151: Offer, Promise, Platform, Big Idea: Create Proven Funnels that Convert with Marketing Medic Mike Caldwell

Robert Plank: Can you tell us about what is it that you do on internet, how you got started, and with this funnel so specifically, what makes you stand out? What makes you different and special with funnels?

Mike Caldwell: I think the first question was how I got started, and I got started because I actually met Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels and DotCom Secrets, on a bouncy castle obstacle course in the Caribbean Sea. We became friends. I found out what he was doing. I'm an entrepreneur. I had some home-based businesses that I needed to promote more heavily online, and I ended up enrolling in one of his mastermind programs. I was able to learn directly from Russell Brunson, the master himself.

One of the first things we did is I live off-grid here at the place we call the Ark, and Russell built a funnel for me. It wasn't converting very well. I was responsible for the traffic. I was getting insane traffic coming into the funnel, but it wasn't really converting. Most funnels don't convert right out of the box. They require numerous iterations to make sure you have the offer right, the messaging right, so that it converts. Before we were able to do that, word got out that I was ridiculously good at driving traffic from Facebook. I was hired by a Bootcamp Gym to drive traffic for them. I was driving traffic. Again, the same thing happened. I drove traffic to their website, but it wasn't converting. They allowed me to rebuild their entire Bootcamp funnel for them, and our first month we spend 300 dollars in Facebook ads. We did 11,000 dollars in gross revenue.

Robert Plank: Awesome.

Mike Caldwell: From there, things snowballed. What I've always done is I always... I'm a paramedic. I was a paramedic and firefighter for 12 years. I was actually Canada's top paramedic for training. I was the area ambulance manager for the helicopter base in Ottawa, Canada. I had more skills than probably anyone else in the country, but what I learned is that it's the ABC's airway greeting circulation, the basics that save lives. I apply that same foundation to all my marketing campaigns, and I find that by sticking to the basics, that accounts for 80 percent of your traffic and sales.

Robert Plank: Would you say that... Was that the big reason why you were able to turn around that one client's funnel? Like you said, that... You said that, didn't Brunson build a funnel for you, and it first didn't convert? You had to go back to the basics, follow the steps, and see from the beginning what wasn't working?

Mike Caldwell: That's right, yeah. That's where I've come up with... I wish it was 3, but it's 4 things. 3 would follow my ABCs, but for a landing page funnel to work, I think you need 4 things. The first thing you need is an offer. What a lot of people don't understand is that they want to provide the offer that they want to give instead of the offer that their audience wants to receive. If you can do your research and know what the audience wants and create that for them, then you're going to be in a lot better shape than if you have some document that you prepared 4 years ago that you've never done anything with. "Hey, I'll just give this away for free, because I already have it." That doesn't have the value that's required to get somebody to take that next step into ascending into your funnel. The first thing you need is the offer, and that offer has to come with a promise. What pain does that offer promise to relieve?

The second thing is a promise. If I give you my email, then you're basically promising me that you're going to relieve me of some sort of pain. It's great for me to promise that to you, but there needs to be a platform that supports that promise. We can make promises out the yin-yang, but if there isn't the platform to support it, then you don't have the credibility necessary. I usually break the platform down into 3 things. It's usually different for each niche, but for most people it comes down to what does the client have to believe in me, what does the client have to believe in my product, and what does the client have to believe in themselves?

If we're talking about the weight-loss niche, for example, the client has to see that I'm fit myself, because they don't want to learn to lose weight from some fat guy. I have to show the credibility that 1) I'm a fit guy myself, and I practice what I preach. Then we need to show them my processed work. I'm fit, but I might be some sort of mutant guy that was born with a 6-pack. I have to prove that my platform works, and that's usually done through testimonials. If I have a dozen people saying that "I joined Mike, I followed his program, and I lost 12 pounds in my first week", then that gives a lot of credibility to my promise.

The third thing is what they have to believe in themselves. Most people have some... Again, in the weight-loss space, they're like, "Oh, well, you know. I'm big-boned. It won't work for me" or "I'm allergic to gluten, so it won't work for me." You have to address reasons why the people think that whatever you're selling won't work for them. Whatever product it is, there's always a reason why people will say, "Oh, it works for other people, but it won't work for me."

Right now we're up to: you need an offer, you need a promise, you need a platform, and then the fourth thing that is required is a big idea. That's your headline. The big idea is more than a headline. It is a headline, but it's something that incites curiosity and hopefully demonstrates your unique mechanism. Usually my headlines, or my big ideas, they're useful. It has value to the client. It's unique. Nobody else is offering it. It's ultra-specific. Sometimes I use this, and sometimes I don't. It depends on the market, but it might also incorporate a sense of urgency. It's 4 Us: useful, unique, ultra-specific, and urgency.

Robert Plank: You said that there are 3 things, or there are 4 things as far as your process?

Mike Caldwell: There's 4 things that I use whenever I build a funnel to any page, and that is: offer, promise, platform, and big idea. The big idea has four Us assigned to it. That is: useful, unique, ultra-specific, and urgent.

Robert Plank: Oh, okay, so promise was the second one there. Awesome. I like your way of thinking. Like you said, you used to be an EMT. You're all about the ABCs. It's one of those things where... I don't know. When I look at people making webpages, or I look at the webpage I'm making, it's so easy for me to get bogged down or overwhelmed, or when I deal with a copywriter, they make it a certain way. A copywriter slaves and spends all this time finding the perfect sentence or word. You mentioned a little bit there with the offer and the freebie, things like that, the things that you think are impressive and cool and useful are not necessary the things that those customers are going to find useful and things like that. Have you come across that, where someone wrote a webpage without a process but with a starving artist mentality, and it's set in stone, they refuse to change it? Have you ever dealt with stuff like that?

Mike Caldwell: Yeah, and for copy... There's two components to copy. People make decisions primarily based on emotion. "I want that." How many things in a day do we see that we want, but we don't get everything we want unless there's a rational backing for it. I want a '65 Ford Mustang, but I might not be in a financial position right now to purchase a car like that, especially given that I live on a gravel road. Any copy that you write has to address the emotional wants of the person, but then able to support that want with the logical reasoning for why they should move ahead with it.

Robert Plank: That's cool. If you see any page that's not converting or could be better, instead of eyeballing it and saying, "Well, maybe I'll just change some stuff", you can actually see some real, concrete reasons why maybe something's not quite landing. Have you ever come across with people building funnels, landing pages, and things like that where if they're stuck about what kind of decision to make, as opposed to going with some kind of best practices or advice, they say, "Well I'm just going to split test it. I don't know what my headline should be. I'm just going to split test it"? When I've seen people people talking about funnels, landing pages, in this way, the advice to split test it has seemed like a cop-out. Have you come across something like that before?

Mike Caldwell: Yeah, and that's why everything I do in this... So many of the things that I do in my marketing goes back to my firefighter paramedic stuff. Everything I did as a firefighter and as a paramedic had a standard operating procedure. When faced with this situation, this is is what we do in these steps. That's why my funnels have 4 steps to them: offer, promise, platform, big idea. My headlines, they're unique, they're useful, they're urgent, they're ultra-specific. I always go back to that stuff. I will split test 2 different- Split testing is awesome, because, like you say, what resonates for me won't resonate for everybody. Everything I split test has been based on principles that have been proven to work.

Robert Plank: You're not wasting your time on goofy stuff? You're actually... I guess what I'm trying to say is that based on everything that you've been saying so far about these copywriting principles and your checklist and things... You have a pretty good idea at what is going to sell. You can make a pretty decent stab at it. It might need some tweaking later, but you have a pretty good idea of have the headline be this font and this size and use that template. I guess what I'm asking is: Do you have some sort of a template that you use? I know you mentioned these different principles, but do you have a starting point for the funnels you create?

Mike Caldwell: Definitely. Like I say, it's those 4 things. I usually use Oswald font for my bold headlines, and I Railway for my copy within. That's based on knowledge that I've got from past funnel builders, from past website builders, from past copywriters. This is what's worked before. When you find a system that's working, I tend to stay with it. Everything I've talked about today, I didn't invent any of this stuff, because had I invented it then... I haven't been in the business that long to have proven it all out. Everything I'm talking about is stuff that I've got from people like Russell Brunson, from Todd Brown, from Todd Brown's team, from Dan Kennedy, Rick Sheffield. It's all these guys. It's a combination of what worked for them. We're talking dozens of years of experience in a system that ultimately works.

Robert Plank: Why reinvent the wheel? Go with what others have done before you, and build on that.

Mike Caldwell: A big mistake that a lot of people make is, again, going back to the emotion. Quite often, we think, "If we just pack all these features in... The more features we get, the more we overwhelm somebody that they're going to want to buy", but I don't care about the features. I care about the end result. If it only has 1 feature that's going to allow me to lose 12 pounds in a week, that's awesome. If you list me 50 different features, but I don't know I'm going to lose any weight after I go through all these features, then who cares?

Robert Plank: Right. It's a lot of beating on your own chest but nothing about what's in it for me. Have you noticed that lately, in the past maybe 5 years or so, that a lot of these webpages have had less text and less information on them?

Mike Caldwell: Yeah. Again, I've done a lot of work with Russell Brunson, and I'm in his camp. What I see happening a lot is people are cloning the gurus like Russell. What they don't understand is that someone like Russell... When you come to a landing page of his that has minimal text or minimal copy, that is not your first exposure to Russell. You've been following Russell for weeks, months, years. You've been getting all the emails from him. You know what he offers. You know what his past track record's been. When you get to one of his landing page that has minimal copy on it, that's because he knows that you've already spent dozens of hours in front of them.

What too many funnel and website builders are doing now is they're cloning one of Russell's minimized landing pages, and nobody's... Ted Schmidt launches a funnel and it has no copy on it, because he like, "Oh, that's what Russell did." Well yeah, but we all know who Russell is. We know what he provides. I've never heard of Ted Schmidt before. You've got to go back to that platform for the 3 biggest objections people are going to have for not wanting to buy from you. Russell has already dealt with those objections in the weeks he's been corresponding with you.

That's why I like to have that platform. I say it's what they have to believe in you, your product, and themselves. Those are the 3 biggest things, but I always go back to... If I walked up to you on the street, and I made you an offer, I don't care what offer it is, you're going to reject it. Right at the beginning, you're going to say "no". I want to know the top 3 reasons you're going to say "no" to what I'm offering you, and then I'm going to address that on that landing page. I remove the objections before you can ever bring them up.

Robert Plank: That's a cool way of going about it, in that you can basically get caught up, I guess, to where a Russell-level guru already has. You can get caught up, but you're also not writing 50 pages on a webpage, also.

Mike Caldwell: Right. You don't want to overwhelm the person. I want to do my research, and I want to know what your objections are going to be. Usually the objections are that... Looks like somebody else is on the call right here, but... Usually the objections... Sorry, I lost my track. Where was I? Usually the objections are money-based. "Oh, I can't afford it." What I like to do is before they say they can't afford it, I like to show them what the benefits are if they don't buy it.

Robert Plank: The takeaway selling.

Mike Caldwell: That's right. That's right.

Robert Plank: We've been mentioning for the past few minutes about different mistakes that you've seen on the landing pages that you come across or mistakes on landing pages- Woah, there's a shirtless guy in our Podcast- The mistakes that you've seen other funnel builders make. Is there one big, huge one?

Mike Caldwell: It's actually the one that we just mentioned. Well, it's 2 things. Somebody will say say, "Give me your email, and I'll give you my 3 secrets to financial freedom." They think that that's going to do it for them. There's so many problems with that. The first is you're going to give me your secrets to financial freedom? I have no idea how financially free you are. I have no idea how your system could apply to me. Do I have to make more money? Do I have to save more money? Do I have to start buying stocks? Are you wanting me to start flipping houses? I don't know what your product is. There's nothing unique about your offer. If I wanted to have financial, what if I type "how to have financial freedom" into Google? How many answers am I going to get to that on Google? Tens of thousands, so what separates you from anybody else? That person would need a unique mechanism so that I can't Google it.

That's the biggest thing. Most funnels I see, the only copy is above the fold. There's minimal stuff in there. There's no platform for why I should believe in you, your product, or how it could apply to me.

Robert Plank: It sounds like out of those 2 things it's have a better freebie to give away in general, and then make that freebie as sexy as that can be.

Mike Caldwell: Yeah. A freebie has to be... We're coveting our emails more and more every day. We're getting bogged down with all the spam that we're getting in our inboxes. Again, if you're giving 3 secrets to financial freedom, you have to intrigue me in some way that I believe that what you have works and that what you're offering I can't Google it and get for free. By free, I mean without giving my email on Google. The offer has to be really good.

Again, I like to go back to Russell all the time. One of the things that actually to me to sign up with Russell is when I got his free plus shipping book offer. I sent away for his 108 split tests for 7 dollars, 95 cents, and shipping. Then he sends me this 200-page, high-gloss, every-page book, and every page had killer content, killer value on it. Had I seen this book store I easily... I wouldn't have had any problems paying 50 bucks for a book like that. Russell gave it to me for the cost of shipping, and so, what that leads me to believe is that if he's going to give me that much value for free, how much value is he going to give me when I pay more?

What most people do is they come up with some kind of Word document that is basically worthless, that they spent 5 minutes researching, and they're trying to give that away in exchange for my email address. Even if they do trick me and get me to give them their email address, once I get this 1-page Word document with generic information, what are the odds of me ever buying anything from them down the road?

Robert Plank: Almost nothing.

Mike Caldwell: People got to give some thought to that offer. Like you said, how can they intriguing and sexy? Then once they get it, how can you make them say "wow"? When I got that book from Russell, I wasn't expecting it. I was like, "Wow. I can't believe I just got this book for the cost of shipping." That's a funnel has to work. That free offer, that's your first impression, and if you blow that first impression, you're done.

Robert Plank: Give them a huge wow when they get that thing for free?

Mike Caldwell: Exactly. Exactly.

Robert Plank: Speaking of ClickFunnels, I've known Russell for years and years, but I haven't been paying as close attention to him in the past few years. I know about ClickFunnels. I've seen a bunch of funnel pages. I've seen it demoed, but I don't have an account. In your words, what is ClickFunnels, exactly, and how is it different from all the other page builders out there?

Mike Caldwell: ClickFunnels is a page-building online software where... They just made it. They're all pretty much drag-and-drop now, but ClickFunnels has made it very intuitive for how to build the page. What they've done is they've... With a ClickFunnels account, you get all the integrations that you would have to usually use third-party providers for. I got rid of my AWeber account, my autoresponder, because now everything thing goes through ClickFunnels. They call them Action Funnels. The Action Funnels are better than what I had with AWeber before. Everything's segmented a lot better. I can move people around on my list. If you come to my page, you give me your email, then you'll get one sequence of email blasts from me, but if you buy 1 thing, then you'll get a different sequence. If you also go for my one-time offer, then you'll get a different sequence.

It's really easy to set that up within ClickFunnels. At the same time, they have all the eCommerce also integrated, so I don't need third-party providers for that. I can have my forms right on the page. You don't have to go to a separate PayPal page or to buy it or whatever, and then they've made it super easy- and this is where the true value comes in. If you decide to buy my TripWire for 7.95, I can include... It's called an order bomb. For 4 dollars more, I'll give you the checklist that supports the document. All you have to do is click this one little button, and that's added to your order. It's very painless for you, so you'll probably do it.

Then once you go to that page, ClickFunnels also makes it super easy to have a one-time offer. You've bought my document for 7.95. You went for the order bomb for 4 dollars. Now, I'm going to give you the one-time offer on the next page, but again, you just have to click the button, and it's added onto your cart. Again, completely painless for you. It makes the sales process so easy, and it defines what a funnel is.

Robert Plank: It sounds awesome, the way that you describe that, because if you can cancel your AWeber account, if you don't have to connect a PayPal button to a webpage. If it's all handled all in one place, and it's all drag-and-drop, that seems like that clears up a lot of that extra time that people would have otherwise been spending on all the technical stuff.

Mike Caldwell: Yeah. What's really cool is, like you said, you've been following Russell for awhile. Russell gives so much value away. Again, his upfront offers are so awesome. You can get most of his books for free plus shipping. You can get the DotCom Secrets, that's his playbook for making funnels. If you follow his playbook and incorporate that with ClickFunnels, then you're business is off to the races. The other thing I love about ClickFunnels so much is you don't get... WordPress sites are awesome. They're free, but if you're having problems building something on WordPress, what do you do? You're kind of screwed, aren't you?

Robert Plank: Yeah, you're on your own.

Mike Caldwell: You're on your own. There's forums you can go to and get a half of different bunch of answers from people who don't know anything more than you do, but with ClickFunnels, there's online chats. There's online support right there. You'll usually get an answer within 24 hours at the latest, and it's usually a lot quicker than that.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Not only do they do anything, but also they support it pretty well. Speaking of supporting this thing called ClickFunnels, is that right that what you do is you set up funnels for other people?

Mike Caldwell: Yes. Yes and no. I'm more of a... I definitely build funnels for people, but my strength is more in the whole strategy behind the funnel. I can build a funnel, but my strengths are more in building the business. The funnel is one component of it.

Robert Plank: In these last couple of minutes here, can you walk us through a quick case study of maybe a client you had, and they said, "We need x, y, z", and then you saved the day for them?

Mike Caldwell: Yeah, that happened last week. A potential client called me. I found out later that I was his fourth... I'm a certified ClickFunnels consultant. We have a page where people can go and contact us. I was the fourth person that he contacted on the page, and he was trying to sell some supplements. Supplements are great, but what people have to understand about supplements is they have generally small margins. It's more of a... taking into consideration all the advertising and everything you've done. Russell has a template where he was making 17,000 dollars a day on the supplement funnel. He promotes that, but when you have the opportunity to go to some of his inner circle meetings on that, he'll tell you that that funnel was making 17,000 a day, but it was on a 15,000 dollars a day ad spend. That funnel was between 10 to 15 percent profitable, which is good, but if you want to make a living from it, then you have to have the financial resources to back it with your advertisement, right?

Robert Plank: Right.

Mike Caldwell: Once I explained... I said, "I'd happily build a funnel for you, but another problem with supplements is Facebook isn't really that supplement-friendly. You can do it, but it's tricky. You have to really play within the rules of Facebook to promote supplements on Facebook." I explained that to him as well. Then, what we learned through talking is that he's a pastor with this huge following, and he wants to do more on the lines of life coaching. What he actually has in his arsenal is this amazing high-ticket offer. The call lasted close to an hour, but at the end of the call, he hired me. He told me that I was the fourth person that he talked to. Everybody else has talked talked about this structure, the funnel, and how they were going to put a green button here and a video there. What I did is I helped him walk through his business model where he could actually monetize and make money out the backend. Now we're building out a high-ticket webinar funnel for him, where he can sell his coaching services complete with a value ladder of up-sales and down-sales.

Robert Plank: Awesome. The reason why he chose you over someone else, and I guess what differentiated you from those 4 people, was that they were focused on the tactics. They were focused on the little minutia details, and you said, "Well, here's the big picture."

Mike Caldwell: That's it, yeah. He called me and said, "Can you build me a funnel?", and I said, "Yes, but just so you know, I'm really good at building funnels and strategy and all that, but it doesn't matter how good I am. Russell Brunson was 15 percent profitable, so that would be my goal: to be that good. I'm not as good as Russell Brunson, so we're probably looking at 8 to 10 percent profit. Aside from Russell, I'm one of the best there is." It was almost like saying I wouldn't hire me. I don't want your business. I want to build your business, and if I don't think I can build your business to the degree that you want it, then I don't want to work for you. I don't think you should want me to work for you either. Anyway, that's how I approached it. Like I said, at the end of the day, he ended up hiring me to build him his high-ticket webinar funnel.

Robert Plank: Awesome. That is a good goal to shoot for, and I think that's a good attitude that you're not just clocking in and getting paid x number of dollars for the hours. You're actually making something that's complete and that's going to help someone else's business. If someone wants to find out about you, Mike, and they want to hire or even see what you've been doing and talking about lately, where can they go to find out all that information?

Mike Caldwell: They want to go to marketingmedic.ca, and on that page, you'll see my lead magnet there. I'm giving away my 8-page checklist, so the exact same same checklist that I use when I build a funnel to make sure all my standard operating procedures, make sure I haven't missed anything. That's what I am giving away, and it is legitimately the same checklist that I use. There's an example of somebody who wants to build a funnel. If that's your goal, you're wanting to build a funnel, you find marketingmedic.ca, you come to my website, and you're like, "Wow, Mike's giving me the same checklist that he uses to build funnels, the same checklist that he used to turn 300 dollars in Facebook ads into 11,000 dollars in profit?" That's what I've giving away as my lead magnet. You can guess that my clickthrough rate's pretty high on that.

Robert Plank: Well yeah, because imagine that you actually practice what you preach, instead of saying, "Here are the top 3 conversion ideas". You're saying, "No, here's... I will start to finish. This is what I actually use. Now you can use it as well." Great stuff. Marketingmedic.ca, and thanks so much for being on the show today, Mike.

Mike Caldwell: Thanks for having me, Robert.