In case you didn’t know…
Most marketing campaigns don’t work.
Meaning… most funnels you build will not be profitable.
On the other hand, when you nail it, one funnel has the potential to change your life.
So it’s worth it… but you have to set your expectations right.
The best marketers are happy with one or two out of 10 funnels succeeding.
This means that approximately 85% of the time, the best marketers fail.
It’s kinda like baseball… the best baseball players in the world are getting on base around 3 of 10 times. This means 7 out of 10 times they fail… and these are the best in the world.
Michael Jordan said “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. 26 times I have been trusted to take the game winning shot & missed. I’ve failed over & over & over again in my life. And that is why I succeed”.
Are your expectations set yet?
Marketing is art & science.
It’s art because you can say anything you want, you can design anything you want, you can manifest whatever is in your mind.
It’s science because of data. Your art may or may not be good, in the opinion of the customer.
The purpose of marketing, as it pertains to business, is to move the market towards your business. If they find your marketing art strong, your data will be strong. If they find your marketing art to be weak, your data will be weak.
It takes practice.
Like anything else.
Malcolm Gladwell, in his book “Outliers” studied successful people and found that they all spent at least 10,000 hours on their craft.
They weren’t an expert until they put in 10,000 hours.
This means they failed & failed & failed but kept going.
If you work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, you put in 2,000 hours per year. At that pace, it would take you 5 years to become an expert at marketing.
And the best marketers STILL fail 85% of the time.
So, how much more likely are you to fail 85% of the time?
Maybe 95% is more appropriate?
Now are your expectations set?
While that may come across like I am being negative, it’s actually positive.
I am trying to protect you.
I want you to know that if you are going to go about marketing, you should not get discouraged when you fail the first time… or the 2nd time… or the 3rd time…. plan on building about 10 funnels.
And expect one of them to work.
And don’t get angry if you have to build 20.
Just set your expectations & if you can accept this, then move forward.
If that sounds like too much, then steer away from marketing.
Of course, there are some shortcuts, like finding a mentor, reading books from the legends of advertising, practicing & getting feedback from strong marketers before spending any money, etc.
With that said… there is one way you can make this all much easier on yourself.
KISS
Keep it super simple.
Most marketers are tempted to build a complex campaign because they know they are going to spend money on ads & they want to make some sales while they figure out marketing.
But this is a big mistake.
Why?
Because you don’t even know if the market likes your art.
You could spend 3 months building the perfect funnel & it bombs.
Why not spend 3 days & test the basics, to make sure the boat will float before you manufacture 1,000 boats?
One reason this happens is because we fall in love with our ideas.
You may be emotionally attached to an idea & you convince yourself that the market is going to love it.
But 85% of the time, expert marketers have bad ideas.
So 95% of the time, you should expect to have bad ideas, until you figure marketing out.
So…
Don’t get emotional about your ideas.
Just put them out there.
Instead of building 1 elaborate marketing campaign… just build the minimum sized campaign so that you can test your ideas against each other, and allow the market to tell YOU what they want.
If they each take 3 days, now you can build 10 funnels in 1 month instead of 1 funnel in 3 months.
And the odds of success are the same, whichever way you go.
The purpose of this exercise is to find out what the market responds to.
You are being wise & listening.
You are not trying to convince the market to get your thing, you are trying to see what thing they want.
Don’t try to tell the market what THEY want.
That’s not how business works.
The purpose of business is to solve people’s problems.
If you solve a problem they don’t have, they are not going to be willing to pay you to solve it.
If you solve a problem they do have, they are going to be willing to pay you to solve it.
And the bigger the problem, the more money they will pay.
The problem is, right now, that you don’t know which idea THEY consider to be the biggest.
So you have to find out.
You can either survey the market by asking them what their biggest challenge is… or you can create a simple funnel to see how they respond.
If you already have the ideas, you should create simple funnels.
If you have no ideas, you should survey the market.
What you are looking for is:
What is that big problem that is nagging them right now. What keeps them up at night. What is causing the most stress in their life. Or what is the big goal they have which they can’t seem to achieve without some help.
If you find one glaring problem/goal, that is the best place to start.
If you have a few contenders, make one simple funnel and launch it. Then get to funnel #2 while you wait for the data to come in on #1
Once you know which idea is best, then it’s time to complicate. Then it’s time to build your autoresponders, upsell offers, downsell offers, lead magnets, squeeze pages, etc.