Everything starts with attention, so if you’ve not yet read my Power of Attention guide. Start with that: https://scienceofcopywriting.com/copywriting/the-power-of-attention-how-to-write-copy-that-clicks-part-1/
Just as the title of this series implies, getting attention is one thing, doing something with it is quite another.
Some of the most powerful video on the internet gets so much attention, it’s enough to make you throw up. Check this out: https://www.statista.com/statistics/249396/top-youtube-videos-views/
That’s 9.2 billion views for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
There’s a huge problem with attention though. It has zero guarantee of bringing in any money with the exception of one thing. Ad revenue.
Ad revenue includes direct ads, sponsorship deals, and partnering (affiliate deals, commission related deals, etc.).
Or to put it another way, direct sales are usually fails when it comes to viral stuff. This is because the audience has ZERO buyer intent (excluding a viral video made off the back end of an already commercial entity of some sort).
This is all commonsense though. For every 100 people we grab off the street, we may find a couple of buyers at any one time (assuming we’re selling some commodity).
If we get the attention of 100 (previously unsolicited) people through an ad, we may get a couple more buyers, but anything greater than 10% is as rare as a baby shark viral video (“run away doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo”).
Hopefully that’s set some expectations – anything involved with the parting of large sums of money is the hardest thing to do on the planet (making baby sharks is a billion times easier for example).
Before we go into this whole client getting thing, let’s put to rest The Big Myth. Funnels. A funnel is one way of expressing the most important thing about marketing – “touch points”.
No one is ‘just one funnel away [from anything]’. Every funnel is miles away until the funnel has been tweaked a billion times (rough estimate) until it works (produces a ROI).
A viral video for example, is one touch point. Every time the same person watches it again, it is another touch point. If they watch it enough times, they may even learn every lyric and be able to provide further touch points for all those within hearing distance (but that’s about all it will do).
Funnels, we are taught, are meant to take us through several different touch points: an intro email, 3 info emails, a bridge email, a sales email, another couple of info emails, a segmentation email, and so on.
Does that get more sales than a single touch point repeated multiple times? Nope. It doesn’t (ask Coca Cola or any politician).
In fact, I’d argue (without any stats other than watching a lot of campaigns) that repeat ads work far better than any complicated, over-engineered funnel.
So, with the funnel myth now fully holed, we’ll dig into getting clients the right way.
Click the button for part 2 below.