STOP Caring About Your Brand... Do This Instead!

all right today I want to talk about the difference between branding and direct response marketing and then after that I'm going to talk to you guys about a fight that Gary ve and I had on stage about this exact same topic the world I now live in these big agencies they're 100% art they have no respect to sales these are the pieces that we have used to turn click fronts what is today I literally feel like leaving thank you so what is branding most people know what branding is branding is you create a brand and

an image you put it out there and hopefully your company grows because you got a really cool brand the opposite side is direct response marketing that sounds kind of nerdy and weird what is direct response marketing well direct response is I'm going to put something out into the marketplace and try to get somebody to immediately respond back now Gary V is probably the king of branding online and I believe I am the king of direct response Marketing Online and so we have kind of two different directions and so a little while ago we were running

an event for clickfunnels and clickfunnels was about to pass 50,000 active members we just hired the Harmon Brothers to build this viral video I like to paint nudes squirrels that is fancy folk buy them right up don't ask me why I just paint them you don't know who the Harmon's brothers are they're ones who did Squatty Potty pooper rine all the viral videos you kind of know online we hired them paid them a fortune to build this video that we're going to launch and hopefully get branding and direct response I thought if we're doing this

big event we should talk about these two different principles and so we hired Gary Vayner to come and be one of our Keynotes with that said everybody to stand up and put our hands together for Gary Vayner thank you so much you know what's interesting I was sitting there uh and listening during the event I spoke about how we buil clickfunnels from zero to over $100 million in sales using direct response marketing and then Gary got up and talked about how he had built his companies using branding the way that Gary kind of positional IED

said that what Russell's doing is all about science and what he was doing is all about art and so I'm spending an ungodly amount of time on everything that isn't the math it's incredible that we now live in a world where the people that are building great companies in this and they do great and they make a lot of money they deserve it because they take things that we don't have to worry about out of the equation and the fact of the matter is math will always be that one the things that aren't are the

art the creativity um and most importantly the intuition and then the audacity to leave money on the table every single day of your life to invest in the world that you think is going to be there in 24 months and then you have to be right other otherwise you lose and you can tell by the way that he kind of presented it that he thought what I was doing was kind of lesser class and he thought that The Branding was more important and you can tell from what I thought I thought The Branding was way

less important and the direct response was more important so the question is who won well I'm not going to lie it caused kind of a fight between me and Gary I don't think I talked to him for a couple years since then and so there's little animosity uh he's built his Brands I built my Brands uh through different means both have definitely worked but I'm not going to lie um was not a huge Gary ve fan after this presentation but I saw him again about a week and a half ago at the live event we

saw backstage we kissed him made up and um I'm a Gary ve fan once again so Gary welcome back we're going to get you into dire FS marking soon enough but until I convince you um I'm going to try to convince everybody else so branding is great we know we love it the problem with branding there's a couple things number one is that when you're trying to create a brand you're using social media you are literally left to the whims of the algorithm which as you know changes it comes and it goes for years when

I was building my business I was focusing on doing SEO and Building Things through Google organic and guess what happened overnight everything shifted the algorithm changed and I lost all my traffic all my rankings and they were gone you may be thinking Russell that's SEO this is different that's is branding but the exact same thing happens every single day in social media right when I first got into Facebook I was like Facebook's a greatest the world I'm going to build a big brand there I built a following almost a million people on Facebook and guess

what last week I went live on Facebook went a Facebook live to my million fans and only 50 people showed up is that crazy because the algorithm shifted and all the work I did disappeared overnight I see it on Instagram where people get millions of followers and they say something they get canceled the algorithm shifts them out and that fast their business is gone all the branding all the equity everything you put in is at the whims of the algorithms of other companies which is kind of scary with direct response marketing you can control your

own destiny this is the power of it I can literally go and I can turn on an ad and get somebody come to me whether they like me or they not whether the algorithm thinks I'm cool or not I can pay for that person and get them to come to me and come into my world and so that's the difference between branding and direct response marketing now I'm a big direct response guy because my first Mentor was a guy named Dan Kennedy and Dan Kennedy's written a ton of books one of my favorite books is

the book right here called the no BS direct response the no BS direct marketing ultimate no holds bar k is a really long title way too long I just call it the no BS direct marketing book cuz it's really good and in here he's got 10 commandments of direct response marketing and they're all really really good but there's one that's the most important I want to share with you it's rule number five and rule number five is this he says whatever brand building occurs will be a happy byproduct it will not be bought it means

you do not spend money to build your brand but if you build your brand as a byproduct of direct response marketing that's great now a good example this is clickfunnels clickfunnels is my business as my brand I've been running for the last decade okay but we do not buy ads driving people just to go to clickfunnels instead what we do is we create really good offers we buy ads to drive people to those offers they buy our product or our service and then after that they learn about clickfunnels and the brand this will help you

to get your first business off the ground and having success as quick as humanly possible what I found doing this now for almost two decades is that the very first thing I put out there the brand doesn't actually help you at all in fact initially the brand hurts when we have a landing page we're buying ads to if there's a logo and a picture and a story about you and your company it actually hurts conversion rates so most of our landing pages are kind of blind there's that offer there's a headline there's a reason that

somebody would respond we send someone there they give us their email address or they buy a product or something then they come into our world and that point we introduce them to us and to our brand okay cuz the very first interaction is not about you okay the first first question someone's mind is what's in it for me wi if FM and so what's in it for them is not you or your brand the first thing that's in it for them is the offer you're making them so most of our landing pages that are going

to cold traffic are all about what's in it for them a hook and a headline that's about them that's going to get them excited and give them a result then they come into our world at that point we introduce them to me into our brand into our story and then it builds a connection so we use direct response marketing to make the first sale and we use branding to make the second sale does that make sense and so even though I make fun of brand I do believe in brand brand is important but not on

the front end brand is the second thing you do directory sance marketing brings somebody into your world based on a benefit for them and then branding is what builds the connection with you to get them to buy from you over and over and over again now the first time you get somebody into your world is the most expensive it's the hardest thing to do but the second time they buy from you is the cheapest it's the best because that I am a believer in branding been only one used in conjunction with direct response marketing so

we use direct response to get people into our world and we use branding to keep them in in our world so a few things now the first thing I want you to understand is that uh as you were trying to create your brand and your company the first question you should be asking yourself is what's in it for them what's the hook or the message or the offer you can put out that'll get somebody to come to you it's very focused on them not on you and the second step is now they're in your world

how do you build that connection and build that brand relationship with them now I understand that by watching this video some of you guys um are going to completely disagree with me you're going to side with Gary and think that Gary's right and I totally understand that but some of you guys understand the truth and so um I'm curious which side do you lead on are you more of like leading with branding or leading with direct response where do you fit let me know in the comments down below I want to engage in this battle

together down in the comments because I know this is controversial in fact I've had debates on stage with multiple people about branding versus direct response and what's better what's more important and again the reality my belief is you need both but you lead with direct response and then you build long-term with the brand so what is your opinion I want to know I want to debate this down the comments down below maybe when you guys will Chang my mind maybe I'll turn off all my ads and just start buying ads to my logo but until

then I need you you guys to tell me your beliefs and your reasons down below um on top of that if you haven't read about directory sponsor you don't know about it this is one of the best books to begin with again from Dan Kenny it's called the no BS guide to direct Marketing in here gives you the 10 commandments to direct response all of them are amazing they'll teach you exactly how to put a message in the marketplace to get your dream customers to come to you and you can build a brand them longterm

and strengthen that relationship over time so that said make sure you copy this book read it because readers are leaders I appreciate you listening to this video and if you're enjoying this please come back got some really cool videos coming out in the near future every week we're dropping new videos to help you to grow your business grow your brand and change the lives of the customers that you've been called to serve