WARNING: The Coming Storm Is Almost Here...
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Welcome to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. My name is Russell Brunson, and I'm what you call a serial entrepreneur, but with a twist. You see, 50% of my time, I'm the CEO of ClickFunnels, helping over 100,000 brands to grow their companies with funnels. And the other 50% of my time, I'm actually in the trenches using ClickFunnels to grow the startups I believe in. During this podcast, I'll take you behind the scenes and show you how we are bootstrapping ClickFunnels and my other businesses from startup to nine figures and beyond. Welcome to the show.

What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I'm a little bit sick, so my voice might sound kind of funny, so I apologize in advance for that. But what I'm going to bring you is fire, so hopefully that helps. So anyway, it's a new year with a lot of new projects coming up. I'm still working on launching the new podcast and new other things. We're launching a new YouTube channel. We have so many fun things happening right now. But also, there's a lot of weird stuff happening right now in the market. I think this year is going to be

It's going to be a crazy year. It's an election year, which messes up everything. It makes ads go crazy because a whole bunch of corrupt politicians are all on both sides are dumping insane amounts of money into ads. Ads are going to get weird this year. Controversy. There's going to be... Anyway, it's going to be a year. And so now that it's January, we're getting started. I just want to talk about some things to think through, some things to...

I don't know, hopefully prepare you and, and get you ready for, for the year from a marketing standpoint. Um, if you've read the traffic secrets book at the, the introduction, uh,

I started, it says there's a storm coming, right? And that was, man, it's crazy. I published that right before COVID. So, in fact, we did the launch during COVID. We hit the New York Times bestseller list during COVID, which is awesome. But, you know, I was talking about how, like, you know, the advertising platforms and things are changing. They're getting harder. They're getting all these kind of things, and the storm's coming. You have to, like, start learning, trying to learn.

traffic differently. And some people took that to heart. It's interesting. Some people, most people still haven't. Most people are still focusing on one traffic source, one thing, right? The right Facebook ads or Instagram or YouTube, but one thing. And that's kind of the thing I want to talk about today because the thing I'm, I think, most nervous for you guys about. And as you know, for the last two years, I've been talking a lot about this new framework called the linchpin. And it's interesting, like,

had we have not doubled down on the concept of the linchpin, we would actually have no ads that are ROI positive right now. It's crazy. Um, I mean, we have more funnels than any company on the planet cause I'm mildly obsessed with create funnels. We're really good at them. We've got great copywriters and split testing people, you know, conversion optimization people like we have the best of the best. Um, and even that said, um,

If it wasn't for the linchpin, I would not be able to physically pay for ads right now, which is crazy. The only funnels that are actively profitable are the linchpin funnels. So hopefully that tells you something that like, hey, this is something, you know, not only Russell saying this, he's practicing what he preaches, right? But it's like, it's understanding like we have to get better and better at marketing if you want to run profitable ads. So that's the first thing. Second thing is like,

we had a scare this week where, um, obviously the majority of traffic comes from the two big sites, right? There's like Facebook, Instagram, which is like Zuckerberg, you know, stuff. And there's like Google YouTube, which is like, um, you know, was it Larry and Sergey, whatever the Google guys. And then there's like all the rest of traffic. Right. Um, and we had a scare where, uh, our core linchpin funnel is driving the majority of leads for click funnels literally, um, got shut down, um,

on Google. And so 50% of our traffic gone and they banned our, you know, banned the camera, whatever, which happens. We were repealed it, repealed it, repealed it, whatever that phrase is. And then within,

you know, six, eight hours we got back on, which was great. But it's kind of really like startled me of just like, holy crap, like that fast, we could lose everything, right? Like it's just, it's such a paid out of such an unsure foundation. And so moving into this year and I've, I've been seeing the writing on the wall probably for the last, I mean for a while, but I've been really focusing on it for the last six months. That's why, as you'll see, I'm launching a new podcast. It's why we're launching a YouTube channel. Like I think I've filmed 17 videos from the YouTube channel.

and we're filming every single week. We're doubling down on social. There's a couple things. It's been interesting. It's funny for me how it goes through waves. There's times when paid ads are the thing that crushes it, and then paid ads get too expensive, and then the organic stuff crushes it and goes back and forth and back and forth.

And look at the friends I have right now. They're making the most amount of money and the most profitable are all people who are crushing it organically. Like they're not paying for ads. Um, they're, they're literally running, you know, they're just got the content game figured out and that's what they're doubling down on. And so the number one thing I would say for everybody is if you haven't

done it yet it's time to get into the organic content side of things and i don't think you need to do like what i'm doing other people doing try to pick like you know try to be everywhere omnipresent every single platform i don't think that's the case i think it's more when i talked about traffic secrets which is like pick pick one and become really good at it if you want to be really good at podcasting become a podcaster if you want to be really good at youtube be good at youtube you know instagram whatever it is like but pick one and really double down

Um, and then create amazing stuff there because if you do it correctly and if you do it consistently, um, that's when you start getting traffic. In fact, I have a call today with a guy, um, started his business two and a half, three years ago, I think, um, this year did over a hundred million dollars. He told me, he's like, I've never had a paid ad yet, but his content game is one of the best I've ever seen. Um, which is crazy, crazy to me. Um, you know, and it's all profit. Like

You take the same business that's running 100% on ads, you could probably scale it from $100 million to $250 million or so. But the reality is 70%, 80%, that's going to be going back into ads. In fact, it's interesting. I was reading a study about all the big venture VC-backed companies. And they were looking at like, let's say someone raises $100 million. I think it's like 80 cents of every dollar goes back to either Zuckerberg or Google.

in all these VCs. Like someone raises $100 million, you know, they paid 20% into rebuilding the team and 80% back into ads. It's like, it's crazy. Like, it's just crazy. And so understanding that, like,

We can build businesses. We have deep funnels. We can have linchpins. We can do all these kind of things, which are great. And paid ads are amazing. But understanding like the organic size of what we should be doubling down on because ad costs are just getting crazy. And during election year, it'll get insane. If you haven't been on an election cycle yet, just realize that

But you've got the Republicans, the Democrats, and everyone in between who are dumping insane amounts of money into ads with no ROI expected or needed just to blast the airwaves. And so because of that, because there's dumb money being spent, everyone who is intelligently spending money, it makes all of us suffer. You'll see sometimes your ad costs double, triple, quadruple. So if you're struggling now, you're going to be in a lot of trouble then. So it's like,

Now is the time to start running, to start preparing for that storm. So that's number one, the organic game. Number two is how do you bypass Zuckerberg and Google?

Right. And this is, again, a big focus in Traffic Secrets. It's like understanding that, you know, I can go buy ads on Facebook and it's going to go out to this entire platform. But if I can undercut Zuckerberg, if I can cut him out and go directly to the influencers, there's way more profit there. Right. So I started looking instead of like how to buy ads on Facebook.

I start with the Facebook platform. Who are the influencers who have influence, who have email lists, who have blogs, who have podcasts, who have whatever? I'm going directly to them. I'm cutting out the middleman, right? And by doing that, you can save a ton of money, right? Ideally for me, my dream is to go after emailers. Email is the best traffic still. So I like going social and say, who are my social platforms have a big email list?

And those are the deals I'm trying to do. If you think about it, let's say someone's got a million followers on Instagram.

to push people to newsletter from the million followers on Instagram. They get a hundred thousand people on email list from a hundred thousand email list. We send an email out to it. They get 30,000 opens. They get whatever, you know, 15% click through rate. Like that's like the cream of the crop, right? It's like, it's like siphoning off the best customers from Facebook and you can actually get to them cheaper than going high level to cover all of Facebook. Does that make sense? It's just going deeper down the funnel, right? So imagine,

you're going to target, let's say you target me, right? So you're going to get 5 million people who know who Russell Brunson is. And so you're paying Facebook to target 5 million people, right? But then you come down, it's like, well, of the 5 million people that target Russell, Russell's got an email list of whatever, 2 million people, right? So I have 2 million person email list. And if I send email to my list, we get 100,000 opens. From there we get 30,000 click-throughs, right? So like,

if you, if you, and we don't have something to answer this, but if I was, um, you know, you'd be paying just for the 30,000 people who are the most likely to buy the cream of the crop, the best possible people. And it's going to be cheaper than going and targeting 5 million people at the top of the funnel, right? Top of Facebook. Um, and so now is the time to start really start building those relationships, which again, if you have no traffic secrets, but go back and read it. It's all in there, but it's building out and, and, um, JV partners, influencers like

like, um, cutting out the middleman and go or cutting out, yeah, cutting out the middleman and going directly to those people. Uh, it's more work. So it's me logging into a dashboard and buying ads and, you know, clicking buttons and looking at the algorithms and stats and stuff. It's, it's a little more step, a little more work. Um,

but it protects you, right? Um, when I cost quadruple because, you know, Zuckerberg can get insane amount, you know, and get $80 a click right now from the Republicans and Democrats. We can't compete with that. But what's cool is I can go directly to the influencers got email list. Um, and you know, Trump stopped by not paying them for ads. Um, that person still needs to, to be bought in. So there's that number three is like, how do you do partnerships with, um,

with people? Instead of just buying an ad in their email list, how do you do something more intelligent? I'm an example. This is not finished yet, so I won't say exactly what the person's name is, but there's a person who is a big influencer. They're awesome. And they sell ads to their list. And so I was going to go by just ads to the list, which is great. But I was like, what if instead I did something more strategic, right? And so what I'm doing is I'm interviewing this person for my podcast, right? And

Um, and then what I'm going to, or what I'm doing is I'm going back and I'm buying ads to their list, but the ads isn't like, Hey, go look at Russell's new product. It's like, Hey, this guy, Russell Brunson interviewed me on this, on this topic. If you want to go get a free copy of it, go to blah, blah, blah.com. Right. And so we're taking his list. Um, I mean, his or her, whoever it is and promoting their, that person's interview. Right. And cause they're the more like, essentially if I put something on my list, it's like a Russell Brunson product. I get

three times the opens and click-throughs versus someone else's product, you get one third, right? So same thing here. It's like, if I want, if I'm buying ads in somebody's newsletter, I want to get the most amount of clicks possible. So let me buy an ad pushing interview I just did with a person. Does that make sense? And so that's what we're doing. And it's,

Anyway, we're finalizing the first one this month here in January, but the goal is to go and do that on everybody. Everyone who's got a big podcast, they got a big list, they got a big whatever, and they're selling ads on it, is go interview the person and then buy the ads promoting the interview. That way people opt in for the interview, and then from there, push people to my products and services through email. It's moving people from traffic that I'm controlling. Again,

again this is traffic seekers 101 traffic i'm controlling into traffic that i own getting on my own email list um so it's just being strategic it's thinking a little bit differently um and yeah so i don't know there's a ton of other things we're working other processes new funnel types like i'm always testing in in the laboratory i've got a new funnel type that i'm

I'm really excited for. I'm not going to spoil it yet, but I think it's going to be the biggest game changer for me. It's not necessarily applicable to everybody's business, but for mine, it's going to be insane. Anyway, so that's what's happening. We're always tinkering here at the ClickFunnels Marketing Secrets Lab. Hopefully, I can keep sharing these things with you guys, but

You know, it's interesting because there's different variations of what we're doing, but the core principles are all found in the Traffic Seekers book. So this January, if I can give you one thing to do, knowing that the storm is coming again and it's going to be bigger than last time, and this year is happening, there's no like ifs, ands, or buts. Know that moving towards November, the ad costs are going to be skyrocketing.

Now is the time to prepare. Now is the time to start getting your organic game all in place. Now is the time to start building relationships with influencers. Now is the time to start building your email list so you'll survive the storm and thrive through it. So anyway, I hope that helps. If you haven't read Traffic Secrets yet, go get your free copy of the book at trafficsecrets.com.

And with that said, I appreciate you guys for listening. Hopefully this was helpful for you guys. And again, watch what I'm doing. Just model it. We're putting a lot of time and effort and energy and money into discovering these things. And the best ways is to model it and look what we're doing. So I appreciate you all for listening. Have a great day. And I will talk to you all soon. Bye, everybody.