The History of Marketing - From Shekels to Sales Funnels

Hey, my name is Russell Brunson. I'm so excited for you to watch the evolution of marketing. I'm going to talk to you guys about everything from the beginning of time with bartering all the way to sales funnels today. And I want you to watch this video because you gotta understand the evolution of how things have come. When you understand where they came from, it makes it easier for you to be successful with your funnels in the future. So we're going to go back to the very, very beginning of time, back to prehistoric bartering time. Back then, the way that people traded stuff is they bartered. This dude's got a goat. She's got some fish. And he's like, I really want to eat fish tonight. I want some sushi. And she's like, sweet. I need some goat milk. Is that really a thing? And so they traded it straight across. And it was bartering. And bartering was awesome, except for the fact that you're like, well, my goat's really cool. I need, like, 400 fish to like. And it just. It got kind of complicated. But that's where it all began, was. Was prehistoric bartering. Okay, the next phase, about 5000 BC is where the very first time they started finding actual, like, archaeologists have found coins, at least metal objects they believed were coins. Right? And so this is when instead of just bartering, you could actually create value or put value inside of a coin. And then you say, hey, I want this goat. Cool. I'm gonna give you 10 coins. And now money started becoming a thing, and it made bartering so much easier. Cause it wasn't like, I don't need 400 fish, dude. After that, in the early 1700 1800s, this is where the snake oil salesman began. This is where salesmen started using a sales pitch where instead of just bartering, they would go together. They'd get a whole bunch of people in the crowd to come around, and then they would then present something to them. Right? Like the farmer's model, right? Like, here I am. Get a bunch of people, and I can sell. Instead of selling one on one, Now I sell five people at a time or 10 people at a time or 100 people at a time. So traveling snake oil supplement went out there and started making some money by doing a performance, getting the crowd all excited. Fast forward now to the 1800s. This is where the gold rush started happening. And what was interesting in the gold rush is that the people who made the most money during the gold rush were not the people panning for gold. It was the people who were selling the shovels. One of my favorite stories about this, there's a guy named Sam Brennan. It was in, I believe it was San Francisco during the gold rush. And Sam was really smart. He saw these things, all these people to California to go pan for gold and make a bunch of money. And he was like, wait a minute. Instead of doing that, what if I sell the tools, the picks and the shovels? And so he went around all of San Francisco, bought all the picks and the tuffles and the tools, brought him to his own shop, and then he got a little bit of gold. And he started running through the streets in San Francisco saying, there's gold in the American river. There's gold in the American river. And people start freaking out. They're like, oh, we need to find some gold. And then they're like, we need shovels. And he's like, oh, I'm selling shovels over here. And Sam Brennan became the very first millionaire in California history. Now we're going to Fast forward to 1830s. We have P.T. barnum, who. My man, if you guys have seen the greatest showman, this is a story about his life. He's written so many amazing books. P.T. barnum was one of the very first people to really start doing a lot of advertising and things like that. He didn't just, like, have a show. He was like, putting out leaflets and flyers and pamphlets and said he may have been one of the very first people ever to send out unsolicited mail, aka spam. He was spamming people's mailboxes. Next. 1886, 1822. This is where selling at the top started. This is. John H. Patterson, was the president of the national cash register. And instead of him going and selling a whole bunch of people, he would go find an organization he would sell the person at the top of and convince them that everybody below them needed goats. So he'd just make one sell the influencer. And then the influencer then starts selling everybody else in their company, in their team, whatever that might be. Then we fast Forward now to 1898. This was the invention of the very first funnel. So 1898, this is way before I was born, in case anyone's wondering. Elias St. Elmo Lewis, he ran an ad agency. And he came up with this first concept of that there were four stages of awareness. And if you look at this as a I D A, and it's something we still use today in direct response marketing. But it very first funnel, say, okay, at the top of the funnel, you Got to get someone awareness you even exist. Then you have to create interest, like oh, I'm interested in that. Then you create desire like oh my gosh, I need that thing. And then you get someone to take the action. Okay, Aida. And this is still a principle today we think about, we talk about all the time. In fact, if you're marketing struggling, it's probably because you're going straight for the action. You're like, buy my crap, buy my crap. So even today this principle is extremely powerful. And that came up in 1898, which is pretty cool. Alright. In the 1920s we started taking marketing and business and promotion to the airways. 1920s radio burst on the scene. Dale Carnegie wrote How to win Friends and influence People which is an amazing book by the way that taught the importance of relationships and people. And in the 40s traveling salespeople were seen going door to door selling stuff that way as well. In the 1940s and 50s this is where video killed the radio star. So where TV came out. And when you read the traffic secrets book, I actually have a whole case study about this. But Volvo Watch was the very first TV commercial ever. TVs were getting put out all over the place. And then during it was during one of the World Series games, Bulva watch came on and it was a 10 second ad that cost 9 cents. And it was the picture of the watch that said the world runs on Bulva. In fact if you Google or if you go to YouTube and search Bolva ad, you can actually see the original ad. It was like the worst ad ever. But it was the first ad that interrupted people while they were watching a sporting event, interrupted them and created desire for a thing which was the beginning of all interruption based marketing which is what made Zuckerberg famous and all of us rich. 1960s, this is the rapid evolution. This is where telemarketing started coming out. 1, 800 numbers multi level marketing. People started using all sorts of different selling techniques. There's a really good book called Spin Selling that came out where instead of just going in and trying to sell stuff, spin selling got people thinking differently. Like hey, instead of me selling something, I need to look at myself as a consultant. And they started shifting the way that they sold things to create desire and to become a consultant. And it became just a better way to sell. 1990s this is where the, the Internet started coming about. We started surfing the web. The power of the Internet made it where instead of just the big brands like the Procter and Gamble and people who could spend A million dollars on an ad on tv. The Internet gave the ability where people like us could spend a little bit of money and get exposure and eyeballs and be able to target directly the kind of people we're looking for. 2000s, this is where it became easier and easier. This is where tools started coming out. CRMs, marketing systems, email, auto responders, things like that. That made this whole marketing game even better. And then 2010, this is where funnels started a thing. Companies like HubSpot popped out other ones which started building tools. They started taking people through processes. And then 2014, this is where influencers started popping up all over the place where they can now affect product sales. Wasn't just you buying ads from Zuckerberg. It was like you buy ads from people all directly, all sorts of people. And 2015, 2019, this is where we helped create the future. Dotcom Secrets, which was my very first book ever came out talking about funnels. Click Funnels came out about the exact same time as well. People started building funnels online and now we are five years into this whole mission and we are at. We passed 100,000 active members last week, which is insane. So over 100,000 entrepreneurs using this and it's growing. We've sold. What's the stat? 4.1, $4.2 billion that have been processed through click funnels that we can track. It is insane. And that is the history of funnels in a nutshell. If you want to get a copy of the book I talked about, Dotcom secrets book, where we start talking about sales funnels and how they work, you can get a free copy going to dotcomsecrets.com on top of that. Make sure if you want to get more cool videos like this, click on the subscribe button. Make sure you're subscribed. Turn on your notifications. That way you'll get a bell every single time a new video comes out. Thank you so much for subscribing. I would love to hear your thoughts down below. Let me know what you think about the evolution of marketing, what things we should have added, what things I should add in the future in other videos. Let me know. And with that said, thank you so much. And go get your free copy of the Dotcom Secrets book. Dotcomsecrets dot com.