What if the marketing strategies that once brought you success are now holding you back?

In this episode, I’m diving into the big shifts happening in digital marketing and why the “template” approach just doesn’t cut it anymore.

I’ll share insights on how businesses that stay adaptable and open to change are thriving, while those that cling to outdated strategies risk falling behind.

Join me in exploring fresh ideas and strategies to help you connect with your audience in meaningful ways!

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am excited for today’s episode. I was sitting in my bath last night scrolling shouldn’t have been doing that, but let’s keep it real. Sometimes I do that and it’s like the, it’s one thing I’m really trying to work on, but I am so fried by the end of the day that there is nothing that I feel like doing besides. I guess you would call it numbing out and I don’t watch TV. So it’s kind of like my TV, but anyways, besides the point, I was scrolling last night on Instagram and I saw an ad from Russell Brunson. And usually I actually ignore like all ads and I tune out a lot of noise, but from other marketers, but I find it fascinating to look at what some of the bigger influences and the digital marketing space are doing. And I saw this ad from w Russell Brunson that was talking about, the video said, templated marketing no longer works. It used to work where you could plug and play a template and replicate it and it would work so good. But it worked so good that now every single industry is so oversaturated that you can’t template your marketing. You have to customize it. And they caught my attention because so I was like, what? This is coming from the one funnel away guy who’s all about templated marketing, right? And I’ve been saying customized marketing for years, seven plus years. So I click on the ad and it goes to a video that is 20 minutes long.

And it’s teaching, I didn’t watch the video, but it’s teaching whatever he’s teaching about. It’s like a blueprint or something he’s teaching about creating a marketing strategy. But it’s 20 minutes long. And if you know Russell Branson, you know that he created what was termed the perfect webinar. And webinars became really popular through him. He was the pioneer in that in, you know, 10 years ago, he developed the perfect webinar formula. And to this day, I still see people follow it. But here’s the creator of the perfect webinar who has probably done hundreds of webinars himself, who is running ads to a 20 minute long training. So what does this tell us? what What can we learn from this? Number one, he’s changed his ways because he had to, because the old ways weren’t working anymore and You learn a lot by watching what people do versus what they say. And so I love to watch what marketers and business owners and businesses are doing because they’re not going to put money behind something that’s not working, right? 

So you don’t see him running ads to a 45, 60 minute long perfect webinar right now. He’s actually not what you see is him running ads to a 20 minute video that’s actually talking about how you cannot template your marketing. That’s a 180 from what he was doing however many years ago. I also then started getting served all his stuff because I clicked his ad and I saw that he is hosting his last funnel hacking live event, which is like his huge, I mean, thousands of people would go to funnel hacking live huge event. Regardless of what you think of Russell Brunson and your opinions on his methods, I will say this. He is one of the smartest marketers I’ve ever met. And I have opinions on his teaching. I don’t agree with a lot of the, it’s really easy. It’s just one funnel away, set it and forget it methodologies, because I think it set a lot of people up for disappointment. And I think it sold this idea that all I had to do was build a funnel, launch it and then it would just start working and raking in money for me when that’s not reality and so I have Disagree I disagree with some of the things I also feel he focuses a lot on marketing and not enough on his delivery regardless of that he’s an extremely intelligent marketer and If you watch what he’s doing he’s completely shifting his model and in how he is bringing in leads, the type of funnel he’s running and going from the creator and teacher of the perfect webinar to not running a perfect webinar. So if we look at this, there’s some lessons here. Number one, I’ve been saying this for seven years and I know you guys all know this because you tune into my podcast, but templated marketing doesn’t work.

The teacher and creator of templated marketing is now saying, it doesn’t work. You cannot take somebody’s exact funnel and bring it into your business and expect it to work because the industries are oversaturated. There’s too much noise. It needs to be a custom experience. The marketing that works is an experiential based marketing. It’s where it creates an experience from someone from the moment they come into contact with your brand all the way through lead, nurture, sale. Number two, I wouldn’t take this and say 45 to 60 minute webinars don’t work anymore because I have clients proving otherwise right now with active ads, but it depends on the industry. If you’re talking about B2B, which is Russell’s industry, business owners, who he’s trying to sell. I think he’s actually selling ClickFunnels on the back end of this. I didn’t go through the funnel, but trying to sell a business product to business owners. I would question automated webinars where I’m still seeing automated webinars work is more in the B2C space because I don’t think those people have hit a point where they’ it’s oversaturated with webinars. Now live webinars are a different story. I still personally do live webinars that are 60 plus minutes long with Q and&A and they convert great. But I don’t have an automated webinar because it doesn’t usually convert well.

Watch what people do because that’s what’s actually working on the backend, right? So the creator of this perfect webinar, which was a 45 to 60 minute long templated webinar, everything was templated. The way that he laid it out, his clothes, like it was a whole thing is now not doing it and he’s running a 20 minute training as his funnel. This tells you the perfect webinar doesn’t work anymore. And I have been teaching against the perfect webinar for years. It’s not a bad strategy. It’s not bad at all. It’s too salesy. It’s too that like sleazy feeling at the end where you’re doing these closing tactics. However, the biggest thing is too many people know it. And if you’re sitting on a webinar and you’re watching,

And you’re like, I’ve heard this five times before and this person is saying the same thing, all those closing techniques. Are you going to trust them? Are you going to be like, this isn’t authentic because they’re saying the same thing that everybody else is saying. So this is why I teach, I have a template in quotes but a structure for webinars that’s completely different. And it really customizes the content and it customizes the clothes because I have seen i’ve seen for years that the perfect webinar doesn’t work.

And I’m not saying this to be like, well, I was right. I’m saying this to say, I still see people try to replicate Russell’s perfect webinar or anybody who teaches an exact webinar template. If it’s not customizable, it will not work. I have clients who ask me, will you write my webinar script? Or can your team write my webinar script? And I actually, they say, can I pay you for your team to write my webinar script? And I say, no. For free, I will give you my slide example. I’ll show you an example of a successful webinar, or a few, and I’ll give you this video I made on how to build a successful webinar, but you have to make it your own, or it’s not going to work. Because if you get up there and you present, and it doesn’t sound like you,

People know who are watching. If it feels like you’re reading a script, you’re trying to be somebody else, and you’ve put yourself in this templated box, it is going to come through in the training, which is going to impact your conversion. So on a bigger picture of this, what I want to say, and what I titled this episode is, is this is what kills businesses. And that is the lack of being able to pivot. Because on one hand, we can look at this and say, okay, well, everything that Russell taught 10 years ago, he’s pivoting what he’s teaching. Which is a great thing for him because that’s what you have to do. If he was still trying to push and say, it’s the perfect webinar. It’s the perfect webinar. This is the only thing that works and templated marketing. He wouldn’t make money. He wouldn’t be successful because that doesn’t work anymore where I think entrepreneurs get themselves in massive trouble is the attachment to not pivoting, to not looking critically at everything in terms of their marketing strategy, their offer itself, their business model and strategy, their pricing, their attraction strategy, all of the ways that they are showing up in their business and constantly questioning it. Not in a way of, I need to always be changing something, but in a way of, is this outdated? We have to evolve with our audience. We have to evolve with the times. And the reality is over the last five to 10 years, online digital marketing and social media and humans and the way they consume has drastically changed.

The online industry and selling digital products and masterminds and services and all of these things has drastically changed. So in order to continue to be successful, you have to innovate and you have to meet your audience and your ideal customers and your leads where they are at and with what they want now. And I think it’s easy to say make sure you pivot your business, make sure that you are open to new ideas. But I recently worked with a business who I actually ended up meeting in our sales process. And I said, they were adamant so-and-so in my industry is doing this strategy. And so I know that if I do this strategy, I can charge the $6,000 for my offer and it’s an It’s a B2C health and wellness offer. I can charge that. And I know that if I do it this way, which is like a webinar to a Facebook group, to a sales call. I know it will work because this person’s doing it and they’re making a lot of money. And so this is what I want to do. And I actually said to them in our sales process, I said, okay, we can try this. That’s the first thing we’ll do. We will implement this. We will try it. We’ll make it the best possible messaging and strategy that we can execute. But you have to promise me that if it doesn’t work, you’ll be open to different ideas. Even if that means adjusting your offer, and the price of your offer, because we’re in a recession, your offer is $6,000 to somebody who’s trying to invest in their health, not even a business owner. And that could be an issue. So I said, in order for us to take you on as a client, we will do we will execute this strategy the way that you have it laid out now and improve what you have and do the best to our ability. But you have to promise me that if we say this isn’t going to work, you’ll be open to pivoting, even if that means pivoting your offer.

And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, of course. So we, we work with them. We do that. And we end up having to pivot the offer. There was definitely resistance there from this client, which I understand because they were very committed and very tied to it being this $6,000 offer. And it working this way, but we ended up pivoting it and we ended up coming up with a smaller priced offer to put out, to then move people into the higher level offer. And it worked incredibly. And like that was the key. That was the thing that was missing. And we’re in the process right now of kind of tying the strategies together and building on that. But I actually was like, we will not take you on and work with you if you’re not open to this because I’m seeing this in so many businesses, the need to pivot. So what can kill a CEO and so many businesses is the is the real attachment to something being the way you want it. And here’s the problem with this. You’re sometimes so deep in it that you don’t realize you’re doing it. I don’t think CEOs consciously say,

Well, I’m refusing to pivot and adapt and so therefore I’m going to do it my way. That’s the thing. When we make these quote mistakes or we take these actions that are probably not in the best interest of our business, we think we’re doing the best thing. We’ve convinced ourselves that we’re doing the best thing. And this is why it is so important to have other people, whether it’s your team, mentors, you know, my team, when you work with us, an agency giving you another perspective because we are so close to what we’re doing that we can actually convince ourselves it’s the best thing when it’s not the best thing. Having other perspectives is so important because being attached to something being the way you want it to be whether it’s a strategy working this way because you saw it work for somebody else so you know it has to work for you and you’re gonna blame everything else but the fact that that strategy is not right for your business.

Or it’s your offer. It’s the offer you’ve been selling for a while. It needs an adjustment or your business model or your business strategy. I do not know a single successful business right now who has not had to massively pivot and adapt and adjust in the last year. Because the market has changed, the industry has changed, the platforms have shifted and changed, and the way people have consumed have changed. So take this lesson from somebody who is a multi-eight figure business owner, Russell Brunson, and look at the 180 he’s pivoted in his strategy, going from what he literally taught as a best practice to doing not that anymore. And the messaging he used to use of templated one funnel away, plug this in and it’s going to work to saying the opposite. And I don’t actually think a lot of people are going to catch this because not everybody’s been around for 10 plus years and watch this. I mean, I was in a mastermind with Russell like eight years ago.

So I’ve watched this evolution and I’ve watched this shift and all of the best entrepreneurs. If, if I look at anybody I knew from eight years ago who is still successful today, they’re not doing the same thing they were eight years ago. It doesn’t mean you have to come up with a bunch of new offers and a bunch of new businesses and be distracted. You have to pivot. The only thing constant in business and honestly life is change. And the more we resist that, the longer it takes us for us to catch that momentum again. So my invitation for you today is to actually just sit with. Am I holding on to something that I want to be a certain way or something that used to be successful and it’s not right now but I’ve convinced myself that if I just change this one thing or if I just do this, it’ll be successful again? Or is there an opportunity for me to open a blank page? and ask myself how I can innovate to meet my audience and my leads and my customers where they are today. That’s the thing. We’re all in this to serve our customers and potential customers. So if we focus on what they want, what they need to today, that usually gives the answers of where you might need to pivot. And Last lesson is and in this is if you really still think templated marketing still works, you got to throw that away. Like if you catch yourself trying to look at another influencer or a program or something that’s going to give you a template that you can just plug and play and set live and it’s going to be so successful. You’ve got to throw that away because you’re setting yourself up to be really disappointed and to not want to put in the work when it doesn’t work.

Marketing always works. There’s only so many levers that we can pull to create success in marketing, but sometimes pulling that lever means overhauling. I was just having this discussion with my team and I said, you know, there’s only so many factors that contribute to the success. It’s your offer, your messaging, and your strategy. Like those three things contribute to your success. You dial those in and you’ll be successful. But sometimes it actually means completely overhauling your offer or completely overhauling your messaging. And I see entrepreneurs so resistant to that, that they sit for months and months and months until they finally come to terms with, okay, I need to shift and I need to change this. So the faster you’re willing to do that, and honestly, the faster you’re willing to do that and just go try things, doesn’t have to be perfect, but you stay in that place of action, the faster you’re going to bring success to your business. All right, everybody have a beautiful weekend and I’ll talk to you next week.