How To Beat Your Own Control

This is when, what we do, becomes a really fun game.

On today’s episode Russell talks about how many copies of the book have sold in the first 6 days and what his goal is. He also talks about how making tweaks to your funnel after it’s up and running can help you beat the control.

Here are some cool things in this episode:

• Find out how many sales Expert Secrets got in the first 6 days and how it compares to Dotcom Secrets.
• Find out how Russell cleared his head in order to come up with new ideas of how to tweak the funnel and increase sales.
• And hear what Russell recommends to beat your control.

So listen below to find out how you can make a good funnel even better after it’s been up and running for a few days.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome to a rainy, very rainy Marketing In Your Car. I just dropped off Dallin, my oldest twin who is my son who loves extracurricular activities, at dance class, early morning. So heading back into the office now and excited.

So the book launch has been live for I think, almost 6 days now. And in 6 days we sold a little over 20 thousand books. What? Crazy. Last year it took us the entire month to sell 20 thousand. I don’t even think we got to 20 thousand, we were close to 20 thousand. I can’t remember exact numbers back then.

It was pretty exciting for us and we haven’t even pulled out the big guns yet. Those who are watching, some crazy stuff’s happening. At 20 thousand and I think we should hit at least 50 or 60 thousand books sold, which is really cool. So I’m really proud and excited for that.

So I’m heading into the office right now because a bunch of things are happening. In fact, the number one thing, well it’s interesting, I don’t know about you but when you’re in the middle of a book launch, launching a million things at once, which we’ve obviously been doing. So my stress levels are a little higher than typical, not stress levels but you know what I mean. Just a lot of stuff happening. It’s been interesting, I think it’s almost like you’re so close to something that you can’t, you don’t know what to do.

So the book launch has been going really well, in fact, our average cart value right now is about $34. So for everyone who buys the book, on average we make about $34 in the funnel, which is great. We keep thinking, how do we make it better, how do we make it better? There’s got to be a way to make it better. I’ve been blank. I don’t even know what to do. I look at it like, ahhh I got nothing.

So anyway, I bought a thing called a float tank a while ago, it’s in my house and I hardly ever use it. I feel bad. In fact, I clean it more often than I use it, it’s kind of a pain to keep. Looking back now, I definitely would not get a float tank in my house. But they are cool. I promise you, somewhere in your hometown, there’s probably a float tank place. If you Google float tank and your city I bet you’ll find one. But basically it’s a huge salt sensory deprivation tank. It’s like a thousand pounds of salt, so you lay and float on the top and sit there. Typically I do my float tank, I go in there and listen to music or listen to CD’s or talks or whatever. But this time for some reason the music thing wasn’t playing, and this is Saturday night, yes Saturday night. Went in there and music thing wasn’t going to work. I was like, ahhh whatever, I’ll just try to focus and do my whole meditation thing. And I’m not a very good meditate-er at all, by any stretch.

But I sat there and laid there and tried to focus on my breathing, and tried to think about the major things. And it was cool because the first time, I think I had time to reset and not be in the motion of everything. I just sat there for like an hour. I sat there for 45 minutes, and I passed out and woke up when my alarm went off. But I didn’t get any great ideas while I was sitting in there, but I feel like it was a flush. Like a cleanse or something because then when I went back inside, it was probably like 11 o’clock at this time, maybe almost 12 o’clock.

A float tank when you, an hour in the float tank feels like you slept for 5 or 6 hours, so I felt really good. I got up and was like huh. So I ended up staying up til like 2 or 3 in the morning. The next day I had church, which was yesterday, I’m at church and all the sudden the ideas started flowing. I was like, what? Where are these coming from. And it was almost like there was a blockage and that flushed it and then all the sudden it was like, it just started flowing and I’m sitting there and I’m like, oh my gosh I can’t even keep up with these. So in church I tried to pay attention and listen and be good, while I’m taking notes, I can’t forget this stuff. This is really good crap, I gotta make sure I won’t forget it.

So I’m like typing in my notepad and try to go back out and focus and then all the sudden it’s like, keep flooding in the ideas. It was like, gall, this is so cool. So I got this huge flood of inspiration. So this morning I woke up early, at 5:00, which I’m already hurting really bad. It’s 8:30 and I can barely keep my eyes open. I don’t know, this is going to be a long week I think. But I got up and started re-tweaking our funnels. Our average cart value right now, I think, what did I just say? 34 or 36, I can’t remember exactly what it was as of this morning. My goal is to get to 40, and I think I can and I have some ideas.

So I’m going to be plugging in all these split tests and different things. I’m actually going to record two different upsell videos right now. Because I think I figured out what I messed up on, which is so cool. It’s the part I love about funnels. So for anyone that’s got funnels that don’t work, you need funnels that do work.  I want to stress this process. I talked about it at Funnel Hacking Live, and I’m going to talk more and more about it. In fact, if I ever happen to do book three, hopefully I never do. But if I happen to do it, this will be the premise of it. Not the premise, but the beginning of it, understanding this piece of it.

So basically, we drive traffic, we spend time, and we look at the numbers. Based on the numbers we try to figure out, now we know what it is, how do we make it better? It’s interesting, if you look at the copywriting world, what will happen is that, big companies like Agora and Boardroom and things like that, where they’re very copy intensive and they hire the best copywriters in the world. The copywriter, whoever writes the copy is called the control. They get a royalty on that control as long as it wins. But as soon as the control is written, all these other writers come in and try to beat it, beat the control.

So they’re all trying to write different headlines, intros, hooks, angles, different things to beat your control. They’re not rewriting the whole letter, they’re just taking what you already had and trying to figure out what can increase it. And if they win, then they get the royalties. So that’s everyone’s job, just try to beat the control. It’s almost like for us, after you get the funnel launched and live and everything, it’s coming back and saying how do I beat the control? And then trying to figure that out.

So it’s cool, you can step back and look at all the pieces. So I look at over the last 6 days, and I sold a lot of books, but we got a lot of data. What’s our opt in percentage, and how many people are actually putting in their credit card? How many people are buying the Black Box versus the book? How many people are buying the order form bump? How about the upsells? The downsells? Then looking at comments on Facebook and other things and trying to see where are the sticking points.

After you identify those, then it’s not that hard to come back and tweak it and shift it. So I’m excited today, to try to retweak those. Amongst the fact that we also are doing another 20 Facebook lives today to promote the book. So it’s going to be kind of crazy. But that’s kind of the game plan. So that’s what I’m doing today. I hope you guys are doing it as well.

Look at your funnels and try to beat your control because it’s a fun game. And if you’re too close, like I was, go rent a float tank for an hour, go float in it, who knows? Maybe like me all day, start flushing out. Or find someone else on your team and have them try to beat the control. Or hire someone and say, “If you beat my control, I’ll pay 100 bucks a try, or I’ll pay you a thousand if you beat it.” Or whatever, and just have people start making it a game, because that’s when it starts getting really, really fun.

Anyway, this week I’m going to take you guys on some fun journeys. We’re actually going to, if you know who the Harmon Brothers are, if you’ve ever seen the Squatty potty commercial, or Fiber Fix, or Snap Books, or any of the awesome viral videos, we’re working with them to write a script for Clickfunnels, so I’m heading down to Utah tomorrow, I think. So I’ll take you on the journey and tell you all the cool stuff I learn along the way as well, hanging out with those guys. Anyway, I’m at the office, going to get some work done, create some videos, make some funnels, try to beat my control and that’s going to be fun. So we’ll talk to you guys soon.