The Big Mistake Marketers Make During A Recession

Ryan: 00:00:00

The mistake that people make when we move into cycles where things are

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getting a bit more constrained, where

they are tightening up a little bit

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is they think that people stop buying.

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They don't, what they start doing is

making slightly more considered purchases.

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And one of the ways that they do

that is they make more smaller bets.

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So many of us got away from this

weird thing that we popularize

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called the tripwire, right?

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The entry point offer, the loss

leader, everybody got away from that.

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And they're like, you don't

need to do that anymore.

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You don't need to have all of

these other product services.

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Just sell high ticket.

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Just go to the top.

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Just do that.

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You don't need all these pesky little

things that you're distracting people.

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That may have been right at the time.

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Guess what?

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It ain't gonna be right

in this next cycle.

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Now, I'm not saying that you can't

still give people an opportunity

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to skip the line and to buy

your most expensive thing first.

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At any given time, there's three to five

percent of the people who are ready now.

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In any market, three to five

percent, they're ready to buy now.

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And so part of the funnel is

figuring out, how do we get those

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people who are ready to buy now to

raise their hand and indicate that?

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But it's three to five percent.

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Everybody else, we're

gonna need to nurture them.

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We're gonna need to romance them.

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We're gonna need to offer

them something small.

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Offer them something a little bigger.

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So it's not that one works

and the other doesn't anymore.

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It's that you need to get better at both.

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I did talk about this at TNC,

I'll be sharing more about some

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tests that we've done, but, we

now across all of our companies

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execute, we call a ready now funnel.

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And so when I knew lead comes into one

of our funnels, we're always assessing

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for number one qualification, right?

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Yeah.

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So I'm just about every single lead magnet

that you see across all of my different

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companies, there's going to be some kind

of drop down that is going to indicate, is

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this potentially is this a qualified lead?

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And all we don't mean qualified

to be our customer at all.

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We mean, are they qualified

for our most expensive?

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Highest end program.

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So it's scalable.

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You got to be doing a million

dollars or more in revenue.

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Like you said, Ralph,

it's not for startups.

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It's not for companies that

are in the early stages.

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We're rooting for them.

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We want to help them.

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They don't qualify for a higher

level programs at digital marketer.

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It's actually agencies

and consultants, right?

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Cause we've got our

certified partner program.

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So it doesn't mean that we don't want to

help marketers of all shapes and sizes.

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It just means our highest level program

is for agencies and consultants.

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So we're going to ask

that qualifying question.

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That's going to let us know, okay, if

they're not qualified, then let's serve

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them with some lower ticket stuff.

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Let's let them graze, right?

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Let's introduce some tripwires

and those kinds of things.

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Let's let them do their thing.

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Maybe they'll become

qualified later on, right?

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We'll look to monetize that.

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Right now across all of our

funnels on average, we are

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returning between 45 percent and

75 percent of our acquisition cost.

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Through the monetization of unqualified

leads and throwing up the air quotes.

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If you're listening, the rest of it

is coming from the qualified leads.

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Now we don't just say,

Hey, you're qualified.

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You should buy our most expensive thing.

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Now, what we want to do is next

step is do a readiness test.

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We want them to take some kind of

micro action to indicate that they're

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perhaps ready to hear a higher ticket.

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Ready to do what Ralph Burns did.

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Hey, I can't help but notice that you

bought you got this 43 split tests.

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Are you an agent consultant?

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Yeah, I am.

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Cool.

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Hey, one of the things we do is

we help agencies and consultants.

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We got a program that we do this,

it starts at around 10 grand a year.

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Interested in learning more about it.

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Here's how we think it can help.

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Yeah, I am.

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Okay.

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So you're not just qualified,

but you're also ready.

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Qualification plus ready means

that we can go ahead and move

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you to the top of the line.

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We call that a ready now funnel.

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This is something talked about last

year, been testing it all year.

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When you think about funnels

that are working for us right

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now, that one continues to work.

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Because what it acknowledges is that

the old ways of doing things, where

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you start people at the bottom of the

value ladder and you walk them up.

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It still works.

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It also acknowledges that, yeah, but

today ad prices are too dang high.

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We can't afford to march them up slowly.

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We've got to go high ticket first.

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We got to flip the funnel.

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How do we do both?

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We're going to test for qualification

and we're going to test for readiness.

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so All of these things again,

though, that's a tactical thing

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that people should just do and test.

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tHat's a way to get some funnel mastery.

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The problem statement ads that kind

of speaks to a little aspect of

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messaging mastery, I submit to you,

if you get those things figured out,

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just go to the traffic store and buy

it, higher costs and higher Ralph.

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just have them buy your ads because I

think it's safe to say, if you got an

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ad that's generating a, two to one row

as within the first, 30 days, you're

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probably going to be able to scale that.

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So that's the game, but it's

all the stuff that used to work.

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Nothing's really changed.

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I remember the very first time I heard

you say, go to the traffic store and I was

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so offended then I really, I spent, , it

was an existential crisis for me, man.

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Cause the next day I'm like, he's right.

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It's just.

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Attention arbitrage.

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And you know what was funny, Ryan,

is until I wrapped my head around

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that, I couldn't scale my agency.

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Cause I was convinced that this

is magic and I'm a magician

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and nobody else can do this.

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And the minute I started treating

it like it's the traffic store,

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we're going to the traffic store,

we're going to buy some traffic.

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And it really is just that simple.

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And this is the aisle that

you go for this demographic.

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And as soon as you get there, it becomes

so much easier, so much more approachable.

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So that's a really healthy paradigm to

have, but it was a tough pill to swallow.

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Sorry, I didn't mean that to

minimize the efforts of those.

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I'm not defending myself at all.

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I had the same kind of like

visceral knee jerk reaction to it.

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So anyway, guys, I guess that's my,

happy to dive into it a little bit

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more, but when I think about it, all

of our focus is on those three areas.

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What are the things that won't change?

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There hasn't really a new channel

introduced in a very long time.

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We got it with TikTok ads, a little

bit, but there's not new channels

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emerging like it was back in the mid

: 2000

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it was a new channel every other week.

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So channels really aren't changing.

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Funnel architecture, the economics,

there's not like massive innovations.

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I like to think I gave you

a quick innovation there

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with the ready now funnel.

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Not a lot of change

there and in messaging.

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I think the biggest change that's taking

place is everybody's going to rely on

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crappy copywriters that they've hired

in the form of their AI tool of choice.

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And that's what they're going

to expect to win the day.

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And it ain't going to happen.

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And they're going to wonder why.

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So I'd focus on messaging.