Selling products online and strategizing a concise plan to make your online business bloom is actually way tougher than it looks.
Online Marketing is an art in itself. And as Jared, my friendly neighborhood enamel pin designer learned the hard way, just any online marketing and sales strategy won’t cut it in the ever-growing competitive environment.
What are enamel pins you ask? Well, you’ve probably seen them… but didn’t know what they were called. Enamel pins are trendy decorative items that you can attach to your bag, jackets, T-shirts, hats, or anywhere else.
You might’ve seen people wearing them at colleges, political conferences, sporting events, charity dinners, etc. Here, take a look at some images yourself.
Picture courtesy: Pinterest
Jared had started an eCommerce business in a niche market. He made and sold custom enamel pins online, but, after a few months, things got more difficult as the sales figures started to decline.
It wasn’t until he got his hands on Brunson’s Dotcom Secrets, did things start to look around. The book helped him to restructure his online business successfully from the ground up, and it has been growing ever since.
Why should you read it? Well, let me explain in this review of “DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online“.
Table of Contents
What is DotCom Secrets all about?
Even though I read this book recently, it was published way back in 2015. BUT the strategies present in Brunson’s book finds validity even today.
In an ever engaging and charismatic manner, the author puts forward a lot of actionable advice for new entrepreneurs to help them get their business started and sell products online.
And unlike most other ‘business strategy books’ which you get today, I found ‘DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online’ quite easy to follow.
Jared, too, found Russell’s personal stories and anecdotes to be relatable. And it helped him to realize a few tactics that he could implement in his own business.
About the author.
To those new to the field of entrepreneurship, Russell Brunson is one of the most successful online entrepreneurs out there.
His rise to success started with him selling everything he could get his hands on.
From selling potato guns, DVDs, shakes, t-shirts, and even body supplements, Russell raised himself to be a salesperson who can turn a profit out of anything.
He later co-founded EtisonLLC, which is now famous for its amazingly successful tool called ClickFunnels. He then used to create an entire ecosystem around it, and include certain books like Expert Secrets, along with live events and a variety of online marketing products. Besides Expert Secrets, Brunson authored as well Lead Funnels and 108 Split Test Winners among others.
Who can benefit from reading DotCom Secrets?
DotCom Secrets is the perfect guide book for you if:
1. You have an existing business.
If you’re yet to have a business that gives value to people, then the contents of the book will be of no help at all.
But if you already have a pre-existing business model with a product or service to sell, along with a website with some traffic, then Brunson’s guide might just be exactly what you need to create the building blocks of a high-converting sales funnel.
2. You’re confident in your core product.
For Jared, his core products were always his enamel pins, which he could customize on demand.
Honestly, he was always pretty good at that, but what he had trouble with was managing his own website, and pulling in the right customers. He found it to be rather overwhelming, as no matter what he tried, he was never able to reach a broader audience.
DotCom Secrets taught him how to identify what his clients want.
It’s essential to give them a design value and show them your ability to grow, without which your chances at making your online business successful will be very low.
3. You’re sure of your brand identity.
By ‘brand identity’ here I mean ‘what your company or business is all about.’
If you have a solid grasp of your company’s image and the various facets and elements that it comprises of, then you’ll be able to use DotCom Secrets to its max potential. Particularly if you read Expert Secrets as well.
Book Contents.
Let’s talk about the aspects of the book in terms of the various features and sections that it represents. There are namely 5 sections in total, each forming a sort of a base for the next.
1. The Value Ladder and Sales Funnels.
The initial section of the book starts off with Russell introducing the concept of the “value ladder.”
So, what is the value ladder?
Imagine a statistical graph of all the products and services that your business offers to its target clients, but in ascending order of value and pricing.
Russell in the book shows it as something like this:
As an entrepreneur, you will always want to sell your best, which is often your most expensive product/service as much as you can.
But as the newest business in the block, your clients will rarely go directly for your more expensive services.
With the value ladder concept, Russell teaches you to start small by offering people something which has a much lower price point so that they get to know your brand.
This helps create your brand awareness in the long run. And once your customers know the value that you can provide, then a percentage of those buyers will climb up your “ladder” and purchase your more expensive services.
2. Communicating with your customers.
Jared had a tough time trying to communicate with his client base.
His online persona was not all that inviting, and I found that the customers who were willing to invest in his pins were not being able to identify with the image that he was trying to portray.
Russell, in this section, talks about how vitally important it is for a new business and entrepreneur to have an attractive online persona.
The entrepreneur needs to attract his desired customers so as to build a strong base of followers.
Russell talks about four major guidelines to go by that you can use to build an attractive character.
- The attractive character must have a backstory.
- He/she must be able to speak in parables.
- Should be able to share his/her character flaws.
- Must be a polarizing figure.
DotCom Secrets shows it as something like this:
After going over the persona elements, Russell talks about some amazing email marketing strategies to help keep your follower base engaged in your products.
There are two email composition methods he will teach you: the ‘Soap Opera Sequence’ and the ‘Daily Seinfeld Emails.”
A. The Soap Opera Sequence.
The Soap Opera Sequence is all about helping you to reach out to your customers and help them bond with your character.
Russell teaches you how to keep your emails open-ended, easy to read, and as entertaining and inviting as possible.
The ultimate goal of this step is to make your subscribers want to open each of your emails.
With some personal anecdotes and examples, Russell explains his thinking process behind each email that he sends. They can help you to mix and match them to fit your particular business model.
B. The Daily Seinfeld Sequence.
This emailing strategy is about maintaining the bond with the subscribers, which you were able to make with the Soap Opera Sequence.
The Daily Seinfeld Sequence, according to Russell, is an essential step in helping you keep your business relevant in today’s competitive market.
Without regular interaction with customers, you run the risk of them forgetting about you, thereby compromising on the effectiveness of the rest of your Internet marketing strategies.
Daily Seinfeld emails (much like the sitcom) are made to be entertaining. Only 10% percent of it will be actual content, while the rest 90% will exist solely for the enjoyment of the reader.
This will help you to engage freely with your customers and communicate with them much more openly.
3. The ‘Right’ Sales Funnel for Selling Your Products and Services
Making a well-rounded and successful funneling strategy for your startup is no ball game.
I find it to be one of the most challenging aspects of running a business because there are a tonne of variables that you need to keep in mind.
Russell, in this section, teaches the value of implementing a pre-existing funneling method.
Don’t make one from scratch if you’re not confident about it, but rather make use of methods that are done by others who have already created a successful funnel that will help you making money.
And to help you out with doing that, Russell will teach you how to reverse engineer an already existing strategy.
In this section, he also talks about the 7 phases of funneling, and how important each phase is to the entire process.
Getting traffic to your website is not enough, you need to convert those visitors into customers, to do so you need well-crafted funnels that will help you make money.
4. Funnels and scripts.
Section four of the book is where Russell truly hits it home with his readers.
Here, he provides some fantastic examples and scripts of some of his top sales funnels and even goes deep into specific details.
You will be able to learn about the psychology and thinking that he uses in making his funnels along with how to structure the perfect OTO or ‘One Time Offer’ deal, which your subscribers will have a hard time refusing what you’re selling.
The seven step-by-step for creating funnels which Russell goes into are:
- Two-Step – Free plus shipping Funnel.
- Self Liquidating Offer Funnel
- Continuity Funnel
- The Perfect Webinar Funnel
- Invisible Funnel Webinar
- Product Launch Funnel
- High Ticket, Three Step application Funnel
5. The ClickFunnel.
The final section of the book is nothing but an advertisement for ClickFunnels, really.
It’s a software for building great sales funnels without needing to learn how to build a website or using WordPress for that matter. Russell has been trying to teach in the book of all the types of sales funnel and scripts you can make for your business and how to utilize them to their full potential.
But that’s more or less about it for the section.
Customer Testimonials.
When it comes to the legitimacy of products like business strategy books or even self-help books and guides, it’s always important to see if it’s a scam or not.
Apart from taking Jared’s experiences with the book into account, I have gone through a lot of customer reviews, and the feedback is fairly positive.
So, it’s definitely not a scam.
Now, it’s important to note here that DotCom Secrets is not a miracle product, and it will not help you have sky-reaching profits overnight.
It will, in essence, show you the steps necessary to help you create and build a business model that will need to first ferment, and only then will your business slowly start to bloom.
Some readers have found some concepts in the book to be hard to follow and suggest that the second reading of it is always a good idea to grasp every facet of Russell’s teachings prime.
All in all, users have voted it to be a rather well-rounded and instructive product, which has helped them to get their startup off the ground.
Here are some positive testimonials about the book:
Where Can You Get Dotcom Secrets in PDF?
You can get a free copy of Dotcom Secrets book clicking here.
Final Thoughts
DotCom Secrets is just amazing when it comes to helping new entrepreneurs deal with a lot of issues that prop up when making a business model.
However, if your business is built on shaky foundations and deals in products or services that just don’t work, this book won’t make things magically right again. DotCom Secrets teaches you various methods to boost sales, and it can be implemented by most businesses.
But since each business operates differently, and Russell intends for you to use this book as a reference and not a strict set of guides to mimic and follow.
The teachings are quite simple, and I am sure that every business will be able to benefit from it in the long run. So, go ahead and pick it up! I’m sure you’ll find a lot of useful info to take your business to the next level.
I hope you enjoyed this article today.
Till next time!
Overall Rating: 9.5/10
PROS
- Uses value ladders and sales funnel strategies and scripts to get your business rolling.
- Relatable content, written in a very engaging and step-by-step language.
- Strategies are versatile enough to help out a variety of online businesses
- It helps you identify your customers along with their needs and demands.
CONS
- You will need to have a pre-existing business model for the book to be helpful. If you don’t, consider the One Funnel Away Challenge first.
- Works best only for businesses that rely heavily on online platforms.
