What Is the Second Funnel?

Understanding funnel stacking is the key to survival in 2021 and beyond.

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Good morning, everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today is webinar day. I'm excited. Hopefully it's webinar day for you too, because webinars day, as long as you don't mess it up, it's usually payday. So, got some cool stuff to talk to you about. I'll be right back after the intro.

Okay. So, heading to the office today, today is webinar day. That's a special webinar day, and I'm excited. I had a lesson that I want you to learn from this. So, how do I phrase this best? So, I just know when we first launched ClickFunnels, the way we did it was, I did a webinar, every single... Well, I told people I'd do a webinar a week for a year. But I was doing like three to five webinars a week, sometimes two or three a day for a year. And that's how we blew up ClickFunnels initially. That gave us initial momentum to get things into outer space. And then, over time we've got funnels and we do funnel stacking. Someone buys a book and they're pushing a webinar, and then from there, we take them through a whole sequence to get people to ascend and move up.

And a couple of years ago I did a funnel hacking lab, I gave a presentation called, "Funnel Stacking," and talked about the importance of it and why it's like, have just a funnel, is not... Some people's business is like one funnel, that's their whole business. I'm like in the future, you got to become better at funnel stacking, which is like taking from funnel one to funnel two, to funnel three and moving them up your value ladder. And back then it was like, because this is how you make more money, but it wasn't like a necessity. And you probably heard me say before, one of my favorite Dan Kennedy quotes, he said, "Whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins." So, that's why funnels are so essential.

When I got started back in the day, you guys heard of my story, right? I sold a potato gun DVD, and that's all I sold, and I was able to make money on that. But then Google shifted and got more expensive. And so we had to build out funnels to be able to still be profitable. And honestly, for the most part, I think most business owners over the last five or six years can have a funnel and make money and be profitable because just the funnel metrics. But something's happened over the last couple months and you may have heard of this. Our friends over at Google and our friends over at Apple and our friends at Facebook all started hating each other and fighting and battling.

And because of these wars, all of our tracking and all sorts of stuff shifted, it changed. And I'm not sure if you've noticed it, we've noticed it, but the cost per acquisition or cost to acquire customers has gone up dramatically in most of the businesses and most of the funnels we have because of these new updates. And it's super annoying. But guess what? For those of you guys who are listening to me who are funnel hackers, who understand this stuff we've been talking about, is a slight annoyance that'll actually yield you more money at the end of the day because you understand these principles. Okay?

So, what's going to happen is, first off, everybody who just had a funnel and that was their business, it's going to be harder for them to make money in that funnel. They're going to get closer and closer to break even, or losing money in their funnel. And a lot of people, a lot of your competition, a lot of people around you are going to be out of business. So there's number one. There's the bad news, a lot of people are going out of business. The good news is, most of your competition is going to get out of business, which means eventually at cost is probably going to drop, your ability to serve people is going to be easier. And so, those who stick through this are going to win, and it's going to be better for you in the longterm.

So, that's the positive. This is the pattern that I've seen year after year, decade after decade now. This is what happens. And so, I warned you in the beginning of Traffic Secrets, I said, "There's a storm coming." We're in the eye of the storm right now, it's happening. And so, ad costs are going up, most businesses who are not sophisticated, who don't understand funnel hacking, and these principles are going to be gone. But for you guys, it's like, now's the time to start preparing, and so, what that means is, no longer is just your funnel breaking even, like going to be the thing that builds you the right business. That's step number one. Now you have to get into funnel stacking. Some of you guys, it's not the first funnel is going to be the second funnel that breaks you even. Okay? Did you hear that?

It's not the first, it's the second funnel that breaks you even. Or some might be the first, the second and the third breaks you even, after that, you're profitable. The biggest companies, they could go the deepest. Now, for us who aren't VC backed, like for example, HubSpot... I think it's HubSpot. We were looking at their metrics and they go like a year or two years in the hole. So, they'll spend $2,000 to get a trial customer and they don't make any money on that person for two years, but they can do that because they've got all these VCs backing them. People like me and you, who are bootstrapping, we don't have unlimited budgets. So, we still have to break even quickly or we can't keep scaling. So the goal always initially was, break even in your first funnel. And then your second funnel is all profit.

But now it's going to be going deeper because of just these new changes in how things are playing out. And so, it's important for you to do funnel stacking where it's like, hey, this may be my book funnel. And from there, I push my webinar funnel and from there it's my high ticket funnel and we're taking them through the sequence. And maybe it's like in the middle of the webinar funnels where you break even, or maybe even at the end of the webinar funnel, you're at break even or something, but you got to start figuring those metrics out and start figuring that process out. And so, that's something to think about.

One thing people ask me is, "How do you track these things?" And Alex Becker actually has this really good tool now, called Hyros, H-Y-R-O-S, that we're using for our tracking. And it's probably the best thing out there right now. It's still not flawless, no one's flawless. Someday. Someday someone's going to build a flawless system. But it's been super helpful for us to be able to see the tracking from funnel to funnel and kind of see what's happening with people. But anyway, I want you guys to understand that this funnel stacking is a key. So for example, that's why I'm so excited about today's webinar day, because recently we acquired a company and I'm going to give more details, probably Funnel Hacking Live I'll first start talking about it.

But we acquired a company that has a whole bunch of front end funnels. And we bought the funnels because they're so profitable. The average cart value is like, I don't know, 130, $140. So, he spent a lot of money to acquire a customer, which is why each of the funnels gets three to 500 new buyers a day, which is awesome. And my goal long-term is to get all those people into ClickFunnels. That's the whole business model. We bought this company because we're buying all their front end funnels so we can push people into ClickFunnels in the backend. Now, in the middle of those acquisitions, when these iOS, Facebook, Apple updates started happening and the cost to acquire a customer went up and all of a sudden these funnels were a 25% profit margin went down to 0% profit margin.

And at first, everyone's freaked out like, "Oh, we should cancel the deal. We shouldn't do it." I'm like, "No, you don't understand, this is why we have to do the deal. This is the key." Yes, it sucks that the margin is now gone from these funnels, but the same thing, is like, we're still at break even or maybe a little bit in the hole, but we're acquiring all these customers and then we can put them into our second funnel and that's where it becomes profitable. And so, the question is, what is the second funnel? What's that look like? How is it going to work? And so that's what I'm testing today. So, what I'm doing today is, I'm doing a webinar to the entire buyer list, entire customer list of this company we bought. I think we have seven or almost 8,000 people registered. So it's going to be a big webinar day today and hopefully I don't bomb it. And it's a big payday, but who knows I could bomb.

So we do a webinar, and if the webinar goes well, I take that webinar presentation and then we plug it into the back end of every one of these funnels. So, somebody buys the product, they go through the funnel hit the thank you page, thank you page will plug in the actual webinar, gets them on the webinar. And now, the first funnel stack has been completed, and it gets somebody from buying the software, getting thank you page, watch the webinar, buying ClickFunnels. And again, that becomes the first funnel stack. And so, that's the key. That's the thing I want you guys understanding is that, I think a lot of people are like, "Oh, you're going to make a ton of money off the webinar." I'm like, "Not enough money to pay back what we bought this company for."

I'm only doing the webinar to be able to create the second piece in this funnel, the funnel stack, thing that's going to plug into the back of all these funnels. So now all these customers coming in every single day, we can transition them from funnel one to funnel two, which gives us profit, but then also plugs people into ClickFunnels, which is our continuity. And that's the beginning of the funnel stack. And then there's things from there, we'll take them on, but that's the key, the principle concept. Does that make sense you guys? Hope it does, because that's the key. I want you guys to understand the funnel stacking is the future. Just like we went from single products to funnel, was the last two decades. The next decade is moving from a funnel to a funnel stack. And so, that's the key.

If you want more info, I think I have a book I wrote back in the day called, "Funnel Stacking." And I think I have it as an ebook now. I might mess up my domain. I think if you to funnelstacking secrets.com, there's a free ebook there that shows you my funnel stack from book to webinar to high ticket. And it shows you the email sequences, the numbers, the breakdown, and kind of a cool thing that you can use if you're trying to think through your funnel stack. But anyway, just want you guys getting that in your mindset, and we'll talk more about it, especially Funnel Hacking Live and other places, but the big key right now is, as it was products to funnels, now we're going from funnels to funnel stacking.

And those who can spend the most money to acquire customer will win, and those who can't are going to lose. And so, if you want to win this game, it's time to start learning these skills and become more advanced in your marketing. So hope that helps. Thank you guys for listening. That said, it's webinar day, wish me luck. And hopefully it's a webinar day for you wherever you are listening to this. If not, schedule a webinar. It gets people on it because webinar day is payday. It's the best day of the week. Thanks guys. And I'll talk to you soon.

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