How a marketing genius captures and commands attention

What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.

This newsletter is about leveling up your paid growth marketing skills by analyzing the best brands' paid strategy, tactics, positioning, and value props.

This newsletter is divided into:

• Sharing what I've learned

• Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers’ lessons with you

• And I analyze & compare the best ads on the internet (this issue)

Estimated read time: 3 minutes, 38 seconds.

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If you don’t know who he is – Russell Brunson is a highly successful marketer and the co-founder of ClickFunnels, a popular software platform for building sales funnels. He is known for his expertise in persuasive advertising and sales techniques.

I recommend reading his book, Dot Com Secrets. It changed how I think about funnels.

Anyway, here are some ad lessons we can learn from him without him having to teach us.

Note: Russell has so many advantages that we might see this as unfair. However, there is always something to learn from him. Also, Russell uses a lot of famous people in his ads and that must be standing out.

Ads that Appeal

I only evaluated ads older than 30 days to see if they performed well. Let’s take a look.

Ad # 1 - How does the funnel change anything?

This ad has been running for 104 days so far, so it must be working.

What immediately stands out:

• Calling on a middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu) educated audience: entrepreneurs who understand funnels but do not know how to fully exploit it

• The hook: How does a funnel change anything, let alone have the funnel change everything for the better?

• Calling out big names: Dan Henry, Grant Cardone, Kylene, Wilder, and many other high-level entrepreneurs.

What we can learn from this ad:

• Value-first, the ad, and the content is teaching you the importance of funnels to eventually use their software → Clickfunnels. Most of us are direct response marketers and we want sales, but Russell, he wants to educate you.

• Selling the concept with the most important desire: time and financial freedom.

So, give value first and sell on the most important desire, not just selfish desires.

Ad # 2 – Selling the most undesirable outcome

This ad is an exception because it was only recently turned on, but it is so good that I am madly in love with it.

What immediately stands out:

• Calling entrepreneurs with the jobs-to-be-done (so you have an idea)

• The script is: hook and then punch > punch > punch and punch again with the CTA

This would explain much better with the script.

What we can learn from this ad:

• The primary copy starts off well: Tired of 9-5?

• Sometimes it is better to share the undesirable outcome that people don’t want

• Explain it like I’m five. Concepts always leave an impression on the audience. Try this with your ads

• CTA: Turn your X into Y (a desirable outcome)

Ad # 3 – Tapping into the existing context

This is also the longest-running ad for 105 days. Let’s see what I learned from it:

What immediately stands out:

• Damien the people shark – this is tapping into the existing context of people who already know Damien and love Shark Tank

• Connecting: Shark Tank’s idea of money to no money

• A funny ad that delivers

• Hello! Damien the people shark. I felt it was kind of documentary “content” that I was leaning into the story of someone (and that is a feeling of native content)

• A challenge that does not need investors or banks or angels – how can a funnel help you do that? It’s already click-worthy to look at.

What we can learn:

• Exploit the celebrity’s context and audience

• Not just using that celebrity to vouch for you, but also flipping the ideas of “investing” and “bootstrapping” so if an investor has changed his mind, so can you. This makes it more believable.

• A free 5-day channel that teaches people how to launch a business – This is the best elevator pitch I have ever seen.

• You can always connect the climax with the CTAs you want

Anyway, did you see how young Russell looks in that video? It’s crazy.

Hope you learned something from these ads.

Here’s my TL;DR:

• Value-first – offer content or anything that makes your audience believe you first, use this as your foot-in-the-door policy

• Sell the most important desire, not just any desire

• It’s sometimes better to sell the most undesirable outcome so people take action

• If you are using a public figure, you can probably tap into their existing context

• Making the celebrity’s narrative, the concept that the celebrity's believes in i.e. “investing more money for growth”, make that as an enemy and then introducing your idea to make it even more believable

What else did you pick up? I believe my readers are even smarter than I am. If you found something interesting, respond to this email and get a shoutout in the next week’s issue.

That’s all from this week.

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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