The Secret Weapon For 6 Figure Freelancers: Email Marketing

[00:00:00] Welcome to the sixth figure creative podcast. I am your host Brian Hood. And if this is your first time listening to the show, this is a show all about answering two, the biggest questions that I think freelancers face when they're in their business question, one is how do I get enough clients to be full-time?

The second question is once I have a bunch of clients, how do I get my time back? So I'm not stuck working in my business, doing a bunch of tedious crap. I don't wanna do, how do I be more efficient? Today's episode is answering that first question. It's all about what can I do to get more clients? We I wanna introduce my wonderful co-host for this episode, mark Eckert. How are you doing today?

My.

I'm doing fine. My cat has been throwing up all day and I didn't

Boo cat, boo.

yeah. I'm not a, dog guy. I didn't even want a cat.

Um,

But then you got married. Did she have a cat?

Yeah. She wanted a cat. We got a cat. I don't like this cat. I, knows. I don't like it. I say to it every single day. I don't like you.

And now. up a lot and I have to clean it up. So these are new responsibilities that I just love having.

That's when an inside cat becomes an outside cat and stays an outside cat and never comes back in again.

I always say, do you want to go [00:01:00] outside? Like it's great out there. Come on. You know, it doesn't, go. So, know, I'm stuck. It's fine. It's

marriage? How was marriage life, man? I mean, you're about a year into it now

it's awesome. She's the shit. Uh, going uh, Maine next month for like 10 days or something we're just gonna I've never been to Maine. She hasn't either. And we just want a bunch of lobster and we have a bunch of friends in Portland. Um, cool. Uh, we're just gonna eat a lot of seafood and just chill and do nothing and just travel.

I think me and my wife, we looked at flights after Portland, Maine, and then we realized that hotels are so ridiculously

We, got a crazy deal on an Airbnb. Like, so we got the whole thing, like for free, just from points. So I was

It was like for a

I'm currently on my trip right now. That is, by the time this episode airs I'm well on that trip. And the reason I like Southeast Asia is I've probably talked about this bunch, but like hotels are cheap, like three star hotels. 40 50 bucks a night, four star hotels, 50, 80 bucks a night, five star hotels, a hundred hundred 50 bucks a night.

You can go up above that, but you can find really good hotels for really cheap prices. it is [00:02:00] really cheap to travel over there.

Enough about travel, man.

Let's transition into the episode we have

planned for today. what are the biggest things that I see in our past guests? The most successful people that we've brought on the podcast, the overwhelming theme of all of the equal, like influential designers or illustrators or. Videographers that we've had on the show, like the best of the best the people earning the most, the people who have the largest social following and the biggest clout, every single one of them. If you go back and listen to those episodes have said that their email list was actually their most important asset when it came to the marketing of their business.

so I wanted it to have a dedicated episode on this. the social proof of those people alone that we've found on this show aren't enough. And the social proof of just me and mark, both saying that our email lists are each of our most important assets in our own businesses.

want to try to convince you the listener who right now you probably don't have an email list. You probably have considered it at some point, but you're not sure what to do. I wanna have an entire episode dedicated this because like, this is one of the best ways to turn strangers into

clients. And I think the thing that keeps [00:03:00] people

from making the email list in the first place think social media is going to be enough to drive their business forward.

and man, you were telling me before we even start recording this mark, you know, somebody who has like 300,000 followers

on YouTube they're legit followers or subscribers on YouTube and then YouTube went and changed things up. They put that notification bell that was up to where you now have to subscribe and hit the notification bell, which I'm sure everyone's heard if they ever listened

to YouTube. and

if they don't have the notification bell on, then they don't notify the subscribers when stuff comes out. So he can't reach his 300,000 subscribers that he has on YouTube anymore because they changed the system.

Yeah, it's the same thing with Instagram is like, it used to be timeline based and everybody would see it if they were your followers and then they changed it. So like now, I mean, I know people where, you they get like one or 2% of their followers actually see what they posted. Whereas like on email, you know, and I have open rates on our email of What 70 or 80%. And if you have thousands of people on that everyone sees it. You don't wanna be reliant on just like one platform. Cause they can change it whenever they want.

And

you're not their boss.

we see things like TikTok these days, we see things like [00:04:00] Instagram reels. Those are the two like big ones right now, and I'm sure others will pop up and TikTok right now. At least at the time we record, this is the biggest one that the hottest one, the sexiest one is the one that a lot of people have successfully used to grow their following, but it is 100% based on an

algorithm, an algorithm you have no control over.

And now the following you've put all this time, effort, energy building up, they control whether or not your followers can see that. And Of these people are past guests that have quarter million people that follow on social media, a hundred thousand, 150,000 people that follow on social media and they could barely reach 10% of that audience or less.

And when you look at like average open rates email lists mark, you give a really high number, 70, 80%, something like that. The industry average is like 20 to 25%. Something like that, 30% you're doing okay above 30%. You're doing excellent. And that is for a single email, by the way, I know my mailing list over a month's time.

When I send emails out, at least 50% of people interact in those emails in some way, shape or form, whether they're opening, clicking forwarding, whatever. So I can reach half of my followers any given month. Whereas on social media organically, it's less than [00:05:00] 10%. Now there's pros and cons to social media.

I'm not just saying to ignore this, to not build a following there. But what I am saying is bring those people over to a mailing list. I'm not the only one that's made this argument. Plenty of people have, but the other mistake people make around this is they think that they can just avoid mailing list all together.

They think that like, Hey, since I'm a service based business, I can do everything. One to one. I don't need anything. One to many. I can nurture everyone. I can build trust and credibility. It's all one to one. And I think if anything prove that wrong, it's when, when COVID happened, when COVID hit and you can no longer be around other human beings we cannot predict the future.

And I think even with human marketing, it's not full proof that could change in the future as well. I know apple just introduce some privacy stuff that affects, but doesn't hurt email. It just affects reporting and metrics. honestly, if you're

not doing this, this is one of the contributors to something that we've talked about all the time of this podcast is fester famine, the rollercoaster

fester famine. If you are the type of person where you have a good

month followed by string of bad months, and it may be good

months and you're going up and down and it's playing with your emotions, it's hurting your confidence. You're not [00:06:00] sure

what to do. Email list could be really one

of the best solutions that you could have for your businesses.

and I think a big part of that mark is

because with email marketing, social media does

this decently well. Not that

great, cuz it doesn't put you in front of most of your followers most of the time, but it is a really good job of nurturing, meaning staying top of mind over a long period of time we talked

about this, I think last week on the show keeping you top of mind until that, 97% who's not ready to buy

right now become the 3% who are ready

to buy right now.

Well, yeah, I mean, as far as like staying top of mind, I mean, TikTok has even said, you after nine days, your material shelf, like they're not gonna introduce it to anybody new. Right. Instagram's kind of the same. Facebook's kind of the same YouTube. It'll stay there for a while, but again, you don't really have much power of who gets introduced to um, email.

You're kind of making your own algorithm in a way. It's like

how can I just continue to nurture people? so to make sure that they know that I'm up to St stuff that could potentially help them.

you're on the fence about this, you're like, I'm a freelancer. I'm not gonna build a mailing list. we [00:07:00] have a lot of stuff today that think is gonna help you with that. Like get you over the objections or the, the roadblocks that are keeping you from billing an email list right now.

most people, they don't know what to say in the emails or they don't know what, what to make as far as lead manual. We'll talk through that stuff. But I think the biggest issue here is as freelancers as

creatives, email marketing is used on

us, against us even

all the time. How much stuff have you

purchased mark over

email? Like my career I have

probably purchased tens or hundreds of thousands of

dollars of stuff that was sold to me through

email marketing. And I have fortunately also sold

hundreds of thousands if not millions

of dollars worth of stuff through email marketing. I've had it. On me or against me, if you wanna say that, like, I don't buy stuff I don't want or need, I'm not saying it's like this evil thing, but it's used on me.

why can't I use it for my business as well. And I want everyone here listening right now. If you've ever purchased something through email marketing, someone

is marketed to you through email. I want you to take that same exact power and use it to your advantage, use it to your own businesses success so that you're not the person who's constantly consuming, but the [00:08:00] person who's also producing.

of people don't even realize that

they're experiencing email marketing every single day, but like, look at Amazon, oh, you left this in your cart. You know, like there, so many examples of

even realize like, oh wow, this really did affect me.

Like, and you buy like the majority of stuff that I buy online has an email

marketing

chain.

Yeah. So I I think this episode, We're gonna dive into like, building. Growing. And I think most importantly, using your email list, which I think is a part that a lot of people make the mistake of you grow this

list And you never use it. You never email them, which is

about as good as not ever building one in the first place. The other thing is email marketing has been around for like a thousand years and when it comes to internet years, it might as well been a thousand years because the internet changes so quickly, so rapidly and things become irrelevant so quickly. The fact that email marketing has stood the test of time for this long is remarkable.

And that's why the biggest businesses in the world like apple, like meta or Facebook, every business in the world that you're on an email list for is investing [00:09:00] heavily into email marketing. So why won't you like, why haven't you yet? I think you're missing

a huge opportunity and hopefully we can address that

in today's episode.

So first things, first mark, first part of billing email list. In my opinion, is what putting a thing on my website that says

sign up from a newsletter.

yeah. Def man, like that's

definitely the

way to do it. Everybody clicks on that.

If you listen, this episode, take nothing else away. Except for the fact of like, do not put that on your website, please. God do not put that on your website. First thing we're gonna talk about

today is just creating a valuable lead magnet. I wanna put the, the emphasis on the word, valuable creating value.

If you create an utter piece of trash that is adding no value to people's lives, then there is no reason for them to pay for this. It may be free, but they're paying for it. They're paying with their email address with their time and attention with their trust that you're going

to deliver on the value you're promising.

So we need to create a valuable

lead magnet. So mark, we were talking this, you were saying, identify problems that keep them up at night. What do you mean by that

in the day, when I was primarily producing, [00:10:00] full-time like producing music, I worked with ind pop artists um, and synth pop artists. And, you you look at an ind pop or synth pop

artist in comparison to a pop artist artists usually have more of a budget ind pop artists, you know, they're kind of DIYing it

and they want to be able to market themselves and they may not have the budget to do it.

So at night, you know, going to sleep and they're like,

oh wow, I have really great music. I love this record.

But like, I don't even know if anybody heard this thing

and I don't really have the money to do it myself.

And so what I did is I went out and I actually interviewed a bunch of

PR agents that work with big artists.

And I wrote down everything

that

they did and I printed it into a PDF. It was a book you could open in iBooks or.

And just offered it out for free for everybody. It just put in your email and you'll get this free download. And that made me hundreds of thousands of dollars because everybody just immediately trusted me in that space.

And artists were like, wow,

this is like

the nicest thing ever. Thank you so much for the

[00:11:00] help.

the way I like to approach this, and this is overly simplified, but it's, this is a podcast episode. I'm not gonna give you a full. Three hour masterclass on this like on creating lead magnet, maybe I could in the future, if anyone wants that, just, let us know. And we'll maybe do something like that

but the simplest version is just finding problems that, keep them up at night. I like that visual. Like what are they like sitting in, in bad thinking like, God, if I could solve this problem, I would give someone a million bucks. But don't have to solve the entire problem. Just solve

10% of it. in most cases as freelancers, we're not probably not capable of SI solving the entire big picture problem they have, about this as a freelancer, I'm just gonna pull a, a random example out. If I am a photographer and my clients are trying to use headshot that

I make, or are branded shots that I use on their social accounts to grow their businesses or grow their influence.

The problem that keeps 'em up at night

is like, how do I grow my social following maybe is the thing that those people want, that my clients one is a photographer or a videographer, maybe.

I can't probably solve the entire problem of growing their

social following, but I might be able to

solve just

10% of that.

What's one small piece of [00:12:00] that.

that I can pull away that is genuinely appealing and helpful to my

client. That'll get them part of the way that it'll either start it or it'll finish it, don't know what it

would be in this specific random

example. I put on my ass here, but are some Lee items you've seen work in your life? you mentioned the indie pop cookbook. How long was that?

actually I ended up renaming it because pop cookbook was actually for a different lead magnet that I made. But, uh, this specific one that Was like really successful. I just called it.

release

strategy. That was it.

simple.

Okay.

release strategy. And then I updated it every single year.

I like added an interview or something like. one that I made was originally called indie pop cookbook. And then I renamed it

as just performing live, just super simple is indie pop artists. Don't have the budget for huge backing bands and like, you know, live sound people that tour with them.

So it was just a guide on how they could run their own live show with backing tracks and,

you

of those really, solved all the problems. And the cool thing is, is that it kept talking back of like, yeah, you know, [00:13:00] artists that I work with, I help them with this sort of thing.

And then they were

like, ah, I need more help. And so I'm gonna reach out to mark and that was it. I have a buddy,

Daniel Cunningham who was on this podcast earlier. a lot of corporate photo shoots uh, headshots. That's something that he loves doing.

And so he has made like a couple blog posts and stuff like that about, you know, to make your employees feel cool. And by, essentially by making them feel cool, they wanna stay at the company longer, get up, spend their nine to five at a company that's just lame to be at that.

Everyone's like, Ugh, they wanna like

feel cool. That's

why people will take on terrible jobs at cool companies. If you know, back in the day before Facebook had a bad reputation, if you worked at Facebook, it was super cool, but they would work you

into the ground. you know, it wasn't a fun job by any

means, but you looked cool.

So tech people would do that like getting signed to a major.

It's not a great deal, but people

wanna look cool. So he made a thing of like how to make your employees feel cool help them with this,

that, that, and that. And then it was [00:14:00] like, you do incredible photo shoots for all of your employees.

it

helps your company grow. Cuz everybody starts learning. They start sharing the photos, blah, blah, blah. And

yeah, that's, that's a great strategy for him.

I'll give you a couple more examples just for

anyone. Who's kind of like still not sure about this. first of all, again, just start with the problem. Think about all the problems that your ideal clients. are wanting to solve in some way, shape or form. It may not keep them up at night. That's ideally what you would do is find one, that's like a really like a, painful problem, but they may not all be that way.

of my coaching clients, he has a lead magnet on the top a hundred music venues in his local area because his clients, the thing that keeps him up at

night is how do I get more gigs in my local area?

so he has a lead magnet with all of the venues that are accepting local musicians for gigs.

And that's one of his lead magnets. He has been really successful for him. Another one is podcast, a producer client that I have, and His clients are, business owners, online business owners, and the thing that keeps them up.

Specifically for his service as a podcast producer is complexity of launching a podcast, it [00:15:00] actually helps the business out. So he has created a guide a checklist, a step by step checklist that goes all the things that you need to know to launch your podcast.

have another podcast client. Who his lead magnet is very similar, but his client wants to 10 X content output. They wanna be like the Alex or Moses of the internet, the people who are on all platforms at all times,

because that type of business owner is, feels like they're behind. If they're not on all the platforms, like some of these other bigger

people. he has a audio guide, which I thought was super interesting, an audio guide that he created on how to turn

one piece of content into 10 or 15 pieces of content and a step by step process behind that. So I thought these are like some really cool, unique ways to create lead magnets that are appealing to your ideal client.

That ideally is also not appealing to your non ideal clients. me, a really good lead magnet, does it just as good a

job, excluding bad clients as it does attracting

the good clients. So anything else around the creation of the lead magnet that we should probably chat about? what formats do you see working PDF video audio?

[00:16:00] courses, audio a more sophisticated market research that you've like together of like, Hey, we've seen these as. we're thinking that this upcoming year is gonna be the Mo like So go in this direction downloads uh, if you're in audio sample packs you're in

video

making like, you templates in

Adobe,

Yeah, assets, of the six figure creatives best performing, at least as far as sheer downloads is asset that I created, which is a pricing calculator. It's helps you,

figure out what, how to price the packages in your business. you want that, just go to six figure creative.com/calculator and you can get that, specific guide. So I will say one more thing just on this lead magnet thing is feel that most people tend to overcomplicate this. I am one of those people.

They try to put everything under the sun into this guide or this video or this mini course. And I probably have 30 plus lead magnets in all my businesses combined. And. My tendency is to overcomplicate, which means when people get it, they're either overwhelmed or they put it off for later.

That's why I don't necessarily love [00:17:00] eBooks, like long eBooks, long courses. I like shorter content that, that gets to the point quickly and helps solve a problem quickly, because if they don't consume the piece of content that they've downloaded, then you got the lead, you got the email address, you somebody's on your email list.

You still have opportunities to build trust and credibility. Get them know you like you trust you later on down the road. But that first interaction isn't strong. It's not as strong as it could have been if they would've consumed and maybe gotten a win out of that content. or if that lead magnet. I prefer to keep it as simple as, as you feel comfortable with.

And everyone has a different threshold. In most cases, people don't, underdo this at least the people that I work with that I tend to work with higher level freelancers who actually give a damn. So if you don't give a damn, then you need to overdo this. All right next on. The list is you've got this lead magnet created.

obviously that's gonna take you some time. I would say, ideally spend no more than 10 hours on it. If you spend more than 10 hours on it, you're probably overdoing it. now we need to create a funnel. That's the second step in this, because if you don't have a, a funnel in place to promote this lead magnet, it's gonna be very difficult for you to build an email list.

Yes. You can share it without a funnel. [00:18:00] Yes. There's ways to build without a funnel. Yes. You could just put it on your homepage of your website. Sure. If you want to, but that's not the most effective way. The most effective way to promote a lead magnet and build your mailing list is to have a funnel in place.

Am I overstating this mark? Or do you agree with that?

No, you definitely need a funnel

for

sure.

And for anyone who doesn't know what a funnel is, a tell you the difference between the website and the funnel really quick. you go to any freelancer's website, their website.com, there's usually a mini bar at the top with a bunch of options.

There's usually multiple pages to go through. usually multiple links on each page. There's a footer with more stuff in it. There's like 30 different options that you could do. Links. You could click things you could do on the site itself pages you could visit. there's like 30 different variations or more.

A funnel has two options. You land on a funnel and you either move forward, meaning you're on the email list or you leave. That's like the only two options you have when it comes to a funnel. So they're much higher conversion rates. the benchmark I give my coaching clients is I wanna see five to 8% of your landing page views, turn into leads, meaning they have, requested a price from you or a quote from you on a [00:19:00] funnel.

I wanna see 40% or more landing on that page and giving you an email address. So it's a much higher conversion rate, but these are generally lower quality than like someone reaching out for a price or a quote request. So we're gonna create a funnel together this is harder to do without visual.

So we'll just try to do our best here, but in my opinion, and you can argue with this, if you want mark, like cuz all run our businesses differently. We're not you and I are not clones in business, but I prefer to have a

non scrolling landing page for a lead magnet. I don't think you have, it should have this long page that scrolls down with like all this information on it.

Keep it brief, keep it simple, shorten to the point. and honestly like if you want a good example of this, just go to six figure creative.com/. Client acquisition guide. I'm breaking my own sins here and doing multiple calls to action in this episode. But whatever go to six figure creative.com/cac.

That is a good example of like what I consider one of the best

practices. As far as the template, it gives you the information you need. There's no scrolling involved. it's a good looking page, in my opinion. are your thoughts [00:20:00] around creating a landing page for a

I, if a really good example, it's why Google is better than Yahoo. You go to Google. There's one thing to do. You go to Yahoo, they got news. They got like all these things. Google you go there.

Search that. is it. So it's

actually how they put that together.

And that's why Yahoo's value

is 4.8 billion while Google's value is. somewhere around 819 billion, probably

over a trillion. If they aren't right now, who knows what the economy's doing, but simplicity wins like Google's homepage is a really good example

of weirdly a

funnel.

You either

take the next

step or you leave. There's not a whole lot of

options

on there. There's like a couple little small options or whatever, but there's not anything crazy.

Thank you, Paige. When

someone signs

up on that page, they put their name and email address in, or sometimes just the email address in

the next page they go to after they sign up is what we call the thank

you page. so, that's what I'm talking about here. So what is your general best

practices, mark?

so you can call the thank you page. You can call it a confirmation page, whatever you want. what I try to do is uh, them to the next step.[00:21:00] they just join the email, so my priority, do I wanna make sure that they moved the email to priority? So like, it doesn't go to spam, then I'll say, okay, check your email, drag us to priority because we're going to send you something cool tomorrow and we don't want you to miss it.

So that could be my number one priority. Uh, things that other people do. Brian, I've seen you do this as

on a confirmation page. It's like, okay, check out the YouTube channel

because this is a great way to see what's next, blah, blah, or whatever. and so

a lot of people will try to get them to the next thing.

So it's kind of like, how can we

get them in our ecosystem as much as

possible. So no matter where they are, they know what's going on. So when we got this person to trust

us, how can we

build

this relationship with them as easy as possible?

this is gonna differ for everyone and it's going to depend on where your traffic's coming from, which we'll get into traffic later on. But a good next step is in my opinion, a video making some sort of offer, like, thanks so much [00:22:00] for downloading this.

It'll be in your inbox shortly. If you are an X, Y, or Z looking for a, B or C, then I'd love to, potentially work with you. If you're interested, fill out the form below and we can chat more again, that's a really simplified

version. There's a lot more that goes into like a good VSL or video sales letter.

But having something on the page, that's like getting them to take the natural next step with you, book a call, fill a quote, request format, something like.

worst thing you can do is just say, thank you. And There's like no link getting them to somewhere else.

You like email has been confirmed. I I've seen that before. I'm like, what the hell are you, doing? like. why don't you, tell me to

go somewhere now I'm lost,

this is what a

lot of marketers will tell you. Your thank you page is some of the most valuable real estate on your website,

and you cannot waste that opportunity. So what I do for six figure creative, and maybe by the time you're watching this or listening to this, I've changed that, but I've done for a long time is I'm not necessarily looking for a cell on the thank you page.

tested that. I don't love it. It just doesn't feel right to me. So what I do is for six figure

creative, at least the thank you page. I'm trying to get them to. get deeper into my world.

[00:23:00] So I say, all right, awesome. Two more things to do.

Step one, join our free Facebook community. So there's a link to get into our Facebook community for free. And step two is, go check your email for the thing that you signed up for. It's super simple. We but generally like a lot of people sign up to the Facebook group.

We have 10,000 people in there right now. then they go to their email and get the thing that they downloaded, which is the thing that's gonna add value to their life, solve a problem, and then make them closer to knowing, liking and trusting me, which I think is whole point of.

guess the next part of this is after the thank you page, you obviously need automated email

delivery. So depending on what your

tech stack is, what software you're using, this is going to look different. If you're using something like easy funnels, which is my software that I recommend everyone here use, then

you can set this all up inside of easy

funnels.

You can, add them to an email list. You can deliver the lead magnet straight to their inbox. It's a wonderful

system why we created it. But if you're not an easy

funnels person, or you already have a WordPress site,

you don't wanna move over or Wix or something, there's solutions out there for everyone like mark, you actually use

easy

funnels and [00:24:00] then you still use another software for email marketing.

So like there's a million ways to do this. I'm

gonna twist your arm about

that, cuz you can probably do whatever the hell you're

doing with your

other email marketing software with easy funnels But we

don't have to

It depends. Listen, it depends on your goals. and run that pitch.com where we license music to YouTubers producers and artists, we have potentially different needs than, you software. So like a bunch of different ones out there and they all have their pros and cons.

Uh, gotta figure out what's best for you. you run a software company, it might be good to have an email thing that triggers within software. Like, it just, it depends what you need there, all of them, but the basic ones, you know hear of like MailChimp, drip, active campaign.

Those are great. do think easy funnels is fantastic. Specifically, like for freelancers. you're a producer artist self-employed by any means, like, it's great because you have all the funnels built in and all the e-com is there. So,[00:25:00]

but yeah, I'm running a software company, dude. It's a

little bit different needs. Like, I

don't know what you want from me.

Yeah. in all fairness, File pass. My other software company is on easy funnels as well, but we use use Intercom because it's like tied into all of our customer support and everything. So don't pretend to be all things for everybody. So there there's power in being niche down.

so, so far we've got your lead magnet created. That

was step one. Step two is you've created a

funnel to deliver that, lead magnet. And step three is now we need to promote

this. for everyone, this is gonna look different.

So we have a few thoughts on this. again, it's just like asking how long is a piece of string. It's as long as you need it to be it's as long as you want it to be, or it's too short, but gonna just talk about this. So promoting the lead magnet, easiest thing to do, first thing to do, put it a link is a link

in your bio on any social media accounts you're active on.

that's just easy, low

hanging fruit. Like I'm not even active on social media, like a thousand percent. I am not

active on social media. I do have a good amount of followers. and still my link in my bio

generated.

I just checked it before this episode, like 15 new leads on that specific lead magnet that I pitched earlier, the,

client acquisition guide, 15 leads in the [00:26:00] last week or two.

that is just completely passive

free leads for six figure

creatives specifically. not paying for it. It's just in

my bio link that's just from that link right

there. do you use like the link in bio, like

thing like that actual software, or do you just put it as a link in your

bio,

I actually think link tree in like all these Multilink things are dumb. I actually think you should have one place for them to go. The last thing you want is somebody, you makes the decision to click a link, you want each step to be like this is the next step. Then that is the next step.

Do this. Then do that. Then do that. The least amount of choices is what you want. the funnel. So if you have a link tree and you have a 10 different things, usually people go there and they don't press anything. you want is one thing that you do. So we put a link in our bio that pitch. I, have one for my own Instagram mark effort that goes to that pitch, cuz that's my main goal right now. And you know, we'll get hundreds of clicks a day. very powerful.

and looking at my own Instagram account, which is wildly [00:27:00] underused, although maybe if you're, you've been following me during this B adventure, maybe I'm posting more often. This is past Brian talking about future Brian in no way am I promising I have, or will do that. just put a little bit about me.

good template to use is like, I help blank accomplish blank or do blank. I help digital CEOs launch their podcast. I help beauty brands write content for their blogs or whatever. Like I'm just talking about Colleen. Well, who's a recent guest under podcast, so just put, like, I help blank with

blank.

It's like a super easy template. And then I put a link to six figure creative.com/client acquisition. And that's the link I can track directly that lead magnet.

mark was saying earlier about

link trees or the equivalent of like Lincoln bio is what I see tons of people do in the mistake they make is click the link and there's like 30 things in there.

None of 'em are relevant to what I care about, what I'm looking for, what I want. it's like when I open a,

cheesecake factory menu, which is like 55,000 options, and I'm like, I don't know what I'm gonna order. This is gonna take forever. So now service slows down the line's backed up at the restaurant.

They can't stock all the stuff they need in the kitchen because there's a billion, different combinations of [00:28:00] things. Nobody knows what they

want. It takes forever. The systems are awful. I can't even imagine trying to run a restaurant like that. There was a restaurant tour consultant who consults on menus, this is a guy who has

sold over. I think it was like $3 billion worth of items from his menus. over time, he says the sweet

spot for menu items

is six. Six items on a menu is the sweet spot. So anyone with more than six items is overwhelming their customers

from paralysis by analysis and under six, you're probably not giving enough options.

So if you are gonna have a link tree, please, God don't have more than six options ever, I understand the need for it. I do have, if you go to hood.wtf, which is my link tree link, I have a link tree. but there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 options on

there.

Perfect. I didn't even plan that,

people might be listening and be like, well, you know, he's not doing much social media. I don't have to either. That's not true because you marketing is so robust, like I'm

on

your list. Um, and [00:29:00] You know, I hear from you through aware of your existence basically every single day, even if we

weren't friends, I

know of you like your email marketing. So that is why, because you've already built a list

and you did a lot of list building primarily through

ads, which we'll talk about real quick,

but

like have the list now, so you don't have to be

on social media and

that's why you have that luxury. A lot of people, if you're like sick of, you every day and like I get it Been able to do that because he has a list. That's the

walk away power. If you want real walk away, power in your life and not being, tied to posting content every damn day, cuz they're

making

us at this point to stay relevant, get an

email list.

let's talk about other ways to promote this, cuz like putting in your bio, like in most cases, for most, people's not gonna really generate enough leads build it in any sustainable way. So second area is if you are like, creating content, you have a content marketing plan of some sort where you're releasing regular podcast episodes or YouTube, or even sometimes in your social media

content share a call to

action [00:30:00] for that lead magnet. I've done it twice. In this episode already. I shared the pricing calculator that I uh, just came up in the episode which was six figure creative.com/calculator. then

I have the client acquisition guide that I shared multiple.

can do it organically.

Like I have so far, which is just like, it came up. I'm gonna talk about it. I'll share it. Or you can have a genuine call to action where you have, like, at the end of the episode, it's like the Now that you know, this, the natural next step is for you to download my guide on blank. And that has worked really well for me in the past with my YouTube channel, I've had videos do as much as 30% of views opted in for my lead magnet my videos don't get a ton of views.

So like, it might be 1500 views, but that's still like four or 500 leads from one YouTube video, which is insane.

as much as ads cost on YouTube or Facebook right now that's

like thousands of dollars, depending on what you're doing on there worth of free leads. From one video on.

single. Instagram post that we make every single TikTok, every single shorts, every single

YouTube video at the end of

each [00:31:00] description, if you wanna start licensing your music,

click the link in our bio, or if you wanna start licensing your music, go to that pitch.com.

If that's on every single post. The post could be about anything, but we always have that and it just reminds people, Hey, this is the next step you

gotta lead. The buyer. Don't think that they'll know what to do on their, on their own.

this is The second to last strategy for promotion. And this is not a strategy that I use. I don't think it's a strategy that mark uses, but it's a strategy I've seen work. Specifically one of my coaching clients uses this successfully so I wanna mention it or least share it, but it is a combination of cold outreach, which we kind of talked through on episode two 19, with Colleen, where we had the uh, cold outreach masterclass, we did talk about cold outreach, but the strategy was slightly different. She was going straight to pitch and her approach, what my client does is he uses cold outreach to build his email list.

And he's getting like a hundred people a month on his email list from the strategy where he'll just find people that he knows would need his help. And he reaches out asking if they need

any help with blank. The thing that he helps with or his [00:32:00] lead magnet helps with. And then he says, awesome, it is.

then he links them to it And think he actually has a PDF that he just attaches in

the message to be helpful. And then he says, and by the way, if, this other thing might be helpful, here's a link to that as well.

he's first adding value in the message. Then he's linking to the funnel that he created. he's just doing this, like. A little bit of time every single day. And this is just a free way for him to do it. I say free it's taking time. Cuz all client acquisition, all lead generation, all list

building is either going to take you time or it's gonna take you money.

There's no such thing as free, just one strategy I wanted to mention. Have you seen anyone do that before mark? I thought that was an interesting way to do it.

I do it.

Oh, you do do that. I

the thing it's like honestly, I don't suggest it for most people. unless you have some more walk away power, it's very easy to come across as

desperate if you don't word things. Right. honest, I think it's a good idea.

To have a little bit of credibility before you do a lot of cold outreach

a book called breakthrough advertising by Eugene Schwartz. It's

one of my favorites of all [00:33:00] time. And he talks about the,

bias of the market.

So basically, what are people thinking about you before they even

know you? you just reach out to somebody random and say, Hey, do this, do this, you know, like I'm selling this, like whatever. They're like, oh, this is a scammer. I'm

mark this as spam,

you you wanna make sure that

you're tasteful about it and you have some credibility to back it up because that's the first thing that's gonna come to their mind.

the other thing is like, that's not a strategy that I, and consulted him on doing.

That's just something he was doing before he even came to me. to me, the classiest strategy is adding value to people's lives. Being a go giver, by just creating content. That's valuable to your ideal clients. So

I'm shifting him to a content marketing strategy.

I'm getting him away from this cold outreach, but I just thought it was worth mentioning. And I guess it's not something that either of us necessarily endorsed, especially for somebody who's

Yeah. I,

their email list.

I

you and I both have built most of our mailing list, or at least I have built most of my mailing list via ads. If you listen to this podcast, there was a high chance you listen to this podcast

because you got on my email list.

because of an ad. so I [00:34:00] wanted to talk about it, but it's such a broad topic. I don't know if we can even do it remotely, do it justice. And it's also one of those topics that most people don't

have interest

Yeah, I, I,

wanna talk about it, how it pertains to building your email

list

via,

promoting a lead

just wanna state this really quick. Everybody overcomplicates ads, I don't really wanna contribute too much this because it is very

advanced and I think it needs its own episode. and honestly, like,

you from you directly um, through six figure creative, But far as ads. are concerned,

all in ad is, you know, Facebook

ads, TikTok ads.

YouTube ads, Google

ads whatever You're basically just paying to create your own algorithm.

That's all ads.

are.

And that's why organic reach is so bad. So like Facebook organic reach for pages was amazing. 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.

1415, around 15, 16, it starts to slow down 17. It was utter chaos and beyond you can't reach organic anymore. and that timeline is the complete inverse of how well their ads platform started doing.

So as the ads platform gained more and more traction and they saw money signs, [00:35:00] they took organic reach away. So the only way get traction really, truly promote something like lead magnet is to play. There's a couple things worth noting.

If you are gonna play the Facebook ads game, the first thing is

for new people, trust the algorithm to put the ad in front of the right people. If you have a broad enough audience and the audience size for ad set level, which we're getting into nerdy stuff. But if you create an ad set with an audience size of about one to 5 million people, unless you're local, if it's local, it's a little different, but one to 5 million people, and That's saying like I'm targeting people who are interested in podcasting, right? Something like that. That's like a stupid one, but that's like a broad one. And if I narrow that down to like the age range and the gender that I typically work with in my clients, I'm just saying, if I'm a podcast producer, then it might come down to one to 5 million people.

If I put my lead magnet in front of those people, Facebook will generally do a really good job of putting it in front of the right people who are interested in this and the way they know this, assuming you've set up Facebook ads correctly with a pixel, this is all beyond the scope of this episode.

Assuming [00:36:00] you've done this correctly is long as

you are getting at least 30 to 50 new leads per week. One, lead is a conversion. As long as Facebook knows this, they have enough data to optimize the algorithm, to put your ad in front of the right people and drive down your ad costs in my world.

I dunno what you pay per lead mark. But in my world, I can get leads from one to two bucks or less sometimes.

mine.

Yeah.

hear people paying 10, 15,

$20 for leads in other markets. So it, it varies wildly in every single market. But I will say

if Facebook does not have enough data, meaning you're only getting two or three conversions, or you're trying to optimize for purchase and sell your services directly through an ad, you will never make it.

It will never ever work in a million years unless you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads in a week or two. So, what I look at is what's my cost to get the action I'm looking for. If that's a, a new lead, what's the cost of that multiply that times 30 to 50, and that's how much you need to spend each week to give them enough data.

So if it's gonna cost you

[00:37:00] $2 for a lead, you need to spend at least 60 to a hundred dollars a week on ads in order for the algorithm to be optimized, the machine learning algorithm. That's all I'm gonna say about there. Anything else to add about this

Yeah.

So right now, I mean this past week or two, I'm getting

Cost per lead at about 97 cents lead,

which is awesome.

very happy with that, but it the thing with ads.

is a multiplier of what you already are. So if your copy sucks, it's gonna show if your funnel sucks, it's gonna show if your offer sucks, it's gonna show if your market sucks, it's gonna show um, cool thing about ads though, is that if you do have a system that works, you have all these skills really well.

In a way it's kind of like being the legal version of a mafia boss, because you basically can control what you want and you can like get everything that you need and you just multiply, multiply, multiply, and you can pay people off. You're basically paying Facebook off. You're paying Instagram off, you're paying TikTok off, you're paying YouTube off to get [00:38:00] your desired results.

So instead of paying, you know crooked, a or something

you're paying off YouTube, but it's yeah,

it. In my opinion, is it is a skill-based slot machine, unlike a Vegas slot machine where you're putting a dollar in and you're gonna get on average. I don't know, 80, 90 cents out on average, like I don't know what actual results are, but over long enough time horizon, you will be guaranteed to lose money in a Vegas slot machine because it's rigged in this slot machine.

It is a skills based slot machine. The better you are at copywriting, the better you are at targeting at messaging at knowing your target market at creating a valuable lead magnet at, creating good funnels that convert the better you are at all

these skills, the more profitable it's gonna be. So if you aren't good enough at all the things, it is literally a slot machine that you put a dollar in.

You can get $2 out. my return on ad spend for my career is like, can't even calculate at this point, but it's four or five X. So if I've spent $300,000 on ads, I have profited.

Somewhere from a million to 1.2, 1.5 million back [00:39:00] on that. that's just what I can roughly track.

that's not even full attribution on everything cuz people will join your mailing list today and buy three to five years from now sometimes, or hire you three to five years from now. and that is return on ad spend. But it's so far removed from the ad that you can't track it anymore.

Last thing is this okay if if you're still listening, if you're still with us today, hopefully still are.

You're serious about building a mailing list. You have created a, I lead magnet, step one, you've created a funnel to promote that lead magnet. Step two, you have promoted it in some way, shape or form. Maybe

you're playing with ads. Maybe you're doing cold outreach, which we don't necessarily recommend.

We talked about it. Maybe you're sharing it in the content you create. Maybe you have friends that can promote it for you. I don't know. But now you've

built the mailing list. What do you do with it? let's talk about what we can do with this list once we have it. I think the first thing, this actually isn't on our outline, mark, but it's worth talking about is cleaning the list, especially if you're doing paid ads. How often do you clean your list?

it's all dependent on what my open rates are. And for a period of time after I change titles and stuff like that, but you a while [00:40:00] I was cleaning it maybe every quarter now it's, it's looking like once or twice a

year.

but

the,

do is if they have

not engaged in any

way, shape

or form in six months

time, just remove 'em from the list. You can do it more often, but six months is a good, easy

but,

but, the thing is, it? is the last resort.

Like I try to fix everything. I can first I send specific emails to people who are. know, messaging back or whatever. and then I try to incentivize 'em I give free things and only if they're just like really not having it, then I remove them.

Yeah, there's the famous, I think it's like a nine word email or something. That's just are you still interested in blank? Six word email. That's what it is. there's no call to action. it's just those six words. Are you still looking for blank or are you still

interested in blank?

That gets the best reply rate of anything. And that's Like the last email that gets sent before I remove them from my list. and the whole point of that though, is to keep your open rates

high so that you're not getting dinged or getting any negative strikes against you from whatever email [00:41:00] marketing platform you're using to send email.

So that's kind of like the first thing to talk about there.

Mine is literally quote, yo, we're about to remove you reply. That's literally what it

says.

That's actually a good one too. That could be even a second to last dish effort. Like after the, are you still interested thing? Say, yo, you're getting removed reply or die.

don't say

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so you've got this list though. You've you're cleaning it. So you're not, you don't have this dirty list.

and honestly, like for leads that I pay for, I'm actually a little more aggressive. Like I have, an automated lead nurture sequence, which is actually the first step. Once they go through that, we'll talk about what that is in a second. If you don't know what that is, but once they go through that, if they've not engaged in any way, shape or form, and they're a

lead I purchased on an ad, I'll still clean them off.

Reason being is your open rates are generally way lower for paid ads than they are for like organic. And I just don't want a bunch of dead leads on my list. So I actually clean, paid leads off cuz a lot of times people sign up through fake or spoof email accounts. And I just don't want those on my list.

Assuming we've got all that done, create an automated lead nurture campaign. This is the series of emails that goes [00:42:00] out when someone signs up for your lead magnet. And it's the same for every single person. And for you, mark, I dunno how long your is or how you do yours. We can talk about that, but it needs to be what I call like six to 12 days long.

It can be longer. It can be shorter, but it needs to be emails that start out every day. I think I've heard this called the Fibe Nachi sequence. It starts off every day and then gradually gets further and further apart until you get out to a good natural cadence of like, for me, it's weekly. I want my list to hear from me weekly, less than that.

And they start to think, be like, who the hell is this guy? I forgot who I even signed up for this. But if you don't email daily, when you first start out, you don't become a familiar face, you become a spam complaint. If you become a spam complaint, you

get blocked or banned or suspended on your email marketing.

it is best to email more often, starting out people can unsubscribe if they don't want the emails and then to slow it down gradually so that you're not burning them out. And you're not burning yourself out. Anything else around creating the automated leadership campaign?

Yeah. So I've kind of like always followed the same sort of formula with my email automation. know, I do a

lead magnet, so I'm giving out something for free, right. That free thing is to [00:43:00] get them to a, you know, eventually buy something. Right. you know, ultimately helps them more.

So what I typically have always done is I have a five day email funnel. first couple days is, you know, talking more about the topic educating, and then later on, I offer some sort of deal uh, to work or whatever I need as the action for purchase. next week or two, you know, it's adding more, you know, maybe every other two days, and then it, it kind of, again, gradually slows down after a month or excuse me, two months.

And then it's just once a week.

that's good. I have a slightly different one I use for freelancers. And this is one that I, teach in my coaching program. I'll talk through it here, give you a way to get the funnel that I created for this and to get kind of this outline and, and pre-built automation that I have, in here.

And I'll actually screen share. If you're watching on YouTube, you can actually see this [00:44:00] [00:45:00] [00:46:00] [00:47:00]

sync licensing isn't real or like attainable for the average producer or artist. So they think like, oh, well I can't do it because like, For whatever reason, I don't have those opportunities. I'm not gonna land deals. you know, there be like scams out there or whatever, or they're gonna take a big percentage. We don't Yep,

yep. the first couple days, I'm just like, yeah, these are the problems. Watch this. And then like this, somebody who made like 50 grand through us or whatever, it's just like, keep going. It's like, we're doing this, we're doing that.

And then it's like, Hey, if You

wanna sign up, here's the deal. And it's, it's very similar [00:48:00]

Are you interested? Yes. Or no? Check? Yes. Check. Yes or no. remember the country song. You think this [00:49:00] is hi. Hello? Goes check. Yes or no.

wow. Out.

showing his Alabama.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm born and raised way boy ball way. But that, I mean, that's it in a nutshell, like obviously we didn't get to do justice. Maybe I could do a whole master class on that if somebody wants it. just kind of talking about my coaching program.

That's enrolling soon. If I'm not already is like, that's one of the things that we help people implement is that exact strategy, but Once they get past the automated series, then you have to go to what we call ongoing nurturing. This is the long term game, the long game, anyone who's in this business for the long term business.

They're not in it for short income. They're not in it for short term profits. They're not in it for the Feasta famine,

roller

coaster. They want stability. They want predictability. Then you have to become a stable, predictable human being. If that's what you want in your business. And part of that is ongoing emails to your email list.

If you suck at this, if you don't wanna do this, go hire a copywriter, even a low tier fiber copywriter, which I is not necessarily what you want. It's better than nothing. So hire any [00:50:00] copywriter, worst case scenario, or just suck it up, learn the skill and send one email a. better than nothing.

And if you are a content creator, if you have a YouTube channel, if you have a podcast, if you are creating things regularly, a blog,

then that's your one chance per week to send an email manually. there other times that you tend to send emails, like other than promotional periods or things in your you're advertising something or you're sharing a new lead magnet or something?

like often that you're talking about, but a lot of times, if somebody has achieved success with us,

um, a whole email uh, series with that. So like when people land placements with us, they land like sync licensing placements.

It's like hundreds of times a month. So we send automations

talking about that to people who landed like, all right, next steps, this is how to get the most out of it. Do this, then do that. And it's been,

and it helps people succeed more so, and

us more for it.

Yep. So this has been a doozy of an episode, there's just so much to cover. Like I hate to say it, but business is not easy. It is difficult. There's a lot to learn. They're, we're gonna have to get out of our comfort zone as creatives, in order to learn some of these skills.

I'm not saying by the way that every creative on earth [00:51:00] needs an email list. But what I am saying is that nearly every creative on earth, every creative I know has had email marketing used against them. it.

is used to sell to them. It is used to convince them to buy something. They may or may not need something that is either valuable for them or, or sucking them into something. But I want you to use this in your own power to build your business. It is a wonderful asset to have. And if this episode didn't convince you of it, then I don't know what else to tell you. This is part of a client acquisition machine.

if you wanna see all the parts for this, if you wanna see all of the, three main elements of client acquisition, this is just a part of that overall machine. You can get my client acquisition guide. I've mentioned earlier in this episode, by going to six figure creative.com/cac. that is interesting because the funnel that you land on that page, this will actually walk you through some of the stuff we've talked about today. You will get the lead magnet,

you will get follow up emails. will get to see behind the scenes.

It's like you get to see what I do. And you also see how I do it in that one funnel itself, which is why I'm sharing that lead magnet. And then it's even funnier. If you go to our show [00:52:00] notes for this episode, six figure creative.com/two, two. Then you can actually get the link to that exact funnel that you just signed up to, as a template, an easy funnel.

So if you're not an easy funnel as user, awesome. This is a great place to start. If you are an easy funnel as user, you can actually use this email in your account straight off the bat. So a there's so much for this man for us to do this on a Friday end of day, end of the week.

few days before I had to Bali. Like this was a doozy man. Like I was not expecting this to go this deep, but like, I hope this helps somebody out there. Somebody who's serious about their business. last thoughts

givers, bro. We're such givers. So know what, you gotta listen to this 10 times to swear to God you're gonna make a million dollars. No, but seriously.

Yeah. is a good episode. It was definitely deep. Uh, that's what business is like if it's, easy and people say it's easy, Then, I mean, it's probably like, you know, cryptocurrency where people are like, you'd make a million dollars then, and then you, I dunno real businesses. Take a while to build up and they stay. That's a true

asset.

I, I