The Russell Brunson Show
The Publishing Playbook: How to Win Before You Launch | #Marketing - Ep. 07
Wed, 05 Feb 2025
Most people build a funnel first and then try to find traffic. But that’s completely backward! In this episode, I share why your number one focus should be gathering an audience long before your funnel launches. I’ll break down the exact strategies I’ve used to dominate in marketing. Whether it's building ClickFunnels into the category leader or creating products that people are already lined up to buy. If you’re struggling to get momentum, this episode is for you. Key Highlights: Dig your well before you're thirsty - If you wait until your funnel is live to build an audience, you’ve already lost. The two paths to traffic - Working your way in (free strategies) vs. buying your way in (paid ads). You need both, but I’ll tell you where to start. The power of relationships - Most successful marketers don’t rely on ads alone. I’ll show you how connecting with the right influencers can send a flood of traffic your way. Why publishing content is non-negotiable - You can’t just build an offer and hope people show up. I’ll explain why consistent content is the secret to long-term success. How I’ve used these strategies to dominate competitors - From beating Leadpages to taking on GHL, I’ll share the mindset and tactics that keep ClickFunnels ahead. If you’re serious about selling online, you can’t afford to wait until launch day to find your audience. The second you decide to start a business, you need to start gathering the many. In this episode, I’ll break down exactly how to do that, so when your funnel is ready, you’ve already got a crowd waiting to buy! https://sellingonline.com/podcast https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Special thanks to our sponsors: NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal https://nordvpn.com/secrets Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Northwest Registered Agent: Go to northwestregisteredagent.com/marketingsecrets to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at LinkedIn.com/CLICKS Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/clicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why should you build an audience before launching a funnel?
Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next Selling Online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's sellingonline.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson Show. What's up, everybody?
This is Russell. Welcome back to the show. Excited to be hanging out with you guys today. And today we're gonna be talking about getting insane amounts of traffic to your funnel before your funnel's even live.
This is one of the biggest problems I'm seeing inside of our community is people, they are spending time building a funnel or building an offer, putting things together, but they're not focusing on the most important thing, which is planning all the seed you need ahead of time before you actually launch your funnel. So that's what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna go deep into it.
And for any of you guys who are building but not getting the eyeballs, the leads, the following ahead of time, We're going to fix that for you guys today and show you a very fun, simple way to do that. But before we do, I got to start with some stories because anyway, I'm enjoying the new podcast style and you guys have been telling me it's been fun.
I've shared a lot of stories again, like I used to back in the day and people are loving it. So I'm going to tell you some stories that will hopefully motivate you and get you excited. One story is the fact that this shirt I'm wearing today, I saw this on the Joe Rogan show. He had it on during his podcast episodes. I'm hoping that by default, me wearing this, our podcast will grow.
So there you go. There's number one. No, but for real, the story I want to tell you guys today, it was one, it was actually, I lift weights in the morning with the trainer and I can't remember what conversation we got in, but we started talking about this and this story popped in my head. I hadn't thought about this in like probably 20 years and I thought it was really funny.
So this comes down to like, I don't know. My number one – I took Strength Finders. My number one strength is competition. Like I love competition. I thrive in it. The more that it is, the better it is and all sorts of stuff. And I think that's why this business has been so fun for me. We first launched it. We were the underdogs and we had all this big competition.
We had all these companies that take on funding. I remember Leadpages when we first decided to create ClickFunnels. They just take on $5 million in funding eventually. They had like 40. And so I was like, we got to beat them. So we were racing to beat them because we had no funding. It was just us with our brains and our intuition and our energy running.
So that was like the initial thing that we went through, right? And eventually we beat them. We surpassed them. And I have not heard the word lead pages in a – I don't know, five, six, seven years. The next was like, okay, who's the next company? It was like, boom, it was Infusionsoft. They just got like $150 million in funding. So like, all right, there's the next goal.
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Chapter 2: How can storytelling boost your marketing strategy?
You need to hire someone like yesterday. Maybe it's a copywriter to help you crank out more sales pages, or a designer to refresh your landing pages, or someone to do customer support to help you to handle your growing audience. The problem is you're swamped, and you don't have weeks to shift through resumes. So what do you do? You turn to Indeed.
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And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more application than non-sponsored jobs. Now here's the best part. With Indeed, there's no monthly subscription, no long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And let me tell you how fast this platform is. Literally in the time that we've been talking right now, 23 people have been hired on Indeed worldwide.
Imagine finding your dream hire while your competitors are still waiting through job boards and job boards that don't deliver. So here's what you need to do right now. Go to Indeed.com slash clicks right now and get a $75 sponsored job credit board to boost your post visibility. That's Indeed.com slash clicks. Support the show, save time, and find your next hire faster.
Remember, when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all that you need. And so the, the concept of that is like, before you need the traffic, there's time before you need the relationships before you need someone to promote. That's when you start building a relationship. Right? Like I remember when I first met Tony Robbins, like eventually I wanted Tony to promote something for me. Right.
But I'm like, Hey Tony, you promote for me. Right. That's me. I'm asking for water without digging a well. Right. Instead I was like, I'm going to build a relationship with Tony Robbins. So for a decade I built a relationship with Tony. Right. I was digging my well, digging my well, building a relationship. And 10 years later, uh,
When my second book came out, Expert Secrets, I was like, hey, Tony, can you promote this? And he's like, I would love to. He did a Facebook Live with me. I got seen by like 5 million people, sold 10,000 plus copies of my book, right? And it all came off of me digging my well before I was thirsty, okay? And so that's the first thing I'm thinking about is like, You're gonna be thirsty.
As soon as your funnel's done, you're gonna be thirsty for traffic. Now is the time to start digging. Today, not tomorrow, not next week, not today, right? That's step number one. The second you decide to be an entrepreneur is starting digging your well, starting to get the people, starting to start building the following. That's something you should be thinking about every single day.
You should be blocking out at least an hour to two hours a day just in like digging the well, right? So that when you have the offer done, it's ready. Does that make sense? So step one is digging your well before you're thirsty. And then in here, I talk about different ways to do that. And there's a lot of stuff in here. But... But there's kind of two sides I'm gonna talk about.
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Chapter 3: What role does competition play in business growth?
And those who took heed to this have succeeded. Those who haven't, like, again, go back and geek out. Okay. sorry, I digress. So number one, again, is digging your well before you're thirsty. Number two is working your way in, right? Building relationships, contacting people, getting to know people like this is like such a key foundational part. Okay.
If you were launching a product in an industry, the people in the industry, you know who you are. Okay. And you'd be connecting with those people in any way you can do it. Okay. Now I want to talk about one of the easiest ways to connect with those people. Okay. Cause a lot of times I'm like, what do I say to them? And I was like, Hey Russell, you know?
And so one of the easiest ways to connect with them is to give them something that they need, right? So if you look at the influencers in your market, in your space, what are they looking for, right? Influencers, people with followings, they're looking for a platform. And I share a story in here about – Do you guys remember Arsenio Hall? Like who, who, who, right? Arsenio Hall.
So he was the biggest talk show back in the 90s. I remember he's the one that basically I think that he was the reason why Bill Clinton got elected as president because he was like kind of struggling. And then he went on the show and played the saxophone. And like all these people loved him and ended up going and voting for him. And like so much like – anyway.
Trump and Rogan, which is kind of interesting. Anyway, that's a story from the other day. So anyway, he's the biggest talk show in the world and it was a huge thing for four or five years. Eventually, it kind of dried up and died, right? And he lost the show. Anyway, fast forward now 20 years later. He's on The Apprentice. I'm watching Celebrity Apprentice and all of a sudden he comes out.
One of the guests is Arsenio Hall. And I'm like, that's Arsenio Hall. I remember that guy. He was amazing. And they're doing all these different tasks and stuff like that. And what's crazy is they get to – They get to the task. It's like a fundraising task, right? Where they have to call their friends and raise money for this thing, right? And so all the people are out there.
They're calling and they're raising money, everything. And Arsenio's got his role next to people. He's calling the first person, next person, next person. And they show him all day and nobody's returning his calls. Nobody's... And like when all of a sudden he raised... I think he raised $0 from the whole fundraising campaign.
And it was pretty embarrassing because every other celebrity got deals done, got things and Arsenio got none of them. And I remember like the... I think it was that night or something. He's sitting there and the camera captured this moment that was like... One of the most powerful things in the world. I think I was the only one that caught it because I was freaking out.
Anyway, I talk about it in Traffic Secrets, but he says this thing. He's looking at the camera and he's talking. He's like, man, he's like, when I had a talk show, everybody returned my call. I was like, oh, did you catch that? When he has his own platform, the President of the United States, anybody, everyone returns a call because they want access to his platform.
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