Ep 06 - Hook, Story, Offer (and the Attractive Character)

Welcome to the Traffic Secrets Podcast. Here you will learn the secrets to get tons of your dream customers, AKA traffic, to any website or funnel. It'll also help you to massively grow your fans, followers, and customers. I'm your host Russell Brunson. Now let's get started. Hey everybody, this is Russell. Welcome back to wherever you're hanging out with me at. We've got Instagram, we got Facebook going right now, and I am home during week number 2 of our quarantine. And I'm guessing a lot of you guys are as well. So while we're sitting here trying to figure out what to do, I figured this is a good time to start talking more about traffic. So hopefully you guys are all excited and pumped for that. Anyway, excited to be here with you guys today, and it's interesting, as we were talking this morning as a team, and we started talking about all the fears, obviously a lot of fears are happening in society and the economy and things like that, It's like, well, how do we protect ourselves? How do we create a life preserver around our company? What does it look like? What does that need to be? And honestly, the biggest, most important life preserver you can create for your company is getting customers. That is your life preserver, especially in times right now where so many companies aren't able to get customers. That's why the economy's failing, why businesses are failing, is 'cause they can't get customers. And so I figure from now 'til the next, I don't know, 2 or 3 weeks, 2 or 3 months, I'm gonna be talking about this like crazy with you guys. How do we get customers, how do we get customers? Because it's the thing that we all need right now. It's the safety net we need to protect ourselves, to protect our businesses, and so that's kind of the game plan. So, with that said, you guys excited if we go jump back into the Traffic Secrets book some more? First off, thank you so much for all you guys, obviously we launched this Traffic Secrets book in the middle of chaos, and the books are selling like crazy, and so I wanna thank you guys so much for doing that. That's exciting. Tom Greases said, we are pregnant, the next generation of funnel hackers on the way. Congratulations, Tom! We got funnel hacking babies coming. I love it. I heard that the prediction is that after this whole everyone's quarantine come down, there's gonna be a whole bunch of babies popping out 9 months later, and the hospitals are gonna be overwhelmed with that. So, good thing they're preparing now, I guess. Anyway, so, I wanna jump into this next section here of Traffic Secrets with you guys. So, if you've been, obviously, the books don't ship till May 5th, but tons of you guys have been telling me you got the audiobook, which is awesome, and so you've been listening to all of the to the things. Today we're gonna be jumping into secret number 3, which is by far the most, one of if not the most important secrets in the entire book, which I'm excited for you guys to get into. So things we've covered so far. Secret number 1, we talked about who is your dream customer and really getting a deep understanding of them. Are they moving towards pleasure, away from pain? Are they a searcher, are they a scroller? Getting deep into their mindsets, we understand them, because if we understand who they are, Then we can understand secret number 2, which is where are they actually hiding? Where are they congregating online? Where are those existing streams of traffic happening so we can go, we can find those people, and we can tap into them, right? So that's number 2. So now secret number 3 is what we call, you guys ready for this? Hook, story, offer, and the attractive character. Now, man, if you guys have been following me at all for the last 2 years, not quite, year and a half or so, about a year and a half ago-ish is when I first came up with the new framework, hook, story, offer, and I started freaking out, and I was like, Oh! And I remember it was one of those things where I was doing a training for my 2 Common Club X members and it just kinda came out. I was teaching something and I was like, if you notice, every single page in a funnel has hooks, story, offer. The ad does, the emails do, the landing page, the sales page, upsells, like every single page has hooks, story, offer. And as we got deeper and deeper into it, I realized that if anything in the funnel isn't working, it's always because of either the hook, the story, or the offer. And then I started freaking out. I remember the next morning I came in, it was like 6 in the morning, I was lifting weights with James P. Furrill and Dave Woodward, and I was like, you guys, guess what, I just figured out this thing. And they're like, what is it? I'm like, it's called Hook, Story, Offer. And they're like, that sounds weird. We spent the entire hour, we didn't lift a single weight that day, we just talked about Hook, Story, Offer, and they were freaking out, I was freaking out, I'm looking at every funnel we've ever done, like what was the thing that made them work and not work? And it was crazy that every single time it always had to come, down, and it's always either the hook, the story, or the offer. And so I wanna give you guys a, as you guys know, when I wrote the new Traffic Secrets book, at the same time I went and I rewrote the DotCom Secrets book, I rewrote the Expert Secrets book, and I wrote this book as well. I wrote this one first, and then rewrote the other two. And because hook, story, offer, it's crazy 'cause it's such a fundamental, important concept, but because I didn't come up with that framework until after these first two books were published, these two books were missing it. And so part of the big rewrites in these include the hook, story, offer. In the DotCom Secrets book, I go deep in hook, story, offer. Expert Secrets, I go back into it as well. In DotCom Secrets, we talk a lot about funnel audibles and testing your funnel, if a funnel's not working, and there's a whole new section in the back here about that. And what's cool about it is it's all based back on hook, story, offer. Anyway, and so in the new book, Traffic Secrets, I talk a lot about this as well because it's such a big part. In fact, traffic, one of the most important things about traffic is being good at throwing out hooks. Right, a hook is like, how do you grab someone's attention, right? Most of our customers all day are on their phone scrolling, and they're scrolling and they're scrolling, right? A hook is the thing that gets them to stop scrolling, right? So the hook could be, it could be the picture of you, right? Like I notice I didn't just do this on a white wall, I'm like, hey, I need a picture back here, and I totally forgot, I usually have something different back here, but there's the default Apple TV backdrop, right? I got my books here, and then I notice I'm doing things like this, I'm trying to like, to hook your attention, so if you're scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, all of a sudden you see this like, Why is Russell so excited? Ah, and that hooks you, right? So hook could be the headline, it could be the image, it could be the picture, it could be the background, it could be, it's something, it's everything you have in your tool chest to grab someone's attention, right? There's hook, okay? The second part of hook, story offer, is story, which then the Expert Secrets book is the deep dive on story, storytelling, selling story process, how it works, how it doesn't work. And so I talk about story a lot in here, but Traffic Secrets is primarily like finding the people and then getting hooks to grab their attention. Expert Seekers is like how you tell them a story to build up perceived value of what you're gonna sell, and then actually in DotCom Secrets we go deeper into offer. So you got hook, story, offer, they kind of weave backwards in the books, but I touch upon them deep in each book. So in Traffic Seekers book, in section number 3, or secret number 3 is all about hook, story, offer. So I'm gonna flip open to there really quick. So you can see the picture here, if you guys can see, if you're watching you can see there's a picture with all these little hooks, then there's the story, and there's the offer. And this is the core framework of funnels, when you really start understanding it. Alright, are you guys cool if I read you part of the book? Ah! Okay, I'm gonna read you a story. This is a fun one. So, it was 9:27 PM, and the last of Jessica's kids had just fallen asleep. It had been a long day that started out way before the sun came up, and it was finally ending. While Jessica was exhausted, it was her time now, and she had a few precious moments to herself without kids pulling her in a million directions. Does that sound like any of you guys? If you've got kids, that sounds like me, especially during this quarantine. Soon as she would have started nighttime routine of cleaning up the house, getting herself ready for bed, taking off her makeup, and finally falling asleep for a few hours before she had to wake up and start it all over again. As she fell on the couch, she reached into her pocket and slowly pulled out her phone. What had been happening in everyone else's lives today, she wondered. She opened Facebook and swiped through the lives of her friends and family, hoping to find some comfort knowing that she wasn't the only one who had a busy day. Soon she started to get bored, but when she was about to close the app, she saw an image fly past her screen. She almost missed it, but she slowly moved her finger back up the phone, bringing the picture into the middle of the screen. Yep, she thought she was right. It was a picture of a woman about her age in workout clothes with gray shorts on. The thing that caught her eye wasn't the shorts though, it was the dark gray spot in the middle of her shorts. A little confused, she looked around above the image and read the words, let me tell you about the time that I peed my pants during a workout. I was filming for Dollar Workout Club and I'd never been so embarrassed before. Jessica was right. It was a picture of a grown woman who had peed her pants. She laughed for a second, but then her laughter turned into uneasiness as she realized that she knew exactly how this woman had felt. She had experienced the same thing earlier that year when her kids had wanted to jump on the trampoline with them. She wanted to be a good mom, but after a few jumps, she had to get off because she had peed her pants. She had quickly came up with a reason why she couldn't jump anymore, and after apologizing to her kids, She had run to her house to get changed. She knew that, she knew the story she told her kids wasn't true, which added to her mom guilt even more. This also made her think about other activities she knew she would love to do but were off limits for the same reason. After a few seconds of looking at the image, Jessica decided she wanted to see why in the world this woman would post a picture of herself on Facebook telling others that she had peed her pants. She clicked on the image and was immediately taken to the page of the video with the same woman in the picture. Jessica clicked on the video and started listening to the story. The woman's name was Natalie Hodson, and she was a fitness blogger and, uh, and a mom of two amazing kids who were both 10-pound babies. Natalie told her embarrassing story when she accidentally peed her pants during a workout she was filming for her blogs. She then talked about a doctor, um, that she had met who specialized in helping women with this problem. She shared how the doctors were able to help her, and after she had success, she wanted to share it with other women. Natalie mentioned she had worked with the doctor to create an online program that anyone could do from home with simple exercises to strengthen their abs, core, and pelvic floor. Together, Natalie and the doctors made an ebook that also came with bonuses like diet and nutrition tips, exercises and movements, and special training programs. They wanted to make this offer for all the moms who had struggled with accidental leaks after having babies, but didn't have the ability to meet with a doctor in person. Instead, you could get the same advice without ever leaving the comfort of your home, and you could get the ebook with all these bonuses mentioned for just $47. Excited, Jessica jumped off the couch and ran across the room to find her credit card. After typing in her credit card numbers, within minutes she had access to the ebook that would solve her problem forever. Even though Jessica's story is fictional, this type of experience does happen each and every day to women who are embarrassed when they accidentally pee their pants a little bit when they cough, sneeze, or even jump on the trampoline. Over the past 3 years, over 120,000 women have purchased Natalie's ebook. This made Natalie Hodson a household name, giving her the ability to change the lives of countless women around the world and made her very wealthy in the process. The framework that Natalie used to get 120,000 people to buy her book, Abs, Core, and Pelvic Floor, is called Hook, Story, offer. Oh, you guys seeing where this is going? Okay, so think about this. This is happening every single day, and I shared that story at the beginning because Natalie's business has blown up, but it's all based on the same concept, right? People have their phones, or they're on their computer, they're scrolling through Facebook, through Instagram, through YouTube, through blogs, like whatever their method of learning is, right? They're doing the thing, and then something's gotta capture their attention, okay? Now for us, as business owners, as marketers, and entrepreneurs, as funnel hackers, our job is to become great at getting people's attention. Throwing out hooks that grab their attention. So for now, someone's scrolling through their feed and all of a sudden they see her standing there embarrassed with the pee pants, like, what is that? Boom, you got 'em. You hooked 'em just long enough that you can now tell them a story. Now the goal of the story is to increase the perceived value of whatever it is you're gonna be selling, right? And then, excuse me, and then you make them an offer. Okay, and that's it, that's the game. That's how we drive traffic, that's how we sell products with things that we're selling inside of our funnel. And I mentioned this earlier, what's interesting is as you start looking at your funnel, at your ad campaigns, at everything, if something's not working, I launched an ad campaign, it's not working, why? It's always because of one of these 3 things. Either the hook wasn't right, okay, it's not getting people's attention, or if it is grabbing their attention but then they're not buying, then it means the story did not increase the perceived value of what they're selling, what you're selling, okay? And if the hook's good and the story's good, it means the offer's no good. 'Kay, so if you get all three of them working, then everything works in the funnel. 'Kay, and that's true on every page. Like the ad, there's a hook, a story, and an offer on the ad. There's a hook, story, offer on the landing page. There's a hook, story, offer on the sales page. Hook, story, offer on the upsell page. Hook, story, offer on the downsell page. Like every single page in the funnel has a hook, a story, and an offer, 'kay? This video alone, like literally I'm here with you guys, this video is a hook, 'kay? There's a whole bunch of hooks around me, right? There's like the books, the pictures, there's me reading a story, there's me being all animated, there's stuff like that, there's a headline. It said, hook, story, offer, and attractive character on Facebook. It wasn't on Instagram, 'cause I can't do headline on Instagram, right? But that was the hook, okay? And so far live, I've gotten about 200 people on Instagram and about 350-ish on Facebook. So 500 people, boom, and with a second's notice, that hook grabbed you guys to get your attention, right? Now I have your attention. Now my job is to tell you a story, and the goal of my story is to increase the perceived value of the offer I'm gonna be making, right? So I'm telling you a story about this book. I'm talking about it, I'm reading parts of it to you, I'm getting you excited, and you're like, Oh my gosh, I need that book. And if I've done my job right, if the story is good, it's increased the perceived value of this book, and then I make you the offer like, hey, I want you to go to trafficsecrets.com and get a copy of this book right now. Okay, here's my offer, right? So the offer is, this book normally sells on Amazon for $24.95. You can get it for free at trafficsecrets.com. It's pre-launch right now, but you can get it for free. You just pay $9.95 shipping and handling, and I'll ship one out to you as soon as we start shipping on May 5th. And then on top of that, I've got 5 bonuses you can go through immediately. There's 5 different videos you get for free when you get this video. Each video's over an hour long. Of some of the greatest traffic minds on the planet. One is an hour-long presentation that I gave at Funnel Hacking Live. One's an hour-long presentation, or a 30-minute presentation from Peng Joon on traffic. And then there's Prince EA, he's got over 3 billion views on his videos, there's a presentation from him, and there's, I'm blanking on the offer, but there's all these things, right? And now if you go to trafficseekers.com, you get this right now. Okay, so good hook, boom, I threw a hook out there, got attention of 500 of you right now, and this will probably get, I don't know, between, you know, over the next, a week, probably 100,000+ views, right? So 100,000 people see this, the hook was right. Okay, I tell a story, the story should be engaging, get to know each other, and then I make you an offer. Hook, story, offer. Like that is the foundation of all marketing, all business. That's why it's now in the DotCom Secrets books, Expert Secrets, and the Traffic Secrets books. It's your job to understand that. Now in the Traffic Secrets book, it's called hook, story, offer, and the attractive character. Because it's you, it's your personality, you're the one who's throwing these hooks out. You're the one grabbing people's attention. You wanna have it be engaging, you have to be exciting, you have to be figuring things out. And there's hooks everywhere, like every platform. Like any of you guys who follow me on Instagram, right? Like if you go to my wall, every one of those images is a hook, right? Like yesterday I did an image with me holding a Post-it note that had a scripture from the book of Esther that said, perhaps, I'm gonna mess up the quote right now, but perhaps you were born for times like right now, right? That was a hook to get people's attention., right? There are all this panic, all this fear, and people are scrolling through feed, and then boom, I'm throwing this thing saying, look, yes, it's scary, but this is your time. It's time to step up and try to stand, right? Hook is telling a story, and the offer is just people like it. I think I had like 4,000 likes in the first, in the first, I don't know, like 5 or 6 hours, right? So hook, story, offer, like it's happening there, it's happening there, right? It's happening when I'm selling, happening in my videos, happening in my emails, happening in my ads, like everywhere you're publishing, everything you're doing, hook, story, offers there over and over and over and over and over again. Kim said, Russell, a hook just an image? It's not just an image. It can be an image, yes, but it can be so many other things, right? A hook is anything that grabs your attention, right? And so when you're scrolling through your feed, sometimes the thing is like, in fact, this is your assignment, okay? Tonight, we got this, whenever you get off this, whatever you're listening to, go to Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, whatever you're excited by, and just start scrolling. Just go through the feed and start scrolling. And notice what things grab your attention, okay? When someone grabs your attention, stop and think, what was it that grabbed the attention? Was it the headline? Was it the image? Was it the crazy person? Was it, you know, something with the comments? Like, there's something that grabs your attention. Whatever that was that grabbed attention is the hook, okay? So I'm making my videos, I'm looking for, like, I set up this location, like, right here for a couple reasons. Like, here's a potential hook that might grab someone, right? You see some books, right? I could put something on the screen back here. I'm in my Funnel Hacker shirts, grabs them. I'm excited, I'm talking, like, all these elements are things I'm doing to try to hook people. I don't know what's gonna hook, like, Something hooked all of you guys. Some of it's 'cause you know who I am, so that's the hook. Some of it's you're looking for traffic, that's the hook. Some of you guys are just like, there's this weird guy, he's all excited, what is it, what's happening? The hook is different, yeah, Gaston said your energy's the best hook. So hook is just, it's whatever it is that grabs their attention. So it's all the tools we have in our tool chest. We're trying all of them, we're throwing everything out to get their attention just long enough that they're gonna stop from their scrolling, let's stop, And then say, okay cool, now I got your attention, let me tell you a story. I'm telling you a story, and again the goal of the story is to increase the perceived value of the thing that I'm going to sell them next, the offer I'm gonna make, and then I make an offer. That's the game, that's it, okay? What's fun is 'cause now it's like when people have a funnel, like my funnel's not working Russell, what do I do? It's funny, I have people, we do consulting, and it's, I don't really do it anymore 'cause it just, I ran out of time, but last time I did consulting it was $100,000 for a day. And people come in and they're like, my funnel's not working, I want it to increase. And I literally, what I would do, I would go to the ad and look at that and say, okay, this ad's doing alright, how can we make it better? Is there any better hooks we could use? Is there a better story we can tell? What's a better offer? And we spend some time on that. Then we go to the landing page, okay, here's your landing page, cool. It's doing alright, what's a better hook we could do? What's a better story we could tell? What's a better offer? And we go to the sales page, hook, story, offer, hook, story, and like, that's it, there's my magic trick, right? If you wanna see the magician, how he reveals his magic tricks, like that literally is it. Okay, it's hook, story, offer. You paid me $100,000 today, that's all I would do. What's interesting is at Funnel Hacking Live, 2 years, let's see, not last year, but the year before Funnel Hacking Live, my opening keynote presentation, I talked about hook, story, offer for the first time ever. And I remember Stacy Martino was there, and she said, she said, I went home that night, and I was like, okay, I need some help, but I don't know what to do. If I was to pay Russell, he would just tell me it's hook, story, offer, so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna think, what's my hook, my story, my offer? And she started looking at her business, she said, Oh my gosh, my story's amazing, my offer's amazing, I'm not throwing out enough hooks. She said, I'm gonna throw out some more hooks. So she started doing all these things and she messaged me, I don't know, like 2 weeks later. She's like, Russell, thanks for the consulting. I'm like, what are you talking about? She's like, you told me that if I was to hire you, you'd do hook, story, offer, so I just looked at my own business, I said, is it hook, low story, offer? I realized it was hook, I threw out a bunch more hooks, and she said we just had the most profitable month of our entire business because of that. I'm like, wow, that's amazing, like now you know my tricks, now I'm useless in the equation, right? So that's what's important for you guys to understand, okay? Your job as marketers is to become good at throwing out hooks that grab someone's attention, then after you have their attention, tell them a story that builds the perceived value of the offer you're gonna make them, and then make them an irresistible offer. When you become good at that, you'll be able to write your checks, you'll be able to write your own paychecks for the rest of your life. So, your homework right now, start going through your feed, news feed, Instagram, Facebook, Google, like anywhere you're going at, and start paying attention to the hooks that are grabbing your attention. Okay, and then if the hook grabs your attention, click on it and then go listen. Like listen, what's the story? What's the hook on the landing page? What's the story they're telling? What's the offer? And start paying attention. This is what funnel hacking's all about. Noticing what's happening and watching it and paying close attention because the way you do this is not gonna be magic, it's just you're looking at that and you're figuring out, okay, how do I do the same thing? How do I throw out hooks? How do I tell stories? Especially right now, like right now the media is good at this, right? Why is media pushing so much fear? 'Cause fear's a great hook. Now I'm not a big believer in like, let's throw fear out there to try to sell products, but that's what the media's doing, right? They're really good at throwing out hooks. They call it clickbait, right? The clickbait, they're trying to get hooks out there. It's the same thing but ethical that you're trying to do. And so that should help. So, Mateo said, how do you help us survive in Corona time? That's how you survive. You need to build a life preserver around your business. The life preserver are customers. Business is all about just getting customers and serving them at the highest level possible. People still have money. There's the false belief like, oh no, people don't have money. It's like, no, they still have money. Money hasn't disappeared. You know, it's gonna shift a lot of businesses, people are losing jobs and stuff, but it's like, if you understand like, people have money, they're still spending money on things that they need, right? Like, look at what people are buying right now. There's a lot of things people are buying right now. You have to understand that, and you have to protect your company. You have to build a life preserver of customers. And how do you do that? The best way is to get traffic, people, customers to you, which is why I'm going live every single day until further notice. About this Traffic Secrets book, 'cause that's what I'm talking about. Okay, now I have an interview I gotta jump off of happening in 3 minutes, so I'm gonna bounce, but I want all you guys right now, it's time right now during this moment of fear and frustration and quarantine and whatever the season we're in right now, this is the time for you to sharpen your saw and become better. I recommend going to trafficsecrets.com, getting a copy of the free book. The book doesn't ship 'til May 5th, but if you get the order form bump, the upsell's the audiobook, which is, which is 7 hours of me reading the book, you can get it today. It's ready right now. So that's happening, and then like I said, I'm going live every day during the weekday. I'm going through chapter by chapter, so go pay attention, go back and watch them, start learning these principles. Even while you're waiting for the book, you can start understanding these principles, start becoming better at them, and test some hooks today. Post something on your Instagram wall or your Facebook wall or wherever you post stuff and test a hook out. See if you can get someone's attention and just practice your hooks. Because the better you get at hooks, the more people you're gonna get. That's kinda the game plan. So, alright, that's it, you guys. It's time, go get your book at trafficseekers.com. Appreciate you guys, thanks for paying attention. For hanging out today. You're all amazing, and I hope you guys enjoy your time in quarantine. I know it's scary and stressful times, but we need to be focusing on the positive and focusing on building life preservers around your business, which is traffic, is customers, is people. And so this book is all about how to get not just customers, ah, if I can get this down here, not just customers, but how to get your dream customers, the right ones, the ones you actually wanna serve, into your business. And so that's the game plan. All right, thanks guys, appreciate you all, and we'll talk to you guys all tomorrow. All right, bye everybody. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Traffic Secrets Podcast. If you want to learn more secrets to getting traffic to your websites or your funnels, then I want to give you a free copy of my brand new best-selling hardcover book called Traffic Secrets. Now, I already bought a copy of the book for you. I just need to know where you want me to ship it. So go to trafficsecrets.com and let me know where to ship your free copy today.