Russell Brunson DotCom Secrets Book Summary
The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online with Sales Funnels
DotCom Secrets is a book written by Russell Brunson and he is someone that I personally regard as one of the best direct response internet marketing experts alive.
I have learned a lot about marketing from him and will forever be inspired by his leadership skills and business genius.
Inside the DotCom Secrets book, Russell Brunson provides a clear step by step guide for the modern day entrepreneur to grow their businesses online through sales funnels.
I am going to be giving a quick summary of the book and some of my key takeaways.
DotCom Secrets Book Summary
The DotCom Secrets book focuses on the core strategies you have to have in place to scale a company with online media.
Russell Brunson explains that many entrepreneurs don’t have a traffic or conversions problem.
The problem is you can’t spend enough to acquire a customer and the way to fix that problem is to fix your sales funnel.
Ultimately, The business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins. -Dan Kennedy.
This is the premise of Russell Brunson’s marketing strategies and the DotCom Secrets book explains how entrepreneurs can profitably acquire customers through paid advertising.
The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online with Sales Funnels
Here is a quick summary of the five core sections inside the DotCom Secrets book:
Section One: Ladders And Funnels
Secret #1: The Secret Formula- These are 4 questions that you need to ask yourself before you start running any ads or optimizing your sales funnels:
- Who are your dream clients?
- How can you find them?
- What bait will you use to attract them?
- What result do you want to give them?
This is the key to making the most out of everything discussed inside the book.
Secret #2: The Value Ladder- Ideally we would like to sell everyone our best thing and we want to serve our customers in the highest way possible.
But the sad truth is that you can’t consistently get people to buy your most expensive product or service unless there has been an exchange of value and developing trust.
The value ladder concept encourages you to use less expensive front-end offers to attract customers for your expensive back-end offers.
Once you have demonstrated your ability to deliver value and developed trust you can then pitch your most expensive product or service.
Secret #3: From A Ladder To A Funnel- Turn your value ladder into actual web pages known as a sales funnel. A sales funnel is simply the process your customers go through before buying a product.
Secret #4: Find Your Dream Clients- Russell’s process for finding his dream clients can be summarized by answering 3 questions:
- Who is your target market?
- Where is your target market congregating?
- How can you get a customer to leave the congregation and check out your page.
Secret #5: The Three Types Of Traffic- There are ultimately 3 types of traffic:
- The traffic you control.
- The traffic you don’t control.
- Traffic you own.
Once you understand how each type of traffic works and how they tie together, you will have the ability to direct the right traffic to the right offers, and convert the highest number possible into buyers and repeat clients.
Section Two: Your Communication Funnel
Secret #6: The Attractive Character- The concept of the attractive character can be the missing link for relating and connecting with your audience.
An Attractive Character is not someone who is extraordinarily good looking, although they might be.
This is all about developing a persona that attracts clients or customers and helps you build your following to eventually make sales.
An Attractive Character allows you to build a platform anywhere you want, whether on email, Facebook, or YouTube.
Secret #7: The Soap Opera Sequence- The way you introduce your character can mean the difference between a subscriber opening your emails consistently or hitting the delete key.
Leverage the soap opera story structure and elements to create your opening email sequence. The goal is to create an instant bond between your Attractive Character and the person reading the email.
Secret #8: Daily Seinfeld Sequence- After someone has gone through your Soap Opera Sequence and bonded with the Attractive Character, content is not what they will respond to.
You want your Attractive Character to be fun and entertaining. That’s how you’re going to write your daily Seinfeld emails. That’s right; Russell recommend sending them daily after your initial Soap Opera Sequence is finished.
Section Three: Funnelology Leading Your Customers To The Sale (Over And Over Again)
Secret #9: Reverse Engineering A Successful Funnel- Before you start to build out any new sales funnel, the first thing you need to do is find other people who already have a successful funnel and are selling to your target market.
It is better to reverse engineer a successful funnel that to try new strategies that have not been proven to work.
Secret #10: Seven Phases Of A Funnel- The real difference between having a six-, seven-, or even eight-figure business is whether you understand the phases of a funnel and can successfully monetize the different points along the line.
There are 7 phases of a sales funnel that Russell Brunson uses for his businesses:
- Determine traffic temperature. (cold, warm or hot traffic require different marketing strategies)
- Set Up the Pre-Frame Bridge.
- Qualify Subscribers.
- Qualify Buyers.
- Identify Hyperactive Buyers.
- Age and Ascend the Relationship.
- Change the Selling Environment.
Secret #11: The Twenty-Three Building Blocks Of A Funnel- Russell Brunson reveals the 23 building blocks of creating a new sales funnel.
Secret #12: Frontend Vs Backend Funnels- Funnels have a psychology behind them, and you need to use a different psychological approach for a low-priced, introductory product vs. a high-ticket package.
The price and complexity of your products or services will determine the type of funnel you need to use.
Secret #13: The Best Bait- There is power in free. You can significantly increase your conversions by offering a free product on the front-end and selling your main product as a back-end offer.
Section Four: Funnels And Scripts
Funnel #1: Two-Step, Free Plus Shipping- The Two-Step Funnel works really well for the free-plus-shipping offers and it can help you increase your conversions for other back-end offers.
Funnel #2: Self-Liquidating Offer- The self-Liquidating Offer (SLO) Funnel is used when we are trying to sell a product that’s priced anywhere from twenty-seven to ninety-seven dollars.
The main goal is to have this frontend product cover the expenses of buying traffic. You hope to break even. That is why we call it a “self-liquidating offer” because if you structure it right, you won’t have any traffic costs, and your upsells become pure profit.
Funnel #3: Continuity- This is the type of funnel you need for creating a continuity program where your customers can pay you monthly or any period for ongoing access to information or software or some other product.
Funnel #4: The Perfect Webinar- Webinars are great sales tools for products or services that need detailed explanation before anyone can buy. Russell reveals his perfect webinar script for selling more products through presentations.
Funnel #5: Invisible Funnel Webinar- The next way to sell products in the middle of the Value Ladder is through a concept called the Invisible Funnel.
The Invisible Funnel is a premium webinar that people pay for after the webinar is over if they love what you have taught them.
Funnel #6: Product Launch Funnel- This funnel is based on the product launch formula made popular by Jeff Walker and it works best for warm or hot traffic.
Basically, you’re breaking up your sales presentation over four videos each providing a ton of value, while educating your prospects and selling your products.
Funnel #7: High-Ticket, Three Step Application- This funnel is a very simple process to qualify and pre-frame potential high-ticket consulting or coaching clients.
Section Five: ClickFunnels
In the last section, Russell Brunson basically explains how you can use ClickFunnels to build sales funnels and grow your business online.
So there you have it folks, a summary of the DotCom Secrets book written by Russell Brunson.
Hope you enjoyed it.
Who Is Russell Brunson?
Russell Brunson is an American entrepreneur who is popularly known for being the co-founder of ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels is a sales funnel building software with over 100,000 active users and earning more than $100 Million in revenue.
The software has experienced great success as a bootstrapped company without taking any investments from venture capitalists or angel investors.
That just goes to show the marketing genius and business savviness of Russell Brunson who is also the author of the Expert Secrets and Traffic Secrets books.
Disclosure: I am an independent ClickFunnels Affiliate, not an employee. I receive referral payments from ClickFunnels. The opinions expressed here are my own and are not official statements of ClickFunnels or its parent company, Etison LLC.
