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GBB Campaign Building System – II

Last week I introduced you to my GBB Campaign Building System (Good – Better – Best) and we discussed the first phase of the system, the Good phase. If you haven't had a chance to read that article, you'll want to do so – just click here – before moving on so that this all makes sense and is in context. We also talked about the need for a systematic approach to campaign building.

What I didn't mention was why this approach is so important… so let's continue.

Marketing Campaign Success Rate

So when I tell you the numbers here, you'll probably be a little depressed. But please don't be, I just want you to know why I've developed the approach I have and why it is so important to the success of your business.

The cold hard truth (that most marketers selling you campaigns will never tell you) is that only about 3 out of every 10 marketing campaigns is a “winner”. Yeah, painful, I know, but truthful nonetheless.

Only about 3 out of every 10 marketing campaigns is a “winner”

So it's pretty much like baseball – you make the hall of fame by striking out about 70% of the time! So I want that to really settle in for you. If you're only going to hit success with a campaign about 3 in 10 times, learning to fail forward fast, is absolutely critical to your business!

F3 – Fail Forward Fast – is another core principal that I teach to my mastermind clients. Again, it sounds a bit depressing, talking about failure – right? But it's not about that at all. The Fail Forward Fast methodology is all about making rapid progress by not getting bogged down in the details until you know you have a winner.

When I think of endurance and persistence, there isn't a better example than that of Colonel Sanders, who, reportedly, was turned down 1009 times before he got his deal selling KFY. 1009 times! And this was a quest he launched at 65 years old!

So yeah, I'm telling you that in all likelihood only 3 out of ever 10 campaigns you create will be successful, but hey, that's a lot better odds than the Colonel was dealt – so don't complain!

The Truth Behind the Number

So if that number is correct, it means you'll “miss” 7 out of 10 times. Now can you see how important it is that when  you miss, you don't waste a lot of time or effort doing it?

I have seen people that have taken as long as eight months to “perfect” their campaign prior to launching it – 8 months! Heck, that's an eternity in “Internet Years”! And what's the likelihood that that campaign will be a success? Still just about 30%…

That is the reason why I created the Good-Better-Best approach to campaign development. You need to be able to rapidly get a campaign up and running and see if you have a winner (or potential winner) before you waste much time. Let's get through those seven potential flops – QUICKLY – and on to our “winner”!

Where We Left Off…

Remember, our fictitious campaign was focused around a Webinar where people might also take us up on a call to action to chat with support. We started out just mapping out the step-goals of the campaign, like this:

The next step was to “connect the dots” with the logic of the campaign and get it live. We're not gonna cover all of that in detail here, but it might look something like this:

So now you have a functional funnel and are able to turn the traffic on and test things out – you've successfully completed the Good stage of the Good-Better-Best approach to campaign building.

Is It Worth It To Go On?

Here's the thing. You first have to ask yourself if this funnel is worth continuing. Is it showing some signs of life and potential in your testing? Are you getting sales? Are you getting good feedback from your buyers?

Remember that 7 out of 10 will likely not be winners. So right now you've got to be real with yourself. Is this a potential winner? Or is it just off the mark and better to scrap it and go back to the drawing board? Yeah, this is a tough question, but let me give you some indicators that will help.

If you've put a lot of eyes on your offer and no one has purchased, it's probably not worth moving forward. A good offer, heck, even just an “okay” offer, will produce sales. Don't get your feelings hurt now, this is “put your big boy pants on” time. It's not about YOU… it's not even about your OFFER… it's about your customer and if they're just not feeling your offer and not pulling the trigger, it just may be a matter of time and they simply may not be ready for it yet. But regardless, if they're not buying… well… they're NOT buying – 'nuff said and move on!

What does the funnel profitability look like? If you're at “break even” already, then definitely continue forward with the Better stage of the GBB formula. But more than likely, you'll probably not be at that break even phase right out the door. If you are, hallelujah, you've hit the mother load and it's time to refine, scale and, most importantly, not change so many things that you screw it up! (yeah, I've seen that happen a lot)

But if you haven't “broken even”, then it's gut check time. You need to objectively look at the financials of your funnel. If you're getting 70 cents for every dollar you're spending AND if you're adding a lot of quality leads to your list, then it's probably smart to continue forward and refine and improve. But if you're only getting 20 cents for every dollar invested and the leads are just trickling in, well, then you probably don't have a winner.

Be brutally objective here. Remember, the smartest thing you can do is bury a loser. You don't want to waste months trying to polish a turd.

Making it Better…

Okay, so you've determined that it has hope and you're ready to move on to the next stage – making it better. Now, obviously, there are a lot of important factors here beyond the simple technical aspects of the funnel. Here are just a few of them:

• The copy
• The sales page
• The price point
• The real and perceived value of your offer
• much, much more…

The point is, a successful funnel is like a chain – there are many, many links… and all it takes is one weak link to break the chain. That analogy is used a lot, but I never hear anyone talk about the corollary. If it only takes one weak link to break the chain, fixing that one link can turn a loser into a winner – right? Absolutely.

So the Better part of the Good-Better-Best approach is about doing just that (or, rather, striving to do just that). So where do you start?

Start With a List of Options

I want you to spend about 30 minutes and really think through your funnel and think through every potential change/alteration/improvement you could make. Don't really try to evaluate the validity of that change right now, just write it down on a list. This is a brainstorming session, so just get as big of a list as possible.

Now, here's the challenge. If you like Campaign Building and are pretty decent at it, or just really like learning it, you've be very inclined to focus on the “tech” changes to your funnel.

THIS IS A BIG MISTAKE.

Look, I'm a technology guy. I've programmed in 27 different languages over my career and yeah, I get it – tech stuff is fun. But I'm much more of a businessman than I am a programmer or even a marketer. And what matters in business is results.

The truth is that the things most likely to impact your funnel conversions are:

• The strength of your offer
• The price of your offer
• The sales page / VSL of your offer

Did you realize what all of those have in common? YOUR OFFER. Yeah, I know, it's a bit of a let down. You expect me to go tell you it's some whizzbang feature you just “gotta have”. But remember, I'm telling you straight here – even if it's not what you want to hear.

So, go ahead, go through the exercise of listing out all of your potential improvements – get that out of your system. But then you have to rationally look at them and order them according to their ability to turn a loser or break even campaign into a winner – and you have to do so objectively. Don't fall in love with your offer, fall in love with results.

Don't fall in love with your offer, fall in love with results.

Troy A. Broussard

I see so many entrepreneurs talk about passion. They tell me how passionate they are about their offer, their product, etc… Heck, watch a few episodes of Shark Tank – passion is not enough!

You can't afford to “fall in love” with your offer. You have to be pragmatic and realistic. You have to look at the numbers and adjust accordingly. Remember, our number one objective in a front end marketing funnel is to sell people what they want to buy. Remember the old marketing adage: “sell them what they want, but give them what they need”.

If you can't turn someone into a customer, then you can't help them – you can't give them what they really need. So your first goal is to turn them into a customer by connecting with what they really want. You can then “shape” that into what they really need in your deliverable.

So now is the time to be brutally honest with yourself. Look over your list and just come up with the top three things that could have the most impact and prioritize them. You now have a game plan.

Roll Through the Changes

Roll out your changes, but do so one at a time. Again, this is a critical mistake that many new funnel marketers make. They change everything at once and a decent funnel on it's way towards success just turns into a “flop” with the push of the Publish button! One change at a time.

Implement your first major change or enhancement to the funnel and test. What? You don't have solid baseline numbers of how much revenue per lead you're generating yet? Then stop. You're not ready to proceed to the Better portion of the Good Better Best approach.

In order for us to know if this version of the campaign is better than the original, well, we have to have metrics on the original. Makes sense, right? But again, many people just get emotional and “passionate” about this and fly right past metrics and testing.

Passion is vital to your business. It's important to be passionate about what you do, your mission to help others, and the people you work with. But when it comes to funnels, it's not about passion, it's about skillful and deliberate execution. I'll say that again.

The single most important skill you can improve with funnel building is your skillful execution. Execution of tracking, the iterative building process and of objectively (dispassionately) observing the results – then adapting.