Coronavirus Marketing Series with Jared Codling

00:00You're listening to the Coronavirus Marketing Series on the Growth Manifesto podcast, a Zoom video series brought to you by Web Profits, where we talk about how to drive marketing and business success through the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, we interviewed Jared Codling. He's an entrepreneur with hands in many pies and one of the best growth hackers in the world. So let's get into it. How are you? Doing really good, man. Really good. How are you doing? Yeah, well, so our main business is the agency.

00:34So that got a bit of pain in some industries, you know, like imagine. We thought it was a bit of a downside just to have clients across such a wide range of industries. But now it's kind of helped us because there's some industries that have improved. There's some industries that are okay. And there's some that are just gone. Like kind of the travel, hospitality. Yeah, gyms, stuff like that. Yeah. It's not shut, right? Yeah. So we decided putting everything in to getting through this

01:10and being stronger at the end of it, yeah? So we've changed our service offering, our messaging, everything. And we've completed that like in a couple of weeks, you know? So like we turned everything around extremely quickly and it's a service that the company is now offering to companies that are stuck. But this is not about me. This is about you, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Quick intro because I like to do intros and correct me if I'm wrong, right? Because I've had to have a look around to find out stuff about you to really create a solid intro. Let me just try it out, right? You're one of the best hackers around in terms of the growth hacking sphere, right?

01:44You're the founder of a site called Hack Your Agency and for New Hack Every Week. The people that subscribe to that are some of the best growth hackers in the world as well, right? you're an entrepreneur you have like your hands in a lot of different pies and you leverage the full power of social media to drive extraordinary performances for yourself and the ventures and the clients that you have there's a lot more information out here as well about like

02:14you hacked to 70,000 what was it um there was a facebook post for 70,000 oh yeah yeah 70,000 I had a look at some of the stuff back in 2016. You got an article to the top of TechCrunch for a startup, which led to an eight-figure valuation. You ran a viral comp that produced 100K in sales just for a gym, and that only cost you $127. And you kind of followed by some of the best growth hackers in the world, basically, right?

02:45And because your stuff's awesome, I mean, I've been across your stuff now for a couple of years and you do think kind of outside of the box and you do find the actual growth hack that's out there if that makes sense like it so have I got that right as an intro yeah definitely definitely I mean it's kind of hard to explain what I do because I do lots of different things I just see myself as more and more these days as like a businessman and I guess it's one of those things where like I always try to find the shortcut the best way of doing something and um and i just don't believe in other people's time frames on

03:19what something should take to do um whether that's a like a one-off task or whether that's growth of a company um i just don't think i think we don't need to put limits on things it's just going to take whatever it takes and um that's yeah that's that's been working for me how do you mean about that like cool let's just start there right and so you don't believe that this is how it is right and you question everything could you just expand on that because like because i'm in terms of this podcast right like i'm trying to focus around the challenges that everyone like is actually having

03:54at the moment and so that's kind of the first part but the second part is to really share ideas to share ways of thinking to share hacks obviously you know the growth hacker of the years on um this podcast and i want to kind of just get some insight into um how you would approach you know of trying to perform in an environment like this you know what I mean let's start with um kind of how you think about things because like yeah yeah like how you started that yeah definitely well I mean it's helping a lot in these times so I've been able to spin up new companies that jump to

04:27you know like making multiple five figures profit per week immediately like within like start them within a week right now and normally um you know that would take most people a lot of time planning and this is you know everything's crazy right now like there's there's a lot of things have changed you can't just um call up the normal guy to get the normal thing done but there's still ways to get things done and i think it all comes back to yeah i've got this mindset where and it started oh geez i quit my job and started marketing like five years ago and what happened

04:59was um i started with a an agency predominantly like a web design agency and it was funny because we were we had like we're backed up with jobs and stuff like that i had heaps of stuff i had to build just knocking out these wordpress websites and then i just had this epiphany just what would happen if i did a week's worth of work in one day like would that be possible if i stayed up for 24 hours straight and drag heaps of red bull and just just went for it and miraculously

05:31it happened i was able to get through like what i thought was a week's worth of work in 24 hours um and that all happened because um i had like about a week before i had a design due like it was an opportunity came up and we got the pitch but we had to get our designing in two hours and one normally took me about 14 hours um i was pretty slow back then and i was like well if i can turn 14 hours into two because i was under the pressure and i really wanted to get this work well i couldn't do that over an extended period of time and for a full week but like for a day right and then that just showed me that i was putting my own constraints on what i thought

06:05something should take in time um and yeah just just always question that and so now i i just always question it can i go faster can i do that differently can i do that better um rather than oh well you know somebody told me it's going to take this long and that could even be it's going to take me this long to get good at this uh it's going to take you this long to learn this skill i just don't i think it's all bullshit yeah sure i um yeah i generally agree with you on that point I personally, I love and hate when someone says that's not possible.

06:38Like it's almost a bigger motivator for me than money. Now money is really, really important, right? Because of the world that we live in and like it always has been. But it's almost like if you tell me I can't do something, I want to like try and prove you wrong for some weird reason. I don't know. It's like a rebellious streak in me or something. I think it's similar for you, right? Man, the funniest thing. So I was explaining this to my girlfriend the other day. So, um, you know, she started to see some success now and we're just talking about motivation and stuff and, um, success in her own thing.

07:09Yeah. Well, actually she's, um, she's jumped into one of my new ventures, um, just like this pandemic related and, um, she's, she's doing really well. Um, but it's her first kind of win. And I said, look, motivation is a funny thing because when I started, everybody told me I was going to fail and I was an idiot for leaving my job and all this stuff. Right. And that was awesome motivation. now the problem is now everybody tells me oh yeah no you'll kill it and then it's like well no no tell me i can't do it yeah because i've lost that entire spark and um you know we still talk about

07:40like i used to work harder and i'm trying to get back to that now and find new motivations because the problem is i rely on the fact that i've got more skill now and it's much easier for me to get even better results than i would have got before just right it was an experience um but if i could work the way I used to work combined with my skill I could do crazy things and that's what I'm working on now because but that motivation's gone the old one that I used which was everybody telling me I couldn't do it yeah it's an interesting one I think um like because I've also tried to hack it like you can't fake tell me that I can't do it like I know when you're fake telling

08:16me and I know when you're actually saying it's not possible you know like I know you know like I think it's a trait of kind of the entrepreneurial kind of side of things i mean there's ways to hack it i guess jump on twitter and tell everybody you're gonna do some crazy thing and i'll tell you you're a fucking idiot and you got no chance and they'll mean it and they'll mean it jump on reddit make some bold claims you'll get shut down in a minute yeah you will won't you um but so in terms of um the motivation side of things so i think that's something that like a

08:47lot of people are going to be facing right now. I think, you know, because we get to, to kind of engage with a lot of, like, like a wide scope of organizations out there and the people that work in them, like a lot of people are just stuck and not like doing anything right now. And, you know, like, it's horrible that there's kind of the pandemic happening right now, the pandemic happening right now. That's terrible, right? Within that, there's opportunity still, right and so like what do you do to kind of to get yourself out of that kind of stuck point and

09:26say actually this is something that's happening because it seems like that you turned around in the last two or two three say weeks or whatever it was and said actually wait there's something here I should be doing something you know so what do you or how do you think about that or you know What do you say to people that are kind of stuck right now, you know? Yeah, it's a really good question. And for me, it's like, well, you know, the pandemic's bad. And like, I'm a really bad asthmatic. Like when I was a kid, I got hospitalized multiple times for it and stuff.

09:57So, you know, I'm high risk category, right? But I don't stress about it. I don't think about it like that too much because I just kind of think about it more. So if I'm stressed, imagine how other people are because I can make money online. and if you've got a business that can make money online or you can transition it to a way where you can make any any portion of it online and stuff like that you are in such a an amazing position right now you're in the top 10 already and so i don't know really what to say to people with completely offline businesses as far as that motivation but if you are able to

10:28pivot to something that still works you are automatically in the top 10 and you're automatically going to do really well maybe not immediately maybe it's going to take some time to adapt but you're just in a very lucky position even to be a business owner you know what i mean to be a business owner right now is amazing because you can you're in control if you're an employee right now well there's no new jobs going if you got laid off you're kind of done you're gonna have a lot of trouble getting work you're kind of at the mercy of the government right now if you're a business owner you're in a position of power yeah it might be hard you're gonna have to pivot you're gonna

10:59have to work out how to make it work and you might have a lot of mouths to feed um as well but at least you have power still at least you have decisions you can make that control your outcome because a lot of people don't have that right now yeah that's an interesting one and i think um um but i think even for the people that are employees right i think you know you can still do side hustles right you can still learn right now there's so many things like it's almost it's leveled the playing field like in a way that i haven't seen ever before right where like because

11:31like yeah like it's like the inventory on facebook ads is way up but advertisers like are all stuck and so they're not spending right and so you got to change it was really hard to make a profit now it's like it's still hard but it's way easier than it was before right but if you can if you can find a way to be relevant and if you can be good at the kind of you know the foundational stuff of online marketing right um that's the start right i think you know there is something there right um well i mean yeah definitely i mean even like let's say you're an employee and you're doing a side

12:04hustle that's a pretty good position to be in the worst position right now because i've got friends in these positions are the ones who have built an amazing company and they've got hundreds of staff they are having bad days right now they haven't really because i'm just talking to them and just saying look you know like it's opportunity but like the level of stress on them compared to somebody who's pretty lean with smaller businesses or it's a side hustle you can adapt you can move quickly and you're not worrying about those outgoings every week that are just so crazy um so it's actually just i think a great time for that underdog and it has flipped the table um and

12:39just said yeah everybody start at zero you know what i mean if you were at the top you're actually in a worse position right now um if you're um yeah if you're lean and you can you can move quick and adapt then like crazy opportunity as you say facebook cpm is like crazy cheap right now um everything's pretty accessible uh and and everybody's online and people are still spending i don't know where to find all the money but people are still spending and this might not age well but um you know so far people are still transacting look i think um there's a couple of

13:12points which i'd like to sum back on that um conversation because there's so many good parts to it right i think um i think the first part which is the easy part is that you know i like to refer to it as not like um not like oh what's it called um well it's not like a zero sum game it's like a negative sum game right now right so everything's contracting there's still money it's just now you've got to fight like to get a piece of that smaller pie it's survival of the

13:43fittest right now so before you could be okay you know you could start like a small agency and you could get you know some clients and like like like it was okay to do okay marketing and you could charge some money for it and you know but that was a thing and you know that happened across the world right like across all industries now instantly there's a lot less money it's all contracting everyone is scared but there's still money going around there's still the needs like in terms of business in terms of kind of health in terms of personal side of things right and it's

14:17it's the companies it's the marketers it's the people who can stand up and who can perform at the top levels that are going to survive this thing but there's still money there's plenty of money it's just it's shifting it's like a transition between definitely i mean it's a funny situation because i mean we'll wait and see how the government continues to handle all this i'm closely watching what america and stuff's doing um because i think it's the background of it is going to be how people are you know what i mean like how much money is the government going

14:48to give people while we're closed down and if that amount is a reasonable enough amount then the people who are able to still operate a business and take that money because there's people still buying are the ones that are going to just kill it and i'm seeing like a microcosm of this my dad actually um he lives like kind of in like an outback town he owns the the kind of store in town now most of the people in this town because there's not much work in that town are on unemployment benefits now they're pretty much as far as the overall town has gone they've actually

15:19got an increase because they're now getting all these extra government bits but they they're nothing changed so my dad's killing it right now um and and so it's kind of like okay your cities like where rents are crazy and if the government like it's going to kind of suck but like you've got to think more like um geographically and this is where it's just from a business perspective depending on your industry you got to look at the areas that are kind of outside of that which are they're going to have a semblance of normality they're going to be locked up but they're going to have money to spend they're going to be spending online and the online ecosystem is a bit

15:51all over the place right now because drop shippers have all just been smashed like most of them it's people don't want to wait for something to come from china firstly people are hating on china secondly the shipping delays and all that kind of stuff it's kind of like if you've got a local business it's pretty good time to do pretty well if you can pivot and make it work online so let's talk about that one because that was the second one um you said before that that um the people that had the bigger companies that had all the staff and kind of have now stuck because

16:22the thing that i was selling is probably not selling as much or everyone's stopped spending money well anyone related to like banks and stuff like that like the banks are not issuing credit cards and stuff right now anyone who's in the mortgage industry and stuff they're all yeah any of those larger companies in those spaces they're doing it tough yeah and i mean you know that's something that we're seeing as well and i think um the key in terms of the conversations i'm having with people anyway is um is that they need to pivot fast they've got the resources they've got

16:53cash still you know i mean like it's not as much as they had before um if they can move really quick and if they can be aggressive with the cost cutting to a level where they're still profitable, but then they have this asset of kind of staff, systems and processes, they can shift, right? But it's difficult. It's really hard right now to shift that size of organization, right? Yeah, I mean, you've got to be smart about it and you do have to move quick.

17:26But it's all about kind of saying, okay how are you going to be at the end of this because there's a few different scenarios you can kind of be and there can be the kind where it's just like well we're gonna have to lay off everybody and our business is done just if you own a gym right now i mean i know there's some people like renting gym equipment with their stuff like let's face it if you own a gym you're pretty screwed yeah and then but then you've got other businesses so my mom manages a bowling club she was able to keep on about half of her staff by converting them to contractors that are now doing the place up because this is all stuff they were going to pay contractors to do,

17:57like painting the place and new roof and all that. She can keep half the staff on, build a really close tight knit because they're all so thankful they've still got a job, get the place done up. Well, all their competitors are closed. As soon as they come out of the coronavirus, lockdowns will stop. Now they're the best club in town and they've got the staff that love them and they're going to stay forever. And it looks amazing. Whereas everybody else was just closed and they've got to go and find new staff and they've got a their place is all run down it hasn't been opened and you know what i mean and it's kind of like looking at like okay well what can we do what what's the skeleton stuff

18:30look like is there something that we even if we can't be making money do we have enough cash reserves to be looking forward and building something for the future um or do we have a part of the business we could just focus on which will at least get us around that cut even mark and we can survive while our competitors die because after this once they're all gone it's time to really make the money yeah i think that's a super point um i mean not the fact that everyone like is struggling but kind of more that um like if you can make it through this and the majority are not

19:01then the companies that are left are going to be able to really you know um expand quickly and see some awesome growth you know i think that's what we saw after the gfc that's what we saw after the dot com you know this is back in 2000 i mean i'm that old now that i that i um you have seen these things happen but if you can make it through which is no easy feat right like yeah because we don't know how long it is you know and that's why it's about it's about looking at can i can i make it week to week do i have a business model because it's an indefinite amount of time at this point

19:34i'm saying it's probably gonna be six months i could i could be way wrong could be six weeks could be six years who knows so it's about can i make it for the next week and can i do that consistently yeah i think that's um that's fantastic let me jump to you just quickly um yeah have you had any businesses that were pre-pandemic that have now kind of had to transition or that kind of kind of have had to pivot yeah yeah yeah so i know you have your hands in many pies i'm just trying to see or understand kind of how you've pivoted kind of some of the things you

20:09know just in case someone like is on this as in video series um yeah just to get some ideas behind it yeah definitely so i've got one that i am so i do a lot of equity deals where i'll come along and i'll see a business that i can scale up and um i'll get a sizable piece of equity in in the company normally around the 50 mark or something like that and um and then yeah scaled up from there now one of those is a coffee scrub company so like a body scrub with coffee beans really high quality product and um we've just been doing really well with it like it was just starting to

20:44really take off i mean i think we'd like 10x the sales in the last month or something like like it was just starting to take off but what's happened is we've had to now stop slow down okay the cpm's are great we can get sales but that upsell flow that we had is not working because people don't want to spend a large amount so they want to buy but they don't want to buy as much because we had like a pretty much buy 12 month supply for this much and it was a really good deal for the customer and also for us it was it just and with shipping and stuff it all worked out really well i've had

21:15to go and say okay no we're going to recalculate the numbers because the whole market shifted and where we could easily charge someone 150 now we can't they'll spend 70 and so how do you make that make sense and it's pretty much okay got like it actually was such a fundamental change we're just still working it out and because we're around that cut even mark right now making a little bit of money but not not what it was yeah um now we know we can still stay afloat um because we're lucky none of us actually rely on the income from it um it's bonus money for all of us which is

21:49great we've got time to kind of work that out but the big thing is just spotting that early that okay this has changed we're no longer selling that upsell it's not working why what does that mean we've got to change to uh how can we you know how can we transition and we don't know how long this is going to last for can we come up with a model that's going to work and get us through it and so it's really just switching pricing strategies which i mean it sounds like a basic thing but it's kind of you know if you've got a lot of stuff automated then that's tricky

22:19yeah right and so so are you able to share kind of some of um um the things which you're thinking about or the things which you're talking about you know because i think you know that this provides insight like into kind of the questions that the um the questions that people kind of be asking themselves right and how they should be thinking especially you know a commerce organizations that were like yeah we're making some sales still but the profit's not as

22:51high and we need to try and change how we think about it so i mean i i think there's a few things um the first one is you know people are paranoid about shipping times right now um and i can give a crazy example actually so we've got a product and this this is like a pandemic time kind of product it's in the ppe space personal protective kind of thing i won't say the exact product but you can kind of guess it's one of i mean this is going to go out to thousands of thousands of people so yeah yeah exactly but it's one of eight or 12 potential

23:24things right and so what happened was um we moved our price point and we're playing with price point and we moved it by a dollar and what happened was and this is you know say it's like down or up No, so let's say we're at $15 and we bump it to $16. We dropped our conversion rate by 40%. From $1. And we're talking substantial amount of traffic because now we're perceived as being in price gouging territory. So let's say we're actually at $14.95. Now we're at $15.95.

23:56And it's just that people are terrified of being taken advantage of right now and being price gouged. And so if you're in any kind of market where there's any kind of pricing changes, be very very on your analytics because we could we changed it back and the conversion rate fixed itself immediately like we knew within two hours because we had such substantial traffic going to it right and so that one dollar i'd never seen anything like it it was just insane 40 40 that's crazy one dollar and and the the impact on profit was negligible right um like that dollar we were

24:29just trying to find the price point and um it's really about perception we're in a fear-driven market and they've got certain fears they're very scared of price gouging they're very scared of long shipping and delays in shipping um another change was just the difference between this is a recent one yesterday we kind of found out we'll had so many orders we're getting a little bit backwards so we changed it so you know buy now and we'll ship in 48 hours um and that really hurt us compared to buy now and we'll ship tomorrow oh wow it just really hurt us and it's

24:59It was one day. We didn't. Funny though, because I think it's like everyone's at home and they've got plenty of time. Like a lot of people. They do not have a lot of time. Like I have no time right now, right? Like I'm so busy right now. I'm trying to balance everything. But I'm in kind of that space right now. And so like I'm extremely busy. But I think there's a lot of people that are just at home and they need that thing now, right? And they just don't want to wait because 24 hours is like an eternity sometimes, right?

25:31Like you're at home, you're stuck at home, you can't go out and you want something to become like, to come to your home because that's what you need. You want it now. Like tomorrow is so far away and like a couple of days away. Like I think that we got something ordered and it's like taking a couple of weeks where normally that'd be okay, but a couple of weeks is like so much- right now yeah because everything changed so quickly and so it's changed our perception of time and it actually reminds me of that time between christmas and new year's every year where

26:04you don't really know which day of the week it is and i think a lot of people are going through that right now but four weeks on end and their perception of time is skewed and it really just um in the way that we do our marketing it's just really important to be mindful of this that these things that used to be minor are now exponentially impacted um yeah right yeah so what do you seeing then as um the best marketing approaches right now or the best kind of the tactics or channels you know so what are you seeing as like this is working the best right i've got a really

26:37i don't want to know what you think specifically because i'm sure you're testing a lot of things yeah no i mean well i had this one working pre-pandemic and it's still working and it's just um it's one that i haven't really revealed i'll um yeah i'll tell you plus you're in my you're in my mastermind group so you'll you'll see the full breakdown of it all but um so um this is going to be promoted pretty heavily right so just say stuff which is cool to be promoted yeah oh yeah yeah it's fine it's fine okay cool i don't want to put that out there this is yeah no i'm not gonna get i'm not gonna give any urls i'm just perfect yeah so um

27:10okay so right now um impulse buys are happening a lot people are stuck at home so they'll they'll jump in and i'll make that purchase it's a pretty short time frame decision so stuff like doing like abandoned cart sms's and stuff like that's working really well um you know we made an extra thousand bucks yesterday or the day before or something just from the abandoned cart sms and follow-up email on a shopify thing wow so that stuff that stuff's important but then i've actually got another funnel which is working even better so basically i'm running um messing a messenger bot

27:41funnel and normally with messenger bot funnel the idea is like you'll get them to click on your ad they'll go into a messenger bot funnel they'll interact a little bit and you'll try selling something and send them to your website and i technically still do that but i'm a little bit different about it what i try to do is drop the the friction and the perception of friction so what i'm doing is i'm basically i've got a um this is for the coffee scrub um we do this and what we do is they go to messenger and then it's a it's a free plus shipping offer so it's kind of

28:14saying like you know you just pay the shipping we'll send you you know the product for free um they get to messenger and then it just shows like okay choose which like flavor you want basically uh in like a nice carousel they choose that and then it takes them to a checkout which appears to be inside messenger now um by the way i use many chat as the software for um for running my messenger bots but then you could build a checkout that looks a lot like facebook you're not breaking any rules here but if the colors the fonts the spacing just everything feels like

28:46facebook like it's still there the transaction rate goes through the roof because they feel like it's a native checkout so they've gone through this thing they choose their product they go yeah i want you know this this flavor pops up a checkout it slides up and it looks like it's native and um we just we custom built one but you can build it on anything like click funnels and all that we've got an order bump um which i think like 60 percent of people do it to double their order um really and then we we have like a we keep the card on file so um this one's a little bit of

29:16technical stuff but basically with stripe what we do is we keep their credit card stored in the database and then we hit them with an upsell straight after they've done that initial purchase and say here's a one-time offer do you want to um do it and if they say yes it just builds their card immediately there's no need to really put anything in now that gets interesting because the next day when we're about to ship to them you can send them a thing and say hey we're just about to ship your order do you want us to chuck in you know one one extra of every flavor it'll just be an extra this much um we could just put it on your card ending with one two three four if they reply

29:50yes or they hit the button yes we've already got their card on file that's only messenger is it is that only messenger it is technically now needs a developer to kind of set that up that last bit that last bit's a little bit hectic but um you know it's you know a decent developer we'll knock it out in a day yeah um but the idea is now we've got the card on file we can do charges from messenger just by them saying yes and not having to put any card details in again um and that lack of friction of just saying oh yeah like and so let's just an example of um the

30:22kind of stuff we're working and building out that we super super smart man that's super that's And that's, I think, a fantastic strategy for any e-commerce site, right? They should be doing that across the board. Yeah, you don't need a... I think it's all about, there's going to be more transactions inside Messenger. And the idea that if you can make it look like it's part of Facebook and it's native and it's like they're not leaving Facebook, they are much more likely to make an impulse buy. If it's a $1,500 product, this stuff doesn't matter. But if it's a small, you know, under $100...

30:56Under $100. You know, especially under 50. especially if it's at the front of the funnel and you're just trying to get that first transaction um then i think this kind of strategies are just vital to get that conversion rate up because you just don't have the drop off they don't change their mind because it happens so quick it's it's it's just done and how hard is it to set up the first part you know like that kind of integration through messenger with ads behind it yeah you would just um just with many chat it's got a called the json ads tool and which basically just hooks up your ad to go straight into messenger

31:28um product selection it's all drag and drop in many chat and then you're just going to have it open at checkout just build it on click funnels or something and just change all the colors and fonts so it looks like facebook um put an order bump on there like it's you don't need to be technical to do that that's awesome that's awesome um thanks for sharing that by the way i'm sure there's a ton of value for anyone that kind of has an e-commerce site and like by the way our conversion rate on that is 25% of people who click on the ad make a purchase whoa okay so so that's profitable on the front end is that right yes it's 100 like yeah it's profitable

32:00on the front end before we even follow up for after sales and subscription products and stuff um that's why we've been able to make it work even in this these times we've been able to just kind of the problem is we're making bulk money on the upsells afterwards and they're just not taking those the front end's still working yeah got it and so you're trying to figure out the upsell side of things and like i think you know these days it's all about the deal right and everyone still wants to spend but they want massive discounts so i guess if you can find a way to upsell something that has a high profit margin that seems like it's well we are high profit

32:33margin that's that's one of the reasons i work with these guys is because they put together really and i think that's right now is a really good time to be getting your prices down uh on everything with your manufacturing because that's where you make your money. My dad always used to tell me this. It's like, you know, when you're selling something, you made your money when you bought it in the first place. That's when you make money. That's like in the property game. That's exactly how they talk about property investment, right? Like they talk about you buy on the, like you make the profit on the way in,

33:04not on the way out. Although you should probably do both. Yeah, I mean, a good example is like just getting like labeling and stickers and stuff done. Every print company right now, they're struggling because they don't have the corporate clients and we're getting like half price um on getting labels and stuff go renegotiate go shop around right now because you don't if if people you're doing business with um not to take advantage but it's just the market shifted like it's just um it's it's legitimately some of these businesses are struggling and they'll do crazy discounts just to keep lights on so are you focusing only on facebook ads right now

33:37or are you doing no no because facebook doesn't like some of the stuff i'm doing um so i'm doing like on some stuff i'm doing like affiliate deals i've become more into that where if somebody else has a website that has my target audience just paying a flat commission you know say it's say it's 25 percent of the revenue that they they generate and just give them you know like yeah like that that just works really well because then i've got easy numbers um other than that though uh i'm doing quite a bit of outbrain and stuff like that like like native ads um google ads um

34:11Google ads seem to be cheap right now. Yeah, I've seen that too. They've like halved like the CPCs, like a bunch of the campaigns I manage, they've gone down a lot. It surprised me. LinkedIn ads finally have come to a point where they're kind of reasonable. Yeah, they're still more expensive than Facebook ads. But if you want the targeting right, they've come down by like 60, 70%, because in the past, I don't know who's creating a profit out of them like at those costs but but they're much lower

34:46now as well yeah I've never been able to make them profitable to be honest um I do all my hacks and stuff to do that other ways um but um yeah I mean I'm surprised Google's cost like CPCs have gone down because I mean Facebook it makes sense because you're kind of competing against everybody for that newsfeed space but Google I mean it's so keyword specific it surprises me just in general that i mean it's it's not that i'm i'm not i'm not running nowhere near as what you're running um on google ads right now i'm pretty niched down but i'm just saying i'm really happy with my prices

35:20yep yep and i think that's a big it's a big message um to businesses out there as well is like this is the time to advertise because it's so much it's so much cheaper right now um but you do need a solid offer that talks to what the struggles are right now and it's all about trying to solve issues to solve challenges right and so i think kind of trying to pivot the message

35:50and the service and the product or kind of like in some way to stay relevant like if you can do that then advertise right now you know totally i mean for me it's been um being really on the math because having to change price points and change traffic channels and stuff like that, being on the math and knowing your numbers has been more important than ever because you just- What does that mean on the math? You know, let's expand on that just a little bit. Okay, so it's kind of like knowing, okay, this is my conversion rate and this is what I, you know, working and just doing Excel spreadsheets

36:21and just working out, okay, this is my cost of goods. This is going to here, even including like my transaction fees and everything. It's kind of like to cut even, I'm going to have to be paying this per click because my conversion rate's this on this traffic source and because now it's about kind of um we don't know what's going to happen so because of that we've got to plan for more outcomes than usual and so then we go okay well what would happen if we had to drop our price by this much or what would happen if our traffic cost went up by this much and we can do a few scenarios and just kind of know oh okay that's

36:53doom and gloom but we'd be okay if this happened and just really um yeah having a tie handle on those numbers yeah i think um i think that's super important too um i think it's easier when it's e-commerce based because it's really transactional it's like this is the transaction oh yeah yeah cpc this is the cpe you know the cost per conversion this is you know the roas and all that um it's much easier like like you like involved in any of kind of the service style businesses is where it's not e-commerce because everything dropped off i was doing a lot of lead

37:25generation but none of it like it's all dropped off um yeah that's that's a nasty space to be in right now and so you're finding it hard i just sell the leads i don't need the money so i just walked away from it okay like yeah like it's kind of i mean i'm lucky that i've got multiple income streams um and so if something's just too hard um and i just it's like well those leads i would have to get the person I'm selling the leads to to pivot their offer. I don't have enough control over the end outcome.

37:59These leads are worthless right now, and even if we can generate them. And so it's kind of like, okay, well, I mean, I could keep a lead system going so when the good times happen again, but then that could be a long way away. I could just go ramp that up when I think the end is coming. Yeah, sure. That's awesome. um let's what are you thinking in terms of actually how this is change consumer behavior you know because things are changing right like how are you seeing those changes happening

38:30um well i mean so the impulse buys and lower dollar stuff is what seems to be it and as you know like my course is like i don't even know how much it is like two and a half grand or something and I just released like the micro course, that little bonus module. And that one, while we've been on this call, I think I've sold a dozen of them. And, you know, it's $200. And so it's kind of like, okay, that $200 mark, that's great right now. People will spend that, but they won't spend two grand.

39:00They won't spend two and a half grand very easily right now. They're just too protective of their savings. And I think large transactions are going to be really tough in all markets. And I think the smaller transactions and getting more of them. It's cheap to get eyeballs out there. And it's really just about how can I get those? Like what's my lower tier kind of offer? Because the consumers are more likely to jump at that because I've just not seen the conversion rate on big stuff. Yeah, for sure. Like I'm seeing or in,

39:36like I think what's important at the moment is that you kind of just need to market really well and to sell like extremely well, right? Like you can't just kind of half, you know, kind of half do things, right? Like it's all those kind of, it's like old school marketers, right? You know, kind of the direct response style marketers that had strong offer, strong guarantees, like, you know, try and create like an offer that is so hard to say no to, you know,

40:08those things at the moment are critical right because everyone's so scared and so we need to as marketers to inspire action and to take away all the risk right and i think that's critically important right now and if you can do that then you have a chance because then all the marketing stuff will work so much better oh yeah definitely and i i think it's you know being a good copywriter right now is really important i mean you don't have to you know what i mean anybody if you know your market now tap into the fears that they've got right now those and they are just amplified you know what i mean um if you're in like anything around like

40:43helping people make more money in any way right now it's an amazing time as long as you don't cost too much and you really results driven and also showing that your system works now that's the big thing people go oh that might have worked pre-covid but if you can show that what you know what i've got works right now then that that's really a big thing what i have noticed is people have more time to do research right now um in those so while while i do say okay yeah the impulse buys are going crazy we're also seeing a lot of people going to the about us page

41:13and the and stuff like that just to kind of go and they've got the time there's a portion of the market there's research orientated and i'll put their time in right now that's awesome um yeah that's awesome that's awesome um so check the about us page right and just kind of have a look at your analytics right yeah don't have coming soon there like so many companies do you know what i mean make sure you actually have um yeah something that's relevant then the other thing is i mean are you sick of getting those emails that says how we're approaching covid19 blah blah blah

41:45yeah i've unsubscribed i think from about 180 of them so far it's like this thing of like um what's the words they sell it we're all in this together i'm like okay cool like i've heard that 180 times now and like you're open which means you can sell to me i'm like just give me some value maybe instead like you know here's some information and even then i might still unsubscribe by the way because i haven't really talked to them in years well yeah i mean it just seems like everybody's jumped on the excuse to try and reactivate their email list but it's like your unsubscribe rate

42:20it's gonna be crazy on that like i don't you know i bought my two-year-old niece a toy like an electric coughing for christmas and i now i apparently i need to know how they're handling the covid19 epidemic i don't care like just like um yeah it's just um so but what i'll say is like on the flip side of that if you have an offer that's relevant don't go with this is how we're approaching covid19 just put your good offer out there people will know that it's relevant to now um yeah i think that's that's super important man that's super that's a super point yeah just

42:55stand out right now like that's that's a big thing um there's a lot of hate right now for making money in these times though i'll tell i'll say that man i have never copped so many i hope you get cancer emails and stuff like that um as trying to make money in these times um i don't care but i just saying if you if you've got a thin skin don't be vocal about trying to make money in any way right now because i think on that point this is something which i actually um like since this whole thing started i started actually emailing our database every single day but

43:27just to share the experience that we're going through and just add massive amounts of value right just kind of try to help try to change the conversation try to be myself not be too scared of what people think but you know to be thought out um and it's been well received so far yeah there's some people that kind of don't like that i'm pushing the marketing side of things but kind our perspective is that you want to keep your staff employed like if you just kind of try to put

43:57like to kind of ignore what's happening and put and to put basically um to put to put the head in the sand and to wait for the government thing or to hope everything turns back around again your business is probably going to go down eventually right especially if this thing takes six months and so it's our responsibility to market right now like to keep um to keep to keep the people employed yeah to keep kind of um suppliers actually having

44:33some revenue in the doors right to keep turning the machine because if we all stop it's a welfare system and we don't have anything left right now well here's the thing though like if people like us don't make money right now then who the hell's paying the taxes to pay for that welfare system like people just want an enemy right now um and i think it's people they're very short-sighted with it and i mean i there's an easy line to draw understand you know what i mean like are you providing value to society or are you you know because there's people hoarding and price gouging and stuff that are in no way providing value but if you're adding goods to the market if you're

45:08people employed if you're paying taxes then at the end of the day we're actually doing way more the society than um than anybody else than just sitting around and look just like on um the final point because you know just on um the feedback um to your email marketing and to your ads you've got a very um specific uh oh the style yeah you have a very unique style yeah how did you come up with that style because like i think that was kind of the first thing i was like i feel it was like

45:39first site i saw of yours like back in 2016 17 or something it's like hey look like i'm too busy for you or something like that right and the whole thing i'm hard to hire website yeah i'm hard to hire website that was the first time i saw it and then you've maintained that persona um well it's actually up with it because it's pretty unique and it's very direct and aggressive but it talks to a very small segment of um the market how'd you come up with it well i'm very lucky that like so I was always like very much,

46:10I don't want to be that guru guy who makes all of his money from selling courses, but doesn't have real businesses. And so I've always kind of had a rule where it's like, okay, I've got to have, I'm going to be making more money from my real businesses than from teaching. And I love teaching. I enjoy it. And that just kind of happened by accident. But what had happened was by the time I started selling any courses and stuff, I didn't need the money. And so it was kind of like, because of that, I could just be kind of like not afraid of losing a customer. I only want to work with people who they're going to,

46:42they're going to vibe with me. So I can just be me. I can just, you know what I mean? And call bullshit on the other gurus. And you know, I could, it's just, I could, I had no reason to put a filter in place that everybody else kind of does. And because of that, I could just be me. So how do people subscribe now to see what I'm talking about? because like you should definitely sign up for Jared's list in some way, but you have to be open to like a very direct approach.

47:14Look, I think it's fantastic, right? And I think you're completely authentic in it, right? Like it feels like it's you just not kind of being afraid to be you. Everyone else is like, if I say that, it's going to be seen by that. And they're all like scared of saying things. But how do people subscribe? um okay is there a place right now or not well i mean i don't really do much on this i mean the thing is like i'm terrible do you want people because if not no no no no send them to um like the top fucking secret.com that's actually the domain as you know yeah uh yeah top fucking

47:48secret.com and then the passcode to get in is n-e-w-h-a-x you'll get like a key code there keep you gotta put in n-e-w-h-a-x at top secret.com and that'll give you like full access to all my content and stuff well not all my content because i've got the paid stuff as well yeah but this is stuff that used to be paid um people really good stuff yeah they're paying over a hundred dollars a week usd to have access to this stuff and then i just went and made it free this one's actually a really good growth hack so i don't know if i've told you the numbers on on what that's done so

48:19top fucking secret i had this idea where i was like okay i'm gonna lock off this thing and it's got like a passcode to get in once you get in you get access to see like five or six videos and then you've got to refer people using your code if you want to get access to more so then it will just virally grow because people want access to unlock more content right and so i did zero dollar marketing spend and um i think i got a list of 40 000 marketers now um just from that from zero dollars spend just from them referring to get more and more people in

48:50and yeah and also I've turned that into six figures as well like monetizing that list later but yeah it was just really cool the virality of that of doing a content unlock if you've got really good content and then you just kind of yeah you know they're going to want more because it's like the first person they you know they refer one person they get access to five more videos but then to get the top tier they had to refer 250 people and people were actually doing it Wow. So that's how good your content is, by the way. So look, I highly recommend that you log in to that site. I think everyone just gets all of the content now just unlocked, right?

49:24They do. Yeah. I've just unlocked the whole thing. Yeah. Just quick one, just on, because I know the story about it, but can you just talk about the reason that it was basically that specific domain name? Oh yeah. So I wanted to prove that, I wanted to be able to say, look, I didn't run ads. Like I I built this site, all these, you know what I mean? Like we've got this email list, built this whole thing without being able to run ads because no ad network would approve me with that domain. It's such a good way. Yeah.

49:54So how did you start it off? Yeah. So who were the first people that signed up? Because it went to 40,000, right? And I think I'm one of them for sure. Right. But yeah, but how did it start? Oh, I actually gave a talk at Digital Marketers Australia. like it was a year and three months ago i think yeah it would have been about that um and um yeah yeah i just at the end of my talk i was just like hey you know here you go um like if you want more

50:24of my content just go here because the thing is i had all this content sitting there that i was doing nothing with i stopped doing because i had this site called new hack every week uh if you remember weren't you yeah um so new hack every week i started for a dollar for the first person that signed up and then the next person that signed up it was two dollars a week and then it went up and up and up and it legitimately i had over 100 members so it was over 100 people were actually paying over 100 a week just to have access and it was like real scarcity because i hate all these people to do fake scarcity i was just like yeah it's not in line with my brand um i'll just tell the truth i'm just gonna put the price up like this um and um and it worked but

51:00then it got really hard doing a new hack every week i got after six months it was really hard because the caliber of the hacks that I was coming up with were really high and it was just too hard. So I just stopped it and I was like, and then I ended up making it all for free. Yeah, wow. That's great, man. Look, thank you so much for sharing all this stuff on this Zoom video series. That's what we're calling it around. Nice. The COVID-19 experience that we're living through. Is there anything which you'd like to say now?

51:30Any specific kind of site to mention anything? that you'd like to promote right now or to get people to look at? Yeah, sure. I mean, I launched a course this morning and I think we sold 20 something while we've been on this call. But it's a couple hundred dollars USD and it's an e-commerce kind of thing for how to do, you know, market during COVID stuff. It's pandemiccash.com. Yeah, look, I think because I'm a part of the mastermind,

52:03I think I saw it already. like I've been just getting yeah it's not for the faint-hearted so I just want to put that out there yeah it's very yeah it's very full-on um full-on but like I do but I would say that it's still it certainly adds value like it's certainly there to fill a need and I also like that like it is about kind of it kind of has integrity behind it as well so I am look I like the content already um and I've already started it but I haven't had time to complete it yet um but super interesting stuff so far and like i certainly um i like how you think you know and it's certainly um

52:39it's been good to speak to you today because you're one of the people um who thinks really differently but who really like he really does try to find the hack who tries to find the growth hack and everyone but there's like quite a lot of people who call me to drop just do you want me to just drop a rule because we haven't been that hacky we've been very top level this whole thing you want me to very we've got a couple of minutes you want me to very quickly drop one of my hacks yes please um yeah it's one that you would have already seen um but it's you know normally you got to pay thousands of dollars for my top level course for this

53:11yeah uh so um one of the big things that i do is i go after competitors groups um and this is this might be a little bit gray hat but it works amazingly there's a site called lead enforce lead e-n-f-o-r-c-e.com and basically what it'll do i can just go pick like a competitor's facebook group and say turn that into a custom audience because i'm going to target them on facebook ads and it's just like they're already you know they're already educated about the niche you know

53:41you know if i go after somebody's like high paid mastermind group i know they're willing to spend as well um and so that's one of my my big hacks is i use this piece of software um they got a free trial and uh but they do some linkedin stuff as well apparently i haven't used it for that i normally use it just for facebook group targeting there's just a little hack um that's just super easy to implement so it scrapes the group and then it creates a custom audience out of it is that right yeah it's got like over a 50 match rate like oh great you can even scrape pages so anyone who i could go okay anyone that likes web profits for example i want to make a custom audience of that

54:14and go yeah and so um yeah it's and then you can do a lookalike audience from that if you want but the idea is more about sniping those competitors. So that's, what's interesting is that we have a lot of our competitors that are going to be watching this video. It's just kind of how it is. I shouldn't have given that example. No, no, no, it's all fine. I thought, Hey, look, I'm sure they're doing some advanced stuff. But yeah, I think we've got about a thousand or so competitors on our list and, you know, we just continue to share with them and we just try to stay ahead of the

54:46game, you know? Elon Musk strategy, man. It's like, you gave up all those patents because he's like, screw it. It's just going to bring more innovation. You know what I mean? That's what I'm thinking about as well. You know, like I just want everyone to win with kind of integrity and authenticity. Right. Like I, like I don't like when people speak behind each other's backs and try to speak like negatively about like a competitor. Like I don't like that at all. If I'm being sold to though, if I get, if I get, when it's huge in the agency world, you'll never, you know, it's very rare to hear an agency compliment another one. I keep my mouth shut normally about other, you know what I mean?

55:19Other people's work because I know when I'm being sold to, I don't, yeah, I don't respect them when they start bad mouthing my competitors. It's just doesn't, why bother? Yeah, exactly. Win on your own merits. Right? Exactly. You know, just be awesome and just, you know, just win, you know? And I think that's kind of the message that is extremely important in this challenging time that we find ourselves in right because you just need to be awesome right now like that's the thing that's going to win um it's not too difficult because everyone else is so

55:54stuck just take action and just be fast and be you'll be fast and aggressive right now yeah but add value and be good in the world you know what i mean i think like if you can combine those things right like and have empathy and all that stuff that you can win at the moment and there's opportunity right now um and that's the message i'm trying um to put out there as well so thanks um in terms of being a part of this uh video series it's been awesome to chat the people

56:25that are watching this subscribe to jared's stuff it's awesome and there's a lot of fantastic ideas out there that you're not going to find anywhere else um and that's something i can say with confidence yeah awesome man thank you so much for having me it's been awesome fantastic jared and I'll speak to you on the inside. Stay safe, man. Yeah, stay safe, man. We'll talk soon. Fantastic, brother. See you, man. Gotcha. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please head on over to iTunes and give us a five-star rating. For more episodes, please visit growthmanifesto.com forward slash podcast.