#TBT - The 4 Lessons Ryan Deiss Learned About Branding

At some point, we have to make a pivot in our business. We have to make this pivot from pure hardcore, direct response, hardcore hustle, the sale at all costs, because that's what needs to happen into something that is more branding and something that is more relationship first. But this dichotomy, this duality, this when do we make it? When do we make that pivot? How do we make it?

Hey, capitalists. In traditional Throwback Thursday fashion, we we're re releasing one of our most popular episodes that we've had on capitalism dot com. Enjoy.

Today you're gonna hear one of the keynotes from the Capitalism Conference. We used to call it Freedom Fast Lane live. Now we call it the Capitalism Conference because it has pivoted to being a global summit for entrepreneurial empire builders.

Some people here are giving you really good, solid takeaways that you can implement in your business right away. Ryan is one of the best in the world at this and he just told me backstage he's teaching brand new stuff that he's never talked about before, stuff that's cutting edge, stuff that is working right now that you can use and implement that he's never talked about publicly. And all of you are going to be the first to hear it. Give it up for Ryan Deiss.

Thank you for being here.

Oh, my goodness. Feel like my little boy's all grown up.

It is amazing. When he said that when he joined the mastermind group that we had and he said I didn't deserve to be there, he was absolutely right. I remember talking to him on the phone and being like, dude, why did you even apply? You knew the requirements. You don't qualify for this. But I remember thinking at the time.

You know, I'm going to give him a shot. You know, he young guy, you know, I'm a young guy, you know all this. What's really starting to piss me off is that I'm getting older and he's staying the same age. And I'm realizing that, like, the older I get, less and less people are telling me how young I am. And so all these things are bothering me. But I do think it's amazing what Ryan has achieved in building this community and really in putting on this event. The very first event that we did, Traffic and Conversion Summit, had about half the people that were at this one. And so amazing, amazing work that he's done to build this community. So let's give him another big round of applause for that. It's truly really impressive.

So my name is Ryan Deiss. Just out of how many of you guys have no idea who I am? Perfect.

I'm going to assume that you don't care who I am. So I'm going to dispense with some of the, with the introductions. If you're interested at the end, I can maybe tell you some more about me. But part of what I'm going to talk about today is the importance of building value in advance. And a big aspect of that is the acknowledgement that no one cares who you are until you first explain why you deserve to exist. In particular, this dichotomy and really this idea. So I want to talk about branding that sells. But, but this distinction between direct response and branding in particular. So I own digitalmarketer.com and digitalmarketer.com, we talk about digital marketing. Be weird if we talked about anything else, right? So Digital Marketing@digitalmarketing.com, we take all the cool stuff that we figure out running all of the other companies that we run. I think that's one of the things that makes us different. Lots of people talk about digital marketing. The difference with us is we actually do digital marketing. Kind of weird. So we own makeuptutorials.com, survivallife.com, absolute rights.com, we just bought sewing.com, so we do a lot of stuff in the digital media and e commerce space. Whole lot of stuff in that space. Primarily based here in Austin, Texas, have offices in Los Angeles and in the Philippines and employ around 200 people. So it's been a pretty wild ride over the last few years, to say the least. But I come from this school of direct response. When I say direct response, how many of you guys have no idea what I mean by that? Okay, thank you. There's like one honest person in the room. What's your name? Ron. Ron. God bless you, Ron. Thank you.

So for Ron and the rest of you out there who are lying, direct response is a form of marketing where you're essentially asking for the order, right? It's designed to be measurable, it's designed to sell stuff that is direct response. Now branding, right? Branding is what we all think about as marketing and advertising. And really in the Madison Avenue world, branding is what the cool kids do and direct response is what the slack jawed idiots do, right? Because they're just like, hustle, hustle, hustle, go, go, go right now. I grew up doing direct response. I remember one of my best friends in third grade came over one day and he's like, look, I Made these origami birds, right? And he, like, did the little pull thing and their wings flopped. And I went, we can sell that. So we went door to door in my apartment complex selling origami birds. So I've always been. That's always been me. I've always. I've always been. I've always said, okay, let's go and sell it. Because I wanted to, you know, eat food and, like, have shelter, and that required money. I figured this out at a very, very early age. And so I've always been of the mindset of, look, if you're not asking for the order, then you're not marketing, all right? And all this branding stuff, that's crap. That's hoo ha. That's for big dumb companies to do when they're so big and dumb that they can't come up with new and unique opportunities to get rid of their money. That's what I believed. That's what I absolutely believe to be true. And just to be completely candid, it was a mindset that served me well in the beginning.

So Gary Vaynerchuk was here, right? Did Gary happen to broach the subject at all while he was here of hustling?

Did the word come up at all? Maybe a time or two. He's absolutely right. When you're first getting started, that's what you gotta do. You've gotta hustle. You have to. You have to. If you don't, you don't survive the next day, right? You've got to be the guy where, when you want the baseball cards and your parents won't give you money to go buy baseball cards, when his friend walks over, says, eee, birds, we can sell that, right? You've got to be that person. You've got to have the hustle. But what a lot of people don't talk about when it comes to hustle is that hustle, hustle presents itself. It comes with a fair bit of collateral damage, right? Have any of you guys felt like maybe a particular salesperson was overly pushy, right? That they were too aggressive and you thought to yourself, you know what? I hate them and I hope they die.

Right now. It's not just that you didn't buy the thing that they were selling, it's that you hate them and you hope that they die. That's the collateral damage that I'm referring to. So at some point, we have to make a pivot in our business. We have to make this pivot from pure, hardcore, direct response, hardcore hustle. The sale at all Costs, because that's what needs to happen into something that is more branding and something that is more relationship first. But this dichotomy, this duality, this, when do we make it? When do we make that pivot? How do we make it? That's been the hardest thing for me to figure out. And over the last 12 months, we've had some pretty significant breakthroughs that I want to share with you. So the problem really is that companies that focus on branding alone will go broke if they never figure out how to ask for the order. Okay, make no mistake, I don't care how much seed capital you're able to raise. Go look at all the original dot com busts. All of them. All the original dot com busts. They said, great, we got a cool idea. We're going to sell toys online. We're toys.com. how could that fail, right? This whole interwebs thing, I've heard it's going to be a big deal. Raise a bunch of money. What are we going to do? Super bowl ad. Super bowl ad. Everybody will know. We'll have top of mind awareness. Name recognition will be fantastic. Super bowl ad. So they do it. What happened to toys.com?

Did it work out for them? The answer is no. If you understand your dot com history, it did not go particularly well for them. They PK'd the domain name, wound up getting sold to Toys R Us. Okay, so going and looking at that, this is a problem. How many of you guys are startup founders? Startup founders? Where right now, today, you. And by the way, if you're a startup of one, because you're a solo entrepreneur, that's great. How many of you, either you're a startup founder or you're working for a startup, working with a startup. Now, there can't possibly be less hands than the time before because that was an additive qualifier. You know what? Screw it. I get the point. All right? In the beginning, when you're first getting started, the number one question that you have to answer is, how are we going to make that first sale? That is the first question that you have to be able to answer. So just saying, let's focus on branding. Let's focus on getting our name recognition out there. It's the surest way of going broke. Companies have been proving this for centuries. The problem with direct response, and companies that focus on direct response alone eventually go broke because everyone on planet Earth hates them. Okay, we talked about this. Don't believe me, just anybody. Remember these racelands, the US Hot rod football, drag racing, Championships flashed in the Volvo arena this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Climbing and crushing among the cars, including Bigfoot, hot rod, mud ball drag racing, funny cars, down and dirty in the bog. From the 23rd century. From the 23rd century. Jet Dragster, two story tall, transforming robot. Get your tickets now. Baltimore arena, box office and all ticket center outlets. This Friday and Saturday, 8:00pm, Sunday, 2:00pm, Baltimore Arena. It's the wildest show on wheels. All right? Anybody remember those growing up? Oh, yeah. So they get to get away with that for like a weekend. And then what do they have to do? They have to flee to the next city, right? They have to flee to the next city. But oftentimes. Right. This is direct response. It works. It works. This is also why this has begun to happen. Now, I want you to pretend that this is Facebook or Google. Now you tell me, has this happened to anyone in this room? Right, that's you. Bam.

Has anyone been slapped around a little bit.

By Facebook or Google? It's on a loop. It's not going to stop, by the way. So you're welcome for that. Right?

Has anyone in this room had a Facebook ad back to me.

I know it's true. It's the sure sign of a thing. It only gets funnier the more you watch it. And then I've watched this for hours. So here's the arc. Here's the comedic arc of this particular thing, all right? It gets funnier and funnier and funnier, and then it stops being funny, okay? But then you know what it does? It comes back. All right? It comes back. Has anyone in this room lost a Facebook account? Had a Facebook account suspended? Facebook ad account. Okay? Facebook account. It sucks, right? Yeah. Two years ago, I didn't just lose an account, I got sued by them. Boo. Yeah. I play for keeps.

No, the fortunate thing about that is I wasn't doing what they thought I was doing. So it got worked out. But like, two months later and a whole lot of legal fees later, and now we're like two kids that fought in the schoolyard. We're actually really good friends with them. But the reason a lot of people complain about that, like, Facebook wants me to change with their business model. Why is Facebook doing this? Facebook is doing this because they're getting complaints from their users about your ads, because your ads are Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Okay? So here's what I want you to think about right now.

A kind of thought construct that I would like for you to implant into your brain about your customers, all right? When you look out in your customers. I want you to picture a vault, a bank vault. Now, I don't want you to see that bank vault filled with money that you can extract. That's how most people think about their customers. I don't want you to think about a vault filled with money that is yours to extract. I want you to think about a vault that initially starts as empty. Okay? A bank vault that initially starts out as empty. And it's your brand is there. It's a bank account, right? When you go and set up a bank account, how much money do you start off with? When you just go and get it set up, do they say, like, hey, thanks for sending the bank account. Here's a whole bunch of money? No, it starts off with how much money in it? Zero. Well, maybe it starts out with 100 bucks if you put 100 bucks in. But if you got a banker, you're going upsetting account. They're just giving away $300 bills and let us know. That's better than a toaster. So.

You go in there and you start off at zero, and then you make a deposit so that you can later on make a withdrawal. I want you to think about and ask yourself this question in and around your marketing. Marketing has the ability to do one of two things. It can make a deposit of relational equity, or it can make a withdrawal. Relational equity.

Make no mistake, every time you ask for an order, every time you ask someone to buy something, you are making a withdrawal against relational equity. When Ryan invited you all to come here, when he said, I'm putting on an event, it's in Austin, Texas. Come on out. He was making a withdrawal against relational equity. Okay? And if you don't believe me, this works. Have any of you ever borrowed money from a stranger? Like, been in a tough situation, you need to borrow a little bit of money from a stranger. Maybe like back in the days of payphones, like, you had to borrow, like a quarter or something. Has anybody ever done this? Am I the only person who's ever in my life ever borrowed money from a stranger? Right? So you go up to him, you say, hey, can I borrow a little bit of money? Right? Can I borrow a box? Can I do this right? So they give you a little bit of money. Now, what if you go back to them again and say, okay, cool, thanks. Can I have some more? What do you think is going to happen? No, they're going to be like, do I know you?

Do I know you? Now think about the question. Do I know you? In asking that question, What I'm seeking to do is to evaluate do you have some deposit of relational equity with me that I am not aware of? It was one thing to ask me for a quarter, right? You get that because you got a base level deposit based on the fact that we're both humans and I'm kind of a nice person. So you get that that's kind of the base level relational equity deposit that we all have with one another as fellow sentient beings. But then when you ask for a little more, it's do I know you? I don't. So this is a construct that whether we realize it or not, we all know it to be true. I just think it hasn't been applied to business in quite the same way. And so that's what I want you to start doing. That's the question that I want you to start asking yourself when I put this message out, Am I making a deposit of relational equity? Am I building up that brand equity? Am I making a deposit or am I making a withdrawal? Now Gary Vaynerchuk again talks about his concept of jab, jab, jab, right hook, same thing, right? Deposit, deposit, deposit, withdraw. Alright, it's the same thing. These are constructs that we all know to be true. What I'm hoping to give you today are some additional examples that you can directly apply to your business. And really just I think the act of thinking, am I doing this or am I doing that, in what order is critical. So I want to give you a new definition of branding. When most people think of branding, they think about their logo and their color scheme. No, those are branding guidelines. It's type of stuff that web designers use. This is what branding is. Branding is anything that makes a deposit into a customer or prospect's relational equity account. That's what branding does. Branding makes a deposit. That's what branding does. Selling on the other hand, makes a withdrawal from a customer's customer prospects relational equity account. That's the distinction.

When you brand effectively, you're making a deposit. Now when you don't brand effectively, when you're not actually making a deposit, when there's no soul in what you're doing, then you're just a logo. Okay, then you're just a.

Thoughtless, soulless brand. Can anybody think of any thoughtless, soulless brands?

Comcast is a good one. Yeah, they're pretty thoughtless and soulless. You know, one that pops to mind to me, you name names or it didn't happen. Right? Can we agree to that? So I think you just gotta Start. I look at Lincoln. I feel so bad for Lincoln, the car company, because they're like, we have no personality. Let's just get McConaughey.

Screw it. We got nothing going for us. Screw it. I was driving to Lincoln long before anyone paid me to drive a Lincoln horse crap. What, like 15 minutes? Come on.

I'm buying that. And McConaughey's pretty down to earth guy. No, this is what the big, big, dumb, soulless companies have to do, and they have to hire the celebrities and trade in on some of their brand equity that they have. What I'm going to suggest you is it isn't essential. If your brand can build up enough relational equity with your community, then you don't have to do that. Okay? Now this is important because I don't want to come off as being down against selling again. I like to eat food for the most, and I'm not a farmer, so if I want to eat food, I have to go to, like, grocery stores and buy it or have pay somebody else to cook it for me. Probably the latter, because I can, like, cook cereal, and that's about it. So there's nothing wrong with making a withdrawal if the funds are available. There's nothing wrong with calling up your bank and saying, hey, I'm going to swing by today. I need to pick up 100 grand. If you have 100 grand or more in your bank account, if you don't, that's called bank robbery, right? And if you call ahead, it's really stupid bank robbery. Okay? So there's nothing wrong with making a withdrawal. How many guys are familiar with the product launch model? Jeff Walker, the product launch model. Okay. What you are seeing in the product launch model is a very succinct example of deposit, deposit, deposit, deposit, deposit for the first 10 to 14 days withdrawal. Okay? So I'm giving you these right now so you can put them in the context of what's working for you. So let's talk about how to build relational equity with your marketing. Let's talk about how to actually market and have your people not just not hate you, but actually love you. There's four real ways to do this that I've seen. The first way is you can make them laugh. If you make people laugh, they'll like you. Okay? If you make people laugh, they'll like you. Anybody remember this?

Yo, what's that?

Hold on. Hello?

So what's up, B? Watching the game? Having a buddy. True, true, true. So we laugh, but we also get the association with the brand, okay? We like it because it made us laugh. How about this one? Anybody seen this? This viral video? You would not believe the motherlode I just dropped. And that's how I like to keep it, leaving not a trace that I was ever here, let alone that I just birthed a creamy behemoth from my cavernous bowels. Nothing is worse than stinking up the shared toilet at work or the toilet at a party. Or your lover's apartment. Of course, flushing removes the graphic evidence. Maybe two or three flushes if your skid marks as tenacious as mine. But what can be done of that subtle scent of a.

300 cow dairy farm? Aerosol air fresheners aren't the most effective option or the healthiest. Trying to mask the stage, giving you a nice blend of chemlab carnations. Just a touch of feces. Just a touch of feces. So how do you make the world believe your poop doesn't stink? Or in fact, that you never poop at all? Poo Pourri. Poo Pourri is the before you go toilet spray that is proven to trap those embarrassing odors up. So how many of you think, surely to God this is not a real product. It's absolutely a real product. It's absolutely a real product. Absolutely. It sold tens of millions, Tens of millions of bottles. Do you know when I first saw this? So we do a lot of stuff in the home gifts and craft space. We went to one of the, I think the Atlanta Gift show when this came out. And there was this army of humanity surrounding one booth. Like, you can always tell what the hot item's gonna be the next year. So are people like, what is that? What the heck is it? And it was Poo Pourri. This was years ago. We were like, that can't be real. That can't be real at all. Then we start to see the video. It was very, very real. 27 million views on the video when this particular screenshot was taken. And just tens of millions of bottles sold right now. Here's the thing. If you're selling something about poop, pretty easy to make it funny because poop's hilarious. Let's be honest, right? Has anybody seen the new one? Squatty Potty with the unicorn poop? Right? That's the new one.

That's the new one. If you're selling something about poop, it's pretty easy to be hilarious. By the way, I was just reading about this. How much do you think they paid to have that spot Produced?

How much? 10 grand? More. Anyone else want to guess 100 more?

$500,000. $500,000. Talk more about that in just a second. How about this one? Hi, I'm Mike, founder of DollarShaveClub.com. what is DollarShaveClub.com? well, for a dollar a month, we send high quality razors right to your door. Yeah, a dollar. Are the blades any good? No, our blades are great. Each razor has stainless steel blades, an aloe vera lubricating strip and a pivot head. It's so gentle a toddler could use it. And do you like spending $20 a month on brand name razors? 19 go to Roger Federer. I'm good at tennis. And do you think you're razor? So.

In 2012, they started out.

First year in 2012, sales were 4 million. 2013, they were 19 million. 65 million in 2014. And this year they're projecting to $120 million in sales. Selling a very commodity item. With humor, with brand equity, right? Selling a very, very commodity item. It's hard to do. It's hard to do. And the truth is, it doesn't always work. How about this little doozy? We love these subs.

Cause they are good to us. Decrease no subs.

They are tasty, they are crunchy. They are warm because they toast them. But what else?

Well, hell, of course, Quiznos do Santa Fe Trio subs with smoky chipotle sauce, fried chicken, roast beef or smoked turkey.

Quiznos.

So spoiler alert. As hilarious as roadkill is, it's not the best at selling a particular product, right? Doesn't always work, especially when you're selling sandwiches. So.

Being funny is hard. Unless you're selling a product about poop.

Right? And even then to do it well costs about a half a million dollars. And you think about it. Makes sense, right? Quick, go out there. Somebody write a really hilarious joke. Go. Does anybody know where a single joke ever came from? This is such a mystery. They did a South park episode about it, right? People don't know. It's hard. Being funny from scratch is hard. Telling a joke, not that hard. I got it. Go write a really witty comedy. It's difficult. It's difficult. The best creative people on planet earth don't always get it right. Sometimes they get it so wrong, they decide that it's smart to have roadkill selling sandwiches. But they got a pepper bar, by the way. Is anybody confused as to why they're warm? They're warm because they toast them, right? The weirdest thing in the world. So being funny is hard. It's really hard. But I will tell you, all of you in this room can be funny, especially to your audience. You absolutely can be funny. If you're willing to be vulnerable and to publicize some of your mistakes. Let me show you something that we're doing right now at digital marketing. Why don't sit.

I always feel like the first smile is really stupid.

And so forth. All right. Hey there. This is Ryan Deiss.

Hi.

I'm bad at emoting.

If you're looking for a video, to learn a little bit. If you're looking.

If you're looking for a video.

No slouching. Justin.

Hi, I'm Justin Rondo, optimization manager. Hi. Nope, nope, nope. Okay. One, two, three. One, two, three. Hi, I'm Justin Rondo.

Now let's talk about creating a. So here's the deal. You all screw up, right? If you're willing to share and document your screw ups with your community, then that's one way to be funny. Now those of you who are in here who are. Do we have any digital marketer lab members in here? People who are. Okay, cool. So you know those people, right? You know Molly, you know how silly she can be. And so to share this type of stuff with your community is one way that you can show some brand equity, right? Be willing to be a little bit vulnerable and. And showing you mess up blooper videos are a great way to do that. All right, let's talk about the second way, which is to make him cry. All right, make him cry. That's another way to show brand equity. Let's look at this example. Technology is a glittering lure. But there's the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash if they have a sentimental bond with product.

My first job, I was in house at a fur company with this old pro copywriter, Greek named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is new.

Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product.

Nostalgia. It's delicate.

But potent.

Sweetheart.

Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound.

It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.

This device isn't a spaceship.

It's a time machine.

Goes backwards, forwards.

Takes us to a place.

Where we ache to go again.

It's not called the wheel.

It's called the carousel.

Lets us travel the way a child travels.

Around and around and back home again.

To a place where we know we are. Loved it.

Good luck at your next meeting.

Fucking baller.

Some of you are getting weepy right now, all right? This is a fake ad about a fictional family on a TV show. Okay.

Come back with me now. All right? Saying a funeral, that's not your family, right? But. Oh, my God, right? Powerful, effective if you can impact somebody at a core level like that. But this is really freaking hard to do.

Really hard to do. Some of the best paid writers on planet Earth putting this stuff together, really, really difficult to do. This is what the big Madison Avenue companies strive to do. Can anybody think of just a real mega, ultra tiered. Let's ling in sorrow for a second, shall we? Can anybody think of a real big tearjerker commercial? Budweiser. Budweiser Puppy. I don't even. Not. I'm sorry, I don't even like puppies. How do you not like puppies? I love puppies. I'm not a dog guy necessarily, Right. Everything makes me sneeze, so. Even my children make me sneeze, but I can't. You have to keep them once you have them, so. But I'm watching. I'm like. Right, right. Does anybody remember the old, like, long distance commercials? The old phone, like, long. Oh, my gosh. Some of those were like little mini dramas that were just. They would sit there and make his own mom. You know, exactly what they were designed to do. Really hard to do. So let me give you another method, another mechanism, something that you can do even if you're not a world class drama writer, all right? And that's this one. Make them feel like they're a part of something. It's not nostalgia per se, but it's a sense of belonging, right? It's a sense of being home. And a lot of times, the things that make us sad, I bet many of you who are more affected by that previous thing are people who have been here, away from your kids for a long time, and you're starting to really kind of miss them. I know. That's what I'm thinking when I'm watching this, right? It's because the sadness is often the thing that brings us home, where we want to be. So create a new place. Create a new home for them. Make them feel like they're a part of something. Who remembers or has at least heard of this? Adam. Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the information purification Predictives. We have created for the most time in all history, a garden of pure ideology where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests, obeying contradictory.

Is more powerful a weapon than any fleet war are we on Earth? We are one people with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we the privilege and avoid a.

We shall prevail.

On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984.

So Apple is a pretty valuable company. I don't know if you've heard kind of a big deal.

What a lot of people fail to realize is that Apple had a rough couple of decades right, during the 90s. You know, if you watch the movie, maybe you didn't read the book, but you watched the movie, right? Jobs got fired. Then he gets come back. It was a tough go. What kept that company in business were their true believers, their true fans. The people that saw this commercial in 1984 and said, yep, that's me. I finally found my home. I finally found my place. Many of you are in this room because when you first listen to Ryan's podcast and you first came around here, you're like, I finally found my place. Right? So that's why you get to say, you know, he could say, hey, I'm putting on an event in Austin, Texas. Come on down. Hundreds of you show up. That's weird, right? That's not normal. You know that, right? You're not normal. It's the weekend. You could be doing something else. You're here.

By the way, I'm not knocking it. What's another word for normal? Ordinary.

I don't recommend that one either. So, yeah, I'm not knocking, but creating the place. Creating a place. If you want a simple way, a simple formula for helping to carve out your place among your people and really codifying that relationship, I recommend doing a video like this one.

I'm Ryan Deiss, the CEO of Digital Marketer, and we want you to know exactly what the Digital Marketer team believes.

We believe the best product should win, not the best marketer. We believe that we shouldn't teach something until we do it first. We believe the biggest marketing sin is being boring. We believe in sharing and even celebrating our failures. We believe it ain't bragging if it's true. We believe nothing happens until something is sold. We believe in making decisions and owning the results. We believe theory is for posers.

We believe that you should have at least one good belly laugh every day. We believe in leveling the playing field so those who truly give a damn can win. Speaking of give a damn, we believe that's essential. But can't be taught.

We believe the duck billed platypus is proof that God has a sense of humor. We believe you don't have to crush your competition to succeed. We believe it's okay to be proven wrong. We believe that girls are usually smarter than boys and harder working too. We believe it's okay to change your mind. We believe it's okay to cry when you're having a really shitty day. We believe the best ideas often come from most unlikely places. We believe Google sometimes does evil. We believe that no one has all the answers.

We believe in delivering step by step solutions, not data without interpretations. And speaking of data without interpretation, we believe that's for cowards. We believe that's unhelpful. We believe that's the primary source of all the world's logical lies. And speaking of logical lies, we believe they wind up in a state special circle of hell along with the people who popularized them. We believe in saying sorry we screw up. Like just now, for example. Sorry for that circle of hell thing. It was maybe a little harsh.

We believe in passing knowledge down. We believe that if you have to rely on deception to sell, your business doesn't deserve to exist. We believe it's usually better to ask for forgiveness than permission. We believe in doing the hard work for first. We believe Kanye should smile more and so should you. We believe both success and failure are temporary conditions. We believe chucklehead is a word. We believe information is worthless absent execution. We believe half assed is better than no ass.

Justin got all the good ones. Being an asshole should be a crime. We believe it's okay to call someone an asshole publicly when they're being an asshole. We believe in giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. We believe if you buy something from us and it isn't a fit, even if it's your fault, you should get your money back. We believe in always saying please and thank you, sir and ma'. Am.

We believe in knowing what others don't and doing what others won't. We believe you should never, never stop learning. We believe small businesses can change the world. We believe we can help small businesses grow and succeed. Therefore, we believe we can change the world. We believe we can change the world. We believe. We believe. We believe. We believe we can change the world. At Digital Marketer, we love what we do and we love our customers. We learn from you. We admire you. We're thankful for you.

So let me give the background on this video.

I was.

Maybe a couple of glasses of wine in.

And I was thinking we've done a really good job at Digital Marketer of establishing core values and determining.

How does the team communicate with one another. Right. How do we talk to one another, how do we resolve conflict? But we really didn't do a good job of expressing how, how do we communicate and how do we relate to our customers. So I figured the best way to do that is just to tell them, here's what we believe. And I sat there again, a couple of glasses of wine in and I just started writing out, we believe this, we believe this, we believe. And that's why you saw bizarre stuff like, we believe the duck billed platypus is proof that God has a sense of humor. Right? All these things that we believe. But the thing is, when you tell someone what you believe, when, when you plant that flag, when you make it known, look, this is where I stand. They now have the ability to stand with you. Most brands are unwilling to do this because they're unwilling to offend people. Right? They're unwilling to offend someone. Look, I'm sure that there are people that might be offended that we say we think it's okay to call somebody out as an asshole if they're acting like an asshole. But that's what we believe. We do it all the time. Hey, stop it. You're acting like an asshole. Right? We're not gonna stop being who we are because we're necessarily. I mean, it doesn't mean that we also believe in saying, sorry, we screw up. Right? Because we do that a lot too. So if you will tell your community what you believe, they'll have the ability to bond with you and follow you. That builds brand equity. And it's simply a matter of writing down the stuff that you believe. Method 4 Here's a crazy concept. Deliver actual value in advance. How many of you have people in your life that if they were to call you up tomorrow and say, I need 100 grand and I can't talk to you about it, but I kind of need you to like have $100,000 in cash in a suitcase at this particular spot. And please. And you, assuming you had the money, you'd do it, right? We got three people who would actually do that for somebody. You need to work on your relationships. People, right? Yeah. We all have those people in our lives, those people in our lives who have given so much to us that we would literally do anything for them. We have those people in our lives. Why? Why? Because they've done so much for us. Right. It's not that we were keeping score along the way. But you know that there's people in your life who have given and given and they've given and they've given and they've never asked in return, right? They're relational people. You also know about those people in your life who are scorekeepers. They're transactional, not relational, right? I don't like those people very much. I don't like scorekeepers. I choose not to surround myself with them. But we know those people in our lives who they just give. They give and they give and we seek to give in return. We're like the bank calling up, saying, you've got a lot of money, please make a withdrawal. You're freaking us out, right? So that's another crazy concept. Deliver actual value in advance. In other words, give your prospects valuable, usable content they actually want before you ask them for money. This is not a new concept. This is what the content marketers and social media people have been talking about for years. The problem is, how do you do that and still do that pesky thing that we talked about before, which is eat right? How do you give value in advance and just throw it out? This is easy for large brands to do. If you're Coca Cola, right? You can shoot a video of a bunch of people on a hilltop who just want to give the world a Coke and put that out and be like, you're welcome planet, because you're like a multi billion dollar company. Whatever you spend on that commercial is what you spent on paper clips. It's a rounding error, right?

It's not that big a deal. How do you do it when you're a startup? How do you do it when you got to worry about paying the bills? How do you do that? That's what I want to finish with is how you do that. First a story. So when I was a kid, we used to go down to the beach, go down the beach all the time with my, with my dad. And one day we were cruising down the beach on a hot July day and the sand was real loose. And so we're cruising around in his Mitsubishi Eclipse, not exactly a great beach vehicle. And we get stuck. Car gets stuck in the sand over the, kind of over the dunes, like coming out here. Bebops this, this guy. I'm like, hey, you guys stuck? Yeah, we're stuck. Oh, you want some help coming out? Yeah, sure. God, we'd love it. Thank you. What a wonderful coincidence that you just happen to show up right now, gets out of his car, starts to hook it up and says, oh, hey, by the way, you know, I'm not a professional towing company, so I can't, you know, charge you for this, but I'd certainly appreciate it and maybe work a little faster if you, you know, maybe show me some love, give me a little tip, you know what I'm saying? Now, being a kid, I didn't know exactly what he was saying. My dad knew exactly what he was saying. And my dad's thinking, I want to kill you right now. Hey, you got me and my kid in this situation, and you're choosing to take advantage of it. You're choosing to be transactional. That more times than not, is what direct response and what selling feels like to the end user. That's what it feels like. Okay, but what if instead the person comes up and he says, hey, you want me to hook you up? Yeah, cool. Thanks. Pulls out. Now, what do you think my dad's going to do in that moment? He's a good man. What do you think he's going to do in that moment? He's going, hey, how much I owe you for that? Thank you so very much. Of course, of course, right? That's what some value in advance looks like right now. If you're just some guy who happened to be driving by that day and you got a new winch on your truck and you're looking forward to try out the new winch on your truck because you say the word truck and not truck, then you're excited, right, to pull. You don't need money. You know, if you're a trucking company, if you're a tow company, you can't rely on the generosity of strangers. It's difficult as a business to sustain yourself relying purely on the generosity of strangers. Do you know what they call those types of businesses? Non profits. Do you know why they call them non profits? They're typically not profitable, right? They're begging. They're asking, please, we've been given and given and given and given. Okay, so how do we balance that? How do we do that today? How do we give value in advance? Honestly, sincerely, but know that it's going to come back later. Well, let's say. Let's say this guy's Jimmy, right? It's Jimmy that pulled us out, right? So Jimmy does it. My dad offers a tip. No, sir. No, sir. Thank you. It was my pleasure. Really happy to do it. Hope you folks have a good day. And Jimmy drives off right? Now, Jimmy didn't make any money off of that, but Jimmy's okay. Now, let's say back behind us, watching this whole thing go, go down was like some beach bum dude, like Jimmy Buffett's third cousin kind of thing, right? And so he comes sauntering up after watching this whole thing go down, and he says, you know, oh, I see you met Jimmy. Oh, yeah. Was that his name? You know, we forgot that his name. Yeah, yeah. Local boy. Good, good kid. Such a good kid. Doesn't surprise me at all that he stopped to help you guys. He is such a good kid. You know what? What I bet would be cool. Where you got. Do you have dinner plans tonight? No, no, we don't. You know, Jimmy's a waiter down at Shell's, you know, little Italian restaurant down the road over there. Some of the best food on the island. I bet Jimmy would think it'd be pretty cool if you were to go there for dinner tonight and ask to be seated in his section. I bet he'd get a kick out of that. Now, let me ask you a question. Gobs of relational equity built up, right? How big a tip is Jimmy going to get that night? You think he's going to get you 15%? No, no. Jimmy's going to make more that night than the dude that owns a restaurant from us, right?

So how do we do that? How do we do that? How does. How do we ensure that there's someone lingering on the beach, walking up to us in flip flops, talking about us after we've done our good deed? It's called retargeting. How many of you heard of retargeting? Okay, we've all heard of retargeting. And most of us think about it, and those of us who have experienced, feels a little bit creepy. Because the way that it works, if you haven't heard about it, retargeting is when you go to a webpage, right? You visit a site, you go to leave that site, and now all of a sudden these ads are following you all over the web. Anyone experience this? It's creepy when you're doing stuff like shopping for underwear.

This happened to my wife. She was like, buying me some new underwear. And I go to use her computer and there's like just dudes junk just all over the place. I'm like, honey, what are you. She's like, I swear I was buying you underwear. I'm never buying that for you again. You are buying your own underwear. This is ridiculous. And I was like, believe me, I don't want you looking at that either. I can't compete with this.

So this isn't good. For anybody.

So that's retargeting. So we've experienced it maybe as a user and maybe we've tried it. How many of you guys have active retargeting campaigns going right now? Nearly enough. Hopefully they'll convince some of the rest of you to do this. So Google does retargeting, Facebook does retargeting. Right. So if somebody goes to your website, any website now, they can start seeing your ads on Facebook and you know they're relevant, you know they're targeted because they were at your site. It's great. And people use them for follow up all the time. Oh, they came to buy this product, they came to this product page, but they didn't, they, you know, they didn't buy. And so now I'm going to retarget them to get them to come back and buy that particular product. That's how everybody's using retargeting. Here's the strategy that we've been using for the past 12 months. All right? Instead of driving ads to product pages, we're driving ads to pure content, pure unadulterated content. So we'll drive ads to a blog post, like a real live blog post on a blog. Not a fake blog post, not a blog post, disguised, you know, sales that are disguised as a blog post, like a real blog post and everything. Now are there ads around it? Sure. Because it's a blog. Right. That's not weird. But the purpose of that particular blog post is not to make a sale, okay? It's not. Right. The purpose is to set, well, there's two fold purpose. The second one I'll talk about in just a little bit. The main purpose, the most, I guess tactical purpose, is to set that retargeting pixel. Okay? To set that retargeting pixel. And that's as simple as dropping a couple lines of code onto the top of this webpage. Google has that code. Facebook has that code. Other networks have that code. You drop it in once on your, at the header you said, boom, it's on all your pages right now they know, hey, this particular person came to an article about blogging. Let's show them some ads about blogging. Then only after we've delivered value in advance in the form of good content do we then say, look, come over here and opt in for the special report.

We get transactional after we've been relational, gave him some good content, showing him an ad, getting him now to come back. Now the risk here is you're buying traffic to non, primarily non monetizable page again, there's ads, there's links going off, stuff like that, but that doesn't convert in any way to overcome the investment. So in the beginning, it feels a little bit scary, but then There's Jimmy Buffett Jr. Following them around. And now when they're seeing your ad, they're not thinking.

Who is this joker? Why is this person in my feed? Let's talk about poop again for a minute. A few years ago, when we first started doing retargeting, somebody hated our advertising so much that they literally took a picture of their own feces and posted it as a comment.

Disgusting, right? And Molly, the girl who runs all of our traffic, the one who's like, yeah, wah. Just make a sound effect. She was like, oh, my God, you have to see this. I was like, molly, why didn't you just delete it? She's like, it's hilarious. Like, no, they really hate us. They're taking pictures of their feces and sending it to us. Like, you do that to your worst enemy. They really, really hate us. Right now you go and look at the comments on our ads, and people are saying, oh, my God, these people are amazing. These are great. We got positive comments on our ads. Nobody else has that. Why? Because we gave value first. Okay? So the goal isn't to convert initially. It's to indoctrinate, engage, and hopefully amaze.

It's to fund up the relational equity account. That is the goal of this type of campaign. That's the goal. The conversions happen later. We drive traffic to content. We set the pixel, then we advertise to our pixeled audience. We advertise to our pixeled audience. We ask people to do an action and a small action. Right? A small action. Hey, give me your name and email address and I'll give you the special report. But make no mistake, give me your name and email address and I'll give you this special report. That is not value in advance. That's quid pro quo. That's, look, give me 20 bucks and I'll pull you out of this hole, okay? So don't pat yourself on the back thinking, oh, you're a hardcore content marketer delivering value in advance because you're asking people to give you their name and email address in exchange for report. That's a transaction. That email address has value. Give actual ungated value in advance. But don't do it out of hope. Do it because you know that the retargeting is gonna help. So goal number one is to set a retargeting pixel, right? That's the primary goal of this traffic campaign. And yes, the content must be good enough that they love you for it. Okay? If all you're doing is driving traffic to really crappy content, you're spending money to convince a whole lot of people that you don't know that you suck. Okay? It has to begin with good content or this whole thing breaks down. All right? Really great, extraordinary, awesome content. By the way, an interesting aside. You know what started happening to all of these blog posts when we started driving advertising to them? What do you think started to happen?

Skyrocketed in the organics.

Skyrocketed in the organics because we had people going and looking at them who are purposeful and excited about it was a nice little side benefit that we didn't think about. At the end of the day, our average cost per lead.

Was lower. We were prepared for it to be higher, thinking that the quality would be better at the end of the day, while we had to spend a little bit more. The average cost per lead was about 80% less.

Than what we were doing. Driving traffic directly from an ad to a landing page, even though we were technically buying that. Click twice. You guys see that? Once to get him to come to the content and set the retargeting pixel, and then again to get him to come to the landing page. We had to pay for it twice, and yet the average cost per lead was less.

Think about that and then realize that, yeah, that makes all the sense in the world. If I see Jimmy, he's getting a bigger tip because he actually delivered value in advance.

So once that pixel's set, you can follow up with him even if you don't have an email address. Across all of our different companies, we have millions and millions and millions of emails on file. Millions of them, and we mail them. We also have a pixeled audience that's millions and millions and millions of people strong and that owned media, that pixeled audience, those people that have our retargeting pixel on them. I'll take it. That's one of the most valuable assets in this entire company. So retargeting is how we balance branding and direct response. Retargeting is not how we creepily follow our people around who haven't bought yet, saying, how about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? That's freaking weird. If somebody did that to you in real life, you would punch them in the face, right? Has anybody seen, remember, Groundhog Day? Right. Remember the insurance salesman that keeps walking up to him and eventually just what, punches him in the face because he's been living this again day after day? Right? That's what they want to do to you, too. So don't say, how about now? How about now? Have it now. Here's some value.

It's how we deliver value in advance without going broke in the process. So the big lesson that I hope you get from this, the future of traffic isn't about who can get the most click clicks the cheapest. It's about who has the most people pixeled. People tell us all the time, Ryan. Everywhere I go, I see your ads all over the place. Do you know who they're not seeing? Our competitors. Ads. Understand this, guys. The great pixel land rush is on. There are going to be those who win because they have the most people pixeled. And they're going to be those who lose because they didn't do this. They didn't see the value in this. And they're going to want to go out and they're going to want to buy advertising only to find that all the inventory is taken.

Okay? The great pixel land rushes on. You're either running or you're going to get squashed when that happens. That's why for me, the most important metric isn't.

Cpm.

It's not cost per click, it's not cost per acquisition. The future of traffic is cpp. Cost per pixel. How much am I willing to spend to set a pixel? All right. How much am I willing to spend to set a pixel? But remember, see all these things in context of the original question that I gave you. Am I adding money.

To the. Am I, Am I, am I making a deposit of relational equity or am I making withdrawal? If you're running retargeting campaigns that make deposits, you're going to have a business that's here for the long term because you deserve to be here because you're giving value in advance. That's all I got. Thanks, guys.

And I think give it up for Ryan Dice.

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