When it comes to converting traffic into leads and sales everybody believes that if they can just get the funnel right everything else just falls into place.

That's like waiting to see the Tooth Fairy riding a magic unicorn over the rainbow.

I see the inside of so many businesses these days, and it's never about the funnel.

Let me be the bad guy and tell you the cold, hard truth.

Your funnel is important but not in the way you think it is.

It's about the mindset of the people who are behind every click and where they are in the process of becoming a buyer.

Now I’m going to prove this point with a real life example.

I was asked to review a software and see if it would be a good fit.

The call with the sales rep was set. Four minutes into the call things fell apart to the point the rep asked to end the call and asked if would I give him some advice.

Here is the problem. I didn’t go through the top of the funnel or the mid funnel.

I jumped right to the bottom and the funnel was supposed to indoctrinate me on what questions I should be asking.

He was freaked out because I was asking the really hard questions and pointing out the flaws in the product.

This was the glaring hole in the funnel. All I did was hit up a few review sites, and it didn’t take long to see that a number of people have been really unhappy.

Sales had been making some huge promises that customer support could not live up to.  

Every question I asked was to lead him into defending a shortcoming in the product.

I even told him what software we currently have.

It was a nightmare for him. He kept telling me why they are better.

Here is a side note for you.

Nobody buys because you are a little bit better. You need to be 10x better with an easy on boarding process.

At the end I gave him a 30 minute consultation on why the funnel as he knows it is dead for this niche.

Funnels still work for a lot of niches. But if you are dealing with high value leads who are educated, you need to drop the funnel and focus on optimizing the buying process.

These days all any prospect has to do is Google a few things and they have as much information as the sales rep.

Gone are the days where you could control the information.

Most of the time the buyer has already done their due diligence and are deciding whether to do business with you.

That might be hard for a lot of people to accept, but that’s how it is now. You need to be able to adopt to this change or your competition will.

If you want to have me review your marketing strategy, let me know. I have a few spots left to help clients this month.

Every day I get emails from people who think they have a traffic problem.

Unfortunately, they have been sold on the idea that traffic is a cure all for about every problem in life.

Got a problem, traffic can fix it. Just like the snake oil cures of the Wild West.

If they could only get some traffic, it would be all rainbows and unicorns.

Traffic is not your problem...and it’s not your answer.

Please print this and tape it to your bathroom mirror, because it's that important.

“Traffic is easy to get. You buy it and extract the maximum value from every click.” - Charles Kirkland

End of story.

That's how you get traffic.

Now let Dr. Charles diagnose your problem and give you a prescription for ROI.

Please answer the questions below truthfully.

Do you have a predictable way to get the maximum value from every click? Yes or No.

Are you learning every day what will allow you to increase the value of your click? Yes or No.

Do you have a framework for testing that measures the entire funnel and not just a single page? Yes or No.

Are you cataloging your results and creating your own best practices that you can reference in the future? Yes or No.

Are you implementing what you learn with each split test? Yes or No.

Are you buying the highest quality traffic for your split tests? Yes or No.

The amount of traffic you can buy is a direct correlation of your ability to measure and maximize it.

Without having systems in place to improve, you’ll always be stuck fighting for a trickle of low quality traffic.

Once your systems are in place then you can start to gauge the quality of your marketing and sales process.

Everything will start to improve.

Instead of focusing on what button can I push to get cheap traffic, your focus changes to how can I pay more to get 10X more traffic.

Ad networks reward higher bid and quality scores with high quality traffic.

Until you can crank up your bids, you have to deal with the lower quality traffic.

Reply and let me know how you did on the Yes or No section.

I don’t need to tell you that Facebook took a public beating in 2018 and why that's good for you.

But here is the problem, the public can’t leave Facebook alone.

Think about this:

• It provides instant on demand entertainment.
• It holds all your favorite pictures and memories.
• It gets rid of the boredom for a few minutes.

Facebook was designed to be addictive and they are ramping up that big time in 2019.

They are betting the farm on Stories.

Facebook predicts that Stories will be the most dominant form of social sharing by 2019.

They are giving Stories prime placement at the top of the page.

Right now it's a huge untapped opportunity for free advertising from Facebook and it's your time to leverage this before everybody else does.

If you decide to skip this, it’s OK. I was the guy begging my friends to use Facebook Ads right after it launched, and it fell of deaf ears.

Let me take the mystery out of growing your business with a 360 picture of your advertising ROI. It’s not about spending more money on advertising; it’s about optimizing what’s working.

Click the link below and let's talk.
https://mediabuyerassociation.com/consulting/

Technology is changing so fast that it's a full time job keeping up with the changes.

As we blend online and offline we are creating a seamless experience that will allow the average Joe to always be connected.

Great?

Maybe not.

If you are running YouTube Ads, hold on to your seat.

YouTube is now streaming movies for free like The Terminator and a number of 80’s and 90’s classics. I’m sure you can guess how they will monetize this.

Yes, with your ads.

Did you know that close to 20% of YouTube content is watched on smart TVs?

According to YouTube, TV sets are its fastest growing medium!

Smart TV’s will play an ever increasing role in video ads, and we need to embrace these devices.

My question to you is how does your funnel work on a smart TV?

Thanks,
Charles Kirkland

Did you meet your 2018 revenue goals?

Was this another year where you worked non stop while producing very little results?

Are you jumping on the latest marketing fad hoping it’s the silver bullet to move the needle in your business?

Are you spending way too much precious time planning vs executing? And when you do get something done the results are lackluster?

Do you feel the competition is gaining market share while you are struggling to hold your ground?

Do you feel guilty when you’re not working and the little time you do spend with your family you're distracted?

Do you find yourself taking out your business struggles on your family and friends?

Are you wondering if maybe it's time to cut your losses and give up?

Are you running around like a Chihuahua on crack multi-tasking yourself to death?

If you answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, it’s OK.

Every day is a brand new opportunity to turn things around.

But here is the problem.

Action doesn’t equal results. You probably work harder than most people you know.

But you don’t seem to have the results you know you're capable of producing.

It's your lack of a Marketing and Growth Plan that's sabotaging everything.

Every entrepreneur and business is different.

You can’t just throw a bunch of random tactics and strategies together and expect them to work.

They might create some results, but they aren’t repeatable.

Without a Marketing and Growth Plan you can expect to work harder in 2019 while getting less results.

I’m here to help a few entrepreneurs create lightspeed growth for 2019 with a Marketing and Growth Plan that produces insane results.

Together we will create a personalized Marketing and Growth Plan so you’ll have clarity and direction on what to do and when to do it.

I have booked out time to work with 5 new clients to help them create a Marketing and Growth Plan to allow them to dominate their niche in 2019.

These spots will go fast. If you are on the fence, think about this.

If the cost of planning is expensive, what's the cost of business failure?

Click here and grab one of the 5 available spots.

https://charleskirkland.thrivecart.com/marketing-growth-plan/

Talk soon,
Charles Kirkland

P.S. Business growth doesn't happen by accident. It takes a proven Marketing and Growth Plan designed for your business to make it happen.

Grab one of the 5 spots here.
https://charleskirkland.thrivecart.com/marketing-growth-plan/

What I’m going to talk about today will not apply to 99% of my email list.

For the 1% who are ready for market domination, this email will be a game changer.

In fact, I would suggest printing this out and taping it to the wall or put it into Ever-note. 

Advanced digital marketing is about strategy, not tactics.

The average marketer majors in the minor details that can’t move the needle in business.

I don’t care what your data is telling you, changing the button color from blue to green and getting a 5% boost in conversions is 100% BS.

What that creates is an artificial lift that can’t be replicated across larger data sets.

I laugh until it hurts when I hear people talk about destroying their competition.

The fact that you are talking about playing catch up tells me you’ll never be #1.

To be number #1 you need to own a new market category that you create on your own terms.

If you have to play by somebody else’s rules, you are doomed from the start.

Every market has a dominant player, and it's virtually impossible to beat them on their terms.

Watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eEG5LVXdKo

Steve Jobs was a business genius on so many different levels.

In the 90's when people told me they used a MAC I would suggest they take off the training wheels and get a real computer.
y for your product.

Get a PC.

Today I’m a hard core Apple fan boy and the thought of using a PC makes me want to jump out a 1 story window and run away.

Steve knew he couldn't market MAC products as the ultimate business computer.

Microsoft owned the business market and fighting them in that niche would have been a blood bath.

Instead, he positioned MAC as the computer for cool people.

If you wanted to use Access or Excel, get a PC.

But for fun things like music, home video, and pictures, get a MAC.

He created a whole new category of fun and easy-to-use computers and BOOM!

Copying the competition is a death trap. It worked a few years ago.

Even if the product is the same as your competition, create a new category where your product is #1 and everybody else has to play by your rules.

That's how you win.

?You can’t outspend a dominant market player into bankruptcy.

You don’t win a business war through attrition. Instead, you become #1 in a new category.

If you are part of the 1% who this email resonates with, let’s see how we can work together to meet your business goals.

http://trinitymarketingagency.com/get-a-free-consultation/

Dominating a market takes serious marketing chops that very few people ever have. You can’t do the same things as your competition and expect to win. To win, you need to create a new market category for your product.

The fastest way to grow

What’s the fastest way to move the needle of an existing business?

   A) Create more ads
   B) Use new traffic sources
   C) Jump on the latest social media platforms
   D) Blog your heart out
   E) Create a podcast
   F) None on the above

Since you have been on my list awhile, you know the answer is F. None on the above.

Marketers often think that being busy equals results. The harder the work, the more results.

This mindset was created by an outdated education system that was designed in the industrial age.

The more you do, the more you make. It's a 1 to 1 exchange.

But when you apply this to digital marketing it creates a trap that will kill you faster than the token screaming girl at the start of every horror movie.

If you already have an existing online business with traffic, you need to focus on optimizing it.

Do not run out looking for the next magic bullet traffic source with dirt cheap clicks.

Instead, you must optimize what you already have. This will pay dividends down the line.

Here's a short list of things to optimize.

Page load time. This can be as simple as installing a plugin. I really like W3 Total Cache. https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Or it may require you to upgrade the server. https://wpengine.com is really a great host. You get what you pay for in the world of hosting.

You also get the advantage of using the WP engine content delivery network (CDN) which can make a huge difference in speed.

Optimize your images. It's not uncommon to see clients who are using stock images with huge dimensions and 300 DPI for a thumbnail.

Use https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/ to fix this problem.

Use Google Tag Manager to load and block scripts on certain pages. Is it really necessary to fire every tag in the world every time someone visits?

https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/tag-manager/

I personally use https://www.ghostery.com to check how many extra tags I have installed and forget about.

Do you have old plugins that are hogging load time? If you don’t need it, turn it off and delete it.

Host your landing pages on the fastest platforms you have access to. I have my blog hosted on a cloud server, but my optin pages are on ClickFunnels because they load so much faster.

Speed is king. Anything you can do to improve the speed of your site will amplify every click.

Do me a favor this weekend and test your site load time on https://tools.pingdom.com and see how long it takes to load. You might be surprised at your load time.

I have time to work with 3 more qualified clients in November. Click the link below and let’s see if you are a good fit.

http://trinitymarketingagency.com/get-a-free-consultation/

Talk soon,
Charles Kirkland

P.S. Can I help you create a marketing campaign to get you more customers this month?

Click here. http://trinitymarketingagency.com/get-a-free-consultation/

Billion dollar lessons learned the hard way

Over the years I’ve worked with Fortune 500 businesses, celebrities’ brands, startups, and businesses that are struggling to this day.

I’ve noticed that success or failure never depends on just 1 thing.

It's a failure of multiple small things that tank a business.

I want to share some lessons that I’ve learned and apply to my own business and consulting.

1. Everybody is accountable for success.

Never hire people who want a job.

When people have the owner mentally they go above and beyond any job description. If you tell me something is not your job, you’re right. It's not your job anymore because you’re about to be replaced.

2. Nobody is too good to do the smallest task. While having lunch with a founder he told me that he doesn’t expect his workers to do anything he wouldn’t do. That includes changing the toilet paper when it runs out.

3. Systems are only as good as the results they produce.

A lot of businesses have systems in place. But if the results aren’t living up to your expectations, you have a system failure, not a personal problem.

Building a better fool proof system is the key to getting predictable results.

4. Time is not your friend. I can’t tell you how many times I have worked with a business where the business was on a nose dive to the grave and nobody really cared.

It drives me crazy. It's easy to ignore when things are going bad and you think that all you need is better marketing. Great marketing can’t save a business with poor economies.

5. Your numbers don’t lie. Forget all the advisers who tell you that you need to lose money to acquire customers when you don’t have the money to start with.

That works if you are an established player or you’re funded to the point where you can bleed money to acquire market share.

When you’re trying to figure out how to make payroll, the number one concern needs to be how to make money now.

At the end of the day cash-flow is king.

6. Daily meetings. I believe in short 10 minute daily meetings where we have a few minutes to review numbers and talk about what we are doing.

The longer you go between checking your sales and expense numbers, the faster you can sink your business.

I have our numbers posted daily on a whiteboard where I can see today and the last 3 months.

There is no reason not to know your numbers.

I hope you enjoyed this and maybe it has you thinking about your own business. Reply and let me know what you are going to do different in your business.

Thanks,
Charles

This week on a client call I was asked, “What kind of emails convert best?”

The client noted that sometimes I send long emails that are designed to educate like my article on how to build a high converting landing page.

https://mediabuyerassociation.com/build-high-converting-landing-page/

Other times I send short, sweet emails just asking for a click.

Other emails are 100% story based like this.
https://mediabuyerassociation.com/agency-kickstart/

So the big question is: which style converts better?

But I think that’s the wrong question.

Think about this.

You don’t take a Jeep to the Indy 500, and you don’t take an Indy car to a mud rally.

Like each one of these cars has a different use, my email styles are different and are used for different purposes.

I like to switch up email types and that allows me to give value to the largest audience segment.

Just like there is no single best car, food or house.

You have to make sure to mix it up.

I still have a limited number of slots open to work with clients. Click the link below and let's see if we are a good fit.

https://calendly.com/mediabuyer/agency-strategy-session

Thanks,
Charles

Ever wake up and decide that nothing in the house even remotely appeals to you for breakfast?

Well, that was me today. For a few days I have been trying to cut carbs from my diet.

By the way, I love bread.

So today we headed to Summerville to this little place called Toast.

I have been hearing good things about Toast, but this was my first visit.

It's the kind of place that would be better suited for a downtown location. But it's tucked away in a nondescript strip mall.

I ordered a southern traditional breakfast and when it came out I was shocked at how big the biscuit was.

It was beyond HUGE. It was massive X2. I skipped eating it, and it taunted me and called my name the entire ride home.

Here's how this applies to your marketing.

Just like it took me years of hearing about Toast before I tried it, your prospects need to see your marketing ads multiple times before they are ready to take action as well.

Prospects will forget about you and your site. In fact, most people will never visit your site again.

We often only have one chance to get somebody's attention.

Once they move to a different page, good luck getting them back unless you're using re-marketing.

Here is one of my re-marketing banners...and yes, I put my face on everything.

See, when clients hire me the first thing I do is set up re-marketing and the ROI is always insane.

It’s a fast way to create a win for the client and that gives them the confidence to give me more leverage in handling their marketing.

But if you can’t make your re-marketing work, you have an offer problem. No amount of traffic is going to fix that.

If you don’t have re-marketing set up please for the love of kittens, puppy dogs and all things nice set it up right now.

Or if you want my team to set it up for you click here to book at time to talk.

?http://trinitymarketingagency.com/get-a-free-consultation

Thanks,
Charles