\n<\/p>\n
Late last year my lead generation methods started to fail.<\/p>\n
We had solid growth in 2023 and throughout the start of 2024 focusing on Google search ads and LinkedIn video ads.<\/p>\n
They both started to decline late 2024.<\/p>\n
Nothing I did changed the results.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t say why this happened \u2014 but I expected it. Nothing works forever in marketing.<\/p>\n
I decided in order to help motivate myself and come up with new ideas, I\u2019d dive into the books of\u00a0Alex Hormozi<\/strong>.<\/p>\n His book trilogy is almost complete, with the third book due soon as I write this.<\/p>\n I listened to his first two audiobooks,\u00a0$100M Offers<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0$100M Leads<\/em>.<\/p>\n I found the leads book in particular very practical, so much so that I went through it a second time.<\/p>\n I also listen to Alex\u2019s podcast episodes almost every day. He has some deep dives into marketing and sales that are solid resources.<\/p>\n Alex is one of the most tactical marketing content creators out there. He gives specific direction that stays current because he is drawing upon the work he does with founders of active companies today.<\/p>\n This is not easy to do since marketing never stays the same, so it\u2019s hard to teach it.<\/p>\n Desiring more content on lead generation I downloaded audiobooks from\u00a0Russell Brunson<\/strong>. I was especially interested to re-review his\u00a0Traffic Secrets<\/em>\u00a0book, part of his own book trilogy (Dot Com Secrets<\/em>,\u00a0Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets<\/em>).<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never been a big fan of Russell\u2019s content, but I seriously respect his results. Clickfunnels is a monster and if webinars and funnels are a part of your marketing, Russell is someone you listen to.<\/p>\n I thought for this newsletter I\u2019d list a few highlights I took away from these two marketing legends, both who have the results (and net worth!) to back up what they teach.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a brief list of highlights from their books\u2026<\/p>\n This concept from Russell has been around for a long time. Based on his books it remains his core traffic tactic.<\/p>\n The idea is simple: Research to find a \u2018dream 100\u2019 list of people who already have your target audience and find a way to do something that leads to exposure to their audience.<\/p>\n Suggested methods to do this are wide and varied, with Russell reviewing several he has done in his book.<\/p>\n From social media content exchanges, to podcast interviews, affiliate promotions, influencer marketing campaigns, book launches, and even something as simple as running paid ads targeting the followers of the dream 100 (as Russell did targeting Tony Robin\u2019s audience).<\/p>\n Some of these tactics cost money. Most rely on relationship building.<\/p>\n I find this concept helpful because it narrows your focus to just 100 people.<\/p>\n Yet I also find this concept frustrating as you can basically do \u2018everything in marketing\u2019 in order to reach the audiences of these 100 people. It\u2019s hard to know where to start.<\/p>\n Of course to be fair to Russell, this is why teaching marketing is so hard. There is no right solution for all situations and the options are vast and constantly changing.<\/p>\n Directionally helpful if a bit strategically challenging, is how I would sum up this technique.<\/p>\n Alex Hormozi on several occasions in his lead generation book and podcast episodes point out something obvious:\u00a0do more of what works<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Initially this idea was presented in a story Alex shared about hiring a well known social media influencer (likely\u00a0Gary Vaynerchuk<\/strong>) for private calls, which leads to a delightfully basic recommendation to improve organic results from social media:<\/p>\n Publish more content.<\/strong><\/p>\n Alex explained how he was asked by Gary (presumably) how much content he had published that day. It turned out Gary was publishing as much in one day as Alex would publish in a week.<\/p>\n Simply turning up the volume will turn up the traffic.<\/p>\n This is not easy to do, especially if you want to maintain quality, but advice Alex clearly took to heart as he is EVERYWHERE on social media today.<\/p>\n As Alex progressed to the paid media chapter in his leads book, the \u2018make more\u2019 concept surfaced again.<\/p>\n This time the advice is to make more ads, especially if a channel is working for you.<\/p>\n One reason to test more ads is to test more hooks.<\/p>\n Ad formats go stale.<\/p>\n New trends emerge you can test with your audience.<\/p>\n Testing new ad hooks with new ad delivery styles on a platform that has worked for you already is sound advice.<\/p>\n I took this to heart, so much so that we are working on new ad media as I write this.<\/p>\n I believe one of the reasons for the downturn in our results is our ad media is stale. We haven\u2019t tested nearly enough hooks and we need new video styles.<\/p>\n Several times I listened to Alex give advice to do more ad media on an existing channel as a counterpoint to launching a new campaign on a new channel.<\/p>\n It\u2019s so tempting to roll out a YouTube ads campaign if Instagram is working for you.<\/p>\n Yet the smarter decision is to double down on Instagram, assuming there is still room to grow there \u2014\u00a0and there always is.<\/em><\/p>\n If a channel is \u2018sort of\u2019 working for you, but not consistently bringing in leads, you think \u2014\u00a0let\u2019s go try these same ads over on this other platform<\/em>, when you probably should get better with the channel you are on already.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve done exactly that, spreading my ad budget even thinner across even more channels because I was frustrated by inconsistent results.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been hearing this advice for decades, but it was good to yet again hear Alex reinforce this idea, which is even more important as AI generated content floods the web (which is already flooded with content!).<\/p>\n Alex explained how today he invests more time in prep work to create better content, which then requires less post-production editing.<\/p>\n That better quality content is reformatted, resulting in better video shorts, better podcasts, better ad media, etc.<\/p>\n If you start with better ingredients you get better food.<\/em><\/p>\n Tools like OpusClip use AI to quickly generate shorts from videos, but they are rarely high quality.<\/p>\n Jumping in front of the camera and dropping a long rambling video might feel productive, but often results in meandering content that doesn\u2019t gain traction, and is much harder to edit together into something effective.<\/p>\n Taking the time to prepare well and present well, results in content that delivers more impact.<\/p>\n This then gives your editing team better source materials to turn out more compelling content, which is then in turn more likely to be shared.<\/p>\n This is a shift that is not easy to do \u2014 it requires work to be prepared \u2014 but that\u2019s good thing, it\u2019s a competitive advantage.<\/p>\n Both Alex and Russell revealed many specific lead generation methods they have used, which to be honest are nothing new.<\/p>\n Run ads. Find affiliate partners. Produce more and better content.<\/p>\n Etc. Etc.<\/p>\n While I enjoy all of the stories these guys share to illustrate how these tactics have been applied by themselves or the founders they work with, the real insight is what you then go and do for your own business growth.<\/p>\n In my case, I decided to get more ad media produced and create new hooks \u2014 even a new landing page with a new domain name to present our offer in a different way.<\/p>\n In your case you may yet to have a reliable source of customers, so you have to pick a channel, prepare well and go deep there.<\/p>\n If you already have customers but growth has stalled, re-focusing and doing more on the same channel is likely the best choice.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no perfect answer, but as a growth marketer this is the job you signed up for and will continue to have to deal with \u2014 so get used to it!<\/p>\n Yaro<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n1. Russell Brunson\u2019s \u2018Dream 100\u2019<\/h2>\n
2. Make More Content<\/h2>\n
3. Make More Ads<\/h2>\n
4. Don\u2019t Start New Channels<\/h2>\n
5. Spend More Time On Preparation (Quality)<\/h2>\n
Prepare More, Do More \u2014 And Do It In One Place<\/h2>\n