SFR 246: How To Choose Your Market...
One of the most frustrating things for me at the beginning of this whole game was that I didn't know what a market was... and there wasn't anybody who could really define it for me...
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SALES STRATEGY SHORTCUTS?
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Usually, I don't believe in shortcuts, but if you know your market, a lot of stuff just gets answered for you\u2026 and it\u2019s much easier to pin down\u2026
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- Your Messaging
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- What To Sell
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- The Funnel You Should Build.
Existing companies I work with like this a lot because it helps them position themselves in relation to their competition
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New people want this because it actually fills in a lot of the questions that get asked along the way.
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For Example:
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- What should I sell?
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- Who am I talking to?
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- What kind of sales message should I create?
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Choosing the right market is one of the major things that help to shortcut the game for real.
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HERE\u2019S THE PROBLEM\u2026
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There are some things that it's obvious that I need to teach; I can see everyone's struggling with X, Y, and Z\u2026
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However, there\u2019s an area in my brain that I've NOT \xa0quite uncovered yet and I keep trying to reach to it.
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A few days ago, I woke up at five, 5:30 and spent three hours trying to figure out what question I should be asking\u2026
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I believe that questions invite revelation; therefore, I must be careful of the questions that I ask.
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I always consider the questions and ask\u2026 and who I\u2019m asking those questions to.
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For example:
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Am I asking broke people questions... or am I asking rich people questions?
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In fact, I have a whiteboard where I list out the major questions that I feel I should start asking. I'm NOT trying to answer them, I'm just logging that I have that question.
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Then when I get a little more clarity on what I need to be asking, I go to my bookshelves\u2026
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I buy a lot of books.
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\u2026 and it's because I'm trying to create clarity on what question I'm hunting the answer for, so I don't get stuck in learning loops\u2026
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I just hunt the answer.
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\u2026 and I've been hunting answers a lot lately.
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Half of what I do is teach people, \u201cHey, this is X, Y, and Z - \xa0I see a lot of people are struggling with this.\u201d
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The other half of what I do is in a discovery realm that\u2019s super fun mentally, but exhausting.
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And there's something that I\u2019m trying to grasp, and I'm NOT quite there yet\u2026
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HOW TO GET MORE CUSTOMERS
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I used to believe that in order to have success, you needed a good funnel.
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Now before anyone poops a brick, let me explain...
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Originally, I\u2019d build a funnel and then I build an offer contingent with the funnel that I\u2019d hacked... NOT based on what the customer needs...
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Then I\u2019d build a sales message.
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Eventually, I realized that I needed to be doing the exact opposite\u2026
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Instead, I need to create the\u2026
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- Sales Message
- Offer
- Funnel
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...and I started teaching it that way.
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However, I \xa0quickly realized that wasn\u2019t where I needed to start
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I was like, \u201cWait a second, I\u2019ve gotta go even further back; way before the sales message and get to know the Red Ocean a little bit more.\u201d
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...and that's when I started creating my Red Ocean Analytics Checklist.
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It\u2019s a living, breathing checklist of my actual findings; I'm not taking that from anywhere, it\u2019s my stuff.
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Red Ocean Analytics, Baby!
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So before I\u2019d create an offer, \xa0I'd go through the Red Ocean Checklist\u2026
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But then I was like, \u201cCrap, no! We can't start at the Red Ocean, we have to go back even further because there are other oceans and other markets\u2026\u201d
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- There are ghost markets
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- We have to think in terms of the customer
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\u2026 I have to go back even further.
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The further I've gone back, the more I see that when people just follow the framework, (and not even well), the chances of their success goes way up.
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The challenge is that I can tell that there's another stage before friggin' market selection that\u2019s starting to pop out.
But I can't tell yet if it's a pre-market selection or something that\u2019s in it\u2026
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Sometimes I feel like it's \u2018The Beautiful Mind\u2019 kind of thing, \u201cY'all here?\u201d
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It's like schizophrenia, \u201cAah, pictures, patterns everywhere...\u201d
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That's my unique ability. I'm not very good at many other things besides this.
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ART VERSUS SCIENCE
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It seems funny for me to say, (cause I'm the \u201coffer guy\u2019), but I'm at a spot now where I believe you can't even make a good offer until you know\u2026
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- The market you\u2019re selecting
- The customer journey and where they've been previously.
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I can't sell something to a customer that they\u2019ve already gone through - and that's what I mean by a ghost market.
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It's the ghost of \u201cmarketing past.\u2019
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The ghost of the \u2018vehicle past\u2019 that they've already gone through.
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It\u2019s interesting to start looking at the journey the customer is on\u2026
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You have to understand that piece\u2026
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Market selection is still an art right now 'cause I'm still learning how to describe it as a science.
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I'm trying to pull the pattern out so that it's not an art.
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*I HATE ART*
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I'm NOT saying that \u201cI hate actual art\u2026\u201d I'm saying, \u201cI hate depending on art because art is hard to calculate.\u201d
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I like science. I like patterns because I can say, \u201cWhen I do A plus B, I get C.\u201d
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I'm still learning to pull out the science piece of market selection.
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\u2026 and I've gotten a lot better at it.
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ACTS OF MARKETING
The last OfferMind Masterclass was the clearest I'd ever taught about market selection.
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A lot of people have already created success with what I taught - that's why OfferMind is such a big deal.
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I'm not just teaching fluffy junk you\u2019ve already heard.
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https://media.giphy.com/media/lwQjQawxKVrUc/giphy.gif
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So let\u2019s talk about market selection\u2026
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Market selection fuels acts of marketing
Stick with me while I explain this\u2026
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There's market selection and then there are acts of marketing.
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So what are the acts of marketing?
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I spent three hours going through all my books\u2026
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I wrote down the question I'm trying to answer right now and I asked, \u201cCould this book answer that question?\u201d
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\u2026 just from face value and kinda flipping through, I\u2019d literally throw books in different piles in the corner.
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I cleared out a bookshelf and labeled the shelves:
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- Offers and Market Positioning
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- Model, Scaling and Marketing Activities
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..and those are the things that I'm deep diving into to answer the questions.
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- What is a market?
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- What are acts of marketing?
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...'cause they\u2019re NOT the same thing.
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This is where people get screwed when it comes to marketing.
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They say, \u201cI'm gonna go do marketing, so I'm gonna go post stuff on Facebook\u2026\u201d
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To that, I say, \u201cGrrgh, tell me some context otherwise, that's NOT marketing\u2026\u201d
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So what are acts of marketing?
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An act of marketing is things like:
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- Creating A Sales Letter
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- A Webinar
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- A Launch Campaign
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- An Evergreen Campaign
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Let me explain what I mean a little bit more\u2026
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MARKETING DESIGN
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Let's say that you're gonna go do a launch campaign\u2026
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You all just saw me do that with my OfferMind funnel, (we already have 200 seats sold, which is crazy).
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Let's talk about what market selection means\u2026
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(Maybe I should call it marketing design? I don't know... it's actually a good way to describe it.)
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'Cause we're all very familiar with this world, let\u2019s take ClickFunnels as an example\u2026
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Anyway, if you look at ClickFunnels\u2026
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ClickFunnels is selling wealth.
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When they went straight to selling wealth, it didn't sell\u2026.
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That's when ClickFunnels almost became an abandoned project.
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Russell had to try and figure out how to sell ClickFunnels to the right market
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\u2026. that's a very natural thing for anything that you build. You're trying to learn how to sell it, right?
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Check this out\u2026
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When ClickFunnels said, \u201cWe're not gonna sell the general wealth category, we're gonna sell to people who\u2019re convinced that websites are the way to get wealth and become anti-Red in our messaging...\u201d
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\u2026 that's when ClickFunnels became \u2018ClickFunnels.\u2019
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ClickFunnels talked about the death of the website.
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ClickFunnels began to sell to the Red ocean of people who are convinced that building a website is what will give them wealth\u2026
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How big is that market? \xa0It's friggin' huge, right!
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And when ClickFunnels became the anti-Red in their messaging\u2026
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Who did it talk to?
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It talked to the sliver of people who were using the websites as the way to get wealth, but who weren't having success.
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These were the easiest people to sell to; you don't have to convince them there's a problem, because they already know there's a problem.
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Watch the way ClickFunnels grew from this\u2026
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EXPANDING YOUR TARGET MARKET
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Eventually, someone would say: \u201cWell I'm in affiliate marketing, could this work for me?\u201d
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Well, of course, it could... so we'd be like, \u201cLet\u2019s add affiliate marketing to the pot,\u2019 and then that would become part of the expansion...
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\u2026 and that's one of the ways to grow.
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Russell didn\u2019t try to sell EVERYBODY, he sold to people who were in affiliate marketing and already experiencing pain\u2026
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That's very different to somebody who says,\u201dYeah, I'm interested,\u201d but they never pull out their wallet.
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These people are:
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- Problem-Aware
- Solution-Aware
- Buyers
- In the middle of pain
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They're not having all the success they want.
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This is a HUGE deal to understand.
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Then after we\u2019d added the dissatisfied affiliate marketers to the ClickFunnels customer base, we went to\u2026
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- B2B
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- Retail
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...'cause they were also asking, \u201cCan this work for me?\u201d
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We used the same strategy and sliver by sliver, we grew the ClickFunnels customer base.
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And what's fascinating to understand is that it\u2019s a mistake to try to target tons of markets at once.
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You have to have one market that acts like a big ol' anchor\u2026
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Anti-Website positioning is one of the major anchors for ClickFunnels.
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And this is the reason why most people fail, (right at the get-go), before they even get to:
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- The sales message
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- How do I write a sales letter?
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- How do I come up with the funnel?
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- What's my launch campaign?
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One of the BIGGEST reasons why they fail is because they don't know what market they're selling to...
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*You're selling to the Red Ocean*
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WHERE TO FIND YOUR TARGET MARKET
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If I wake up one day and I say, \u201cHey, I'm gonna go sell my stuff,\u201d and I put my stuff in a little cart, where am I gonna push my cart to?
ANSWER: To where everybody else already is.
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I\u2019m gonna go to where there are people, i.e., the Red Ocean.
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The Blue Oceans don't exist by definition, they're not there. It takes a long time to grow an actual Blue Ocean.
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So then, acts of marketing are things that you do in *that* market\u2026
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Does that make sense?
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COMPLEMENTARY NOT COMPETITIVE
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I know who my market is... for me, it's ClickFunnels.
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However, I'm not anti-ClickFunnels in my messaging:
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- That'd be *STUPID*
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You peel back that heart you're gonna see gears and the ClickFunnels' logo tattooed there.
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I'm the offer guy, and if you want success with ClickFunnels, you should probably learn how to build an offer, right? That's how I\u2019ve positioned myself\u2026
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I'm complimentary, NOT competitive
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...this is very key.
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So for market selection a.k.a market design - (that's really what I call this piece)...
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First of all, you identify the market and you somehow position yourself to become either the\u2026
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- Companion to\u2026
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- Anti of...
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\u2026 you need to figure out which you want.
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This is all stuff I\u2019ve discovered on my journey
PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER
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There are not a lot of books out there on this subject, and that's why I'm writing a book.
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That's also why I have almost an entire bookshelf full of books around this subject, I\u2019ve had to piece it together.
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There are a few books that have gotten close or really helped close a few gaps.
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But most marketing books out there have been written, how my marketing degree was created - \xa0for corporate and big massive analysts.
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I didn\u2019t learn any kind of direct response marketing material in college. That's not what you learn in a marketing degree\u2026 I didn\u2019t know that.
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What you learn in a marketing degree is marketing analytics.
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You learn a lot of quantitative marketing research, (I hated that class), and qualitative marketing research.
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I learned a lot of market research, but nothing that I actually use now\u2026
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So most of the material that's out there is about that.
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There's NOT a lot of material out there that is about direct response marketers or specifically about offer creation like I talk about.
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What I'm talking about is very much stuff I've discovered while I've been en route.
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That\u2019s a lot of what OfferMind was about last year:
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- How do you know that the market your selling into?
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- How should you choose a mature market?
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Just think about it\u2026
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I'm over here positioning\u2026
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- Myself
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- My messaging
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- My sales letters
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- My product
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Everything is in relation to the market that I\u2019ve chosen... and if that market leaves, I\u2019ve lost my business.
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That's why a lot of people fail\u2026
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They build a product with no thought on the market that they\u2019re selling into and where they go to market\u2026
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...and so they just friggin' wander the village and trying to follow the veins of gold\u2026
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In my honest opinion, that's very dangerous, and it's one of the reasons why people fail!
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The offer, the sales letter, the funnel\u2026 all that crap gets waaay easy when you understand this...
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MY MARKET
I am in wealth and my market is the ClickFunnels market.
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I've helped a lot of people make a million dollars.
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I\u2019ve helped a lot of people make hundreds of thousands... and thousands of people have made their first money online, (or offline), EVER.
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There were a few signals that told me that ClickFunnels is a mature enough market to sell into.
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I'm selling into the ClickFunnels space, but I\u2019ve positioned myself as an accelerant to the vehicle.
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...and I've done that on purpose and a lot of design, (and I told Russell that)...
I was in his office probably like two or three months ago, and I said:
\u201cHey, You're not just the CEO and CMO of an insanely massive and very valuable SaaS software \xa0company that\u2019s explosive and almost worth a billion dollars\u2026\u201d
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( It definitely will be at some time, you know what I mean! It's amazing.)
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\u201c \u2026 AND you're also running a massive coaching program. My goal is to take the burden off of you in terms of \u2018nerd out coachingism\u2019.\u201d
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And he's like, \u201cOh cool, sounds good.\u201d
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That's why\u2026 \xa0that's how I positioned myself in the way I have...
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I'm an accelerant to the vehicle.
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I'm not the anti-Red, that'd be dumb. I love ClickFunnels, you all know that.
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(I think it's crazy when someone doesn\u2019t I have a ClickFunnels trial. You can get a trial at freecftrial.com.)
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MARKET DESIGN NOT BRANDING
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Usually, when I say \u2018market design\u2019 most people think logos: \u201cNo, no, no, bad! That's branding.\u201d
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Branding comes second
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... and when I say branding comes second, I mean it comes at no. 5,000 down the line...
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Branding means absolutely zero in terms of how money is already flowing...
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I\u2019m like,\u201d Hey ClickFunnels people:
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- Would you like to learn how to use ClickFunnels from a guy that was the lead ClickFunnels builder at ClickFunnels?
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- Would you like to learn from the guy who gets outsourced huge amounts of the coaching for what they're selling?
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That's a pretty powerful position.
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If someone's like, \u201cWell Stephen, I can't be successful like you 'cause I don't have status.\u201d
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Yeah, you're friggin' right! It's powerful. Go earn your own path.
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I got a few people with poopy-pants syndrome who reach out to me like, \u201cStephen, but I can't do that...\u201d
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Well, you're right\u2026
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You haven't worked your face off for the last six years with obsessive sacrifice to figure it out.
...but you've probably done something that I haven't, and if you haven't, it's time to cut out some things in your life...
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Alright\u2026 ;-)
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So there is market selection and then there are acts of marketing.
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- Market selection = which market is naturally akin to the thing that I'm going to sell.
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- Acts of marketing = what most people think marketing is.
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Acts of marketing are\u2026
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Let's go create:
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- A Sales letter
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- A Sales Message
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- Different Kinds of Campaigns.
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Most people NEVER do any market selection, and that\u2019s why they're NOT making money\u2026 \xa0(and that's a lot of what OfferMind teaches).
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Until Next Time: Make Money, Do Good!
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BOOM!
If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.
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But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?
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That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
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So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
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Wanna come?
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There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.
You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.