How This $102M Book Funnel Works: Secrets from a Top Funnel Expert

all right hey welcome everybody it’s Rob here with the bestseller Secrets podcast and today we’re going to do something very deep and a little bit different some of you have seen some of the bookfunnel secret stuff that we’ve done uh in regards to some of the most successful funnels and book funnels in particular that influencers and very very successful people are using well I have with us today the secret weapon behind many of the biggest influencers in the space

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this is uh Alicia shank we’re not going to talk about any specifics you and I have talked about this ahead of time as far as like exact funnels that are running and that sort of thing because that’s client confidentiality but this is something that you have done as an agency for a number of years um kind of quietly in the background partnering Within influencers and really blowing up their brands to the tune of nine figures can you give us a couple of examples in particular book funnels that you’ve seen maybe give us the general field that they’re in like personal development or coaching or whatever it is and then give us some of the the results and then maybe we’ll take a look at one or two of them and kind of dive into some of the metrics if that’s okay yeah for sure um so basically yeah kind of like a broad overview we’ve done more than $400 million on line and and we’ve been in all sorts of different niches uh whether it’s like Ecom products books supplements um coaching Consulting course legal birth injury um working in all of the different niches all of the different verticals have U it’s enabled us to gain experience like in those different business models um so we can create test optimize and kind of figure out what’s working or what works best one of the things that we always try to do is figure out where our best and most valuable client is coming from when we take on a client when we’re working with our business partners and so as you’ve mentioned we’ve now had numerous awards from industry leaders like clickfunnels um we’ve done over $200 million in five years in one of them 102 million in 33 months that was on the back of a bookfunnel 50 million in 22 months 67 million in one year that’s another B book funnel um 10,000 people in a paid challenge every five weeks um over 4 million recurring monthly that is on the back of a book funnel so um essentially we just help companies business owners partners and what is scale their businesses so um yeah love to kind of like I can dive in a little bit I I think that the one that we want to talk about mostly is um 102 million in 33 months I I’d like to do that I before we even do that maybe tell me you have so many of these successful case studies of people that have have really blown up their business on the back of a bookfunnel what do you like in a general sense why do you think a book and a bookfunnel is you know really like the point of the spear for these most successful um campaigns that you guys have run I think that as far as books it’s just it’s just the credibility you know it does allow there are two things that allows you to do but the credibility is that needle mover that is only with the book I mean you could have videos and things like this but the book still holds weight um the other thing that allows you to do which other SLO funnels allow you to do as well but um that combination of The credibility and the ability to offset that cost at the front end is what you can really do with a bookfunnel so you can scale with a bookfunnel you can figure out you can offset that pricing with a well optimized bookfunnel paying for the book and a couple of other little products that you can add in there with it and it gives you the ability to scale so that you’re not so cash crunched on the front end you can reach more yeah love it love it okay sorry to interrupt you go ahead dive in walk through uh what you feel like are some of the um the key steps in your proprietary process and if it’s okay I might I might ask some questions along the way so I can understand a little bit better I have a a full notebook here I’m ready to take notes myself um I think that one of the biggest things that we do differently scaling and you’re going to use this with a book funnel is to separate the front end from the back end of your funnel so um you know we’ve shared this in high high level masterminds where even the leaders are like wait a minute we’re not really doing that so we’re looking at them separately so if you really want to be able to scale optimize your funnels and figure out what’s going on in the business um it’s best practice to separate those front and back end so and your goal is always to have that health the front end funnel um now you’re going to determine your metrics like whether or not you need to break even on that funnel on day one if you do you’re going to be probably not scaling quite as high like eventually it’s going to cost more to to acquire a customer and you’re going to have to rework your kpis but looking at that front end separately meaning that front book and everything that you’re placing in that funnel like what is that doing aside from the back end of the business um your old ultimately aszure scaling going to look at the whole thing but in order to optimize that front end funnel that book funnel looking at it separately is going to give you the indicators that you need to sort of make things change in there give me some give me some broad broad percentages if you can so like once things start to scale how much of the cost of acquisition are you trying to liquidate on the front end 80% 90% 70% what does that look like if you are far as scale we’ve had controler come into a couple of our businesses if you are really going for scale you’re looking at Value maybe you’re going to uh sell the company down the line or just you know what whatever it is that you’re going to do if you’re we’re looking at0 70 you can scale as long as everything is is is healthy in the funnel so meaning the front end and the back end everything’s working you can also scale if you have a high ticket offers in the back so I’m talking moderate you don’t even have to have anything extremely high um if you have high ticket offers you can you can run that down further um so what what are those numbers like what are what are moderate what are high what would you consider for the back end so I mean SE with 70% on the front you can you can run that to somebody that’s only spending $1,000 you know in the funnel as long as you’re looking for continuity you’re looking for customers that are going to stick with you you’re going to be building that monthly continuity that’s perfectly fine if you’re um you know selling a $25,000 offer you might come out of pocket and just offset it a bit you might spend 3x or you know instead of spending $100 and and breaking and that being your average part you might spend 300 because you know you’ve got a you know 10% 20% close on the back end and you’re able to do that so just allows you to do so much differently yeah yeah well that and that’s true for us so that’s that’s interesting you hear like for for our various book funnels you know um it’ll cost us as much as $100 to acquire a book buyer of publish promote profit but you know our our various programs range from1 to $100,000 so there’s a there’s a lot of opportunity on the back end there not so much with right with AI for us um because it’s more continuity and a $1,497 offer initially and I haven’t we have a book funnel and and it it’s kind of interesting that book is selling so well on Amazon I mean we’re s selling like a th000 copies a month just organically on Amazon which is driving traffic to us which is which is kind of cool and that’s a whole another story right that’s that’s not scalable and and that’s a that’s a different problem uh in or a different reward or exciting piece of it but that’s interesting so even with a back end of only a th000 bucks you can you can create something that’s really scalable at about a 70% front end of cost of ACC acquisition right if you’re if you’re looking at what they can purchase in funnel and you’re looking at you know you’ve got some healthy continuity the interesting thing is the 102 million uh in 33 months that was all low ticket uh there isn’t anything High ticket on that but it build a $4 million a month continuity business um over what’s the price point on that on that continuity um continuity gosh there’s a couple of different products in there anywhere from you know $37 all the way up to maybe $97 but and then there’s the digital continuity program in there as well that’s 37 a month so we’ve got a couple things going in there and it’s just yeah that those are the things that you can do but obviously if you’re doing consulting like with your book publishing you can spend $300 or do you just have to figure out your own numbers right but be and and so then I’ll get the question well you know if it’s not at scale if you’re not breaking even at scale then you know what’s the point of adding it it’s because it also get your name out there in a way that it’s like establishing you as the expert so it’s it’s just a double there’s two things that are going on you could just put a regular SLO there but you aren’t going to get that additional benefit so you know figuring that out I I love that I I have long talked about the benefit the the side benefits of that to people I’m so glad you brought that up because very few people that I’ve talked to have really brought that up I mean I I was completely unknown in this space and and have developed hundreds of thousands of followers on various social accounts Without Really creating any content whatsoever it’s all been through my funnels that have run and we’ve sold tens of thousands of copies of my books through my funnels and tens of thousands of copies through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and other places and so without creating any content which is which is honestly has been a mistake I I should have been at least creating some organic content along the way but I’m I’m so glad you mentioned that because that is such a great side benefit because people will find you and come to you at completely unrelated to uh the bookfunnel simply because of of The credibility that you’ve built that’s that’s awesome we’ve seen this happen again and again someone will find them day one kind of on on YouTube or somewhere buy a book because they had the book and then bypass all of their things and buy the $30,000 program and it’s simply because they’re just getting into this industry in this industry the marketing we think all these things like oh you know everybody knows this but the general population isn’t really they still they’re still getting educated with it so we still see this happening all the time very very smart people that are coming from different Industries real estate or uh technology or whatever it is that they’re coming from they’re seeing that book they’re still feeling that that’s the credible person yeah yeah very important um you know another thing that we do inside the funnel just on that front end of the funnels we’re always using the rule of five and like 10 if possible and and all that means is that on that first visit to the funnel when once you figure out what your cost to acquire a customer is once you figure out that CPA have a minimum of five times that or 10 if possible amount of products that they can buy on their first visit so for example Rob if you’re having like a $100 CPA make sure that they can buy $500 worth of stuff on their very very first visit or you know and if you can crepe that up to 10 that’s that’s great too that’ll give you you know at least that really Firm Foundation of getting that bookfunnel started off in you know in a good way so you can kind of creep up that those average parts so I love that I have never heard that said I have never heard that I have never heard somebody directly say rule of five or 10 meaning that 5x your cost of acquisition or as much as 10x your cost of acquisition um now I have I I I would like your opinion on this and thank you for for sharing that that’s a really great gem I’ve seen this uh personally but then i’ I’ve seen it sometimes work well sometimes not and that is um oftentimes the lower level um initial upsells are on the front end like the bumps you know $27 $117 $47 and then as you get further through the funnel the more expensive things are re not recently but over the last few years we’ve adjusted that because often times people aren’t even seeing the last page of the funnel in some cases because they’re just xing out after the first upsell or or whatever can you speak to like what your rule of thumb is when it comes to how you architect the funnel out as far as price points um ours do follow that a little we always keep in mind that um that the upsell number one is going to be responsible for most you know it for most of the of the revenue right so most of the revenue that’s in that average order value or average cart value that’s going to be an upsell one so if you’ve got you have something really super important I mean right there in upsell one you can put that we can you know you can toy around with moving that around but um it is a it is a concern um you know you can make sure that you put the no thanks buttons on there like no thanks I don’t need this so that you know you can hopefully get them to the next page I do know that people will drop off they’ll just ex out at the page without even clicking the no thanks but that’s where we’re really looking at that uh we’re always making sure also that no matter what product it is that’s on there or what stage everything has to stand alone meaning that yes you’re building on it and you’re saying like hey you just made the best purchase of your life you know you just did all of these things now how would you like it if I were to you know show you this or take you deeper over here it has to be another vsl it has to be another you know maybe 9 minute but usually what we’re seeing like 13 15 minute vssl starting all over through the sales process because if you just rely on that first sale you’re going to lose a lot of sales it’s it’s a fine balance to see it sometimes to where you can put those three to five if you can get them swiftly through the sales process but you know if you’re really going in again for something for them to buy just remember that no matter what it is and no matter what’s happened before here you are again at a brand new brand new product brand new reason I need to buy it yeah so vsl’s 13 to 15 minutes long for a 20 30 $40 upsell um maybe not for 20 to $30 but once we get into our upsells so if we’re selling you know our first upsells we’re usually let me see here I’ve got some some things written down we’re usually you know anywhere from like I would say 47 would be our our lowest one but we’re looking at like 97 197 something like this got um don’t always have to do a 13 to 15 you you can try other things but we’ve seen that a 13 to 15 because they’re definitely not going to listen to the whole thing but it takes them through the process and it just gives them that ability like if you’re just thinking a fullon vssl as opposed to and you can you can make it a mini vssl but as opposed to just relying on that for like oh they bought my book they bought my book they bought a couple of upsells they’re going to want this too this makes sense like it’s take them through it a little bit more because they did only buy a book and the book is just it’s seen as something like hey I can get this book and I can go through it it’s on my own it’s easy it’s a low you know low cost so now we’ve got to switch them into let’s go deeper with me so so it can be a little bit of a of a lift on that on that page too yeah yeah yeah um I’m sure you’re all over the place with this but is there any um is there any like continuity of uh like what you’re seeing cost of acquisition in a in a bookfunnel like in the coaching space or in the uh self Improvement space like is it you know does it run like okay in the self-improvement space it’s going to be $75 cost of acquisition or something like that can you can you speak to that or at all or is it all over the place it is all over the place but we always just come in with saying hey it’s going to cost us a $100 like this is where we’re starting guys this is what we think is going to happen and we might be pleasantly surprised like in the supplement space where it’s a down a a little bit less than that and then we might be like oh it’s a little bit more than that over here like you know 120 as the consultant or maybe you know 8090 but we always come in with that $100 and it does seem to be something where a lot of people land it’s almost like the ad ad gods are are are you know just there saying this is they know how much money they want to get from us right good good that’s where we’re at um another thing that we see that some work that we see that could be done is like once you get that funnel going a lot of people are like hey I want to get my funnel got to launch it got to get it out there and they put all of this work into the pre launch and into the pre funnel but that’s great because it should be professional and amazing before you put it out there but the work really happens afterwards right so it’s like that optimization okay what happens when they’re hitting the page what happens when they get to the bumps to the upses like are they working and then ultimately what’s happening 30 days down the line 60 90 so it is a process but it’s just important to continually optimize and take a look at what that is as opposed to just sort of letting it ride so we try to look at things depending upon what they are we try to establish percentages so we we’ll say you know well number one we’re definitely not looking at things every single day because there are a lot of you you know you are looking at it but you’re not gauging it making any decisions but looking at things like okay what’s happening over the seven days what’s happening over the last 14 days and just having indicators that are like you know what this does seem to be trending downward by X let’s take a look at this particular you know product or page or offer so it’s just important to make sure that you’re always looking at what’s going on there and before you start fing it on the back end like down the line yeah I appreciate that um that is for those that are listening for me that’s the hardest part you know and I think for a lot of people that build funnels and that sort of thing because you put so much time and energy and effort into it you know initially with videos and with what upsells there are and when it starts to work especially when there’s a really high ticket thing on the back end it can work just okay and you’re still making plenty of money but if you just optimized it right if you just took the time and energy and effort to look at all the things that you’re talking about man it it it could be a game changer so I I appreciate that and that’s also like a knife in my heart I’m like yeah I don’t do that I mean and you’re looking at everything right not just the funnel but the emails the I mean we’ve come like we we we’ve come through different accounts and different businesses and found you know okay your abandoned card emails not going out for 30 minutes why or you know all of these different things so just different pieces to the funnel itself or to the campaign itself just always making sure you know what is that little what What’s Happening Here what’s the customer experience and and putting yourself in the shoes of that person that’s first buying the book and how can you help it’s a fine line you know some people buy a book and then they go through the funnel with all the bumps and upsells and downsells and things and they’re like oh my God forget it unhappy I bought this book but if you can change it to how could you make them speed up their process make their life easier hey we know you want this result and kind of look at that funnel in that way yeah yeah just continue on good um I don’t want to interrupt the the process you’re taking us through if there there are more pieces but I I do um have some questions along the way so you know I I’m I’m really intrigued by this lower ticket you know having a a scalable successful funnel with only a$ th000 back end versus it needing to be 15,000 20,000 Etc of course the assumption is on anything that’s 15,000 20,000 basically that’s a book a call right you’re just sending them because that that purchase needs to be made you know via consultation and and discussion and you’re sending calls to the sales team um at least that’s my assumption I don’t think anybody’s clicking a button to pay 15,000 bucks but um at at what at what point would you say what price point would you say through the funnels that you’ve seen we have to send them to book a call versus they can click a button for the Thousand thing or maybe even the Thousand thing they’re not clicking a button I don’t know like what what’s that look like no yeah um I think it’s just kind of like how it has always been like about1 to $3,000 they could probably do that 1,000 probably INF funnel on that first two to three you’re probably going to want kind of like a webinar Master Class type of thing but we are sing uh a lot of High items on it in challenges now so if you want that high ticket item without a sales team you can do that in challenges now too so we might have um book funnel on the front kind of feeding them through taking them into a challenge and selling a high ticket offer without a without a sales call and those can be you know 3,000 and up and and without without issues we we are seeing happen but yes you’re right like not everybody’s going to just click and buy $33,000 in the fun the one that I was talking about specifically for 102 33 months of the bookfunnel is um lower ticket with a huge focus on continuity and renewal subscription products so we’re talking about building you know buyers list basically so that that company um can sell can prep to sell or you know is is just really strong in that I mean when we’re putting book funnels on the front buying in the front we’re creating huge lists of buyers instead of lists of people that are just raising their hands and they might want something free and with you know that company and several of the companies just um millions of actual buyer so the ability to just have a continuity every single month run as much traffic as you want to run and then anytime that you want to make an offer make a new master class or anything new a million dollar pull a million dollars out of your list at whenever you’d like it’s just kind of like okay we’re gonna pull this lever because we’re gonna this right now so yeah because you have a you have two million buyers that have expressed you know enough interest to pull out their credit card and put the digits in and say they want this thing and so yeah yeah that is that is really powerful really building continuity really building up um you know movement based based uh companies products those type of things like if you you’ve got that you know that movement message yeah I love it beautiful good um other other key things that you want to discuss in the process or um is that you know mainly the stuff that comes to mind for you you know that’s mainly the stuff um yeah that’s that’s mainly it um you know focusing on that on that front end I think uh making sure that you’ve got enough in that frontend funnel to where you guys can you know you can do five or 10x like that number right there is is huge going through some things here um you know split testing once you know that your message is working on your on your book and your in your bookfunnel itself your ads like once you know it’s working then that’s when we’ll really shift the focus and go over to testing like the products and making sure that they’re in the right places and they’re converting properly and then you know keeping in mind I did want to make sure that I covered that you know keeping in mind that that upsell one it was interesting that you asked about it like that is our you know that’s going to bring in 20% or more of that average order value so that’s kind of like the one to really to really do the most with and then yeah I mean keep in mind that like like with client acquisition like paid ads now and scaling like you’re going to be looking at the overall row as a few years ago we could get three to 10 row as on day one at scale I’m sure you know that now you can still get three row as on day one if you’re running a tiny bit of traffic but if you’re driving a ton of with you’re really scaling once you move into scaling it’s just a different game you need to start looking at how long it takes you to break even with ad spin monetization Windows um it could be seven days 14 days 21 30 if you’re spending millions of dollars on traffic so it shifts from what are the row as uh I need 3x row as on the front to how much is a lead worth and 30 60 90 days ultimately how much revenue do you want you could your Ras is definitely going to go down at scale but your revenue for the company could still go up so it’s just a matter of like Dan Dan Kennedy said whoever pays the most whoever’s willing to pay the most for the person so yes well that’s immediately what came to my mind right of course I mean you know I mean whoever can afford to pay the most to acquire a customer wins period And so that that just means means that you can wait longer to actually get a return on that investment there are too many people honestly that you know are are needing to make money on their ads on day one and that just immediately almost immediately exempts them from being able to use paid advertising it’s like sorry it doesn’t work that way right I mean we’re we’re long past the days of 5cent clicks on Google you know absolutely absolutely it’s it’s it’s amazing the highlevel entrepreneurs and business owners that I’m come across run into and become even friends with that are still of this mindset that that it’s too much or they they want to have some fixed number that is based on history uh frankly like three years ago so we’re like yeah that’s work anymore yeah yeah I mean that that just doesn’t work anymore and it just means that we need to be better right I mean that’s that it it just means that um we need to do a better job on delivering real value for people and really being able to express that value so that they want the next thing from us they they fall in love with us they they want the upsell or the high ticket thing or or whatever that is and so yeah I yeah I really respect what you do I mean what you do is um of tremendous value and service to people it is not easy to do uh there are not many agencies honestly that I was going to say the gift but it might be more the grit you know like because you gota you gotta really just dive in you got to know what you’re doing and you are gifted in that but you got to really dive in and know where to dive in hard to uh to make things work as you said so um in the past um you were and you’re still very exclusive to work with because you’re you know when it comes to the agency model and your partnership model that’s one thing but you mentioned you’re doing something new you’re you’re going to um start a coaching program to help people to do this themselves or maybe even do it for others you want to talk for for a moment about that and we’ll give them a link uh to it for anybody that’s interested as well yeah for sure I we have a coaching program that we’re finishing the touches on right now and a course that we’re finishing the touches on so for those that still can’t get into the coaching program um they can now buy a course and it’s going to talk not only about um book funnels but just deep like high level marketing so we’re at you know how to Market how to get your message how to create a message that is worthy of clicks all of those type of things so everything from like low ticket High ticket offers just everything so we’re going to package every we’re pulling off some pieces that we do with our high-end clients that we know uh works and gets us results and we’re just putting it into the Consulting program into the course so we’re hoping to to reach a lot more people that way killer well I think it’s going to help a ton of people and uh we’re going to talk more about some various things as well but uh we’ll give a link to everybody um you also have a main website that they can go to as well right um uh should we give them that link also or not worry about that we’ll just give them a URL in the in the show notes and that kind of thing yeah URL in the show notes is probably best because um they’re just going to pop onto a waiting list our main website uh yeah says everybody it says that we’re full so love it it’s like hey thanks for stopping by but if you thanks for stopping by we don’t have anything to sell you right all these people I want to buy something Alicia I want to buy from you you’re like no no I’m not selling you anything it’s terrible say hey thanks for stopping by we’re booked but um you know I want to help more people and we will you know those high level clients and and people that are really SC their business we are helping them we are you know we do have room for um some of those situations but what where we can help I think the most is going to be in our new course and program so if you pop on that weight list then you’ll you’ll be good love it love it awesome well thank you thank you so much for uh for this uh very very helpful I have a a page of notes uh I loved uh I loved you know the ability to go deep the rule of five or 10 very very good you know uh the the thing you shared about 70% of front end very very helpful um even successfully scaling with only ,000 hour backend seems crazy to me but very exciting so thank you thanks for being a part of uh the bestseller Secrets podcast we’ll get this out to everybody and uh hopefully help a ton of folks all right thank you so much love it

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