Funnel Magazine Volume 2: Edition 12

FUNNEL MAGAZINE TRAFFIC & LEAD GEN

EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

THE 3 TYPES OF TIME TESTED TRAFFIC

6 FUNNELS

THE INTERVIEW

46 METRICS

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16 STRATEGY & TACTICS

LEADERSHIP

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66 SOCIAL MEDIA

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LETTER

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BOOK MARKETING MASTERY 2019

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2 STEP APPROACH TO FACEBOOK ADS

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FIND AND FIX THE LEAKS IN YOUR SALES FUNNEL

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FUNNEL BLUEPRINTS HOW TO GET PAID FOR PLANNING

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THE 3 TYPES OF TIME TESTED TRAFFIC

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TARGET YOUR IDEAL CLIENT WITH YOUR PERSONAL PROFILE

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RUNNING VIDEO ADS IN FACEBOOK CAMPAIGNS

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COACHING IS KEY

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FROM THE EDITOR

AKBAR SHEIKH

NO LONGER CHASING THE DOLLAR BUT CHASING THE IMPACT

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR OF

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Dear Funnel Hackers, I am so grateful to be able to share with you, Akbar Sheikh who is an absolute genius at building seven figure funnels. He is also a true philanthropist with his donations and mission for Clean Water in Africa. He sees the root cause to a majority of their poverty is their need for clean water and having to travel for clean water so being able to provide funds for them to be able to build a well is the solution.

Akbar’s mission for clean water resonates so much for my husband and I because we are following the Permaculture movement. We are trying to watch our impact on the world and be more mindful of our natural resources. Being able to influence and make a bigger impact in a positive way is how you make a difference. In the interview with Hawk, Akbar says “If I only donate 10%, I’m only making this much impact.

But if I can get a bunch of entrepreneurs who donate 10% we’re literally making a difference. This isn’t like some pipe dream. I want to help a million entrepreneurs.

But we are literally making this world a better place through helping entrepreneurs scale, and they’re giving back, and I just love it” Akbar also has a talent with sales psychology and being able to find what’s missing in your funnel to make conversions. In his interview with Hawk, Akbar says “We identify all the holes, all the missing opportunities and we fill those gaps to help you scale.”

There is so much I personally took out of this months interview with Akbar, it was a literal digital Gold Rush.

Happy Holidays and Have A Happy New Year, Your Editor, Tricia Wilkes

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TRAFFIC & LEAD GEN

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Book Marketing Mastery for 2019 ARTICLE BY Delilah Cordova

The author-industry is going through drastic changes • The social media powerhouses are not our friends! as online publishing and marketing become the new effective way to affordably create a book and become • We need to create and dominate our own small section of the internet. published.

• There are billions of users on the internet and Many Indie authors are rising over the traditionally part of that could be yours if you have the published authors by out creating, outselling and tenacity to reach out and take it. dominating the charts with their message. The old payWe need not be afraid of these changes. They have to-play methods of getting on the Best-Sellers list of the changed the world for the better by protecting everyone past are succumbing to the new age of the industry. online.

There is absolutely no better time to become an author Remember this: people are still making money online than now! and finding ways to thrive.

I must discuss with you the recent changes that Whether you are published traditionally or selfoccurred in 2018 so we can set out eyes on 2019 a published, your book will only be successful with proper fresh perspective. marketing to prospective readers and building an Over the last year, we have seen set a plethora of author platform. Who better to market your books than you? Especially, in the new social media world, every changes in how we use the internet for business. business needs a face with a creative strategy.

What do we do now in the aftermath of all these changes? What are the So, where does the new author start? lessons learned?

Start Marketing Your Book At Conceptualization

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Your book marketing efforts start NOW! Let’s get people involved in your project and use social media as a tool to introduce your book and its message from the beginning. It’s a must that you begin building your fan base today because once your book is ready to launch you are going to want someone to sell to. Beyond your friends and family!

Begin with relationship building in mind first. Your first several hundred fans will be excited about your upcoming works and that is what you want. You want people to be excited about what you’re doing now and what’s to come. Get on Facebook and tell everyone that you are about to launch something massively awesome! Peak their curiosity and get them involved in the journey.

Book Project Management

of tasks and determine their dependencies. That means working out the order in which tasks need to be completed, identifying those tasks that can be done at the same time and those that can’t be done until another task has been completed. This is also where you will allocate your resources and set a budget to how much certain task will cost or how much budget you should leave available to these tasks.

Planning is where you start thinking about marketing and audience building tasks because these activities can be done at the same time as writing. The final planning task is to develop the plan of the book. It’s one thing to plan the overall project. It’s another to develop the plan or outline of your book before you move to the actual writing period. Lastly, avoid linear thinking such as thinking you must write the book before you can do anything else.

Let’s take a moment and talk about an author’s Brand Awareness priorities.

Constantly think in terms of making your brand familiar We spend so much time on the things that don’t make through reach and awareness campaigns. If you have a us revenue. We miss learning to manage our projects lead character or you have special artwork that brands effectively and focus on the things that will. your book it’s important that you start making people Think about it…What are the different areas authors familiar with your style and brand now. must manage?

For example, if you’re writing children’s or young adult books one of the best ways to market your book is • Doing research to send teachers and librarians posters and other • Writing the book classroom materials that can be hung on the wall or • Building your team placed for students to see. Think about the amount • Marketing and promotion of organic reach this will install in their minds. Have • Working on your content platform What you focus on will depend on your specific goals you ever known a teacher who wouldn’t find value in for your book project. Your high-priority tasks will having support on school supplies given to them by a change depending on where you are in the process. supportive author? Follow up with the platforms that Creating a project management plan that lays out your audience uses most. like Youtube and Instagram. the project’s scope, maps out the timeline and gives a Use advertising strategies to reach deep into your detailed breakdown structure of tasks will make it easier target market. for you to work with your team and set deadlines that REMEMBER ifyour marketing efforts don’t immediately are realistic. go viral, don’t panic and definitely don’t give up. Watch Project management can be applied to small your numbers and be consistent in creating noise about administrative projects like writing a book or organizing your brand and book by communicating daily. Always a book launch. In fact, if you use project management focus on the big picture, because creating a presence the launch event is simply one task to be planned and and building a following takes time. Everything you are doing online has a digital footprint. Follow your insights managed during the process of launching a book. and analytics. Assess what you need to do by following The secret to book project planning is a process known the data. Measure what works and what doesn’t so as chunking. Chunking breaks down the process -- from that you can spend your time on strategies that will deciding what to write and when, through the editing, be most valuable for you and your goals. graphic design, and so on -- all the way to the actual launch and beyond.

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Leverage Other People’s Audiences To Share Your Book Message Get in front of as many influencer and blogger outreaches as you can. This is social media reality and now influencers have such a huge impact in helping others achieve organic online success. Through the use of their social media platforms, podcasts and livestreams video, the right influencers can set you up to their audience and get new eyes on your works.

For example, “I cannot believe that I totally sucked at...” then lead them to the goal. If you are using links, be sure to place them in the comments section so that Facebook will organically expand your reach. And NEVER sell on your personal page. Facebook wants to keep people on Facebook so adding links on posts will flag and slow your reach on a post. Lastly, ALWAYS remember to post only 5% about selling and 95% relationship building valuable material. Social media is a relationship building tool, not a sales platform.

Blogging is great in creating backlinks back to your site Be sure to leverage LIVE video, as well. Create a 10and it helps in ranking your website on Google.

20 minute live around a central topic or something that is trending for the day. Then, repurpose the content for Basically, Backlinks = Traffic. other platforms like Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. Backlink building is when you are getting a link from They are great to repurpose for other channels and someone else’s site that drives traffic back to your own. don’t need to belong. Focus on creating topics around And the more credible and authoritative the sites that what is trending and add that to the post. link to you are the higher you will be in the rankings.

It is not necessary to feel that you must go out and Audience sharing is the new word of mouth! Take action conquer all social media channels at the same time and contact them. but begin to use them in your strategy. Conquer one At OmniPresence Studios, we use a system I have at a time and encourage organic growth. Therefore, dubbed “Social Prospecting” where we create a list of it’s important to have content planned out so that you our perfect influencers. Once we have these parameters can go on each platform learn the best practices for set, we create a multi-touch social campaign to build your audience on each one. You need to be able to use a relationship with them and get them fully on board your time to study the behaviors and research how your competitors are using their platform. with our message and opportunities.

Backlink and influencer prospecting building takes time, patience, and effort. When you go down the route of using this method of outreach to create a quality prospecting campaign, you need to be prepared to do what it takes to build relationships.

Social Media Best Practices One of the biggest problems for everyone who is using social media is having enough content and creating content that is engaging. Creating an editorial calendar can help you pre-plan your content quarterly. One of your daily posts must simply be an engaging question.

For Facebook, the goal is to have your audience engage with you beyond “likes” and emoticons. Ask questions that create more than a “yes” or “no” response and gets your audience participating on your posts. Facebook loves content that they see is engaging your people.

This will ensure that those people who are engaging will see your content when you post. Plus, people love answering questions.

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As you read, remember to think in terms of reach and awareness every day.

Don’t put all your valuable time and effort into one platform because it is not evergreen and in constant flux. Can you imagine logging onto Facebook one day to find that ALL of your memories from the beginning are GONE? How devastating that could be to your business and your personal life. Facebook has been known to go on sprees and shut down big influencer pages because they were using their personal pages to sell. Facebook is not our friend. To gain reach on your business pages you must pay. You do not have control over these social media platforms and for whatever reason they deem fit. They can take down your business pages and personal pages for not following their terms.

Which is why it is even more important than ever to create your own space on the internet. You may ask Is a website even relevant anymore? Can you build your entire business life using just a blog, Facebook and Twitter? ... and then the answer is, Yes, and at what risk?

Next, create post that peaks curiosity at It’s IMPERATIVE you have a place that you control! the beginning and then tell a story. Your website is the only true space on the internet that you control. It’s wise to have one. Even a simple onepage website that can collect emails, collect tracking VOLUME 2

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and pixel data, and contact requests is better than nothing, let’s face it: you need to be found online. Your job in marketing yourself is to remove as many barriers as possible for potential readers. You want it to be easy to find you, easy to learn about you, and easy to buy your book.

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Is This Tradeshow Right For My Business: 10 Questions To Assist In Making A Decision?

ARTICLE BY Janice Means

Ask yourself and ANSWER these questions:

Assumptions: You have working funnels. You have tangible items that people are buying. You can jump ahead into your funnel process and add a person to a higher value item as well as your opt-in or free/loss leader item.

You have identified your ideal client and know them very well. This event will attract a high number of your ideal clients.

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• What is the investment to become a vendor?

List the Amount.

• Do you have the materials to create an inviting booth? Tablecloth, banners, backdrops, etc.

Consider having 2 or more devices available to allow sign-ups for those not carrying their device. Make a list of items and the investment needed to complete the booth prep.

• What is the timeline for the event? List the date. Make a quick milestone plan of action items between now and then.

• Can you get Wi-Fi service and/or mobile service at the venue during the show? Yes/No. • NOTE: If there is NO Wi-Fi available and NO mobile service in the venue during the event-the extremely high probability of a NO GO for funnel focused vendors. What is the alternative if they can’t sign-up at the moment?

• What is the expected attendance of the event?

Is this a realistic number and can it be verified?

What was last year’s attendance? What portion of the attendees are your ideal client? List all

• these numbers.

• How many of the attendees do you expect can be engaged at your booth? Write down this number. What is your plan to engage the attendees?

• How many people need to be added to your funnel from this event to be considered a breakeven point? Write down the number—remember to calculate based on normal funnel conversion numbers. You may find that they are higher since they met you. However, don’t make that assumption on the first event.

• How many people need to take advantage of your higher value offer to make break-even?

Write that calculation down.

• Are the other vendors your ideal clients and you really want to get in front of them? Does this event promote/provide opportunities to network/meet the other vendors? Yes/No? • Is your intuition telling you that you must attend? Write this down, meditate on this.

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Answer all of these questions honestly. The weighting of each answer will vary for many businesses. If you are honest with the answers to the individual questions, your decision should be apparent. Where or what is driving the indecisiveness? Is your competition there and are you worried that they know something that you don’t?

If you are still on the fence, find a trusted to source to review the questions and answers.

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Article by Hernan Vasquez

How to Slash your Cost per Lead in Half with A 2 Step Approach To FB Ads

Hello there! I’m super excited for this article and I This new inventory comes in the shape of Instagram wanted to thank the staff at Funnel Magazine for Ads, Messenger Ads, Audience Network Ads and allowing me to be part of their publication, which I recently added Instagram and Facebook Stories Ads. admire and love.

These are all potential opportunities that we have to For this article, I decided to share with you a strategy get our piece of the pie, even when the competition is that I’ve been implementing for my funnels and that growing on the platform. has been working amazingly well if you’re doing any With that being said, the strategy that I want to share type of Facebook ads at all. with you can help you decrease your cost per leads a The reality is that, if you’ve been doing any type of lot because it will imply that you’re putting out your best Facebook advertising at all, you’ve noticed that the content and your best value first. costs of the platform have been going up.

In other words, this strategy can help you not only This is not a surprise since more advertisers are jumping getting more leads for your business but also increase into the “Facebook Train” to promote their services and your brand awareness, have a higher chance of going products. And it can bring great results (when used “viral”, foster a community and much more. right)!

For this, we’ll use what’s working really well on Facebook Long gone are the days where you could get one penny right now, which are videos and video views. This per click or $1 per lead. approach will help you build a big audience fast and then targeting these viewers with your offer, webinar or However, Facebook has this in mind and they want us lead magnet. to keep on advertising.

Plus, you’ll foster a lot of goodwill in your marketplace, One of their solutions is to launch new inventory, new which can be a really wise investment in your brand in placements and new ways we can approach our the long run. Let’s see how it works: target audiences, still make money and keep on spending on their platform.

Step #1 - Create Valuable Content (Specifically Videos).

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Facebook loves videos. Especially, they love video ads.

In other words, they want to position themselves like the “New YouTube”, so this is an opportunity that we need

to leverage.

For this step, you can create any kind of content out there (blog posts, viral posts, audio, etc.), but I strongly suggest you use videos because they get a lot of reach and better placements right now on Facebook.

You can even get people watching your video for a penny per 3-second view! And we’re talking about really targeted audiences! We’ll talk about that in the next step.

Next, you’ll choose your target demographics in the targeting phase. This is important because you’ll be creating an audience after this is done, and you want this audience to be interested in what you have to offer in Step 4. Basically, you’re creating your own “pool” of people that are interested in your lead magnet or webinar offer.

If you want to put this into overdrive, you can go LIVE in your Facebook page and then boost these videos through Video Views campaigns. Live videos and live streams have a lot more reach than pre-recorded videos uploaded to Facebook.

A word of caution: Lead with your best content.

Think about this for a minute. You’re reaching out to cold audiences, people that don’t know who you are or that you even exist. And the content that they’ll see for the first time needs to blow them away! It needs to be really good so that they want to engage with your company and know more about your brand.

You can do this with articles as well, and send people to your blog posts by the use of Landing Page Views campaigns or View Content campaigns. This is also fine if you’re camera shy or you simply feel more comfortable writing articles.

Step #2 - Boost Your Content On Facebook We all know that organic reach on Facebook Pages is near to zero, right? So if you want to get a lot of mileage for your hard work, you need to put some money behind it. Even further if you worked hard to On the Ad level (or creative), you want to choose the content you created on your Facebook business page, make this happen. selecting the “Use Existing Post” option in your ads.

To achieve this, we can basically use two type of Campaign Objectives: Video Views or Pay Per Engagement. In any case, if you’re doing videos, they both work well. I’ve seen the Pay Per Engagement have slightly better results at scale, but you need to test this out.

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For me, that is a really engaged prospect! Much more engaged that someone that accidentally stumbles across my ad on their timeline. We have had a touching point and I’ve provided value without asking anything in return. Pretty cool huh?.

Once you’ve created these Custom Audiences, it’s time to finally launch your Conversions Campaigns, which will be the one that will bring you sales and leads.

The way we do this is to create a new Facebook Campaign, and we choose the Conversion Objective.

Provided that you have the Facebook Pixel correctly installed on your site, you should be able to pick the right type of Conversion, depending on your goals for Once you have your content uploaded to your Facebook this campaign. page and boosted, we move to Step #3.

Step #3 - Create Custom Audiences For Video Viewers Now it’s the time to create those Custom Audiences so we can pool those video viewers somewhere that we can target them. To do so, you need to go to your Custom Audiences section within your Ads Manager and create a Video custom audience.

Then you’ll choose the video you’ve been promoting in Step 2, which will increasingly get more and more views.

I usually create three custom audiences: 25 percent of video viewed (larger but less engaged), 50 percent of video viewed (the sweet spot) and 75 percent of video viewed (smaller but super engaged).

By doing this, we’re immediately weeding out most of the people on Facebook and only focusing our Conversion campaigns on people that are engaged with our content and that have at least watched that percentage. This basically tells us two main things:

• That they are somewhat interested in the topic we’re discussing in the video • That they have already had one touching point with our brand, so we’re not complete unknowns So just to recap: We’re using our Video Views campaigns in order to attract those potential prospects that are interested in our products and services and we’re giving them the opportunity to learn from us, without asking anything in return. Once they’ve reached certain goals (like watching 50% of a 10-minute video), then we’re The more you run these videos, the bigger your targeting them with an offer (that could be a lead custom audiences will become, because Facebook will magnet, a webinar or even a trip-wire). automatically put those video viewers into the different “buckets”. Not to mention all of the “organic” views that This will increase your conversions and dramatically your video could have (and that you’re not paying for). lower the cost to generate a new customer because you’re taking this powerful two-step approach.

Step #4 - Retargeting Your Custom Audiences If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

So we have come to the stage where we can start promoting our products and services to those audiences. Thanks a lot!

My videos are usually 10 minutes long. If someone watches 50% of my video, that means that they’ve heard me rambling for at least 5 minutes. Think about this.

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Article by Yael Bendahan

How to Find (and Fix) the Leaks in Your Sales Funnel

So, you’ve finally launched your sales funnel, and... • Your offer • Landing page crickets.

• Copy Guess what?

• Design • Targeting That’s totally normal.

• CPM (or cost per 1000 people) It can take quite a few tries before you get that perfect Once you do this, you’ll be able to figure out where to funnel that converts like gangbusters. (What are optimize and split test to fix those leaks! gangbusters, anyway?)

So - working backward: The important thing to remember is to get that minimum viable product out there, and you can tweak Your Offer and optimize from there.

Is your offer a GOOD one?

But what if your funnel isn’t converting the way you Will it improve their WEALTH? HEALTH? want it? How do you figure out where the “leaks” are RELATIONSHIPS? STATUS? (or where you are losing the people going through the What PROBLEM does it solve for them? Is it a NEW funnel)?

OPPORTUNITY? Now, there are a few variables you’re going to want to look at when you’re trying to find the leaks in your These are questions you need to ask yourself! funnels. I like to reverse engineer it and look at it New Opportunity backward.

A new opportunity is very important. You don’t want to offer someone an improvement. You want to disprove what they’ve tried thus far and offer them something completely new.

Why?

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For a few reasons - and if you want to dive deep into this, you’ll want to read Russell Brunson’s Expert Secrets.

But the basic reason is this: people have tried to improve in the past, and if it hasn’t worked, they’re not going to want more of the same concepts and ideas.

They’re going to want something completely different because that gives them hope for change.

You’re going to want to take a look at your copy (and design).

Landing Page

5. Social proof for the win. You can literally NEVER have enough social proof. One program I signed up for had 16 web pages of testimonials. 16! (And yes, I scrolled through and checked!) Seed your copy and design liberally with social proof. You can use testimonials from happy customers or clients, or even screenshots of Facebook comments attesting to your expertise!

Copy

The copy is the single most important thing that sells.

In fact, good copy can even sell a terrible offer! So if Take the Whole30 diet. Why did so many people jump you know your offer is gold, that it’s going to help your on the Whole30 bandwagon? (Or pretty much any audience, and the only thing that’s missing is them new diet that comes out?) actually KNOWING it, you’re going to want to look at Because it was something NEW and DIFFERENT. your copy to make sure it converts.

Anyone who’d tried dieting in the past and hadn’t How can you do this? succeeded in losing weight now had hope that THIS diet would finally be the one that got them the results 1. Know your target audience and research their pain they wanted. points. This means going into their Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups and forums and seeing which If you’re not sure about this, it’s important to go back to questions come up again and again. This might basics and read Expert Secrets. He breaks it down very mean actually surveying your target audience - and clearly and all you need to do is follow what he says. you can even consider offering them something to Yup, it’s that simple. entice them to complete the survey, like a Starbucks gift card. The most important thing is to know WHAT Do Your Offers Make Sense?

IS BOTHERING THEM so that you can speak their You’re also going to want to make sure that your tripwire language and address those pain points directly. offer works together with your OTO (one-time offer).

Make sure that your OTO isn’t just more of the same 2. When you’re discussing their pain points, don’t just - you want it to complement your tripwire offer and bullet point the actual problems. Describe how those make it better, not offer information that your tripwire problems FEEL. Use metaphors. Get really deep into left out. That makes people feel cheated as if they paid WHY those things bother them so much! for something that wasn’t complete. Alternatively, they 3. Address their objections - and then overcome them. may feel like they already have everything they need Hit them straight out of the gate. When people see with your tripwire offer. you’re not afraid to ask (and answer) the hard questions, For example, someone I know sells a branding course that makes them much more likely to buy. Things like and then upsold a web design course. These worked “I’ve heard that LinkedIn is only for corporate workers” perfectly together because once you’ve locked in your or “Organic reach is dead” etc. Use those objections to branding, you’re going to want to make your website create compelling copy! look awesome. If she’d offered MORE branding help, 4. Use psychology. (For more about psychological her customers would either have been disgruntled selling, check out this article by Copyblogger.) One because they’d have felt like she left something out great tactic I’ve seen is the reverse psychology one: of the original branding course, OR they would have “This program is NOT for you if...XYZ.” When you’re been happy with the course they’d already bought and giving them reasons that they should NOT buy it, it wouldn’t feel the need for even more branding advice. causes a reverse psychology effect wherein your people Okay, you’ve done your due diligence and your offer are suddenly thinking about all the reasons that they SHOULD. kicks butt. Now what?

If your offers are fine (that’s opt-in, tripwire, and OTO), you’re going to want to check your landing page. If you have at least a 20% conversion rate, you’re doing well.

Anything more than that is fantastic!

In order to figure out your conversion rate, you’re going to want to drive at least 100 people to your landing page - and if 20 of them opt-in, you’re on the right track.

But what if your opt-in rate is 15% or 10%...or worse?

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6. Benefits before features. Benefits before features.

Benefits before features. Yes, you’ve probably heard this so many times, but it bears repeating because people FORGET. You love your product and want to shout to the world all about it - and you mean ALL ABOUT IT. Every module, every detail, every spec. Well, guess what? People don’t care. All they want to know at first is what it’ll do for THEM. Don’t forget that people buy with emotion and justify with logic. So make sure to hit their emotions FIRST, and what your product or service will do for them (Allow them to spend more time with their family? Help them feel better in their clothes?

Make their marriage a happier, more connected one?).

After you’ve painted a picture of what you’ll be able to help them achieve, and they’re pretty much sold on the result - THEN you’ll want to add your features to help them justify the decision they’ve already made emotionally.

doing is wasting your money.

You definitely can use Facebook Ads to get those first 100 people to your offer, but after that, you’ll want to make sure you can see where leads might be dropping off.

If you’re getting tons of link clicks but not many opt-ins, that means that your ads are doing well and you’ll have to go back to your landing page and offer.

But - if your landing page and order form and offer are all on point, but your link clicks or CPM are expensive or you’re barely getting any - you’re going to have to check your targeting.

(For reference: An average CPC on Facebook is around $.50, and the average CPM is around $10.)

Targeting is the NUMBER ONE reason that Facebook Ads fail. You might have the world’s most amazing 7. Don’t forget to have fun and let your personality offer, but if the wrong people are seeing it, you’re not come out in your copy! You want to attract YOUR going to make any sales. people - the ones who resonate with YOU. Ideally, the best place to start is warm audiences Design website traffic, email list, people who’ve engaged with your Facebook Page or Instagram Profile, and video Now, why would I put design after copy? views of 3 seconds or more (on Facebook or Instagram).

Because, honestly, even the ugliest funnels have converted when their copy is on point. Lock down your From there, you can also create lookalike audiences of your past customers, or lookalikes of your email list. copy and then work on your design.

One great design trick I’ve seen on highly converting (Lookalike audiences, for reference, are audiences funnels is a photo or video of the creator/coach/ that Facebook creates that are similar to your existing attractive character. This helps people see the person audiences - like your website traffic or email list.)

behind the program and will immediately increase the Again - if you have these warm audiences, this is where know/like/trust factor. you’ll want to start to get the best results. If you don’t have any warm audiences, you’ll want to start warming A few more design points: them up with video - but that’s for another time!

• Bullet points convert really well • Make sure there are contrasting color blocks to After that, you can test a bunch of cold audiences for a couple of days and turn off the ones that aren’t break up the page converting.

• Make sure that your headlines flow well together as you scroll down because odds are But when you’re defining your cold audiences, you’re that many people will just be looking at the going to want to go back to where you did your target headlines. audience research and think: What is their lifestyle like?

What kind of products do they buy? Which influencers Link Clicks (AKA Traffic) and CPM do they follow? What do they enjoy doing?

Here’s where you’re going into Facebook Ad territory. The deeper you delve into your target audience’s Don’t forget that Facebook Ads only amplify what’s psyche, the more you’ll be able to identify where to already happening - so if your landing page and target them. order form aren’t converting, all you’ll be So...what does this all mean?

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If you’re not getting a lot of link clicks to your landing page at a reasonable rate, you’re going to want to split test your ads if you aren’t already. If you’ve done that and still aren’t seeing results, you need to change up your targeting.

The important thing to do when finding leaks in your funnel is split test at the earliest stage that you’re seeing a drop-off.

So if it’s at the traffic level - you’ll want to split test your ad copy, creative, and audiences. If it’s at the landing If you’re getting a lot of link clicks but not a 20% opt-in page level, split test your copy and design. rate? You need to check your landing page copy and Past that, make sure that your tripwire and OTO aren’t design. too similar to avoid customer frustration.

If you’re getting a lot of opt-ins but not a 1-5% purchase Ready to troubleshoot and find those leaks? rate? You need to consider your offer - whether it’s a good one, and whether it works with your opt-in.

Go get ‘em!

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Article by Yael Bendahan

Sales Funnels 101: The Five W’s

If you’ve been in the online business world for more than a few months - well if you’re reading this article!

- chances are that you’ll come across the term “sales funnels”. They can sound intimidating and difficult and just something ELSE you’ll have to learn about your business.

Why would you use a funnel for your business?

Mapping out and creating a sales funnel for your business allows you to measure success at each stage, and see where potential leads and customers are dropping off. This also allows you to optimize your sales process so that it’s performing at the top function and But they can be the most profitable tool you can ever getting you your maximum amount of leads. create for your business!

Funnels That You May Have Come Across Let’s address the who, what, when, where, why and Lead Generation Funnels - yup, just a landing page how - the easiest way to start! with a place to enter your email address and download What is a sales funnel? a freebie, after which you receive a series of emails in sequence to introduce you to A sales funnel is essentially the roadmap for the buyer’s journey through Know, Like and Trust. It brings SLO Funnels (also known as Tripwire Funnels) - Ever people through the awareness, engagement, and then downloaded something and were brought to a page purchase steps of their journey. where you were offered something else for a reduced price for a limited time? That’s a tripwire funnel or an A sales funnel can be a series of web pages, emails, FB SLO funnel - which stands for Self-Liquidating Offer.

Messenger messages, or even Facebook Ads that lead your target market to get to know you, receive value Evergreen Webinar Funnels - Sign up for a webinar, from you, and eventually buy. you get a timer counting down to when the webinar starts which then redirects you to a webinar page) The job of the sales funnel is also to lead your prospects up your “value ladder” - from your free offer to your High-Ticket Application Funnels - These are usually for intro offer to the highest and deepest way they high-ticket coaches - you’re directed to an application can work with you or buy from you. for a call.

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Free Plus Shipping Funnels - Buy a book and only pay the cost of shipping - like Russell Brunson’s Expert Secrets.

You’ve probably come across any or all of these!

placed that’s linked to your funnel

Who can use a sales funnel?

Here’s the important thing to remember - if you’re YOU. If you have something to sell or something to say. driving traffic to your funnel, and the funnel doesn’t convert, that traffic is WASTED. It’s pretty simple. If you have a business - whether it’s coaching or consulting, e-commerce, local, agency, You can have the best Facebook Ads in the WORLD, non-profit, selling info products, network marketing - but the people who click won’t convert to leads because your funnel isn’t working. you can use a funnel.

When and where do you use a funnel?

This is the foundation you need to lay before you start driving paid traffic to your funnel.

When people come into contact with you. So, if you’re working on driving traffic to your website, work on HOW do you create a funnel? driving traffic to your funnel. This is the best way to get Here are the foundations you need for a basic your prospects from point A to point B and then C - successful/lead generation sales funnel. which works MUCH better than a website!

• A clear target audience.

Why? Because a website has OPTIONS. • Bait (or an opt-in incentive).

A funnel only allows someone to take ONE action - • A nurture sequence to keep your prospects engaged and deliver more value. which will take them to the next page. This minimizes distractions and increases the likelihood of conversions. • An offer to lead them to at the end.

I’m not telling you to get rid of your website! But you’ll want to lead to your funnel from your website as well as In my next article, I’ll be deep diving into these foundations, along with discussing your entry offer drive traffic directly to it. Some options are: (which is THE most important offer you’ll be making), • Having a tab on your website menu leading to walking you through the steps of creating your first sales your funnel funnel, and a collections of tips that I’ve put together to • Adding a little form to collect names and emails set you up for funnel success!

• Creating a button or graphic prominently

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Article by David Milton

Rethink Your Traditional Sales Funnel

It’s time we rethink the traditional sales funnel. Since the 1920’s, sales funnels have had the same basic construction. We try to get as many prospects as possible into our sales process and then close as many of them as possible.

The Ask Method. The response to his program was overwhelming because, as marketers, we know the way in which we talk to prospects needs to change. In fact, the response was so huge, the credit card processing servers crashed within a few minutes of launch. That’s right, Ryan broke the Internet.

The problem is that everyone is treated the same. But, we instinctively know every prospect is different. No two However, I believe more needs to be done. Sorting prospects are exactly the same. So, why do we treat people into buckets at the beginning stages of the prospects’ life cycle does not address the middle, nor everyone the same? the end of the sales process.

Because it’s just easier. And, because we are lazy.

So, how do we talk to our prospects, the way they want, For years, a sales funnel has been constructed of a solid throughout the sales process? It’s easy. Create a sales material. The large opening at the top gathers all the funnel for each prospects’ psychological profile. potential prospects and ‘funnels’ them down to a small exit. What comes out the bottom is supposed to be our Luckily, there are only 4 major buyer profiles: 1. ideal client. But, there’s a huge bottleneck in the middle. Early Adopters. 2. Mid-Early Adopters. 3. Mid-Late Adopters. 4. Late Adopters.

If you’ve built sales funnels for any length of time, you know one-size marketing does not work. In real life, we Early Adopters (EA) will purchase just about anything, are shown we should talk to different people, differently. for no reason. Mid-Early Adopters (MEA) need a You wouldn’t talk to the gas station attendant the same few more ‘touches’ during the sales process. Mid-Late way you talk to your lover, for example. So, why do we Adopters (MLA) need even more ‘touches’ before they are inclined to purchase. And, Late Adopters talk to all of our prospects the same way?

(LA) will never purchase anything from you. A ‘touch’ Each ‘conversation’ needs to have a different is considered an email, an ad, a phone call or other funnel. Ryan Levesque attempted to correspondence. address this issue by developing So, what are the numbers? EA’s are 2% of your total audience. MEA’s and MLA’s hold 48% (each) of the

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audience, while LA’s comprise 2%.

According to my research, EA’s only need about 1-3 touches before they purchase. MEA’s require 4-12 touches and MLA’s require 12-20 touches. In 2005, the average number of touches that produced a sale was 6-8. Today the average is 10-12. As time goes on and the consumers get overwhelmed with sales messages,

that number is expected to reach 20 touches for each purchase.

So, what’s the major takeaway? Sales are not created by having a bigger, more complex funnel or a larger audience. Sales are created through relationships.

Understand your prospects’ needs, wants and desires, and they will reward you, handsomely.

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Article by Christopher Gaudreau

Funnel Blueprints - How to Get Paid for Planning

A funnel blueprint, in its most basic form, is a diagram that shows each of your funnel pieces and how they all work together. Things like pages, emails, ads, blog posts, and other elements are all organized into one visual communication. A diagram like this makes communicating the overall plan easier to potential clients, existing clients, your own team and any outsourced help you may have. Funnel blueprints are a great way to get everyone on the same page (literally).

model homes for buyers to check out. You may want to consider having your own model, a finished (yet unused) funnel for clients to check out... and one for each type of funnel that you can build (room for customizations of course).

Funnel Blueprints Are Very Necessary

Let’s take that same model house and assume that the builder does NOT have a blueprint and only has the model to go look at (house hacking?). The builder However, funnel blueprints can and should be much can probably derive quite a bit of information by just more than a simple diagram. They act as a set of plans checking out the model home... but not everything. and instructions for the builders to execute on. The builders may be page builders, automation specialists, He can’t see inside the walls to check out the framing, copywriters, media and whoever else will be involved in the plumbing, the wiring. He can’t even tell what kind creating the funnel. of paint is on the walls just by looking at it... did they use the right primer? Will it last more than 2 years? Are Blueprints Are For the Builders (Not the Client) the trim pieces real wood? .... you get the point. Some things are still unseen and decisions need to be made Think about it… by someone with the right education and experience to A real blueprint is a set of very technical drawings and do so. instructions, making sure the build goes exactly to plan.

In marketing we know “the sizzle sells the steak” Well if Even with what CAN be seen, you can bet your life that the funnel is the steak, the blueprints are not the sizzle. the builder will be drawing up a little blueprint of his own while he’s checking out the model house (the best A live working funnel is. he can anyway) because he needs all the information Clients would rather take a tour. That’s why gathered and organized in one place so that later, many architects and builders have when he’s building, that he and his crew can reference.

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That basic footprint can give clients a good idea of what the house will look like. How it will flow. How big the rooms are etc... and that stuff sells it.

In the world of funnels, our version of the “nice drawing of what the finished product will look like” come in the form of mockups, conceptual drawings of pages and other marketing assets. Mockups are a great way to SHOW without being specific (leaving room for customizations).

So, this is how architects sell:

Builders Can Blueprint Too (Somewhat) They can definitely read them (they have to) and he can throw together some drawings himself if need be BUT a builder should really spend his day’s building to be doing his best work.

Architects specialize in creating the blueprints, those detailed sets of drawings and instructions needed to build what the client wants (a what the client doesn’t even know they should want).

• 1) Listen to what the client needs • 2a) Show the footprint that fits what the clients needs • 2b) Show the mockups.

• 2c) Show the model funnel, if you have one.

• 3) Then show the rest of the blueprint ONLY to instill confidence in the buyer that YOU have it ALL thought out, organized and under control.

• 4) Discuss the client’s needs and wants further, speaking to the marvelous customization of that blueprint that only YOU as the architect can provide • 5) Close the deal BEFORE creating their actual blueprint (yes… get paid to plan) • 6) Create the actual blueprint (the detailed one) and deliver • 7) Offer to build the funnel (if that’s your thing) or manage the build of the funnel (be the watchful eye making sure everything goes according to YOUR plan)

Architects know a whole lot about building things too.

They know about the materials, the environmental considerations of the location being built on, the knowledge of what’s actually possible with tools and so on. Architects also deal with the client in designing what they want and balancing that with reality and informing them about things they didn’t know.

Architects are ultimately the visionaries that see all sides and consider all things. They should spend their time Are You Ready to be a Funnel Architect? making blueprints and then making sure the build stays In a world where the technical implementation of on track with those blueprints along the way. funnels is becoming increasingly less technical, lowering the barrier to entry, you can bet that the competition will Funnel Architects Sell grow. How will you stand out? How will demonstrate Architects are better equipped to sell the buildings. Not your expertise and professionalism? because pages and pages of technical instructions are appealing to buyers in any way but because architects I believe the time has come for a new type of marketing have all the answers at their fingertips. They know the professional, not a funnel builder but a funnel architect. plan inside and out... they designed it!

So, the secondary purpose of a blueprint is to help sell.

It’s the “surface” of the blueprint that sells, the top 1-2 pages (leaving out all the detailed technical instructions).

Those pages usually consist of a nice drawing of the finished product and a basic FOOTPRINT of the building. The footprint shows a nice overhead view of each story of the building. Easy to understand. Not a lot of technical info. Most people think this is the entire blueprint! But it’s not... not even close.

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Article by Susan Mershon

A Visual Mapping System for Designing Your Funnels

If you’re like me, I like to have a visual workflow or It’s called Funnelytics. You can bring your funnel ideas to life with just the click of a button. diagram when it comes to any type of design.

Especially for something like a sales funnel where there It features a drag and drop interface that you can use to map out every part of your funnel. From landing can be so many steps. pages, sales pages, upsells, emails, ads and more - all Forward steps, side steps, and even back steps. to your liking.

It helps to diagram out the entire process from start to Your funnels are stored in Projects so you can organize finish to be sure you’ve got everything covered. them by type, category or group.

Sure you can go old school and use a pen and paper Once you create a funnel, you select a funnel step using – which I like to do. one of these four categories Pages, Traffic, Actions & There is something about putting pen to paper that Offline. helps me think thru the process.

Each of these categories includes icons that represent You could use a program such as PowerPoint or Word, a specific step. but they’re not really designed for creating workflows For instance, in the Pages category, you will find icons outside of an organization chart. for all different kinds of landing pages including sales And what if you need to share the workflow or diagram pages, opt-in pages, and download pages. with your team?

The Traffic category includes social media icons, email, Hard to do if using pen & paper – easier to do if you chats, affiliates and more. use a tool specifically designed to help you map out The Actions category includes actions that visitors your funnel. to your funnel can take such as add to cart, watch a And I know of a simple to use online tool that webinar and purchase. allows you to create funnels in minutes.

The Offline category includes offline activities such as meeting, business card, and phone.

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your funnel.

Each category has its own settings based on what it does.

You might want to sketch out your funnel on a piece of When you’ve completed your funnel design, you can paper or dive right in and create it in Funnelytics. save it as a png file and then share it with your team.

To create a funnel, simply drag and drop the icon from You can also save a funnel as a template to use as a the appropriate category to the grid area. blueprint for similar templates.

As you drag them onto the grid an arrow automatically connects the icons together to create the overall flow of The best thing about Funnelytics besides its simplicity is it’s free to use. your funnel.

You can also customize each icon adding things like Give it a try next time you’re creating a funnel for your business or your clients. goals, parameters, and notes.

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The 3 types of Time Tested Traffic ARTICLE BY Hawk Mikado

Over the years I’ve increasingly seen how important Here on Linkedin, etc.) having the right Traffic, Funnels, and Follow-up • Direct Advertising and Sales - this is often the strategies are important. Most companies focus on most expensive but absolutely the fastest way to their Funnels and website, which is only important if you get in front of your customers (Paid advertising have enough Traffic going to you funnels and website... platforms have massively accelerated this process too) Now there are 100’s of different traffic strategies, and • Speaking “the oldest and highest paid most of them work in one or two subsets of a small profession” to a group of people... You can industry, but there are 3 types of traffic that work for host your own events, speak at other events, every business, regardless of their industry. broadcast yourself LIVE, or run automated webinars... this builds trust the fastest.

They’re time tested to work, it worked 100’s of years I likely didn’t teach you anything new, and if I did ago, and it still works today... the platforms have simply welcome to Internet Marketing... I know most people changed, I’ll get to those in a minute... and organizations are doing one or two, but not all 3 to First I want to touch on the subject of traffic, there are market their business.

4 categories: The most neglected, and best credibility builder is • FREE & Online writing content on other platforms so you show up as • FREE & Offline the expert.

• PAID & Online Imagine you had a prospect looking at working with • PAID & Offline you and your company OR Your “competitor”, they The most successful businesses have all 4 in place, and google you (which happens A LOT) and they don’t find a presence for you, but they do find one for the “other usually more than one in each category… guys” ... even if you provide better services and are at Now for the 3 types of Time Tested Traffic: a better price, they’re more likely to hire someone else.

• Writing Content to Distribute to While it takes some work, you can find ways to write Others: (Guest Content Writing, for blogs, magazines (like ours), show up on podcasts, Your own Blog, Emails, speak at events, and get your name out there.

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One thing I get asked all the time... “why don’t you pay

contributors to write for your magazine” and what I • -ou can pay to get your article alongside have found is that the content we have to pay for is an advertisement in most publications, hire often not as high quality, and there are actually people someone whose job is to get your story out into willing to pay US to be in our magazine... So we the world. decided early on we don’t charge and we don’t pay to write... You’ll make a lot more money on the backend if you give your best content for free as a guest writer than trying to get paid as a freelance writer.

If you’re interested in doing some guest writing here are a few resources: • You can write for us, go to FunnelMediaKit.com and apply to become a writer.

• Google: INDUSTRY + “Write For Us” - you’ll find a TON

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How To Target Your Ideal Clients With Your Personal Profile Article by Juliette Stapleton

If you are a service provider, freelancer or any any “business”-like content ever can! solopreneur who replies on their personal brand to get And here is the trick. You CAN target different groups clients, you must use your Facebook personal profile for in your connections with posts, designed to engage Client Attraction, or you are missing out! them and not annoy or repel the other ones. So you Facebook forbids using personal profiles for commercial can almost use your Facebook profile as a customer gain, but we know that business is often done through management tool! Would you like to know why? connections and conversations. How many deals are The answer is simple – you should be using Friends closed over dinner or an informal meeting in the bar or Lists! This is a hidden treasure for anyone who is looking a coffee shop? We choose to work with people we like for clients to connect to online, and it opens a whole and trust more than a faceless brand, no matter how new dimension of using your personal brand to attract much advertising it may throw at us. and convert, without breaking Facebook rules or being When you are connecting to people on Facebook, spammy or salesy. you are using your personal profile. Facebook pages cannot outreach to people – unless you run ads. But running ads not only requires a reasonable budget, more importantly, but it also requires an intimate understanding how to convert cold traffic of people exhausted by mediocre advertising everywhere they go, so much, that they simply do not respond to most of them anymore. This is another learning curve that most of the time is unnecessary and needs to be outsourced to an expert while you are focusing on what is essential for creating great products and services and serving your existing clients.

But not everyone can afford an ad manager, or even have a budget to run ads altogether. If your business You can create different lists, for example, New needs only a handful of clients to operate, your personal Connections, Prospects, Hot Leads, Existing Clients, profile is a much better weapon for you!

Dream Clients and, of course, Friends and Family and separate your connections into those lists. A cool thing With your personal profile, you can join Facebook that you can even add users that you are sending your groups that promote interests that your ideal clients friend requests to into those lists BEFORE they accept share and position yourself as a go-to expert in the it!!! So when they do, they are already in the list that can group. At the same time, you can start connecting be targeted with a much more “introductory” content, to those who engage with you by sending them aimed at informing about who you are an what you a friend request behind the scenes and starting do and warming them to wanting to know more. All private Messenger conversations. Throw posting you have to do is go into your post privacy and select a inspirational content on your profile into the particular list this post is designed for. mix to help them resonate with you and your stuff on a deeper level than Another cool feature is that on the desktop version, Facebook creates mini Newsfeeds within those lists,

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so you can, for example, engage with your new connections more, to entice them to follow your content more. Everyone loves when they get someone engaging with them, and they will feel obliged to return a favor.

Let alone the fact, that this employs the algorithm indicating there is an interaction between these users and Facebook will show more of you to each other.

Do you see the potential? And then when a connection becomes obviously interested, you can move them to a list called Hot Leads and post content that will push their pain points, or empower them to take a step forward while ensuring them you are the right person to guide them through it or do it for them! This type of content is too aggressive for a new connection, yet for someone who is ready and needs a gentle nudge – this

could be all you need to make them take a leap of faith and hire you.

Friends Lists are not new, but they seem to be neglected since marketers are traditionally focusing on Pages, yet I find this is the magic tool to connect, influence and create long-lasting relationships with your ideal clients using your personal profile on Facebook.

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4 Tips for Using Social Media for Your Customer Service Efforts!

Article by Debbie Roy

When we think customer service, many of us have this an excellent service to your audience. image of walking up to a service counter or reaching Nurture your audience and they’ll become brand someone in a call center or the service that we receive ambassadors! when visiting a department store.

You have a social media strategy in place in which The world is changing, and so are expectations, ways of you attract, nurture, and eventually, convert leads and communications and ways to deliver a stellar customer RETAIN those clients. Social customer care/service experience. Because of these reasons, social media has plays a BIG role here! A client retention strategy starts become a powerful customer care and service tool. even before someone says “Yes, I want in.”

Social media is a force to be reckoned with, not only to Your client retention strategy begins when you nurture build a brand and advertise your products and services your leads. Once you secure that client, you should but also to leverage its power for your customer service continue to nurture that relationship by providing efforts. So how do we use social media for our customer value and offering various client incentives. Not only care/service efforts? Here are a few tips! will this turn them into loyal customers but also brand ambassadors.

Use video marketing to give your audience the answers to their questions before they even have to Brand ambassadors don’t have to be “official.” When ask! someone constantly raves about you or your brand and What? How do we even do that? You can do this by the services that you offer, guess what? They are brand being pro-active, knowing your buyer persona (ideal ambassadors! client) and using resources already available to you.

This happens with proper nurturing. I see it repeatedly all You likely have a set of frequently asked questions over social media; someone looking for specific services that both your prospective clients/customers and or programs and the same individual or companies are your current clients/customers may have! Use these being mentioned over and over again. That’s priceless! questions to create Facebook Lives, LinkedIn videos, or Youtube videos discussing these various topics on a You can use social media to proactively engage with regular basis. your audience and provide them with ongoing value.

Try incorporating the following simple steps into your By sharing this information on social media, you’ll help strategy. Create a client-only Facebook group where your audience in their buyers’ journey without them you provide ongoing incentives, tips, and guidance even having to ask these questions. You are making to your clients. Use social media to thank your team the information available to them by leveraging social members; your audience will love a glimpse of what it’s media. There are many ways to be creative here, you like on the inside! could also create a poll on Facebook asking your audience what topics/products they would love to Use social media to create stellar first impressions. learn about next and you’ll easily have your next video topic. You could take a private message received on First impressions are everything and word of mouth is social media and do a spontaneous live video still a thing, and with social media, news travels even discussing the topic. With video marketing, FASTER! The previous two points discussed can help us the sky is the limit and it’s a great way with our first impressions, but there are other key points to be proactive and provide we need to consider.

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fun, however in most cases than not it isn’t the review itself that will turn a prospective customer away but rather the way we handle the review. Always leave a reply to your reviews, thank your customer for leaving their stellar review and be empathetic for the less than perfect reviews.

responder letting your audience know to visit a specific blog or video if they are looking for help with XYZ. Example: “Hello, thank you for your email. We’ve been receiving a higher than normal amount of emails and should get back to you within [enter time frame], in the meantime, if you’re inquiry is about our recently launched [enter product name] please visit our video here: [enter link]. If your inquiry is about the steps required to set up your new [enter product name] visit our new blog post here. Thanks again for contacting us and we’ll be in touch soon.”

I’m not saying that the customer is always right, and we all know that this isn’t the case; nonetheless, they still need to be addressed. I always recommend that my clients respond with something like “We are sorry to hear about this recent experience, we’ve sent you a private message to discuss further.”, “We’re sorry to Take time to revisit your strategy and ensure that while hear that you were not satisfied, customer satisfaction fixing a problem you are still leveraging social media is our number one priority, we’ve sent you a message for your social customer care efforts. to discuss.”

All the points discussed in this article will not only help Use your social media strategy to fix a problem. you build a stronger online presence and reputation Leverage social media to complement your internal but also creates a positive customer experience and customer care/service efforts by solving a problem you complement your customer care/service efforts. may be dealing with internally.

Example, if you’ve have been receiving a high volume of calls or emails that you cannot handle due to staff limitations or your team being overwhelmed, see how you can use social media to answer these questions.

Use video marketing or create simple posts to provide answers to these questions. Create an email auto-

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Sunday school teacher would care psychology of sales. So, I just ran to know.” with it.”

Things were going great for Akbar but still, something was missing.

Akbar explained “I had to still go find my why so that I have a purpose. I always, my whole life I hated what I did for a living. I’m searching for my why on Craigslist, I don’t know why. But I’m searching Craigslist.

Craigslist like it’s really weird. What ended up happening is one day I bumped into a funnel and, it was a NO LONGER CHASING THE cheesy funnel. One of these, I work DOLLAR BUT CHASING THE IMPACT from home funnels, you can do it, your grandma can do it, everybody Intro by Tricia Wilkes can do it. You have five minutes left to order. Like a super cheesy funnel.”

I HAD NO WHY Having a WHY, a reason to wake up in the morning, to push through, is something that is so unique to ourselves as individuals, to make us have a purpose in life. In the interview with Hawk, Akbar recalls before he found his why he said “My life was totally messed up, alright?

I was in the wrong relationships, I was hanging out with the wrong people, I was eating the wrong food which made me fat. I hated what I did for a living. I was in terrible relationships. I was just a total mess.

Physically, mentally, spiritually, I had no spirituality. I had no why.

I was such a mess that I ended up being homeless.” Akbar continues on with Hawk about second chances and waking up in the hospital, with this realization that “ I’m gonna end up dead in this lifestyle.” First of all, actually what happened was, I didn’t die in that hospital I was given a second chance, God saved me.

And I said, “Dude, I’m gonna take advantage of this second chance.”

I dropped all of my bad habits, immediately ripped my bumper sticker out of the McDonald’s parking lot, lost 50 pounds, got out of all of my toxic relationships, dropped all of my bad habits and I had more bad habits than your

Akbar found his unique purpose, he discovered his why and was now ready to make his mark on the world.

“I went from nothing to you know, here we are. It all kind of stemmed from, from that closet. When I was homeless, living in an electrical room with no windows, no hot water, no shower. Just bumped into something on Craigslist, believed in it. And after many, many years of struggle, we’re starting to start to enjoy what we do. Which is really what we do, honestly, as we help entrepreneurs scale so that they can give more to their families, communities and Akbar describes finding his why as favorite charities. Hence, making divine intervention. I say it was some the world a better place and we’re kind of divine intervention.“I was just enjoying that.” blown away. I felt like Neo from the I Couldn’t Afford To Donate A Pen matrix I’m just like, I see everything so clearly” “ I just saw it clearly in a Hawk asks Akbar what he would very deep and profound way. I’m attribute to his success, Akbar like, “Yeah, this is cheesy and sleazy answers “We’ve seen tremendous but the psychology...I’m like, “This is results for people who’ve changed so sexy. This is brilliant. I gotta get their mindset, who’re no longer involved in this” Akbar found his why, chasing the dollar but are chasing Yes, he found his why on craigslist! the impact and they want to make Akbar continues “ I just took off from a difference. He continues on to say there. I think we’re all gifted. God’s I would very, easily and constantly given all of us gifts, and for some say my number one secret is not any reason, I was just gifted in deep Facebook algorithm, or funnel

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hack or messaging or copy or email tactic People always ask me for that silver bullet. Dude, give me some awesome template. Give me some awesome topic. Let me tell you what my number one secret is.

It’s just been straight up giving and giving in many different ways.”

of clean water on Africa and the revelation of his success and now have the ability to give back. “They can get to go to school, they can actually have a life. Before that, we funded an entire well for thousands of people. A couple of years ago, I couldn’t afford to donate a pen.”

Akbar is not only giving content and sharing his gift of Sales Psychology with the world. He tells Hawk about his current mission to give even more, “We just funded a mission in Africa. How it works in Africa.

In certain villages, Women have to take the kids out of school, and they have to walk for hours just to get clean water, they got to walk there and then come back, and the kids have these big buckets on their heads. Though the kids have no future because they can’t go to school. They end up to continue the poverty cycle. The culture never evolves, the poor get poorer. And it’s all because they don’t have clean water. It’s destroying their society.

We funded clean water. And now 100 people in that village are going to get clean water for life.” Akbar says. He talks about the effect

Akbar says “This isn’t like some pipe dream. I want to help a million entrepreneurs. But we are literally making this world a better place through helping entrepreneurs scale, and they’re giving back, and I just love it, man.” Read the full article to find out what Hawk did, when he didn’t have the funds to donate, he found a way to donate and feel like he was contributing to a cause.

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The On-Off Switch

and implementing and cultivating.

So it’s key is to be on and to have that momentum because once that happens, then that’s where the really exciting, excitement happens.”

The Three Core Fundamentals Of Online Marketing Akbar gives our readers the Three Core Fundamentals Of Online Marketing. These three core fundamentals he implements in his own marketing and with his coaching clients.

“I just did the Instagram thing on this. What are the three core fundamentals of online marketing?

Number one, are you building your audience daily? Is your bot list or email list or whatever growing daily or follow Instagram or whatever, are your followers growing daily?

Number two, are you cultivating them daily? Are you giving them actionable, really good content that’s a resonating with them?

That when people read it, they’re benefiting from it. They’re enjoying it there. Aha, this is why I like it. I love it. And three, are you monetizing that? Are you asking for the sale?

Are you scheduling calls? Are you pushing them towards something, you know, in a respectful, noncheesy, non-spammy kind of way?

I promise you, most people are not doing this properly at all. That’s all you really need to concentrate on, man to have a seven figure business.

Anyway, there’s so much noise out there, bro. You don’t really need all of it. You know, it’s all good. And you can build but really just need to start with these three things.”

Akbar went from failing in a lot of different business ventures for ten years to find the switch that now allows him to benefit from all of this major success. “What really fascinates me is this thing I like to refer to as the on-off switch. I was off. Those businesses didn’t fail. I failed those businesses because I didn’t have the right mindset, right?

Like I just had a client of mine a coaching client, and a lot of times I gotta do this, he had a failure in mindset, that is all dude. This isn’t going to work, I’m not going to be able to scale my business. It’s not going to work.” I’m like, “Stop!” You know. You are awesome like you are going to make this work. Once I got my mind right, which took me 10 years, which you know, “Don’t get nervous. You can fix a lot faster look I just didn’t know I needed to fix it.”

Then things took off. But once that After hearing these three core switch happened, I can’t think of fundamentals, Hawk gets this Ah any failure.”

Ha! The moment that he has to He continues on describing this On- write and start implementing right Switch moment “Once you’re on like, away, read the full article to find out there are no big failures in business. what that Ah Ha moment is.

Because business has ups and Golden Era Of Time downs and learning and evolving

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“We are in the golden era of time.

Like you know, people say “Oh back in time, there was a gold rush in California. I wish I were there.”

You’re in the Gold Rush, dude.

Like it’s insane right now. I’ve said this, I’m not afraid to say on go on record and say it is scientifically on a molecular level impossible not to make an online business work. If you don’t give up and you’re doing the three fundamental things” Akbar really gives so much implementable content in this interview with Hawk, that you really have to read the full article to get every tip and every hack to begin your own personal digital gold rush.

The Interview Interview with Hawk Mikado

Hawk:Hey, what’s going on everybody? This is Hawk Mikado, The Funnel Genius and publisher of Funnel Magazine. I’m super excited to have Akbar, who is a genius at building seven figure funnels. He had an agency that helps people build seven figure funnels and now has a coaching program that helps people with their funnels and scaling their business using funnels.

Welcome and Thanks for being on.

Akbar:Thanks, man. Appreciate you for having me.

Hawk:Absolutely. So, I know we met quite a while back, and we’ve done multiple different things together.

Can you tell me a little bit about the story about how you got started and what inspired you to get into this marketplace?

Akbar: How we got started was honestly if I really think about it.

Really was some kind of divine intervention. Well here, let me back-up. So, not too long ago I was homeless, alright? Well, let’s rewind a little bit further back. My life was totally messed up, alright?

I was in the wrong relationships, I was hanging out with the wrong people, I was eating the wrong food which made me fat. I hated what I did for a living. I was in terrible relationships. I was just a total mess.

Physically, mentally, spiritually, I had no spirituality. I had no why.

I was such a mess that I ended up being homeless. I actually ended up in the hospital half dead from trying to numb the pain. That was a

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wake-up call for me. I’m like, “Dude, okay, I’m gonna end up dead in this lifestyle.” First of all, actually what happened was, I didn’t die in that hospital I was given a second chance, God saved me. And I said, “Dude, I’m gonna take advantage of this second chance.” I dropped all of my bad habits, immediately ripped my bumper sticker out of the McDonald’s parking lot, lost 50 pounds, got out of my toxic relationships, dropped all my bad habits and I had more bad habits than your Sunday school teacher would care to know. I left all of my party animal friends, I became spiritual. In this journey, things were going good. I lost 50 pounds and had a glow to my face, people were looking at me differently.

Before they would laugh at me, now they’re kind of looking up to me as a role model. Like things are really changing, but I had to still go find my why so that I have a purpose. I always, my whole life I hated what I did for a living. I’m searching for my why on Craigslist, I don’t know why. But I’m searching Craigslist.

Craigslist like it’s really weird. What ended up happening is one day I

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bumped into a funnel and, it was a cheesy funnel. One of these, I work from home funnels, you can do it, your grandma can do it, everybody can do it. You have five minutes left to order. Like a super cheesy funnel.

This was why I say it was some kind of divine intervention. Because I was just blown away. I felt like Neo from the matrix I’m just like, I seen everything clearly. I know why that lady is wearing that dress. I know why that person is smiling. I know why they have this big buy now in a countdown timer. I know the message, why they are asking these questions. I just saw it clearly in a very deep and profound way. I’m like, “Yeah, this is cheesy and sleazy but the psychology...I’m like, “This is so sexy. This is brilliant. I gotta get involved in this.” Right? Just what I meant was like the psychology sales.

And I just took off from there. I think we’re all gifted. God’s given all of us gifts, and for some reason, I was just gifted in deep psychology of sales.

So, I just ran with it. I started talking to companies, and I’m like, “Dude, your website stinks. Like, it’s terrible.”

And stuff like that. Just happened today I just had a meeting today with a very prominent, well the companies actually do really well but their marketing stuff, and the marketing itself is terrible. And now we’re going to help them all grow exponentially. But I would identify like, these companies, I’m like, “Dude, your stuff’s terrible, your website, and your funnel are terrible.”

And then I make them a video, and I’m like, you see this right here. You don’t have any authority you don’t have any scarcity. There’s no social proof. You are, where’s the social of this? Like, I rip it apart and making a video and send it to them, “Oh my god, dude, this is awesome. Can you help us?” And I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” Boom, ba boom, ba boom, ba boom, ba boom, you know. I went from nothing to you know, here we are. It all kind of stemmed from, from that closet. When I was homeless, living in an electrical room with no windows, no hot water, no shower. Just bumped into something on Craigslist, believed in it. And after many, many years of struggle, we’re starting to start to enjoy what we do. Which is really what we do, honestly, as we help entrepreneurs scale so that they can give more to their families, communities and favorite charities. Hence, making the world a better place and we’re enjoying that.

Akbar: Yeah, you’re really good as I remember, you were helping people that have some tech questions like, “What’s your account?” Blah, blah, blah, blah, and you’re done.

And they’re just like… Because the thing is, I still say that one of the most powerful ethical principles of persuasion in the world is definitely reciprocity. I’ve seen it with my wife a lot, too. It’s like, give her a flower and she would want to give it to you back or a garden. She’s a sweetheart, but I’m saying like human beings inherently when they get something they want to give more, which is like, dude, we’re so blessed that exists. The thing is, we just need to tap into a problem.

Hawk: So, what have you seen for your clients that have implemented that as a strategy of just being full, like just fully giving, not expecting anything in return?

Akbar: I mean, look, we’ve seen tremendous results for people who’ve changed their mindset, who’re no longer chasing the dollar but are chasing the impact and they want to make a difference.

You know, we had one guy, and he was funny enough in E-commerce you know, a guy in e-commerce, and he was doing alright. Actually, he plateaued. But when I taught him that, I’m like, “Listen, man, right now, you’re just treating your customer like there another number.

They are human beings. You need to cultivate a relationship with them.

Once he understood that and that traumatic, dramatic shift, he broke that ceiling and hit seven figures just by understanding that your most valuable asset really is your customer and the relationship you have with them.

Hawk: I love that, man. And the one thing that I got from what you just shared here, especially as a servicebased business was you literally broke down what they needed to do. And, they could have gone and taken that elsewhere. We’ve done some similar things where we just literally give the whole site. It’s like, here’s what you needed. 90% of the time, they’re going to come back Hawk: Absolutely, So what would to you and say, “Is this something you attribute your success to? you know, you can help me with Akbar: Alright, that’s easy, man. instead?”

I’m not a tech guy at all. I’m just VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

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laughing at my sales guy. We can’t even figure out our calendar thing like, we would be doubled book from our calendars. I’m like, dude, I have no idea how to fix this. And he’s like, I have no idea. I was like, “Hey, I’m technologically illiterate.” And honestly, I would very, easily and constantly say my number one secret is not any Facebook algorithm, or funnel hack or messaging or copy or email tactic, People always ask me for that silver bullet. Dude, give me some awesome template. Give me some awesome topic. Let me tell you what my number one secret is. It’s just been in straight up giving and giving in many different ways. I’m so

honored to tell you and millionaires.

The only reason why I share these things is to inspire other people so that they do it and it works. We just funded a mission in Africa. How it works in Africa. In certain villages, Women have to take the kids out of school, and they have to walk for hours just to get clean water, they got to walk there and then come back, and the kids have these big buckets on their heads. Though the kids have no future because they can’t go to school. They end up to continue the poverty cycle. The culture never evolves, the poor get poorer. And it’s all because they don’t have clean water. It’s destroying their society.

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We funded clean water. And now 100 people in that village are going to get clean water for life. Okay, they never have to leave. The kids can go to school. Society is going to improve, just because they get clean water they now have a future. They can get to go to school, they can actually have a life. Before that, we funded an entire well for thousands of people. A couple of years ago, I couldn’t afford to donate a pen.

I remember I was looking at my numbers there was no money for charity. I now have much money to get, there was no charity. Now we’re really impacting thousands of lives.

I’m really happy. That brings a big

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smile to my face. Because that’s why we do what we do. Honestly, like, I’ll be honest, I don’t tell many people that we have an e-commerce store.

It does millions of dollars. To be honest, I really don’t need to do all of this stuff. But we’re helping, these are all of my students’ success. We’re helping so many entrepreneurs do well. What happens is we teach them to give. So I try to donate 10%.

And I love it when my students come to me with “hey man, we donated, what was that water thing. Who is that I want to donate”. Because, if I only donate 10%, I’m only making this much impact. But if I can get a bunch of entrepreneurs who donate 10% we’re literally making a difference. This isn’t like some pipe dream. I want to help a million entrepreneurs. But we are literally making this world a better place through helping entrepreneurs scale, and they’re giving back, and I just love it, man. Honestly, I really do.

Hawk: That’s incredible. I remember I was looking at our numbers. I mean, $12,000 in 2012, Akbar: That’s awesome.

Hawk: And I remember I couldn’t give anything. So what I did is I partnered up with Kiva. And they set it up so that basically, I put money in, but it helps somebody grow their business. And then the money came back on the state. Repeat it, and then I can reloan that. So that was a way that we were able to give without actually losing.

Akbar: That’s awesome. Is that a microloan?.

Hawk: Yeah, so we’re, it’s 2500 bucks.

Akbar: I’m gonna go check that out, you see, I’m talking about I’m probably like, 99.9%, I’m going to donate to Kiva. Because you just mentioned them.

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Hawk: There are hundreds of little businesses out there. And it’s a really cool way. Like, that was a great way for us to donate when it was pretty much just me. I had a couple of interns at the time, and it was like, I wanted to be able to give back. It felt so good to be able to do that.

And, you know, at the time I was charging $200 for a customer for like a month’s worth of work. So, I didn’t have any money because I was undercharging for what I was doing. It’s like one of the best feelings is to be able to give back. Finding a cause that you’re really committed to and so I think that’s powerful. It’s really powerful to be able to have that. When you say, you’ve scaled a musical past seven figures now how many people do you have on your team that you’ve been able to do that and in scaled up?

Akbar: You know, man, honestly, I got lucky. To be honest, we built like a dream team. A lot of it was remote with a funnel designer, copywriter, tech person, right-hand man, VA type. That’s really kind of all we needed. Some of the funnel people would be like graphics people.

Now, things have shifted, where I want to do everything in-house, we now have a full-time VP of content creation and distribution. We have like a VA, but we want to bring them in full time in-house. We’re shifting to in-house because we want there to be a culture here where we come up with an idea, I do this, do this. And okay, now you’re in charge of this nutrition. Let’s make this happen.

And we’re all like, cultivating, being creative in one space. Like, that’s just how I like to vibe, a lot of people again, digital nomads and man that’s cool, like, you know, whatever, makes you happy. But, for me, like the excitement is having a team inhouse in my room and we can all come up with an idea we can make it happen and bounce things off of

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each other and stop so, that’s what we’re doing right now.

Hawk: It’s tough man! What are some of the other hardships other than you being homeless what are some of the failures? Obviously, not a failure but what are some of the things that if you hadn’t turned it around it would have, completely devastated your business but you were able to take that quoteunquote failure to catapult your business forward massively?

Akbar: You know before I launched this business, I failed for 10 years, right? I mean, my God. I had tried Harry’sfleamarket.com, it was supposed to be some drop shipping site. That just goes to show you where my mind was. That was the name I came up with. It included an ethnic clothing online company like custom tailoring. There was a bunch of them. Oh, furniture transportation company. Wow really going down memory lane here. Cars as to wholesale, automobiles, real estate. I’m sure there are a couple others that my family and friends would remember, I don’t remember everything. Everything failed! What really fascinates me is this thing I like to refer to as the on-off switch. I was off. Those businesses didn’t fail.

I failed those businesses because I didn’t have the right mindset, right?

Like I just had a client of mine a coaching client, and a lot of times I gotta do this, he had a failure in mindset, that is all dude. This isn’t going to work, I’m not going to be able to scale my business. It’s not going to work.” I’m like, “Stop!” You know. You are awesome like you are going to make this work. Once I got my mind right, which took me 10 years, which you know, “Don’t get nervous. You can fix a lot faster look I just didn’t know I needed to fix it.” Then things took off. But once that switch happened, I can’t think of any failure. Because once your

business is, there are always going to be roadblocks but then that’s the bit, that’s business you know. Does kind of go through it evolved, move on, learn from it. And if there’s a problem, we fix it, we move on.

We have like, for example, I had my right-hand man. Like I couldn’t operate my business phone. He left out of the blue. He wanted to become a health coach. That was a big problem. But we evolve. We just said, Okay, you know what, no man can be bigger than the business, we need to be systemized everyone needs to be able to be replaceable.

But it was good. You know what I mean? So once you’re on like, there are no big failures in business.

Because business has ups and downs and learning and evolving and implementing and cultivating.

So it’s like the key is to be on and to have that momentum because once that happens, then that’s where the really exciting, excitement happens.

That’s when you can create that’s where you can build and grow an impact laws otherwise you can.

Hawk: I love it. I appreciate you sharing when it comes to automation you talk about the system. Its systemization and automation which is one of the most important things to be able to scale quickly.

What do you look for when you’re automating?

Akbar: Dude, automation is so important. And to be honest, we are still in the process of automating.

And we’ve taken way too long, we should have started a long time ago. It’s okay. But again, it’s okay Because everything happens for a reason. But automation, we talk about onboarding clients we’re talking about first is for too long.

In other words, I was in like the service business, and I was the direct contact a lot of clients which ate up too much of my time that never should have been. I should have had

a project manager, you know. Now when I onboard it kinds of click, click, you know. When someone comes to be a coaching client of mine they get an automated email, they get on my Voxer, they get in my group, they get access to the materials, and it’s going to integrate with Zapier where edible arrangement sends them a basket of fruit. Like everything is automated. And I just do even when I get these automated sales on my phone, “I just I love it.” I just have so much love and

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respect for it. Because it’s like, I’ll be chatting to my wife doing whatever, you know, not to be cheesy taking calls at the beach. But like, yeah, sometimes you are like ding! A message, you’re just hanging out in your pajamas or at the fireplace.

And all these days is like, dude, that’s how much I used to make on a freakin month. And it’s like ding!.

It’s all automated. I don’t know who this person is. This is a stranger.

I’ve never met this person. I don’t know where they’re from. And they

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just bought from me. Automated funnel, automated messaging. It’s so sexy. I gotta tell you, like my family’s actually been in business for I don’t know, like 10 generations.

We come from a business family in my entire lineage. And I have a very large family. My dad’s got eight brothers and seven sisters.

My entire lineage, only a handful of people have ever had jobs. So I know a lot about businesses a lot, all types of businesses, wholesale, retail, everything you can think.

Honestly, I’ll tell you something I’ve been exposed to this. The sexiest business model I’ve ever seen in my life is hands down in online business.

you love and outsource the rest.

You know, like I can’t like right now, we’re Omnipresent, we have a blog podcast, Facebook, Instagram, Bot, what else we got, I don’t know, everything. I can’t do all of that. I can’t!

The thing is, I say this what is your most profitable activity? Actually, I really thought about this recently, and the most profitable activity for me is creating content. That’s what I try to concentrate on now, creating content, servicing my clients, building out automation on the backend. And, basically, outsource the rest.

Hawk: I love it. So you mentioned you built a sales team. That is a challenge for a lot of entrepreneurs.

What did you do actually to create your sales team? How did you put that together? How did you inspire them? Motivate them to stay?

Hawk: It’s so awesome. So, love that there’s, automation and delegation and you know you can only automate so much. And there’s, there are certain things you don’t want to automate as well. Do you have a percentage or a ratio of what you want to automate you know, Akbar: The thing is I had a team like 90/10, 80/20, something like before. They were doing really well, that?

But I had to let them go because I found them unethical. You know, Akbar: I don’t have a ratio. I mean they’re like do anything to make for example for the longest time a sale sort of thing. So first of all, I was handling all my own sales. it’s a little difficult to get ethical That was a total Nightmare. I had salespeople in all honesty. And I the wrong mind, I had the wrong can say that because I used to be idea about them. My closing ratio in sales. Number one if you find this is really high which would be better ethical salesperson, you’ve won half than any salesman. I think that’s the battle. So I found one heavy wrong and it’s just kind of dumb to hitter who respected me because he think about, what do you think? All was ethical and I talked a lot about these big organizations that they ethics. So we aligned, so that was run like any big organization has really important. And so he brings a sales team. So when I first got on his people that he charged that a sales team, it’s just like, “Dude, he’d been around for a while you I love this.” I have so much more know. So that’s how I did it, is by free time because on average like really aligning with someone that a call is more than 45 minutes. So has the same kind of beliefs as man imagine, like offloading all of me. That doesn’t want to sell just that. Yeah, the closing ratio is a little anything to anyone then. Because lower but dude I can create and the truth is dude, if you’re good produce so much more in our free at this stuff, right, if you get the time. And it’s all good you know. So, psychology and all of this, you can you know, we outsource that. I say sell anything to anyone. But that this do what you do best and what VOLUME 2 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE

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doesn’t mean that you should, and some salesman just do. So I had to, we had to think really., dude if someone’s on qualified then sell to them and if they’re not, don’t sell it to them. And we really align there, and that’s a smart thing to do.

Anyway, it’s good for business and people who stopped anyone their business is not going to do out in the long run anyway. So, that’s how we built it.

Hawk: It’s perfect. I love that. Do you guys pay them base plus commission or commission only or, base only?

Akbar: 20% Hawk: Just commission at 20% straight?

Akbar: I’m glad you brought that question up. So some people want to charge more. You don’t need to pay more than 20% in all honesty, number one. Number two, less than 10%. I don’t think you’re really going to get talented people. Honestly, I think 20% is kind of the sweet spot, in my experience so far. Now, I hope I’m wrong. I hope someone tells me, Dude, you can get some for 10% Anyway Hawk: How much do you charge?

Because I know people who go for like 2%, 3% but they’re doing million dollar deals.

Akbar: Right, exactly. So the thing is you have no excuse not to get a sales team right away. Because there’s commission only people out there.

So I don’t have the money for what he was talking about free. They take it, they’re just taking a percentage.

So like you have no excuse to start trying to build. Just get one salesperson for now. Let me tell you something, there’s plenty of them out there that are looking for work.

And there are some good ones out there that just have them take the disc test. Google Tony Robbins disc

test. Make sure they take it, and you take it at that, it aligns your beliefs, align your values, and you know, that’ll give you a little jump ahead of the competition for sure.

Hawk: Awesome. Perfect. Getting back to the funnel itself. What are you guys doing to drive traffic to make sure that your team and your phone is just you know, going keching! Keching! Keching?

Akbar: You won’t believe it, but right now, we pretty much always has been pretty much 100% organic. We’ve been 100% organic, reputation based. Just people hear about us because you know, we get a lot of people results. And most people tell other people, we put a lot of content out there. We take advantage of reciprocity. And I’ll tell you straight up, we give content.

We give a little bit of content. We get a lot back. People say, “Hey, man, I’ve been following you for a while, and I love your stuff.” By the time they contact us they’re just ready to come on board, making It an easy job for the salesman.

You know what I mean? We do a very good job of cultivating our audience. “Hey, listen, I just did the Instagram thing on this. What are the three core fundamentals of online marketing?” Everyone’s like, “Oh, I already know.” “But, are you doing it?”, “No.” Everyone wants like, once something is Instagram theater? Facebook? Forget all the noise for a second, are you doing the three core fundamentals properly?

Number one, are you building your audience daily? Is your bot list or email list or whatever growing daily or follow Instagram or whatever, are your followers growing daily?

Number two, are you cultivating them daily? Are you giving them actionable, really good content that’s a resonating with them?

That when people read it, they’re benefiting from it. They’re enjoying

it there. Aha, this is why I like it. I love it. And three, are you monetizing that? Are you asking for the sale?

Are you scheduling calls? Are you pushing them towards something, you know, in a respectful, noncheesy, non-spammy kind of way?

I promise you, most people are not doing this properly at all. That’s all you really need to concentrate on, man to have a seven figure business.

Anyway, there’s so much noise out there, bro. You don’t really need all of it. You know, it’s all good. And you can build but really just need to start with these three things.

Hawk: I love your second one there.

Especially, one and three. I think people, a friend of mine shared this Randall and I think, I guess it came from South Park. But it was, you know, it’s like; first, we get the socks to blink, blink. And then we get you to know, we get paid. Okay. But it’s basically like you do the thing. And then blink, which is like this, like an unknown thing that actually gets the results and then you know, get paid, right. So you just shared something.

And I just wrote it down on my desk here. You said, “Send daily nurture them daily.”

Akbar: Yeah.

Hawk: And make sure that they actually resonate with the content.

And I think that’s a big thing.

Like, do people resonate with your content. I think one of the biggest ways to know is if they opt out if they unsubscribe, but most people will just stop reading them. Like I’ve got, I don’t know, how many gurus that I follow in my email inbox that I haven’t opened their email in the last six months.

Akbar: Right, yeah.

Hawk: So I, like I just, I just wrote down to write a PS at the bottom.

Tell me, reply to this email. Let me know if you like or dislike this

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content, right? Or do you like better support?

Akbar: Yeah.

Hawk: That’s just something I had an Ah-ha moment and had share that. Awesome, man. That’s really cool. So do you guys drive Facebook traffic or you guys driving traffic to generate new followers?

Akbar: We’ve done zero paid ads.

We’re getting into that now though because the smart thing to do is to have organic traffic and paid traffic.

Now we’re, we’re gearing up and working very hard to create kind of really nice funnels and made some really professional videos, and now we’re going to get into paid traffic, hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

Hawk: Okay, awesome. So what does your value ladder look like when somebody goes in? Obviously, they’d they consume your content.

What’s the next step and a couple of steps after that?

Akbar: It’s honestly super simple like a super stupid simple man. Like you go to my website, there’ll be some call to action. You put your email address right? Now, the main call to action is just to book a call with us actually. That’s all it is in there.

It’s in it, so you gotta put your email address, and then you add it to our global list, and then we email you daily content. Great content and then we’ll keep pushing back to book a call with us. Our whole thing is to talk to us on the phone, and when we’re on the phone with you trying to sell you our coaching program, that’s really all. It looks like, man it’s just about getting people on our lists and following us on Facebook and Instagram, all these things, cultivate them, giving them content on all those platforms and then pushing them to book a call with us.

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Hawk: Awesome and so it’s a really simple funnel. Do you guys don’t have any trip wires other than just book a call?

Akbar: I have for when I’m on podcasts and stuff I have a pretty cool tripwire where I give you my book, I have a book. It’s pretty cool. That was one of my Boyhood dreams actually. I always wanted to be International Best Seller. I give away my book it’s sold on Amazon for $47. And I give it away for free as a tripwire. And what’s cool about that is you got to give me your email address. So when you give me your email address, it takes you directly to my bot. And my bot has this whole sequence of videos. And it’s talking about the book was like, “Hey, man, if you want the book, you gotta go get it. It’s in my group.”

And then they get the book and get there. Join my facebook group.

So from that tripwire, you’re on my email list, you’re on my bot list. And now you’re in my group. And I’m going to cultivate you in all three ways until you talk to me and buy from me.

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Hawk: I love it.

Akbar: But to be honest with you, we’re not a typical digital marketer.

We’re here to sell to people who will benefit, and we’re not trying to sell anything to just anyone. You can sell anything to anyone, but that’s not the right way to do business Hawk: Absolutely, there’s a statistic, it’s 5 to 12 touch points before somebody buys.

Akbar: Yeah.

Hawk: You’re hitting that all in one.

We used to make people go through 12 touch points just to get on the call with us.

Akbar: Wow. Hawk: Basically, we got on the phone, and then it became a 15/30 minute call, and they either say yes or no. Fortune is obviously in the follow-ups. If somebody doesn’t, you’ve talked a lot about the automated follow up, you guys do any manual follow up or, or you said, you do bots, your email, you guys, do SMS, or, you know, having people on the phone actually

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picking up the phone and asked him to schedule that call?

Akbar: I want to do SMS, we’re not doing SMS yet, we just kind of, we did all their stuff in webinar base Before we now just switch to want to get you on the phone. So we got to do things. Now we’re kind of implementing that to take further right now. It’s just on our website, book a call, and that’s all we got going on. What other things I did get a community manager for my facebook group, which we cultivate a lot. So that community manager guy tries to compensate people and see what problems they have.

And then introduce our coaching to them.we do have that, that’s kind of a cool idea that we’re currently pushing out.

Hawk: Love it. Awesome. If you had one thing that you could share with the audience, and let’s say they implement nothing up to this point that we’ve gone over, which would be insane because you’ve shared some really powerful things and I’m implementing some of this later today. I’m going to send this

over to our content guys and say, “Hey, we need this in our emails.”

But what would that one thing be?

That would help them improve their lives, improve their business, help them give back in a bigger way and really change the way that they do.

Something they can implement and take action on right now?

Akbar: The one thing I want to say is, I really want to congratulate everybody, right? And I really, really mean it because again and I alluded to it earlier. I mean we are so blessed, bro. We are in the golden era of time. Like you know, people say “Oh back in time, there was a gold rush in California. I wish I were there.” You’re in the Gold Rush, dude. Like it’s insane right now. I’ve said this, I’m not afraid to say on go on record and say it is scientifically on a molecular level impossible not to make an online business work.

If you don’t give up and you’re doing at least three things any kind of things like the kind of things we discussed today. Doing three things daily to take your business forward.

It’s as simple as that. What did I say before? Those 10 businesses didn’t fail, I failed those 10 businesses because I didn’t have the right mindset and just gave up. I just gave up on each and every one of them. Prove me wrong, Do you know anyone who has never given up on their business and is always doing good things to take their business forward every day at least three things? Do you know anyone that hasn’t made it online?

Hawk: Very few. It’s, and it’s usually they’re not doing three things right Akbar: Right.

Hawk: Going back to your three things which are building your audience, creating that community, engaging them and ask them to monetize.

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Akbar: Yes, yes if you’re not doing those, if you’re doing those three things and you don’t give up, it’s impossible not to succeed.

Hawk: Absolutely. You’ve created seven millionaires through your, coaching program and countless sixfigures earners, hundred thousand earners.

Akbar: Yes.

podcasts all the time. Here, let me get you hooked up to my podcast manager. Dude, your copy’s terrible.

Here let me hook you up with my copywriter. We identify all the holes, all the missing opportunities and we fill those gaps to help you scale and then you have endless walkie talkie support with me for a year to help you implement that blueprint.

Because we’re entrepreneurs, we need accountability, we need to bounce ideas off each other. Or, “Hey man I got this idea, man.”, “I need to hire, this team member’s not working out for me, what do I do?

Oh my God, I need a Facebook, an expert in Facebook ads, you know anybody?”, “Of course I got the best.”

You know what I mean? Sounds like, I’m basically your pocket CMO and strategic CEO, for the entire year.

And I tell you I really enjoy it. Were giving benefits, Changes people’s lives so for the first time in our life honestly, we’re loving it.

Hawk: And you’ve also helped us.

We launched a new webinar for automating this world or automate the world. And within literally the first presentation we did, we close 30% on that. And having collected 100 grand from that specific presentation. We’ve basically closed the program down because we outsold literally sold out in you know two hours. Can you share What are some of the things that you do with your clients and how can somebody work with you, get to work with you if they want to have a conversation Hawk: That’s awesome, perfect. I with you? appreciate you sharing. Alright you Akbar: Yeah, On our website guys, you have had the blessing to akbarsheikh.com. I should probably learn and grow and get the genius come up with a different website, from Akbar who has shared some right? Because nobody knows how incredible insights and wisdom on to spell Akbar Sheikh? Probably how he’s not only helped himself come up with an easier website but and some of his partners create anyway, for now, that’s my website. three multimillion-dollar companies And dude, the way we work with but also helped seven of his clients people is very just honestly, so what create multimillion dollar companies we do is when, when I have a client as a million dollar companies as of coaching partner, the first thing well. So, appreciate you for being we do is what I call your business on. Thank you so much for sharing. in a day. So we’re going to get on the phone just like this when this Akbar: Thanks, bro. creation was rated. Dude, where’s your business at right now, where do you want to take it to, what are you doing right now to market it. But we’re going to get a full analysis real quick. Like one minute, like I do here where the holes are you. Why are you doing all your own sales? You need to get a sales guy, here let me hook you up with one. Dude, you’re just so awesome you should be on

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marketing campaign for a gym out there made $40,000 over a two week period profit, and we use that one, and then we have a standard straight call to action one. Do you want your gym to look like that?

Or does your gym look like this, you want it to look like this? Call us. So we have a straight apply funnel that does very well.” His funnel has 72% opt-in rate over 1000 opt-ins which is outstanding! He also is running funnels for the gym owners to get new members. He’s taking his niche and focusing on both sides of the coin.

Get Focused On One Niche I know we all have heard this “NICHE DOWN.” I think its always stated but hardly ever followed because everyone is running off all of the things and all the people they want to reach. Tim Lyons talks about working with one niche and the advantage of doing so he says “The nicest thing about our business is we’re working with one niche, one industry, one style of a gym, we can scale quickly. We use the same funnels across multiple different locations, all we have to do is rebrand them, so we were fortunate enough to create some really strong funnels early on, like two or three that we just knew we’re working well.

We knew the ad copy work, we knew the headlines work, we knew that the images that we were using were working. So that allowed us to go ahead and just scale very, very fast.

In the first nine months in business, we had already acquired 150 new clients” Continue on to read his full response in the interview of fulfilling for one niche and the success he’s seeing.

Marketers And Coaches Hawk asks Tim Lyons what would fast-track our readers to success and for key insights and he responded with “I’ve always found coaching has always paid dividends.” He further answers hawks question with “first, you shortcut every single process, everybody that’s already made the mistakes is in front of you, why make those mistakes again, hire somebody that’s a coach, hire somebody who’s already been there. I wish I would have learned that a little bit earlier.”

I think one of the reasons hiring a coach is so important is because as entrepreneurs especially in the digital marketing field you have to coach your clients on so many aspects.

They pay you to build a funnel or to generate leads, and somehow you

are coaching them on their brand, their message, their direction. Their Success is Ultimately Your success.

When Tim Lyons says “You know, as marketers, you’re kind of hired to generate leads and sales for clients.

But we end up being coaches to business coaches, not only do we have to come up with the creative, not only do we have to come up with you know, monitor, the campaigns and optimize campaigns and have the right offers, we also have to be a coach and teach them how to sell” Which caused this huge Ah-Ha moment for me! I hope it creates that same moment for our readers!

To Grow, To Plan, To Strategize, To Automate To think about the point of growing, planning and strategizing to finally get to a place that your business is mostly automated should be the ultimate goal number one. One of the first steps on that road is to understand your client’s lifetime value and Tim Lyons explains why by saying “Understand your client lifetime value, I think that’s the biggest piece that I feel is missing.

To understand how much your clients are spending with you, how long they’re staying with you, and what the value is of a client. Once you understand that, you know how much you’re willing to spend to acquire a client.” Hawk also provided some key insight when he also added, “I usually share with my clients like there are two things you need to look at. One is how much does it cost to acquire the customer?

And then how long does it take for you to get to break even, because if you know those two things, then from there, everything becomes simple.”

Finding a way to automate your business takes a process and putting your daily tasks down on paper for others to follow. Tim goes over his

Metrics

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Running Video Ads In Your Facebook Campaigns

You’re running video ads in your Facebook campaigns. Great! You should be. Right now, certain video ads are getting more attention and more engagement than static images with copy, for less.

So, how do you know which video ad in your huge test is best? The data feedback from Facebook is dismal, but I may have a solution.

Facebook shows you how many people saw your ad at the 3-Second, 10-Second, 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, 95% and 100% intervals. As marketers, we are only concerned with 25%-100%, as the other metrics are very deceiving.

For example, if your ad is set to auto-play, then you will naturally see a huge percentage of people in the three and ten-second columns. These data points are skewed because it may take three to ten seconds for someone to discover whether they want to watch your video, or not. They really didn’t watch your video with intent, so those two columns are useless for our purposes.

Over the years, I have developed a method to help gauge Performance and Engagement of a video ad, just by using the data in the 25 through 100 percent

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ARTICLE BY David Milton

columns. This method is somewhat arbitrary and tends to confuse those who want concrete answers from their data. Think of this as a gauge. Just like the speedometer in your car, this equation is not exact but is it better than what we currently have.

Let’s say we have: To calculate the Performance metric, we want to take the 25% number and divide it by the number of Impressions, expressed as a percentage: 2,010 / 12,487 = 16% Performance This is the percentage of people who watched a meaningful part of your video ad. You would use this number as a rating to compare to other ads in the test or group. Easy.

The Engagement metric is a little more fuzzy, but it is easy to calculate. Simply add the number of views in the 25 through 100% columns, and arrive at a total: 2,010 + 1,222 + 560 + 342 + 158 + 74 = 4,366 Now, take 4,366 and divide it by the number of Impressions: 4,366 / 12,487 = 35 Engagement Notice, I did not show this as a percentage, even though it could be. It is simply a rating. The higher the rating, the better. Also, because we added all the numbers, you could reach a number greater than 100.

Here’s why so many people give me that puzzled-dog look when I show them this metric. In Facebook, when a person watches 25% of a video and then watches 50% of that video, they are taken out of the 25% column and placed into the 50% column.

Why are we adding people who aren’t there? After all, only 74 people watched the video to completion, not 4,366. Those marketers are only interested in the number of people who completed the process. I am more interested in rating the popularity or overall interest the content provides the viewer. This equation rates the viewer’s interest, not the number of viewers.

We also assigned an Engagement rating of 35 to the video. Some videos may show a Performance of 22% but an Engagement of 10. That would indicate the video had a better response at the 25% mark, but viewership fell off after that. The video started well, but interest waned, compared to others in the test.

Sure, you’d be able to figure that out just by looking at the numbers in each column. But, when you are looking at a set of numbers from hundreds of ad campaigns, then this method makes it much easier to see the potential winners and losers. Remember, in all marketing, we are looking for trends. We are trying to In this example, 16% of the people who saw your video predict the future, not analyze the past. watched at least 25%. That’s the Performance rating.

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Leadership — Revealing the Power of Chess in Business

Leadership — Revealing the Power of Chess in Business Article by Jim Eagerton

Doing Business Development with Amazon and the Likes Being in Seattle the day Amazon announced their record-breaking earnings was the day I was speaking to employees and chess club members about: Revealing the Power of Chess to Professionals. Many current and future leaders have studied business and some have even studied chess. But few, if any, have ever connected the dots between the two. And that’s what we accomplished.

applied to developing and maintaining many of the critical skills needed to run a business.

Spending the better part of the day with my Amazon host, we hung out in the spheres where Amazon is sheltering endangered species of plants. Employees get to work inside in a conference area soon to be surrounded by vegetation. We also had time to blitz through the Amazon. Go store in the heart of their booming campus. Just fire up the app and head into the store. Once inside, discreet cameras in the ceiling record what you are putting into your virtual shopping cart. And then…walk out. A minute later an email arrives on your mobile with a receipt of your purchase accurate to the penny.

Seattle is a mecca for chess with numerous scholastic organizations providing students world-class learning opportunities. But it’s also big on corporate chess.

Amazon, Boeing, Blue Origin & Microsoft among others all have company clubs where employees play against each other and test their skills in corporate chess matches.

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I was in Seattle at their headquarters to show some of If chess is presented in terms that business the Amazonians who play chess how valuable strategies people understand, it can be readily and tactics that appear on the chessboard also occur in business and could enhance their professional development.

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Who Let the Dog Out? Everyone in the audience had played a ‘decent’ game of chess recently and of course, reported to work that morning so they were in the right room eager to connect the dots. Curiously none of the attendees brought their dogs. Yep, Amazonians can bring their dogs to work every day. And I thought to bring your child to work once a year was a bit overdone.

Tactics Right out of the box we discussed tactics. Tactics are opportunities that occur when the pieces are in a certain formation on the board, so they are not always present in the position. The skill is recognizing when they are in the position and taking advantage of them at the moment. In business, they happen through the placement of the resources available to the company.

The first tactic was the skewer. An important piece is under attack and has to move out of the way leaving a piece behind them to go lost. This example is ridiculously simple for those that have played any chess. It’s black to play since his King is in check from the rook. The only way to get away from the check is to move out of the way (dodge the bullet) so the King must move up. White plays Rh7 + attacking the King again, it can A B2B tactic happening right now is that Toys’R Us move up or back but in either case, the rook on a7 goes stores are sitting empty and other retailers are eyeing lost and with it the game. that space since the opportunity has become available to acquire an asset at bankruptcy pricing. Wait too long So that’s the chess dot, for the business dot everyone and they could all be gone.

All of the tactics in the presentation are used in business.

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in the room was acquainted with the phrase: Getting Thrown under the Bus! It’s the same thing. A leader is under pressure or attack and steps aside and an employee behind them take the hit. In a presentation the night before I chose not to bring up this bus analogy because there was a young girl in the audience. She would have thought: “Wait, I ride the bus” what’s he talking about?

AT&T Uses the Skewer This chess skewer tactic was recently used at AT&T when it was discovered they engaged Trump’s personal lawyer for $600K. CEO said bad day for the company and was a big mistake. Did he take the hit, nope the head lobbyist in the DC office took the fall (resigned/ retired) after the King/CEO stepped aside? In chess when the King is in check it often has to step aside and the piece behind him goes lost. What were they paying that kind of money for? Maybe it was the game of getting the TimeWarner AT&T merger approved? After originally approving the merger now the government is thinking of taking their move back and not allowing the merger. At least in chess with the touch move rule once you make your move it’s over. You can’t take it back.

Wells Fargo Doesn’t Play the Skewer If you don’t play the skewer tactic in business, it could be a losing move. When Sen. Elizabeth Warren had the CEO of Wells Fargo testifying before her in Congress she asked Mr. Strumpf “Who in your direct line of reports did you fire over this scandalous credit card fraud activity?” He looked at her and said “no one”. And she replied then you should resign and give back all the ill-gotten gains you acquired during that time. And you know what a couple weeks later he was gone and through claw-back provisions, he lost much of what he had earned.

Another business/chess tactic is the use of clearance.

In chess, it’s when a piece is keeping another piece from making progress. Another piece could accomplish something if the piece in the way were removed from the board. Generally, they can be sacrificed if necessary to open the avenue for attack. This is one of the most interesting examples of clearance I’ve seen in my practice. Can you find it? (Hint: Rh1+ starts the winning combination) When does clearance happen in business? Usually, it’s part of a reorganization. The company wants to put people in different positions and sometimes needs to displace those already there. Also can be part of a layoff or early out of the program because in business, making a profit is essential for long-term success.

Uptake In Chicago, we have a unicorn tech company called Uptake. Maybe you’ve heard of them. They install sensors on heavy equipment and monitor the status and performance. They can tell when a piece of equipment should be taken offline for preventive maintenance and stop a serious breakdown. Recently something curious happened at this fast-growing company. They laid off 50 people. Didn’t announce what area of the company was cut.

In the press release, the company said the purpose of the layoff was to make sure they had the right employees in the right positions. Sounds like a chess explanation.

In chess when you see strong players maneuvering their pieces to different squares on the board, they are reorganizing their workforce. And the press release went on to say Uptake is still hiring.

Powerful Business Strategies and Tactics Found in Chess In our discussions, we revealed how a chess strategy of offering your opponent a draw created over a billion dollars’ worth of value. The importance of overprotecting an asset resonated with this group because a company that is growing so fast often has people doing their thing and their backup may not be in place. Succession planning comes to mind for example. We learned about the importance of making preventive moves. Sometimes in chess, you don’t have a good move. But you have a move that prevents your opponent from having a good move. Shades of the LinkedIn acquisition come into play in that case.

Top of Mind

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Among the skills that playing chess can develop for business leaders is keeping the strategies and tactics

you need to win “top of mind”. Just like in a sales funnel or email campaign, when you send the first message the client may not need your services. But several months later, when they decide they need to build a sales funnel for their business if your email arrives on that day and you create funnels, you may have just acquired their business.

Bring it Home

You can learn more about the fascinating connections between running a business and playing chess by bringing it home to your organization. It can happen with a keynote speech, in a workshop or breakout session that challenges your associates with valuable professional development using a game. How cool is How do you know this works? Just ask these Amazon that…. Contact us through our website or let’s connect Chess Club players who are practicing how to make on LinkedIn and discuss the possibilities. If it works for their company extremely profitable.

Amazon it will work for you.

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Coaching is The Key Article by Loren West

Do you ever get so frustrated with your marketing I lost a ton of money, wasted untold amounts of time, results (or lack of them) that you want to throw your and was on the verge of giving up. laptop against the wall?

It wasn’t until I hired my first marketing coach that As you imagine your screen & keyboard shattering all things finally started turning around… over the floor, I want you to know something…

In the beginning, I thought I wanted to be an SEO Everything is going to be OK. “guru” until I realized one thing.

No matter what arena you compete in, the feeling of ...I hated SEO! frustration and the fear of failure will always be present.

The algorithms change waaaay too much, and it’s far There’s no escaping this. too easy to get your website or sales funnel penalized.

In fact, unless you were born into a SUPER-RICH Lucky for me I was driving ZERO traffic, or else I may family who can pay your way to the top, you’re going have destroyed my entire business trying to “trick” the to have to WORK for the things you want in life. system… AKA Google.

And since you’re most likely not one of those people, Then I tried to be a “social media” marketer. you might as well suck it up, and realize that sooner or later, you’re going to meet these two emotions head- But little did I know, that term is EXTREMELY vague, on. which led to me offering everything under the sun to clients who wanted to pay the least amount of money So if you’re not getting the results you want, or can’t for my services. seem to break through to your monthly income goals, it’s time to embrace your failures, and channel your After giving up on that venture, I decided I’d go back to frustration into something more productive. being a “course junkie”.

That something is a business/marketing coach!

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I told myself I didn’t know enough to make a stable income online, so I took out a loan and wasted a few When I first started in digital-marketing, I failed thousand dollars on marketing courses. miserably…

Although the info I consumed was good, the lack of My mind was all over the place, results killed my confidence, and had me stuck in a “learning loop”.

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During this journey, I ended up befriending what some have all had a coach/mentor to help guide and push would call a seasoned marketer. them to GREATNESS! I bought a few of his programs in the past and decided ...Us marketers are no different. to take up his offer for a 1-hour consulting call.

In fact, our world changes so fast, and so frequently, Before, I had only invested in dozens of low priced that we need as much help as we can get from people ebooks and video courses, which brought me little to no who have been in business longer than us. progress. But this offer felt different…

So if you can find the RIGHT person, and, if you can Up until now, I was always left with information overload afford it, you should DEFINITELY hire a coach! and my own beginner perspective. Both of which hadn’t Besides having a great offer, It’s the best way to (almost) put any money back into my bank account. guarantee an ROI in your business...

But now, I finally had the opportunity to speak to someone who makes a full-time income online! I was Now that you know the REAL “secret”, you’ve got a choice. ecstatic…

I was finally about to learn the SECRET to MILLION- You can either keep doing the same thing expecting different results, which is the very definition of insanity, DOLLAR marketing!

I never forgot that call…

...or, “do what you gotta do” to become a 7 (or 8) figure boss!

Because things were revealed to me that put every piece of information I had consumed into perspective. Which means realizing, and accepting that fact that In other words, several “light-bulbs” turned on that day. you don’t know it all, and going after someone who knows more than you to help reach your goals.

1. There is no “secret” to building an online business.

Ready to finally get the breakthrough you’ve been 2. Stop buying courses (because I already knew waiting for? Hire a coach asap! “enough”, and chances are you do too!).

3. Coaching is the way!

How important is hiring a coach?

The bottom line is this... you can’t reach the top of anything without getting help.

All the greatest athletes, actors, business-people, etc.

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The Changing Face of Google Article by Sarah Ricketts

In this article, I will be exploring the dynamics between user and Google in the perpetually evolving online space. This includes how Google has become more autonomous and sophisticated in understanding human behavior.

With the advent of Google over 20 years ago, a new era of accessibility became available to users at their fingertips. It was with this accessibility that the internet was no longer unfamiliar territory - it became a portal of information one could navigate to find what they were looking for. But, with the emergence of Lycos, Yandex and Ask Jeeves between 1994 and 1997, there Focusing more on natural language queries and were many search engines before Google. moving away from keyword integration exemplifies how ‘finding meaning’ added a newer layer to Google’s Although Google globally secured its position as a search algorithm and the direction it was going in. dominant search engine, it still made multiple revisions to its algorithm to continuously improve and provide Due to Moz’s handy algorithm update chart, it is more value to its users. possible to see that the number of confirmed algorithm updates have steadily declined. This indicates that These updates ranged from ‘Caffeine’, to make search Google is becoming more autonomous, integrating faster, to ‘Panda’, which was focussed on combating search behavior into the fabric of the search engine’s spam and content farms. These revisions were functionality. fundamental to improving search for the user inline with Google’s mission to “Organize the world’s information While Google was steadily evolving, the convenience and make it universally accessible and useful”. of and intrigue created by the Internet meant that it had become a part of daily life. This soon transcended ‘Hummingbird’ aimed to understand the purely functional uses as it began to enter the social relationship between semantic search sphere - with the creation of Facebook and Instagram queries and human interactions. in 2004 and 2010 respectively.

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Although Google followed suit in 2011 with Google+, its version of a social sharing platform, it didn’t see the same success. As Facebook and Instagram have

a collective user base of over 3 billion, it’s clear to see that it would be difficult to compete with a scale of that demand. In the more recent news, Google announced that they will be closing down Google+ in the next few months due to a data leak of up to 500,000 profiles.

This isn’t the only reason Google will be shutting down its services however. They explained on their Blog saying that the ‘consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds’.

Machine-learning and artificial intelligence came to the forefront in 2015 with ‘Rankbrain’ to determine where sites rank in search results whilst helping Google to process and understand search queries. This was a big move into autonomy and understanding the dynamics between user and machine which is so integral to the functionality of the search engine.

WHERE, what about the WAY that users search?

Introducing: Voice Search.

Voice search launched in 2008 on Google’s mobile app and was initially named Voice Action. In 2011, it was announced that Voice Search would roll out onto Google Web. Google Voice is now a staple part of search behavior with 20% of all searches activated by voice within the Google app and Comscore predicting that 50% of all searches will be voice led on Google web by 2020.

So with all of these search innovations and developments in the Google space, who’s to say what’s on the horizon for Google? I’ll tell you something though, I’ll be waiting to see what the next big thing is for the internet giant!

Sources:

• https://www.blog.google/inside-google/ This is no small feat mind you, with the additional company-announcements/twenty-yearsknowledge that user queries have changed dramatically building-everyone/ over the years. What used to be a requirement for direct, • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ practical information has changed with the demand web_search_engines for instant information for so many questions: • https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change • https://backlinko.com/google-rankbrain-seo • How do I get from A to B? • https://www.theguardian.com/ • What’s going on with [insert celebrity here]? technology/2018/oct/08/google-plus-security• How much to fly from Paris to Rome? breach-wall-street-journal • https://www.theguardian.com/ ...And so on. To answer these questions, Google’s technology/2018/oct/08/google-plus-securityecosystem includes News, Video, Images, Maps and breach-wall-street-journal so much more.

• https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/justSo we’ve covered WHAT people are searching...but say-it-future-search-voice-personal-digitalWHERE are they searching from? assistants/1392459 • https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/dataSmartphone usage has skyrocketed in the past decade collections/voice-assistance-emergingand Google’s Mobile First indexing update was technologies/ implemented to address this question.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_ Hummingbird Although Mobile Indexing officially started rolling out in 2018 (which some of our sites received a notification • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Voice_ Search about), it was actually announced in 2015 and had a lot of webmasters rushing around trying to ensure • https://www.blog.google/technology/safetysecurity/project-strobe/ their websites were mobile-friendly. Ensuring Google crawled the mobile version of a site before crawling the desktop version mirrors a shift in understanding the ways in which search behavior is changing. It’s this kind of reactive nature that keeps Google at the forefront of search.

In the UK alone, over 96% of all 16 to 34-year-olds have a mobile phone - with mobile users confessing to checking their mobile phones on average 28 times a day. This equates to over 10,000 times a year. That’s a lot of Mobile love!

So now that we’ve established the WHAT and the

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