re spending needs to be offset against the ad costs for that free book. The idea here is that you want to break even, so that if you’re spending $1,000 on ads you want to be making at least $1,000 back from everyone who went through that sales funnel.
This is the magic of frontend funnels (or what some people call self-liquidating offers).
When you start running frontend funnels that breakeven (IE they’re self-liquidating), you’re left with the single most important thing to your business…
Customers!
And it cost you bupkis to get them too (because you’re breaking even).
Think about it.
That means you literally have no ad budget.
You can pour in as much money as possible to drive an unlimited number of customers to your business…
And it doesn’t cost you a cent to do this!
Now that’s just at breakeven, what happens when your frontend funnels actually turn a profit?
Well, that means you are now getting paid to find customers.
This is what the worlds elite marketers and entrepreneurs are doing to build monster businesses.
The Bottomless-Budget Strategy The Worlds Best Marketers Use To Become Millionaires
Let’s dive into a few examples here.
I love what Russell Brunson has been doing for a number of years now, especially with his company ClickFunnels.
He’s possibly the best example of someone I can think of right now who obsesses (like me) about finding the perfect frontend funnels.
He has a number of books (Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets, 108 Proven Split Test Winners, Network Marketing Secrets, FunnelHackers Cookbook), a challenge (One Funnel Away), a DVD (The Perfect Webinar), a report (LeadFunnels) and a bunch of others…
He ran through a few stats for some of these in a presentation of his. Here are a few numbers from three of them over a single month:
DotCom Secrets Book:
Leads: 5,410
Book Sales: 2,395
Average Cart Value: $30.81
Ad Spend: $45,019.26
Sales: $52,783.20
Profit: $7,763.94
108 Split Tests Book:
Leads: 2,013
Book Sales: 1,357
Average Cart Value: $12.38
Ad Spend: $4,185.39
Sales: $18,171.60
Profit: $13,986.21
Perfect Webinar DVD:
Leads: 1,605
Book Sales: 760
Average Cart Value: $34.38
Ad Spend: $20,628.77
Sales: $25,404.65
Profit: $4,775.88
From just these three frontend funnels he’s spending $69,833.42, he’s generating $96,359.45, and making a profit of $26,526.03
Now he has a company with hundreds of employees, so I’m sure you’re probably wondering how he’s keeping the lights on let alone growing at the rate that he is?
To understand that, you need to take a closer look at those numbers.
In just one month those three frontend funnels alone have generated almost 10,000 leads, and 4,512 customers. That’s before anyone has even bought his software ClickFunnels, which runs for $97pm and $297pm.
That means from just these three funnels alone he’s adding 10k subscribers to his list (that he gets to upsell down the line), and 4,5k customers EVERY month.
It’s little wonder that ClickFunnels has over 120,000 subscribers, paying them tens of millions every month.
Are you starting to see how insanely powerful this is?
But it doesn’t stop there…
Because once these people are in your Skyscraper, they can boost a number of things like your revenue, your traffic, and everything in-between.
Just take a look at the effect these frontend funnels are having on Russell Brunson’s business:
What would you do with traffic like that?
Better yet…
Imagine you were generating tens of thousands of leads and customers every month… BEFORE they even bought your core product or service!
That’s how powerful frontend funnels are.
The Million Dollar Marketer’s Secret Growth Trick
Frontend funnels change everything.
In fact, with them you can start finding customers for free.
Better yet, if you can get your frontend funnels to turn a profit, you can get paid to build your business.
That’s why you need to start building out the frontend of your marketing strategy.
What lead generators and trigger products can you create to feed your business?
Because when you get that right, you’ll have a system that can turn absolute strangers into hyperactive buyers chomping at the bit to purchase from you over and over again.
Every. Single. Month.
And who doesn’t want that?
Until next time, here’s to frontend funnel’ing.
Steve De La Cour
Founder & CEO
Kong
