You have to get your customers to vote with their credit card.
On this episode Russell talks about why your opinion doesn’t matter when it comes to marketing. He recalls an article written about Rippln that didn’t go well, and why the authors opinion wasn’t important.
Here are some interesting things to listen for in today’s episode:
So listen below to hear why your opinion does NOT matter.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson, and this is Marketing in Your Car. Alright everybody, I hope you are all doing amazing. I had two days in a row of 5am wake ups. So this is good, I’m getting into the cycle, into the late night, or early night going to bed, late night, or early morning…..yeah early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise. Is that true? Well, I hope so. I’m testing it out right now. It’s been going good so far. This morning I was working on the Funnel University stick sequence and one of the emails talks about this article I wrote one time called Your Opinion Doesn’t Matter, or it might have been Guess What? Your Opinion Doesn’t Matter. I think I said it more like that.
Anyway, I pulled up the article and I reread it and it made me laugh and smile and I wanted to share it with you guys because it’s important. And the fact is your opinion really does not matter when it comes to marketing. In that article I talked about how one morning, this is back when we were in the middle of the Rippln Launch and I had done this video and one of my buddies texted me at 5 in the morning, he was like, “Hey man, you’re on Tech Crunch.” I was like, “What? I’m on Tech Crunch? This is awesome.” And then his next text was, “It’s not good.” I was like, “Oh crap.” So I went to Tech Crunch and there was an article. And the title of the article was titled: What Not To Do In Your Startup Launch Video or something like that. And I start reading this thing and he goes line by line through the copy for the sales video I created, and he just ripped it apart. He hated it, venomously. Is that the right word? He was so mean about every single thing and just ripped it line after line. And at first I was like, my heart sunk, I was sick to my stomach.
And then I stopped for a minute and started thinking, well all these things were his opinions about why he hated this video and why it was not a good video for a tech startup and all these things, but then I started looking at the numbers and what we had achieved with that little cheesy video that he hated so much. And I can’t remember, at the time I think it generated 300 or 400 thousand opt-in members. And we were average 30 thousand opt-ins a day from this one video. And I was like, it may be that he didn’t like it, but it didn’t mean it didn’t work. It was working perfectly. And I started thinking back, about all the split testing stuff that we used to do. The way Todd and I used to do our split testing, I would go and create the best version I possibly could and he would make up these tests, and half the tests I was so embarrassed by. I was like, “Don’t do that, it looks bad.” Things I didn’t like. And I was like, “No there’s no way that’s going to beat my control. The thing I created is perfect. This is my opinion.” And 9 times out of 10 Todd would beat my control. Almost every time.
I realized really quickly, my opinion doesn’t matter. I have my opinion but it doesn’t matter. What matters Is how people vote. And it’s funny because a lot of times we think, I’ve seen….drives me crazy, businesses that run survey groups, have people fill out surveys, all these kinds of things to try to get feedback on their product. What they’re going to buy or not buy and all these things. And there’s a time and a place for those things. But the reality is that none of that matters either. The only thing that actually matters is will customers vote with their credit card. That’s it. If they will not pull their credit card out of their wallet and vote with their credit card it doesn’t matter.
They can say, “Oh yeah, I would definitely buy that product.” Or “I’m definitely more like this.” Or whatever. They’ll tell you whatever. Whatever it is you’re looking at, but the only thing that matters is not your opinion, it’s not even your customer’s opinion. The only thing that actually matters is them voting with their credit card. That’s how they vote. They can’t vote by saying, “Yes I would do that. Oh yeah, I’d buy that.” Only way that they can vote is by actually pulling their credit card out, that’s the only vote that matters, that is if you look at….that’s how it should be with the presidency. You should vote, but you should vote with your credit card. And the more money you’re willing to spend voting on a candidate, the more votes you get. Because then it actually matters. The only thing that actually matters is how they vote with their credit card. That’s the only truth, everything else is opinion and opinions don’t matter.
It’s funny, as a marketing educator, it drives me crazy watching other marketing educators, and a lot of them say blanket statements that they feel are true, that I know aren’t true. And I’m not going to tell all the specifics, because the person’s really cool. But I’m in a Mastermind Group, and they wanted me to give a talk, a short talk. So I was giving this short talk, ahead of time they had this public speaking coach, who wanted to get on the phone with me and walk through my talk with me. So I got on and was kind of interested in what he had to say, and what was interesting was that he kept sharing all these opinions about the stuff I was doing wrong and how I should have done it instead and all these things. And while I have a lot of respect for the guy and his opinions, I know that his opinions were wrong. Not because I’m arrogant or I’m boastful or anything like that, I might be but that’s not the reason I knew they were wrong.
I knew they were wrong because I had split tested these messages. I had split tested the verbiage and how I used it. I knew which one out converted. He used to tell me, “No you have to go this way.” And I was like ugh. I was respectful and I was like, okay. And I did it that way for him and for the group, but I knew it was wrong. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his opinion was wrong because we had split tested. And I wanted to step back and be like, “But you know, I have run hundreds of thousands, if not millions of visitors through a path, that uses the message, you’re trying to get me to use, vs the one I’m using here and I know that this one wins. Every single time. I don’t even have to guess any more. It’s not worth testing anymore because I know based on millions of people voting or not voting with their credit card, that I’m right. And it’s just killing me because……but I respected him and the situation so I followed that even though I knew it was wrong.
And I just want all you guys to understand, our opinions really don’t matter. I get people in the Inner Circle all the time, “Russell, can you look at this page and give me your opinion?” I’m like, “No, I don’t want to give you my opinion. My opinion could dramatically screw things up. As we’re building I will give you my opinion because this is the direction I would go, based on everything I know, this is the best chance of success, so create that first and then I’m not going to give you a review because my opinion doesn’t matter. The only opinion that matters, is the opinion of the buyers in your specific market. So create it the best you can, and then you go and you buy ads, and you get people to come, and then they vote with their credit card, and that’s how we know if we got a winner. If people vote with their credit card. If they don’t, I don’t care how pretty it is, how many awards it wins, or how nice it sounds. The only thing that matters, when all is said and done, is will people vote with their credit card. And that’s the key.”
So the sooner you are okay humbling yourselves, I’m the same way, I have to continue to humble myself and I do every time Todd destroys me in a split test, every time something I create doesn’t work, or every time we test things and we figure out things that do work, I get humbled every single time. I realize that man, I’m not as great as I think I am. My opinion does not matter. The only opinion that matters is that of my customers who are pulling their credit cards out and voting.
So watch that closely. Watch what is causing them to vote with their credit card and watch what’s not. And that’s how you’re going to learn and that’s what you should base your judgment and opinions on. Not on what you like or don’t like, because what you like doesn’t matter. The guy at Tech Crunch did not like my copy, yet it was probably the highest converting message I had ever written. And because he thought it was wrong, does not make it wrong. People were voting, and that’s the only thing that really matters. So there’s your marketing lesson for today. I’m at the office. I’m going to go get some work done and try to get some customers to vote with their credit cards. So that’s the plan. Anyway, I appreciate you all. Have a great day and we’ll talk to you guys all again soon. Bye.