Bastian Ernst

Sure. It’s called respect-based marketing. It’s pretty much nothing new. It’s based on never-changing elements like respect, relationship, and trust.

What we have seen in the last couple of years was marketing transitioned into communicating with people in a fake manner, and we lost elements of relationship and trust. That’s something I want to bring back and promote, and that’s what respect-based marketing is all about.

It’s all about establishing a relationship, trust, buying beliefs, which then gets people engaged until they convert.

Bastian Ernst

Yeah, for sure.

Bastian Ernst

We use respect-based marketing in the particular funnel called relationship funnel, which is pretty much a sales funnel. We’ve changed the name to relationship funnel, and this funnel does nothing else than installing beliefs.

When you want to sell a service or a product, what you want is you want your prospect will lead to believe certain things.

If you go to a supermarket and you want to buy an orange, you will only buy that orange if you genuinely believe that orange is yummy. That’s the same case for your product or service.

Bastian Ernst

You want to install belief A, B, and C and only then, your lead or prospect can accept the desire or need off your service. That’s what the funnel does.

If you use email or an ad returning funnel, a bot or YouTube videos or podcast shows, it doesn’t matter what the medium. It all comes back to the methodology, which is respect-based marketing.

Bastian Ernst

For example, you guys know this because we have a lead magnet like an eBook. You promote it through Facebook ads, and then what everyone does is you send them a bunch of emails.

Bastian Ernst

One thing we do differently is, for example, we segment our audience. That means, we ask them a couple of questions, collect data, and then we personalize the experience through this custom journey and sales experience. Meaning, we pretty much customize on the website, on all the pages throughout the funnel and inside the emails through dynamic content, and then custom fields.

Instead of just sending them the lead the magnet, the PDF or the eBook, and then subscribing them to a ten-email series, you first send them the lead magnet. Then, you invite them in the second step to your free course, your seven lessons free course.

Before the opt-in, they have to go through an onboarding interview. You collect that data so you can then personalize the entire experience. That’s, for example, one thing we do for one element.

Bastian Ernst

Another element is we have different roadblocks throughout that journey. We want to get people to commit to certain things.

If you go to my website, for example, it’s not like a regular website where you can scroll down to read and then, sign up.

The first page leads to the second, the second to the third, and then only in the third people can sign up. We’re going to lose a lot of people, but the people who will make it through, they’re super ready. Everything that happens after that sign-up, they will have an entirely different mindset, and those are few differences, but they are the two ones I like.

Bastian Ernst

It’s tinylittlebusinesses.com I believe.

Bastian Ernst

Exactly. It’s the reason why I’m here on this podcast. It’s because of Andre.

I listen to your podcast, and I love it, and Andre’s a great guy. He coined this way of doing with the name ‘pre-sell sites’ or ‘pre-sell worlds.’ He’s a cool guy, and yeah, it’s incredible stuff.

Bastian Ernst

Yes.

Bastian Ernst

You’ve seen Facebook ads, right? People click that Facebook ad and they’ll arrive on a landing page. That’s a regular page, a one-pager, and people can opt-in there by just answering one question. This question is usually about the problem. What is the big problem you’re facing right now? And then, people choose and then enter the email address.

Then, people arrive at the Thank You page. On that Thank You page, that’s the page where you can now invite them to your free course.

Since we already know what their biggest problem is, you can now customize this page to get them into that course. It is another roadblock, but people who go through that, they’re committed, and that’s what you want.

Bastian Ernst

You want to have these micro-commitments throughout the entire sales experience, and you’re going to increase that request overtime until you have that big request in the end, which is the conversion event. That could either be a webinar, a sales call, a sales pitch, and so on.

Bastian Ernst

Yeah. That’s a good question. In the past, I never did it. Maybe two months ago, we decided just to try it out. So far, we like the results.

What everyone does is they have a lead magnet, an eBook, and then, on the Thank You page after someone’s signs up, boom! They present that they have an offer.

Bastian Ernst

We, on this Thank Page, we get them to the online course into the free email course. Only after they enter that online course, they will arrive in another Thank You page, and that’s where we present the offer. The way we do it is through a segway page.

Instead of just having the sales pitch in that Thank You page, we first build that little bridge, create context, and then the page after that is the front-end product, which is around 12 bucks plus. This is so far converting at 7% – 8% on the first front-end. Then, we have an upsell funnel with upselling one and two.

Bastian Ernst

Of course, a great funnel is incredible, but the dragon fuel, the beast so to say, and how you do that depends on you, but one way is Facebook ads of course.

Bastian Ernst

For example, with this one funnel, which I always use as a case study, the funnel we are talking about right now, that was in September. We spent $6,000, and we made back over 25,000, which is four times. We use Facebook ads for cold traffic, for cold leads, and get them to sign up for that lead magnet as an element one.

Element two is to get them into the course, and then element three is the front end product, and then element four is the core product.

Bastian Ernst

I think two things there.

Bastian Ernst

The first thing, which is something that Gary Vaynerchuk always says, is the currency of business is attention. If we scroll through the newsfeed, what grabs our attention for the first time is essential, but what’s more crucial is how we can maintain someone’s attention.

Bastian Ernst

That’s the first thing you got to understand, that’s the currency.

Bastian Ernst

The second thing is what I always try is to optimize for engagement. That’s the ultimate goal for me because I know the more people I engage with my stuff, the more people will click through from an email to a sales page for example.

That’s how you can achieve more results with less traffic. It’s because if you get 10% click rate, and I get 20% click rate with the same amount of traffic, I can generate more revenue just for getting people to click more. That’s why I optimize a whole marketing journey or the entire funnel for engagement.

The way we do is by as I said before, through micro-investments.

Bastian Ernst

The first email, what I want them to there is respond with one word. I tell them how to respond, to reply with the word “Ready.” If they do it, they get a little PDF, and then I teach them throughout the funnel to do certain things.

For example, we have another element called the frequency selector. At the end of each email, we ask them, “Hey, do you want to get the next email now or in two days?” instead of just like how everyone does it like send in every two days or every one day.

Bastian Ernst

People can choose. They understand that they can decide how to proceed and how to go through this entire sales experience. That’s how you teach them to do certain things so that in the end, once the big request is there at the conversion event, they’re pretty much ready for it. That’s how you create audience engagement.

Bastian Ernst

Yeah, exactly.

We use ActiveCampaign for the whole thing. It’s pretty much like InfusionSoft, and yeah, we clean our list regularly. We’re doing it right now, and it’s super important.

Andre, he’s a big role model for us. We prefer to have a tiny, small, but hyper-engaged group of people versus having hundreds of thousands of people.

Bastian Ernst

Exactly.

Bastian Ernst

In the past, what we did is if someone signs up for our lead magnet, but does not go through and join our free course, our free emails as well, we just unsubscribe them. We send them an email and tell them, “Hey, you have three chances to join our course. Unfortunately, you didn’t act.” We unsubscribe them.

Now, we do it a little bit different. We give them different options because some people, they like email courses, some prefer to watch videos, and some prefer to join a webinar.

Now, we use different mediums first before we unsubscribe them, but in the end, it’s always the same. If they don’t want to engage, we let them go.

Bastian Ernst

I’m sure many of you guys write a lot of emails and have email sequences either more at the beginnings or more advanced, but think about how you can get people to engage with each email.

We have a different call to action. You can either have an educational call to action, or connect the different emails, or have a sales call to action. Also, you can connect an email with a landing page. You start a story, or you begin to teach in the email, and then you get them on to your landing page, and then have a video and continue the story or continue whatever you teach.

Bastian Ernst

Think about how you can get people to engage with you and your content, and you will see that the higher your engagement rate is, the higher your sales conversion is going to be, and the more revenue you will generate for your business.