Selects Edition: The E5 Method for Marketing with Todd Brown

This is the Selects Edition of the Eventual Millionaire, where we choose to republish the best interviews I had with millionaires. (This episode was originally published on February 28, 2022.)

Todd Brown is considered the #1 authority on engineering profitable customer acquisition campaigns, and the creator of the renowned E5 Method.

He is one of the most sought-after marketing experts other experts go to when they need help with their own business. With clients in over 64 different countries, operating in over 71 different mass and niche markets, Todd has helped his students engineer more six and seven-figure marketing campaigns than any other expert online today.

His list of coaching students, consulting clients, and subscribers reads like a Who’s Who of A-List Entrepreneurs. His Agency has created the promotions behind some of the biggest direct response marketers and companies online today.

Todd is always excited to share his insights and experience around how to bring predictability into the customer acquisition process and set the business up for true scale.

“The quality of your ideas behind your marketing campaigns ultimately determines the success of the campaigns.” – Todd Brown

Episode Highlights:

• How E5 Method started (What is E5 Method and how does it work)
• How to match the right incentive to the right audience
• Two major most valuable lessons in marketing Todd learned in the last 20 years
• How to effectively differentiate your product from your competitors
• What is Dual Brain Communication
• What are 6 important metrics in making a decision in your business
• When to tweak your marketing campaign

Website:

ToddBrown.me

Connect with Todd:

Facebook
Instagram
Youtube

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Masters and today on the show I finally have Todd. Brown. Now I’ve heard his name literally a million times from all of my friends. You can check him out at toddbrown.me. He's the creator of the E5 method and you can check that out in a book format on Amazon. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Todd:	I'm excited to be with you. I was really looking forward to it.

Jaime:	Yeah. So, the reason why I hear your name all the time is my good friend, Kurt Mali, has this stupid belt that he cannot shut up about. And it’s your fault. 

Todd:	It is. I unfortunately unleashed a plague on the – and I say that with love. I love Kurt. He's brilliant and amazing at what it is that he does. But yes. He won it in a room full of incredible media buyers, his peers, and so now he gets to show it off everywhere he goes.

Jaime:	Well, it was genius on your part because, again, he says your name everywhere you go and everybody in that room says your name everywhere you go. How did you even come up with that? 

Todd:	Yeah, it's a great question. So, let me give a little context. So, I decided to hold an event in in Baltimore, in gorgeous Baltimore of all places. And I decided to bring together 40 or so top media buyers. So, the folks that handle all the paid traffic for some big companies. So, some of the best of the best were in this room. And what I wanted to do was I decided – I brought in a full film crew. I wanted to film it and I knew that later on I was gonna do something with it. I was gonna productize it. 

And so, I really wanted to incentivize this group to really give the best of the best, like their absolute best stuff for these two days. And I said to myself like what could I give them or offer them that they would be excited about that hasn't been offered before. I’m like, “Look, I could do money, but this is a group of very successful people.” And so, the amount of money that I would have needed to give would have been extraordinary. And so, I said to myself, “You know what? I know that from doing launches in the past with partners that there is this competition to outdo peers.” The bragging rights and whatnot. 

So, I said, “You know what? I wanna go out and I wanna get like a legit heavyweight championship belt, and at the very beginning of this gathering I'm gonna unbox this thing and I'm gonna say, ‘The person who shares the best information is gonna walk away crowned as the media buying master.’” And I think that's what it was on there. And so, it was funny because – I gotta tell you this very quickly. 

So, we're at the top of this restaurant in Baltimore, and it's beautiful, it’s the nicest view you can get a Baltimore, everybody is kind of chill, folks are kind of looking down at their computers and iPads as I'm talking and introducing. And I know that this is a room of smart people. And so, what it's gonna take to hold everybody's attention is gonna be quite significant. And so, I let them know I'm I want to incentivize you guys to share your best stuff. And, boom, I take out the box and I begin to proceed to introduce them to this belt. 

The moment that this belt came out of the box the entire room, the feel, the vibe shifted to a point – they were enamored with this belt. And the belt is a few hundred bucks. It’s not like this – but it just goes to show you that when you match the right incentive with the right audience what it can do. From that moment on it was like a cut-throat gathering of people that just wanted to outdo each other and so, it worked perfectly. 

And in the end, we let the group vote on who they felt. So, it was it was voted on by peers. And of course, Kurt Mali, as he always does, he’s incredible, he shares incredible information, he’s brilliant at what he does. He walked away the victor and the marketing industry has never been the same since.

Jaime:	I used to do jujitsu with Kurt and so, when he was holding – we love UFC and he’s showing this belt and I'm like dude. Brilliant to have guys that are, no offense, more geeky. Media buyers are a little more on the geeky side. To be able to get a belt is just freaking brilliant. So, I'm assuming you take this amazing genius ideas to all of the other marketing that you do. So, tell me more about the E5 method and how you sort of work through stuff.

Todd:	I will. Let me say this. To wrap up that, to put a bow on that – at some point, I have to in a future episode – I will come back and tell you the message that I got from Kurt. I think maybe weeks later, if that, when somebody stole the belt.

Jaime:	Oh, yeah. Oh, I was there. Yeah.

Todd:	So, I replaced it for Kurt and whatnot. But right? And so, there’s been a reward out for the original belt for some time.

Jaime:	Next time on Eventual – yes, we’re totally gonna talk about that next time.

Todd:	Next time. Next time. 

Jaime:	Well, that’s the thing. You made it such a coveted thing, right? That somebody even wanted to freaking steal it. You know what I mean?

Todd:	I guess. I really – in all fairness, let me give credit where credit’s due. I think Kurt really did an amazing job of turning this into – I knew they'd be excited. I had no idea what it would become after that, and good for Kurt that he turned it into something extraordinary as he deserves. And so, my gosh, where do you wanna begin in terms of marketing? We can talk about a lot of things. If you want I can start by sharing what I believe is the single most valuable lesson that I've learned in the 20 years that I've been doing this as it relates to marketing. 

Jaime:	Well now I can't say no to that. So yes, do that. 

Todd:	So, I’ll start with – there are actually two major things. I'll start with one and then we'll shift over to the other. So, I'm very fortunate. I live in South Florida and in South Florida there happens to be a lot of really exceptional marketers and copywriters, especially folks from the world of like Agora, which is the $1.5 billion newsletter publishing behemoth. And so, I got the chance some years ago to come to meet and befriend Mark Ford. Mark publishes many books under the pen name Michael Masterson, or he used to, and Mark is really the guy who is really what I would call the marketing genius behind Agora. 

And so over time Mark and I became friendly. Today, I consider him not only a mentor but a friend. And so, finally one night I asked Mark, I said “Mark, what's the real secret behind how you were able to take Agora from this $10 million entity to . . .?” At the time it was $600 million, back then when I was talking to Mark. “What did you do? What was the real secret like? Tell me now. There's no one else here. Boil it down, give me the real scoop.” 

And I was thinking that Mark was gonna say something like, “Deep pockets. We spend a lot on advertising. We've got huge email lists.” And I'm sure all those things played a role, but that's not at all what Mark said to me. What Mark said to me – he looked at me and he said, “Todd, we realized early on that we are in the idea business. We're in the business of generating, disseminating interesting, compelling, sometimes contrarian ideas.” 

And what Mark was really saying, because that really sent me off on like a six-year journey to really understand – Mark introduced me to the to this concept called the big marketing idea. And what Mark was really saying was that behind every marketing campaign, behind every video sales letter, long form sales letter, behind really every blog post, essay, whatever piece of content that you put out, there is an idea. There's an underlying idea. 

People oftentimes confuse the headline and the hulk, or the headline and the angle, or the headline and the theme. The idea. Hulk, angle, theme, idea – all really the same thing. Reality is just that the headline is just the words that we choose to use to express the underlying idea. And what Mark was saying was that the quality of the idea, the quality of your ideas behind your marketing campaigns ultimately determines the success of the campaigns. They ultimately determine the amount of attention that you get the amount of engagement that you get. 

And so, Mark introduced me to this concept called the big marketing idea, and the big marketing idea is really an idea that is both intellectually interesting because it's new, it's unique, it's different, it's a fresh perspective, it's a story or angle that other people in the marketplace aren't telling, and it is emotionally compelling. It's emotionally compelling for two reasons, which also lead me into the other most valuable lesson that I learned. 

It's emotionally compelling because there is a promise of result. Like there's a promise of the outcome. That's really at the foundation of all effective marketing is prospects need to see how their life is gonna be improved, how their problem or frustration that they're dealing with is gonna be eliminated. And so, it's emotionally compelling because there is a promise of change and that promise of change is backed by or powered by what we call a unique mechanism, a different way a delivering the result. 

So, before we go on to that, let me go back for one second and say – so, what Mark was really trying to teach me and what took me a long time to really fully understand, learn, and then deploy is that you want to, you need to take time to develop ideas behind your marketing messages, behind your marketing campaigns, that are both intellectually interesting to prospects, where prospects feel like they've just stumbled on something newsworthy, where it gives prospects the feeling of discovery. 

I’ve just stumbled on something that nobody else has shared with me, I haven't heard before. I'm interested in in learning more about this because it's unique. It's fresh, it's timely. Maybe it may be contrarian. And in that idea we're also conveying that the prospect can get the results, the outcome, the change, the transformation that they want with a new and different mechanism. A new and different approach. And so, before I go on to that, does that make sense? Am I rambling or is that –

Jaime:	Yeah. No, no. I totally see – in the belt. You did the belt. Everyone was like, “What's this?” Yeah. 

Todd:	Yeah. And so, number one is realizing that we're in the idea business. And oftentimes, entrepreneurs, marketers will immediately sit down and start to try to write copy and what they're thinking in their mind is they're thinking, “I just wanna talk about all the benefits of my product or service.” They're told it’s salesmanship in print. So, benefits, benefits, benefits, benefits, benefits. 

And the reality is that they haven't thought through, “Well, what's the angle that I'm going to wrap this in? What's the story that I'm gonna wrap this in that my market is gonna find wildly compelling because it is intellectually interesting, and it is emotionally compelling.” And so, that's the first thing. The second thing is, and I would almost say that this, the unique mechanism, is really more valuable today than ever before. So, let me take a step back, give a little context and then get to this. 

So, one of the most important things in marketing, one of the most important things for us to do, for your listeners to do, is to differentiate. People want to know what is different about your thing, about your approach, about your method, than everything else available to me. And for years we were able to differentiate on things like length of time in business, credentials, even client testimonials. We've got a ponderance of proof. Track record. 

And the reality is that today those things are no longer nearly as effective as they once were thanks to the technology industry. Thanks to companies on the internet that appear one day and all of a sudden in two months they’re huge companies. It didn't used to be that way. 

And so, today there are only two ways for an entrepreneur, for a company, for a marketer to effectively differentiate their product from everything else. Because what people really are asking at the heart of interacting with a marketing message is, “Why yours? Why should I choose yours?” So, “Why yours?” You're telling me that your product can deliver XYZ benefits. So are all those. They're also all saying very similar things to you. 

So, there are only two ways to differentiate, two effective ways to differentiate today. The first way is with what's called the unique selling proposition. A USP. USP was first created or coined by an old-school direct response marketer, Rosser Reeves. And there's a lot of definitions for a USP, for a unique selling proposition, out there. I'll simplify it to this: When your product or service offers a unique benefit to your prospects that no other competing products or services offer, you have a USP. 

But today, USPs offering a unique benefit, those are rare, and they're typically only found with disruptive products and services, like disruptive technologies. So, the example that I always give is when Uber first hit the scene. Well, they had a lot of unique selling propositions, like the fact that you could hail a ride from your phone, the fact that you didn't need cash, you could see when your ride would arrive, there were ratings. When you looked at yellow cabs, right, you didn’t get any of those benefits with yellow cabs. You got that with Uber. 

Of course, today we know, thanks to Lyft and other ride sharing companies those are no longer unique selling propositions because now they can be found all over. But the point is that a USP is one way to differentiate, but it's very rare and it's very uncommon. The reality is that for the majority of your folks listening they're not gonna be able to identify a USP. So, that brings us to the second way of differentiating. And the second way is a way that I just mentioned a few minutes ago. And that is with a unique mechanism. 

So, every product or service has a mechanism. Mechanism just means how does the product or service work to deliver the result. So, if you've got a supplement that helps to bring down blood pressure, how does it work to bring down blood pressure? Is it the nutrients in there, the combination of nutrients? Is it the dosages? Is it the delivery vehicle in the pill or tablet, whatever it is? If you have a software that you offer and that software helps people to get top Google rankings, well how does the software work? Is there an algorithm in there, a formula? And that algorithm does certain things that get you the top rankings? 

And so, in every product or service there is a mechanism. What we are looking for is, and what we want to identify, and you can identify this, in the overwhelming majority of businesses we want to identify a unique mechanism. In other words, we wanna be able to say to the market to really boil this down, we wanna be able to say to the market, “I can get you XYZ results.” In other words, right, “Here's a way, a different way for you to get XYZ result, XYZ outcome, XYZ transformation, for you to eliminate that paying point, for you to get more of what it is that you want.” 

Whatever it is that they want, we ultimately want to be able to say, “Here is a different way for you to get that result. Here's a way for you to get that that works differently from everything else that you've tried or heard about in the past. And this different way is superior to all the other ways for getting the result.” And so, that is ultimately what we – we want to identify that. And the reality is that unless somebody is selling a pure commodity, like a glass of tap water, you can identify a unique mechanism. 

Because it's really how does your product or service work to deliver the result? Why do you do things the way that you do them? Why do you do the steps that you do them? Why do you do them in the order that you're doing them? What would happen if we took them out a step? What would happen if we put in an extra unnecessary step? What would happen if we changed the order? 

See, there's a reasoning behind why you do what you do. Well, once we've identified that unique mechanism, once we've actually identified that – and there's a process and whatnot to doing this, then we build our marketing campaigns, all of our marketing campaigns around introducing this unique mechanism and then educating prospects on not only what makes this mechanism different compared to everything else but what makes it superior. And I wanna point something out here. And I know I'm rambling, and so I'm gonna be quiet in one minute.

Jaime:	I love it. Keep going.

Todd:	And I want everybody to get this, I want everybody to understand the power of this. So, what we're not doing, what we don't do, which is very different – what we don't do, what we don't teach, which is very different from the majority, or what the majority are being taught to do, we're not pitching a product. 

So, the unique mechanism and the product or service are not the same thing. The product or service contains the unique mechanism, the product or service is powered by the unique mechanism, but it's not the same. They're not one in the same thing. And that's an important point, because what we do is we go to the market and we say, “Here is a different and better way for you to get the result that you want. Here's what makes it different. Here's what makes it better. Here's how it works. Here's why it works.” 

And ultimately we're educating. So, their sales filter isn't up. We're not pitching a product, so we don't come of sleazy, slimy. Bait and switch. We're not salespeople. I'm not a salesperson. I'm a terrible salesperson. And so, we're educating on this mechanism. And ultimately what we're doing is we're leading the prospect to see that unique mechanism, our unique mechanism as the smartest move for what it is that they want, the wisest move, the right move, the best move for them to get the result that they want. And we're doing that through education. 

And once we've led them to that point where they want the unique mechanism, where they're like, “I get it. I see it, Todd. I understand it. I recognize it. That's the way that I wanna go. I understand why that's the smart move.” It's then and only then that we transition into the offer for them to get the product, which is how they can experience the unique mechanism. And the beauty is that once we've led your prospect to want the unique mechanism, we've created an “all roads lead to you” path, because they can't go anywhere else and get the unique mechanism. They can only get it from you. 

So, you mentioned earlier Kurt. Kurt’s Belt Method is a great example, because the Belt Method is his unique mechanism. He doesn't just talk about Facebook advertising, steps to Facebook, ways of tweaking your Facebook ads. When he talks about what it is that he does and why it works and why it's effective and when he shows case studies, he shows case studies of the Belt Method. And he explains why the Belt Method is the best approach, the smartest approach to paid traffic on Facebook. 

And then only when you're convinced that, “Dang, I wanna use the Belt Method, this mechanism,” does he then segue into the offer for his training, his consulting, whatever it may be. And see how once you've bought into the Belt Method, you can't go anywhere else and get it? You're now in Kurt's world. He convinced you of this mechanism that he is the sole purveyor of. 

And so, it's a beautiful thing because you're not using slick sales skills, you're not using hyperbolic copy or exaggerated claims. You're taking what it is that works behind your product, your service, you're educating the marketplace on it, you're leading them to understand what makes it different and superior. You're leading them to ultimately want it through education, through teaching. And then once they want that mechanism, you’ve got them. Done. Done deal.

Jaime:	I saw Kurt do this to one of my retreats and I was watching in the back with everybody, right? And everybody was indoctrinated, and he didn't sell anything. And people were coming up to him going, “Yeah, how do I . . .” And he of course had a free Facebook group to just sort of, “Yeah. We have info. Come here.” I mean, there was almost no sales pitch. And I know people signed up for his stuff, right? 

And I so appreciate you going crazy on this because when you don't have the foundation and you add all the crap on the house on top of it – that’s why if your Facebook ads don't work, that's why all the things don't work. And they blame the platform and it's kind of – you kind of suck as a marketer is really what the –

Todd:	Yeah. Amen, I mean what you said is something that I've preached or tried to preach because it pains me in in my heart for people that – it’s kind of like when somebody says, “I tried direct mail, direct mail doesn't work for me.” Or “I tried email, email doesn't work.” Or “I put up a lead generation page and I couldn't generate any leads.” And they blame the tactic, or they blame the strategy, or they blame the model. 

The reality is that it’s like this – this is the closest analogy that I've been able to come up with. What most people are unfortunately learning, what most entrepreneurs, marketers are trying to learn and study, and unfortunately are learning and studying, is how to set up the pages of, let's say a marketing funnel and all the different kind of funnel models. 

It's the equivalent to me of wanting to become a best-selling author and learning about the different binding options, learning about the cover, learning, “Okay, I need a preface. I need an epilogue. I need a table of contents. I need that six chapters.” And never ever concerning yourself with learning, mastering the message in the book. The message in the book. Like having a hard hardcover, having a paperback, having 200 pages or 300 pages, having a great table of contents, or an epilogue. 

None of those things are gonna turn it into a great book. It's a book that has impact, that moves people based on one thing, and that's the content. And that's the same thing with marketing. The reality is that a good marketing message can be delivered as a video, as a webinar, as a long form sales letter, as a direct mail piece. But a bad marketing message, an inadequate marketing message, one that doesn't differentiate, one that doesn't demonstrate what makes it superior. Changing it from a video sales letter to a webinar, ain’t gonna fix it. Because it's not the delivery platform. It’s not the medium, it's the message. Period.

Jaime:	One hundred percent. Preach. Okay. And I see everything visual, so I always see it as funnel builders or whatever or like paint-by-numbers. So, they're just making the copies of the things and it kinda looks like – but you're not the artist. And so, the hard thing is though, even a lot of marketers that are kind of good don't consider themselves artists in this. You've spent many, many years refining this whole thing. You got to talk to the guy from Agora. Most people don't have a chance to have that level. 

So, if somebody were to test their mechanism, what would you try to tell them as like their initial tech? Because what's gonna happen is someone's gonna go, “Okay, great Todd. I’m sold. Now I'm gonna sit here with a blank piece of paper and start trying to figure out how the heck I get my mechanism or pull out what that is, and then I'm gonna hope that its good enough.” You know what I mean?

Todd:	Yeah. I mean, look. Let me say this and then I’ll the answer question. I think I really had to become a student or became a student out of necessity because – I wasn't joking when I said – I'm a terrible salesperson. I'm not a good salesperson. I don't like to sell. I hate the high pressure. That’s just not me. And so, I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it and I also I love teaching. I love educating and so, I was very fortunate to learn that some of the best and biggest direct response companies were using education-based marketing, but it wasn't education for education’s sake. 

They had this mechanism that was unique, and they were able to educate about that. And so, it was just out of necessity for me that I was able to kind of realize it. And I've spent the better part of my adult life mastering it. What I would say is, and if this doesn't help, you tell me, and we’ll find another path that helps.

Jaime:	Okay. I will. Believe me, I will.

Todd:	But No. 1 is stop thinking like a marketer. Stop thinking marketing. Stop thinking advertising. Put that aside. The very first thing that I would tell folks to do is, No. 1, take out a pad and a pen and sit back and start by asking yourself questions. This is what we call interrogating your mechanism. This is how we learn about your mechanism. Identify it, understand it, and get the fodder that we need to build an effective marketing message. 

So, No. 1, sit back, pad, pen, and ask yourself, “Why does my product or service work?” No. 1, just why does it work? Why is it able to produce the result that I'm claiming it can produce? The change, the transformation, the outcome. Why does it work? What about it produces that result? And then I want you to answer the question “how does it work?” How does it produce that result? So, what happens? What are the steps? What's the formula? What’s going on in the body, in the brain, in marketplace, on your lawn? Whatever it is that you market, sell? And how does it work to produce that result? Okay? 

And then I want you to ask yourself, “Why did I decide to do it that way?” If you put together a formula for a supplement, why that formula? If you are consultant, if you're a coach, if you're a therapist, if you're an advisor, if you put together a train, why that formula? Why did I put it together that way? Why in that order? Why in that order? What would happen if I changed the order? What would happen if I took a step out? What would happen if I took something that's not in here and I put it in here? What would change about the result? What would change about the way that it that it works? 

And once you've done that, as strange as this sounds, once you've kind of gone through that questioning, and you might have to dig because – the funny thing is that most entrepreneurs, marketers they take for granted what's in their product and why it works.  They haven't spent the time thinking about it. Many for a very long time and some not at all. And so, here it's difficult to think about, “Why do I do it that way? Why do I do this first with clients or in the agency? What would happen if we didn't do that first? Why don't I do this step that most others do that we don't do? Why don't we do it? Well, what would happen if we did do it negatively?” 

After you think through all of that, then what I want you to think about is, “What name could I give to this process?” And I don't want you to think benefit-driven, promotional, cool-sounding. I want you to throw all that out. I just want you to come up with a name that is congruent with what it is that you just uncovered. So, if this works because it taps into both sides of the brain, maybe it's dual-brain communication, or dual-hemisphere communication, something like that. It's congruent with – I just want you to name it. And I don't want you to name it something promotional. I don't want you to name it something cool. I don’t want you to name it something – 

Jaime:	That’s helpful. Yes. We get stuck there. Like it has to sound great. Yeah.

Todd:	Let me tell you this, and this is funny and ironic. So, I spoke at an event a few weeks ago, which Kurt was at in the audience. And I said to everybody I was talking about this, the unique mechanism, and I said, “Look, as crazy as this sounds, the name of your unique mechanism is almost insignificant. The only rule that I have is that you do not want it to sound promotional or commercial. Save the whizbang, cool name with alliteration and benefit for your product, your service, your bundle, your offer, not the unique mechanism. You want the unique mechanism to sound credible, to sound scientific, to sound real, so that people . . .” 

We want something that sounds official. And so, the thing is that – don’t get caught up in is this a good name. Make sure it's not a bad name. A bad name is one that is commercial, promotional, benefit driven. Corny. You want to imagine that this is a name that I could see eventually when I make this big, eventually I could see other speakers talking about this at the conference, writing about this in articles. 

And everybody's gotta realize – let me say this, everybody's gotta realize that everything that's been named, somebody named. So, you take I don't care what – all these names that we feel like Six Sigma and all these. Somebody named it that. Today it's just like, “Oh, that's a fish?” That’s real. Somebody named it that. And so, you have every right and authority and credibility to name your mechanism after you’ve done that interrogation. 

And so, then when you have that unique mechanism, then ultimately go out and start to let people know that you’ve got a different and superior way to get them the result that they want. That different and superior way is called Dual Brain Communication. Here's what makes it different. Here's what makes it better. Here's why it works. Here's how it works. Here's what it’ll do for you. And let me tell you how you can implement this, learn more. I put together an offer for you. Boom.

Jaime:	And one percent of the people that just heard that will actually take a piece of paper and write any of those things down so anyone listening, you be that person. 

Todd:	Yeah. The other 99%, shame on you. You know what’s so funny? I wanna say this. I get to say this when I’m a guest, right? I get to be the bad person. It’s not that difficult. I was a terrible student. I didn’t read a full book cover-to-cover until I was like 22 or something like that, which is crazy with the library behind me. I legitimately did not read a book. 

But here is the thing – you continue to take one step in front of another. Like you know what it is? People just overcomplicate it and they throw in the towel too early. This is a learnable skill. This is not a talent. I am by no means talented. I have no talents whatsoever. None. I really truly do not. And this you can learn. Over time you’ll get better, you’ll get more efficient, you’ll get more effective with this. And so, anybody and everybody on here can do this if they’re willing to learn it, implement it, and continue to take one step in front of another.

Jaime:	So, what do you say, though, to second guessing or this wavering? Because that's the thing. Is it good enough? I don't know. Do I put it out? You know what I mean? There’s all this that stops them before they start anyway. What do you say to that?

Todd:	Yeah. Pull the trigger. The beauty is that, without getting too deep, the beauty of the type of marketing that we do, which is based on direct response marketing, is that direct response marketing is all metric driven. It's all data driven. And I look at six numbers. So, I don't want to be careful that I'm not scaring anybody here. It's all numbers driven. And so, meaning that it's not subjective, it's objective. It's not based on my feeling. 

There’ve been times in the past, years ago where I thought I felt, “This campaign is gonna be a winner.” And the numbers said differently. I don't care about how I feel, how my team feels, how my right-hand person, this marketer on our team. I don't care about their feelings, their gut, their opinions. What I care about is the numbers, and the numbers will tell you. And so, look, I would tell you, “Launch it, get it out.” 

The beauty also online, even with something – like you wanted to do Facebook advertising, maybe the Belt Method, is you can start small with a small budget. Let the numbers tell you. The data will very quickly tell you. The problem that so many marketers and entrepreneurs have when it comes to their marketing is that they never launch it, or they hesitate to launch it and then they make these tweaks. 

They’re endlessly tweaking, like endlessly tweaking, changing. But they're not changing things based on data. They're changing things based on opinion, and they have no way of knowing whether they're helping or hurting. And so, you wanna go from subjective decision-making with your marketing to objective as quickly as you can. In order to do that, you have to get it live. Once you get it live, we can just use the data, the metrics to tell us whether it's working, whether it's not. If it's not, what's not working. Where we need to optimize, enhance. 

And so, you gotta stop making these decisions subjectively. The reality is you've got to recognize that you will likely always have doubts about whether it's gonna work or not. I've been doing this for 20 years, two decades, and there are times I release campaigns and I'm like, “I don't know what's gonna happen. I think it's gonna work.” But all we've got is – I believe it's gonna work. But the beauty is we put it out and we let the data and metrics tell us. 

One other thing, and this for some people might not be motivating, but it really should be – that is this: Lots of campaigns will not work out of the gate. That's okay. That's normal. That's part of the business. That's typical. I'm telling you, for all of you, I’ve worked with the best of the best. Some of the best marketers, the best entrepreneurs on the planet come to me when they need help with their own marketing campaigns, and I can assure you that the overwhelming majority do not hit home runs with every campaign. Most of the campaigns don’t work out of the gate. 

And so, that iteration and optimization is part of the game. It's normal, it's commonplace. Be okay with it. Set the right expectations but pull the trigger so we can start to get data, metrics, and use that data and metrics to make our decisions. 

Jaime:	Okay. Yeah. So, you say all the same things I do. I absolutely love you already. So, what are the six metrics though? Because that's I wanna know six. Because everybody gets overwhelmed with all the things. What are your six?

Todd:	Oh wow. You're really putting me – okay. So, this is where, and I don't wanna scare folks so –

Jaime:	A lot of people get it. Keep going. 

Todd:	Yeah. So, there are really two categories of metrics, and this could be a whole conversation in and of itself. But there are two categories of metrics that I look at specific to our marketing campaigns. There are economic performance indicators and then there are marketing performance indicators. 

The economic performance indicators, which I'll give you in just a second, are the number that I always look at. They're the ones that determine whether a campaign is viable or not, meaning whether we're gonna continue to run it, we're gonna scale traffic, we're gonna get more buyers from it, and so on. Those metrics include, No. 1, average order value. The average amount of money that a new buyer spends with you the day that they become a buyer. 

So, if you sell one product, that's all you sell, and it sells for $100, your average order value is gonna be $100. Every time a person becomes a buyer, if you're only selling one thing in that campaign, that one thing, $100, that's the average order value. If you offer an upsell of $200 and let's just say 50% of the people take advantage of that upsell, that means that that upsell, if you price it at $200, that means that that upsell is worth $100 a buyer to you.

So, every time you get a buyer, that's worth $100 to you, plus the hundred of the main offer. That means you have an average order value of $200. Some people spend $300. Some people spend $100. But your average order value is $200. That is the value side of the equation under economic performance numbers.

The other side, of course, is our cost per acquisition. And so, some people refer to it as customer acquisition costs. How much does it cost you to acquire a single buyer? So, if we spend $1,000 on Facebook ads and we get ten new buyers from that – well, we spent $1,000 divided by the ten buyers tells us that we have a cost per acquisition of $100. It cost us $100 per buyer to acquire them. So, we've got a cost of $100. If we go back to that $200 AOV, it costs us $100 every time we invest. We invest $100, we make back $200. And we deal with averages. 

So, if every time we spent $100 to acquire a buyer we made back $200, I don't need to look at any other metrics. I don't need to look at any other campaign. In essence, you're turning $1 into $2. The reality is, for what it's worth, going down a different track for one second, but if we were investing $100, if we had $100 cost per acquisition and we had $100 AOV, so we spend $100 to get a buyer, every buyer spends $100, that’s what we call breakeven. 

I would do that all day every day. Because you’re acquiring the most valuable asset in your business for free. If your bank account is no less today than it was two days ago except now you have the single most valuable asset in your business, which is a buyer that you can then go on and sell more and more stuff to on the back end. 

The third economic performance number that we use, and I'm only gonna talk on the surface about this because this is really for more advanced folks, is lifetime value. Or really the way we look at it is like one-month value, three-month value, six-month value. What is the average buyer worth to you one month after they become a buyer? What is the average buyer worth to you three months after they become a buyer? What is the average buyer worth to you six months after they become a buyer? 

The beauty again, with direct response over time as your business grows and matures is those numbers become repeatable and reliable. And so, what that allows us to do is that number allows us to operate more like an investor where we're investing in the acquisition of assets, we're investing in the acquisition of customers, those customers have a cost, and those customers have a value today and a future value. 

So, maybe we might say we have an average order value the day that they become a buyer of $100, or let’s go back to the $200 to not confuse people. And then let’s say we have a six-month value of $800. So, they’re worth $200 to us on day zero, the day that they become a buyer. They’re worth $800 six months later. Well, maybe now we’re willing to have a cost per acquisition of $150. Because we’re invested and we know that even though we’ll go negative when we acquire the buyer, in several months were gonna be at breakeven and profitable and all that. So, that –

Jaime:	I’m just gonna stop you real quick because I love what you just – because everybody says lifetime value. “Oh, I don’t know because it hasn’t been a lifetime yet.” The name of the name is just totally messed up. But you just broke down for six months. Everyone can do that. Everyone can get a gist of how much it’s gonna be. So, thank you for breaking it down that way because I think people get scared of it.

Todd:	Yeah. Yeah. Well said. And I think the healthiest way to look at it is what’s the average buyer worth to you 30 days later and 60 days later. You don’t even need to worry about six months, especially early like – first of all, early on during kinda start up and growth phase, folks shouldn’t even be worried about lifetime value, one-month, two-month, three-month. They should just be looking at – I would tell them operate at breakeven or better. 

If you can acquire a buyer at breakeven, you spend $100, you make back, and you spend $100, you make back $100. It’s amazing. You are acquiring buyers for free. Like geez Louise, all you gotta do is market and sell to them a second time and that’s all found money at that point. And so, that is the economic side. 

And then on the performance side, which we can spend far less time on, the marketing performance side, we’ve got your typical metrics. The marketing performance side is about how is the different pieces and parts of a campaign working and performing. So, if you use an opt-in page, you got opt-in rate, you got sales conversion rate, you got order form completion rate, and you’ve got upsell take rate. 

Those metrics, though, here’s the thing, and it’s important for folks to understand – those numbers, those metrics, are just used to understand how the different pieces of a campaign are performing so that you can fix or identify the constraint in a campaign if the economic performance indicators are off. If the economic numbers are off, like our cost per acquisition is sky high, we then ask, “Why?” In order to identify, “Why?” you need to look at marketing performance numbers. 

Those numbers will include the numbers that I just rattled off and sometimes if you’re doing paid advertising they’ll include like what’s our click-through rate, what does it cost us to get a visitor, and then what’s our opt-in rate, what’s it cost us to get a lead, all that kind of stuff. And so, here’s the thing though – those marketing performance numbers, opt-in rate, sales conversion rate, they do not determine the viability of a marketing campaign. 

You could have a 10% sales conversion rate and be losing money like crazy. You also could have a half a percent sales conversion rate and be making money, profiting on the front end every time you acquire a buyer. And so, we don’t use those numbers to determine the viability. We use the economic numbers. At the end of the day, you can’t deposit sales conversion rate, right?

Jaime:	It’s a good way to put it. Good way to put it. I have a 90% conversion rate, but it does squat, but it’s totally worth it. Yeah.

Todd:	I had a client once who came in, this is years ago, who came in, a student, wanted to learn and deploy the E5 method and he said, “Todd, the only thing that I won’t change is the opt-in page.” He was using this opt-in page. And I said, “Why?” And he said, “Because the opt-in page is getting something like a 55% opt-in rate from cold traffic.” And I said, “Wow. That’s really good.” And I said to him, “How many sales has that 55% opt-in rate produced for you?” And he said, “None.” And I said, “So, are you telling me that if I could get you a ton of sales every day, but it would mean that your opt-in rate would drop down to 40%, that’s a no-go?” 

You have to – what are we in the business to do? We’re not in the business of generating the highest opt-in rate we can. We’re in the business of ROI. We’re investors. We’re investing in assets. I want my return on the investment in that asset to be what I need it to be. Period. And so, if I have a campaign that – let’s say I have a campaign that is breakeven, for example, $100 cost per acquisition, $100 average order value, I don’t care about the marketing performance metrics. I don’t care what the conversion rate is. I don’t care any – none of those things will change the fact that that campaign is viable and bringing us new buyers for free every day.

Jaime:	So, how often do you tweak? So, let’s say for example you do have that. It’s an ATM machine. You put in $1, you get out $2. Do you even bother with tweaking anything on the conversion? You just back away slowly?

Todd:	Yeah. I don’t wanna touch it.

Jaime:	Put more money –

Todd:	Listen, I tell my team, when we’ve got something that’s working extraordinarily well, I’m like, “Listen, don’t change it, don’t even log into the thing. Don’t do anything. Don’t do anything. Don’t even look at it.” Why? When it is within our KPI, our key performance indicator, and let’s say for us that is breakeven. 

And look, in the spirit of transparency, we have a lot of campaigns we’re willing to go negative. So, we’re willing to go out of pocket somewhere between $20 and $30 for every buyer that we get. But let’s say we have campaign that’s somewhere between that and breakeven, so it’s within KPI. Done. Done. We’re not in the business of endlessly toying with these campaigns. We’re in the business of getting them within the KPI because of the ROI that we want.

Jaime:	What about longevity of them, though? Because eventually after a while you kinda do have to tweak it, right?

Todd:	Correct. So, when it drops out of KPI, that’s when we’ll go in there and tweak it.

Jaime:	Yeah. Not rocket science, people.

Todd:	And sometimes I will. In the spirit of transparency, sometimes there are campaigns that when they drop out of KPI, they could drop out of KPI for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the idea behind the campaign is just no longer a fresh, interesting, new idea. It’s been knocked off. Like our competitors came along and copied it and now it’s old news to the marketplace. That requires a much bigger tweak than another issue, let’s say. Sometimes you gotta scrap the campaign after six months or seven months or whatever it may be. But I think, I wouldn’t even, for the majority of folks, I wouldn’t even worry about that.

Jaime:	They haven’t even gotten there yet. Yeah.

Todd:	They get their first campaign rocking and rolling and their whole life is gonna change because they’re finally gonna see – like I saw many, many moons ago, if you can generate one new sale you can generate ten, and you can generate ten you can generate 100, and you can generate 100 the sky’s the limit to what it is that you can do. And the opportunity is there. So, focus on the first step and don’t worry about that bridge. We’ll cross it when we come to it. 

Jaime:	Well, I appreciate that we’re not selling them, “And then you get 100 sales right away!” You know what I mean? You said on one of your website videos, it just takes some hard work. But it’s not rocket science and as long as you keep moving forward, and don’t screw things up too, too much, you can at least make a lot more progress than you are now not doing anything. 

Todd:	Yeah. I mean, look, I always say to folks, “Look, if there was a magic button, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be pushing the magic button.”

Jaime:	Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Yeah.

Todd:	Right? And I wish there was. I’m like everybody else. I wish there was. Look, you’ve gotta recognize without going off on this crazy tangent that a single good properly designed, like we’ve talked about today, marketing campaign can truly change your life. But I always say, “It only takes one . . .” The whole “one funnel away.” Like my buddy, one funnel. I do believe that people are only one funnel away. That’s not to say that it’s your next funnel, and that’s not to say that it’s not gonna take iterations and optimization and work. It is. It is. That’s the nature of the beast. 

But if you’re willing to do that, my gosh. We’re talking about your life here. And so when people ask me, “How do you – any advice to get motivated?” I’m like, “No.” Because you’re either motivated by the outcome or you’re not. If you’re not jacked up and excited about the idea of having your own business where sales are coming in every single day like clockwork and you’re changing lives and impacting people, there ain’t nothing that I can say to you that’s gonna change that.

Jaime:	Preach. All right. So, I know we have to start wrapping up because, oh my goodness, I could talk to you all day. And of course, we already said we’re gonna have you back on so there’s that, too. We’re gonna do a part two. But for the last question, what is one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Todd:	I’m gonna go back to – I’m gonna cheat and I’m gonna go back to, I’m gonna say, please, please, please take that time, set aside time, put forty minutes on your calendar at some point over the next week to sit down with that pad and pen and I want you to interrogate your method, your approach, your system, your formula, your process, whatever you wanna call it, to identify your unique mechanism. 

And then name it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t go promotional. Name it. And if you do that one step I think that you’ll have a little bit more fire in the belly to take that mechanism to the world. And so, if you could do that I would be so proud of each and every one of you.

Jaime:	Foundational things might be unsexy on the outset but they freaking make money. So, you should totally do it.

Todd:	Well said. Well said.

Jaime:	Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Todd. Tell us where we can find more about you.

Todd:	So, you could go to toddbrown, T-O-D-D-B-R-O-W-N.me. I believe that if they go to E5 bundle, so that’s the letter E, the numeral 5, bundle, B-U-N-D-L-E.com. I think the team has my book there with some other bonus goodies. I think folks just have to cover shipping or something like that, $10, $15, something like that. Well worth it if you wanna learn more about the E5 Method. And on social, Instagram, @toddbrown I think it is on Instagram. And that’s all.

Jaime:	I love it. And on Facebook there’s like a bazillion people tagging you on all the mentor. You’re amazing, blah, blah, blah. So, if anyone wants to read any of that stuff, even though customer testimonials aren’t worth anything.

Todd:	It’s all nonsense. It’s all crazy. It’s all nuts. It’s crazy. You know what? I’ll tell you – I’ll leave folks with this. I’m a regular dude from New Jersey who was a terrible student, total goofball. I’m so thankful that the only thing I can do fairly well is marketing because I can’t do anything else. And so, you just gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other. You can do this. There’s no question. You don’t need talent. You don’t need any special connections. You don’t need a whole bunch of money. I started with $800. You can do it. You just gotta keep going. Commit to it and you can make it happen.

Jaime:	Awesome. And thank goodness for the internet. Thanks so much, Todd. I hope you have an absolute amazing day.

Todd:	You too. Thank you so much for having me.

Categories: All, Business, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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