Video Transcript:
Jason:
Yeah. All right, there we go. Cool. So welcome to episode number two of what are we calling this thing? Sales system experts, I think.
Aaron:
Sales System Experts.
Jason:
You have a cool mic.
Aaron:
Well, I don't know if it's that cool because I ordered a new one with a boom and this one's got its little tripod.
Jason:
Look at this. Hold on. Check this.
Aaron:
Oh, look at that. That's a professional grade.
Jason:
Well, it's funny because I bought this six years ago and then I was hunting around... So I'm on a standing desk. And I was like, "Oh, I think I remember buying something at some point." And it was this thing.
Aaron:
Well, the problem with me is that I like to move every three years. So every time I move I'm like, "I don't want to ship that" over and over again. And so I've got this mic, which has this little tiny desk tripod. But if I leave it here, how much different is the sound?
Jason:
It's not that bad.
Aaron:
Really?
Jason:
Yeah. Hold it again.
Aaron:
It's not amazingly better here.
Jason:
No, no, it's not. It doesn't sound any different.
Aaron:
So I bet you it's because it's not tapped into this system, which I'm going to look at right now. Nope. It's not. It won't even give me the option for it. So me holding this mic by my face is completely irrelevant.
Jason:
To anything, we're doing right now.
Aaron:
To what we're doing right now. I can sit here like this the whole time, it won't make any difference whatsoever. All right. Well, on that note...
Jason:
Bam.
Aaron:
Bam. You do not have to be a genius to make money online.
Jason:
No, you don't. You don't. I covered an entire week of affiliate marketing this week and we all know those affiliate marketers are not geniuses.
Aaron:
Affiliate marketing is the lowest brow marketing possible, but it's a really easy way to make money.
Jason:
It is. It is.
Aaron:
Right? However, let's sidetrack this. Did you see the Wall Street Journal post this week on Amazon?
Jason:
I did not.
Aaron:
So check it out. Basically what Amazon says is when you sell on Amazon, in the terms of service, is we will not study or copy your shit and launch our products because people need to know the Amazon has their products.
Jason:
Yeah. Totally.
Aaron:
The first one I think they started was the diaper company, and they just took right off. They have their products selling on Amazon. And most people might even be more confused by that and be like, "Aren't all the products on Amazon their products? No, all the products on Amazon are different company's products and they've put their products on Amazon and Amazon is like the hub people buy from.
Aaron:
But let's just say you and me, Jason, we started the world's first-ever recyclable titanium sunglasses. And we listed them on Amazon. Amazon says, "We're never going to look at your stuff and study your data if we ever decide to make recyclable titanium sunglasses." Which seems fair. Turns out, they've just had a bunch of employees that are no longer working there come out and say, "Oh yeah, we studied all the data. We studied all the funnels. We started the whole process on multiple companies that have launched their product."
Aaron:
Busted. Thievery and busted. And it was in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. And I don't know if it's true, I'm just quoting the Wall Street Journal, but if that's the case, there's going to be some serious class action lawsuits and who doesn't want to take a piece out of Amazon who's the business owner because there're poor business owners that list on Amazon get their ass handed to them like monthly.
Jason:
Yep Every month, yeah.
Aaron:
Every month they're changing some terms and conditions. They're changing some way the algorithms works. They're investigating your product sources. It is the fastest moving target on the planet. And I think if you're a merchant that's on Amazon, you would love to be in a class-action lawsuit against Amazon. And-
Jason:
Was independent business owners were 40% of the revenue on the e-commerce site. So-
Aaron:
Absolutely. 40%. And in addition to that, over the last week or two, Amazon cut the affiliate commissions on a huge amount of essential products. So almost like the network marketing companies of the world, they've got everybody to bring their friends and family in. And then they change the compensation plan five. Thanks for all the customers and peace. And not only did they do that, but they also did that during the apocalypse.
Aaron:
So all those people that were used to making all those affiliate commissions on X, Y, Z product, during the apocalypse, they said, "Yeah, we just took that from whatever it was, 30%, I don't even know what it was, down to 2%. So in two weeks, they've kicked a whole bunch of people who built their company in the balls. They've done it when they need the money the most. And they've been busted stealing IP from people who were on their platform, duplicating it and making their products. That's a nasty triplicate of information there.
Jason:
Well, I just read that Amazon, I think it was yesterday or the day before, Amazon was looking at $1,4 trillion valuations and on the road to $2 trillion and Bezos just bought his fourth apartment in the same building for $16 million. And he's doing a big multi-story thing.
Aaron:
Which I have nothing against. I'm a pro-capital, pro entrepreneur, pro everything. And I got no hate for Bezos, for how many millions he takes a minute. However, I think it's greasy to kick your affiliates in the balls during the apocalypse and two, everyone's always talking about the Chinese, the Chinese, they're stealing our secrets. They're studying it. Bezos' been stealing secrets. They're launching his own companies to compete with you and oh, just coincidentally, I bet a lot of those companies lost their bestseller status not too long after he launched his competing product. And that's just my tinfoil hat theory, but I would love to...
Aaron:
Amazon doesn't open its data to anybody. Amazon's not like Facebook, you can't API Amazon's data. It'd be amazing to see what was the time between them launching their competing product and the number one competing product falling off of the best seller status. Wouldn't that be interesting to see?
Aaron:
So they got lots of money, they could fade class action lawsuits in the billions and be like, "We're good. It was worth," Like Volkswagen did when they sold all those cars, the guys were like, they're eco-friendly and there was nothing different about them. It was a straight line, and they got a $5 billion fine or something and I was like, "How can you find a company $5 billion?"
Jason:
Well, Facebook got a $5 billion fine from the FTC.
Aaron:
Was it $5 billion?
Jason:
$5 billion, yeah.
Aaron:
Wow. I'm surprised I don't know that.
Jason:
I don't know that they paid it yet. The last I knew they hadn't paid it and it would have been a while, but where the hell is your Frankenstein mug?
Aaron:
I just picked it up and I was like, "I don't have my luck." And you're supposed to have continuity amongst episodes. I almost feel like I should go get it but I don't want to disrupt where we're going. So-
Jason:
Facebook groups.
Aaron:
Let's talk about groups. Let's talk about Facebook groups. We've now spread all this breaking news about Amazon maybe people don't know. And now we'll pivot to Facebook groups. So maybe we should give it some ground.
Jason:
Some context.
Aaron:
Some context. Yeah. So I'll talk about normal funnels and you talk about normal funnels, what you can expect, engagement, conversions. And then let's talk about Facebook Groups. While you're setting the tone, I'm going to go get my mug.
Jason:
Okay. There you go. All right. So normal funnels. A normal sales funnel is very linear. Somebody comes in and they go from signing up as a lead to moving through some sort of a, I call them content-based assets, but basically, it's a lead magnet, a sales video, an automated webinar, all of that kind of stuff that works them through a sales model and then gets them to sell. So it's a one to many... Sales funnels are... going to run around. All right, there you go buddy. Get it. Oh, hold on. There we go. There it is.
Jason:
All right. So sales funnels are one too many relationships. Sales funnels are built to sell to multiple people at the same time. It's a one to many kinds of sales platform and he's back. So we're going to flip back over here. Yeah, there it is. So the sales funnels are one too many, you build it once. Many people go through, but it's a one to one relationship. So somebody has a relationship with you in the brand. What we're going to talk about now is about having a relationship with the rest of the community and getting support out of the community to then sell into your thing. Correct?
Aaron:
Yeah. 100%. The funnel is one to one and it turns it on and roll as many people as you can through it and give them information and you make them an offer, very basic. But what is important to know is when you build a sales funnel, there's typically like a ceiling as to how much money you're going to be able to convince the person to part within a funnel. And Mike Diller said one time that he feels you can ask for up to $500 per hour that you spend with a human being. I would say he's shorted it by half because I think it's been really popular to build webinar funnels where you can sell 995 on an hour-long. So I think that if you do it right, it's potentially $1,000.
Jason:
Per hour.
Aaron:
Per hour, for every hour you spend with somebody.
Jason:
That's a good metric to know. That's where I would have placed it, but I didn't necessarily have that number in mind. Whereas, what was it about four years ago? It was probably 3000 an hour. Like it was 3000, 3000. You could sell it two or $3,000 offer on a one-hour-long webinar.
Aaron:
Yeah. And I think that people have become desensitized to it. It's become commoditized a bit. So I think that maybe Mike is more in line with where you at now. It's somewhere between 500 and [crosstalk 00:12:26] the reason why is that because people have to know, like, and trust you. If you watch Simon Sinek-Start With Why, he said, "Facts and figures are cerebral, but buying decisions are limbic." So we've got a decision, which is what powers trust and that's internal.
Aaron:
So the more people know, like, and trust you, the more likely they are to buy. So that's a time investment. So what's becoming popular right now are Facebook Groups and funnels where you essentially offer to give something away for free or a very, very low amount, like a boot camp, like a three day or five days, a 10 day I've ever seen somebody do lately, where people can acquire some type of skill or solve some type of problem and get to know you better. And it's a very simple funnel. It's ad to the landing page to thank you page to join the private Facebook groups, to have a start date for it and have an end date, and then be delivering a little piece of content daily from your start to your end date, your three-day, your five days, your 10 days. A little bit of homework that you give.
Aaron:
And then as people are conversing with you, just engaging with people, answering their questions, posting questions like you were at a party. Like, "Hey, what do you do? What's your biggest issue? What do you find the most fun? And creating that environment. And that allows the client to ultimately get to know you at a deeper level and what you're all about.
Aaron:
And what I'm seeing is that on the tail ends of three to five-day boot camps, even with a free opt into it, not charging them first, we're seeing people be able to consistently do a 10 to one return on ad spend. So what they're spending on the front end to get them in, when they're selling a two, three, $5,000 eight weeks intensive or whatever, after the Bootcamp, they're converting enough people to get a 10 to one return on ad spend, which is enormous. Enormous.
Aaron:
And I had a client that I was talking to last night, that's coming on board. And he did a 10 day one just recently, which I've never heard. And, it was a very specific type of business, like how to find undervalued businesses and turn them around and et cetera, et cetera. And he was explaining a system and he was charging 17,000 for his program at the end of this. And he closed 18 people on his first one. And I was like, "Wow, that is a big number off of Facebook groups." But he gave 10 days of content. He started with something like 200 people, by the end of it, it was 40 people paying attention after the days.
Aaron:
All those 40 people were really into it. So when he offered the full-blown program, they bet, they were excited. And I was like, "Wow, that is a big number." It was 10 people at $17,000. So he pulled $170,000 out after a 10-day boot camp.
Jason:
So what does lead generation look like? Is it into a lead magnet report? Confirmation page?
Aaron:
No. Not. It is straight up. Here's what you're getting. So, "Hey, XYZ prospect, have you ever wanted to learn more about how to find undervalued businesses, turn them around and flip them for profit? My name's XYZ person. I've been doing this for 20 years. Here's my background. And so many people have asked me about it that I am launching a free 10-day boot camp. I'm starting on X date. In this boot camp, you're going to learn about X, Y, and Z. If you'd like to be a part of it, click below." Goes to a landing page, capture, name, email, phone number, if you want. So that they're on your list because that's the biggest challenge with Facebook groups. Nobody wants to do anything on Facebook groups because now Facebook owns the data, you don't own the data. And they could shut your group off.
Aaron:
So the way you get around that is you capture their name and their email before they get into the group. And on the thank, your page says, "Hey, thanks for joining. Here's how to join the group, click this button." And then they join the group and a lot of people like, "Why would you do it in a group? Why wouldn't you just do it by email or Zoom or any of these things?" Well, the benefits of the group are that we live on our phones. And when you're in a group, you're getting just constant notifications. You're not having to leave the ecosystem of your phone to go to a different ecosystem. And that's the power of Facebook groups.
Jason:
It makes a lot of sense.
Aaron:
Yeah. Super.
Jason:
So after the five or 10-day boot camp, how is the pitch made? So [crosstalk 00:17:38] all the free shit is done.
Aaron:
Live in a group on the last day. And then what I'm seeing work well is two options. So you do the pitch in a Facebook Groups live in the group on the last day, and then you offer them two opportunities, a strategy session with you to talk about it or direct to link.
Aaron:
Yeah. Exactly. Like here's to go to to get started and have an open and shut date. Like we are starting this in five days. Because without that sense of urgency, people won't act. So having that sense of urgency is super important. But saying to people like, "Here's my offer, here's the price, here's when it starts, I'm only going to take X amount of people," to also create that sense of urgency. And then, "If you have questions if you're interested in this, but you just got a couple of questions you want to ask me, you can go ahead and book a strategy session."
Aaron:
Because you don't want to take the whole group to strategy session because there are always people who would just be happy to buy. So sending them to a buy link allows them to just buy, but for those people that have just a couple of questions, that extra strategy session makes sense.
Aaron:
And then what we do is we count down inside of the group for the next five... "Hey, there are only four days left to register, three days left to register-"
Jason:
Oh, right. Yeah.
Aaron:
And we hit them with the emails because we captured from the beginning, here's the offer, four days, three days, two days. And then we re-target all the people that joined the group for free. We re-target them on Facebook Groups and Instagram back to the order page. So we're hitting them from four different places, inside the group, email, retargeting, and strategy sessions. So yeah, really, really effective model that just allows you to bond with people more and create that sense of trust. That's just hard to [crosstalk 00:00:19:46].
Jason:
... one to one kind of a sales funnel. So listening to it, I think back to... Aaron, you and I have been doing this for a long time. The Jeff Walker product launch formula. The product launch formula created a launch echo, is what he called it. But, it was like the entire marketplace moving in the same direction at the same time, all through email. And this is before YouTube was huge and Facebook Groups was huge. I mean beginning parts of Facebook Groups at least, but the product launch formula was able to mobilize an entire community through three or four videos. But now it's like, we are more connected than ever, but yet disconnected. And everybody's doing something at a different time. So this group model makes sense because it's unveiled to a collective group without the weird emails and emails and a bunch of other things.
Aaron:
Well, it adds the engagement factor because your group can be talking to the people responding, replying, commenting in the group. Problem with Jeff Walker's stuff and Jeff Walker's been hugely successful, he was very revolutionary in the last decade, but Jeff Walker's product launch formula doesn't work for cold traffic. It only works if you have a built-in email list. You got to build that list first and then do the product where you don't have to have the email list for this. You can go cold traffic right into the group and be nurtured in the group and then launch. So it's very similar to his strategy except there are two added benefits to it. One, you can do it to cold traffic and two, you can be constantly engaging people in that group for four days, which is it allows you to bond. So it's similar to two added benefits.
Jason:
Yeah. With Jeff Walker stuff the comments were a big part of it. The comments underneath the sales page video, and then his reply in those comments was how that engagement was born. But with this model, it is like the guru, of course, is important, but other group members are supporting other group members too I'm sure.
Aaron:
Absolutely. And-
Jason:
Higher teams can jump into this five-day boot camp or whatever.
Aaron:
And you can define how engaged you want to be with that group. You have to do at minimum one life per day with a piece of homework. But I've seen people do the whole bunch of random other things like fire-
Jason:
videos and shit
Aaron:
... chats where I'm just going to take questions for 30 minutes in the middle of the boot camp. The more you engage with the group, the better off it is in your conversions on the backend. So if you can carve out three to five days and say, "I'm going to be all in on this for five days because I'm going to make a quarter-million dollars, then it's worth it.
Jason:
Totally. How often can you do these? So, I mean, you can't roll from one boot camp into another.
Aaron:
You might have at least 30 days in between each one. And, it's dependent on the size of the audience that you're marketing to. If you were just saying, "I'm going to do this for hair replacement surgeons," you would probably need to do it no more than once a quarter because it's a small audience. But if you were doing it to biz op seekers or something where there's just-
Jason:
That group is always changing.
Aaron:
That group is so big that you can be doing it every two weeks.
Jason:
If you wanted to.
Aaron:
If you wanted to.
Jason:
And then just have a team fulfill out of the backside.
Aaron:
Absolutely.
Jason:
Yeah. That makes sense. Cool.
Aaron:
Successful like... And it's really easy to set up. That's the other benefit of this, you have real elaborate funnels. Evergreen, ever webinar, multi-touch, SMS, email-
Jason:
And then there's [crosstalk 00:23:59], which is relatively simple.
Aaron:
Yeah. This is like, ad, landing page, thank you page, group, order page.
Jason:
And a lot of people probably skip the first three steps and just go right to the group and they nurture the group and then grab order information out of the backside. Niche wise is there... So what are some of the niches that you've seen be successful with groups?
Aaron:
Lead gen, I've seen personal branding, I've seen any type of education, like the one I was talking about earlier today. See education and biz-op, they're just so weirdly intertwined.
Jason:
Especially now. Like, right now.
Aaron:
I want to make more money." "Okay, what do you want to make more money doing?" "This." "Well, then let's educate you on that." Amazon coaching, although I just bashed the hell at Amazon this morning. It's just a communication portal. So if you have something valuable that you can teach and you have a course that you want to launch, a coaching program, or whatever after it, this is just a great way to engage people. It almost reminds me of a four-day seminar or something.
Jason:
Well, as I was asking the question, you and I both have clients that are live event companies, how many were displaced by this pandemic and how many people or physical locations with memberships that can use this group model to recreate some of the best parts of it and perhaps pivot into an even bigger, better, more dynamic business than what they had before?
Aaron:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And we have a plan. I mean, we have a mutual client right now that we won't talk about that we're testing this model versus another model. And almost when you think about it, it emulates what they do. If anything, it might be better. A lot of times in those live seminar models, you got a lot of talking, but you don't have a lot of interacting. So a guy comes up on stage and he's like, "Hey, I'm the guru, this is what I've done, this is what I can teach you, this is what you could become," and they offer. And then it's going to the back of the room and fill out your form and whatever.
Jason:
Well, you're interacting with our people, not necessarily them. S0-
Aaron:
You're interacting with a stage and a group, which is always better than recording, which is why you convert much higher at live events than you do virtually. But this is like, "Hey, here's my thing that I'm going to teach you, now go do it. Try it out a little bit, and let's talk about how you're doing. And now that confidence is getting built up in the right people. It's way more engaging. So it's almost like combining the best of both worlds.
Jason:
Yeah. It makes total sense. So the Bootcamp sessions need to be video-based. Live stream, I'm sure helps, works-
Aaron:
Live stream, 100%.
Jason:
Live stream, okay.
Jason:
And then, are the live streams promoted at all? Or they're just-
Aaron:
No, inside the group.
Jason:
Just inside of the group, okay.
Aaron:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jason:
And I just had this conversation with a mutual friend of ours, Andrew, before this, and he had made a post in one of our groups for one of our companies... And let's clarify here, if you have an offer of any type, you should have Facebook groups right now. And when somebody buys from you, one of the very first things that you should say is, "Join our private Facebook groups." Because if you look at something like ClickFunnels, almost their entire customer service is operated inside of their Facebook Groups, right?
Aaron:
Exactly, yeah.
Jason:
It's them plus all the members responding.
Aaron:
Right, so it's [inaudible 00:28:07].
Jason:
And there's a huge amount of engagement that happens there. So in one of the groups that we have right now, he made a post the other day and it was something to the sales funnels like, "Hey, would you be interested in having us evaluate your sales funnel or whatever?" A whole bunch of comments that came back. And what I said to him is that... He was super excited about how many people had responded and how much he could engage with people. And I said to him, "If you'd done that on a Facebook Groups live, we would have had 10 times more engagement?" and he said, "I had no idea. Why would there be 10 times more engagement?" I said, "Because you have to send that Facebook Groups has what they want you to do. But then they have a whole bunch of things that you can do."
Jason:
So they have Lots of options, but there's a certain thing they want you to do. And they want you to do video. Why do they want you to do video, Jason?
Aaron:
They want to displace YouTube.
Jason:
Right. Well, they can't shove an ad in the text that you write, but they can shove an ad in your video and they need more inventory-
Aaron:
[inaudible 00:29:14] need more inventory.
Jason:
And people are like, "What do you mean Facebook Groups needs inventory?" Facebook's inventory is where they can put ads. They don't have any room left in the desktop newsfeed. They don't have any room left in the sidebar.
Aaron:
That's Instagram and WhatsApp. I mean, a big part of those acquisitions were... They just invested $5.7 billion in a telco in India.
Jason:
Oh, I didn't know that.
Aaron:
Yeah. So I mean, all of it is for more ad space. If you listened to any of their investor recap days, they're saying, well pre-virus, "We're running out of ad space."
Jason:
"We're out."
Aaron:
Yeah. "We're out. We're creating new places, new placements for ads." And now it's, advertisers are kind of running for the hills unless you're us and swallowing up as much inventory as you possibly can. But-
Jason:
But all it ultimately, is that if you played their game by their rules, you'll get way more out of it.
Aaron:
Oh, well it's so funny because since doing the GSC daily, I've promoted probably a handful of 10 or 15 of those, like 30 now live streams. They're long as shit in myself and dry and like, but I am getting through plays for two cents. I'm getting finished 30-minute watches, like for a buck like, what?
Jason:
Wow. This is what I try to explain. Some people make, "Is that good?" we have to like to frame this. If I stood on the corner of the downtown city street, when it was busy in New York and said, "I will give you a dollar. If you'll listen to me for the next 30 minutes," every single person I offered that to would tell me to fuck off.
Aaron:
Yeah, totally.
Jason:
Your people are listening to you for 30 minutes for a dollar?
Aaron:
Which is getting them to know, like, and trust you?
Jason:
Yep.
Aaron:
That you can now re-target with an offer later on and there, and the likelihood of them buying is exponentially higher because they've watched two hours of your stuff?
Jason:
Right? Well, it gets back into your first metric, which is, how much are they worth per hour? $1000?
Aaron:
Absolutely. You're trading dollars for thousands.
Jason:
Right? Yep. It could be paid off sometime in the future.
Aaron:
We need to find some tap into it, capitalize on it. And even taking it a step further on the Facebook Groups and stuff, one of our chief strategists at our agency at Seven Mile Media showed us in the last six months' worth of data, not like yesterday last week. This guy is like our chief data officer. He's like, "Yeah, we're 40% lower on cost per acquisition when we use dynamic creative." Which most people might not know about, right? Dynamic creative means you put five images or five videos or five pieces of text and they just rotate them for you. Versus putting one in, and then creating another ad with another one, and creating another ad with another one. The difference from the two is you're allowing them to rotate it however, they want it.
Jason:
Like a black box.
Aaron:
Yeah, exactly. But they want more control in their algorithm of opportunities and options. With a 40% reduction in CPA because we're doing what they want us to do. They want us to optimize budgets at the campaign level. They want us to use dynamic creativity. They want us to use auto placements, not in the feeds only, they want you to be able to put it as many places you can because they don't have any inventory. So they're giving us a better traffic and more conversions for doing what they want. Which-
Jason:
So, as long as it's not in an audience network, you're okay.
Aaron:
Bro, I've got four my cheapest conversions at the audience level.
Jason:
Really?
Aaron:
Absolutely. And we auto-placement everything we do in the agency. And people are like, "What?" I'm like, "We auto-placement everything. We let, we leveraged the algorithm."
Jason:
That is awesome. Once you have conversion data network.
Aaron:
Don't try.
Jason:
I disagree, bro. I've got three autos right out of the gates.
Aaron:
Really?
Jason:
I'm not scared. I'm not scared at all.
Aaron:
They'll figure it out eventually?
Jason:
And in three years, there's not even going to be this stuff. It's going to be, but the ad worldwide, open targeting, the algorithm. The Algorithm will be so good, it's going to be like. We'll be out of business. It will be amazing.
Aaron:
Oh shit, that's good stuff. Ads, Facebook groups. What else do you want to talk about? Does anybody have any questions? Is there anybody who's watching? Do you know what else we should talk about? And then we forget that we've already been on here for like 35 minutes, and we're trying to keep it to thirties to total the attention span.
Jason:
We should probably just...
Aaron:
So in the next episode, what should we talk about?
Jason:
I think we should talk about the five conversion killers in any funnel. Because I had something that I was going to talk about, then you took me in a different direction.
Aaron:
Oh, okay. So let's talk about the five conversion pillars. That's a great idea for a podcast next week.
Jason:
I think it's awesome. We can look at all of our data and all of our fuck-ups and-
Aaron:
We got plenty of those.
Jason:
Yeah. 100%.
Aaron:
That sounds good. Cool, I love it.
Jason:
All right. Signing out.
Aaron:
Yeah, have fun. See you next Friday.
Jason:
Episode number two in the books.
Aaron:
See you.