John Parkes / Co-Founder ClickFunnels. Chief Traffic Architect at Prime Mover

Most marketers blame their funnel when sales are slow. But according to John Parkes, the man behind ClickFunnels' explosive traffic growth, the real problem usually starts at the top: your ad.

In this episode, John breaks down how to diagnose funnel failure and where to start fixing. He explains why curiosity fuels conversions, how open loops improve webinar attendance, and why video is non-negotiable if you want to build trust fast.

With over $150M in ad spend under his belt, John delivers battle-tested wisdom that can help anyone selling online—whether you’re running a challenge, webinar, or high-ticket funnel.

Key Takeaways:

• 1.5%+ click-through rate is your first green light
• Why video builds instant trust with cold traffic
• The secret behind high webinar attendance
• How curiosity converts better than clarity alone
• The truth about scaling your ad strategy

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Guest Bio:
John Parkes is the Chief Traffic Architect at Prime Mover and the digital strategist behind hundreds of millions in online sales. With over a decade of experience managing more than $150 million in ad spend, John has helped scale some of the most influential brands in digital marketing, including ClickFunnels, where he remains an equity partner. Known for his ability to decode ad performance, diagnose funnel bottlenecks, and engineer conversion breakthroughs, John is also a sought-after speaker and coach. At heart, he's a family man devoted to God, country, and his wife and six kids.

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (02:35.02)
Hey, welcome to the Headsmack podcast. My name is Paul Povolni and I am excited to have another misfit with me. I have John Parks with me and he is the chief traffic architect at PrimeMover. And for more than 10 years now, John has been a coach and stage presenter to tens of thousands of marketers looking to dramatically increase their traffic, conversion sales, and their sales online. With over $150 million worth of ad spend, John knows his way around ad campaigns like the back of his hand.

whether it's optimizing things on the campaign, audience, or at creative level, John is the man with the skills, strategy, and expertise and experience to generate world-class results. At his core, John is a man who loves God, country, and family, and John has an amazing wife and six kids. John, welcome.

John Parkes (03:22.533)
Thanks, Paul. I'm glad to be here.

Paul Povolni (03:24.27)
Yeah, I'm excited about this conversation. I know you're going to have a lot of value to share for those that are looking at building their business and looking at their marketing chains and how to make it more effective and all about meta ads and all the fun stuff that we might get into. don't know whether we'll get to go into all of it, but certainly we will provide a lot of value. so John, so tell me a little bit about yourself. I'd like to start the podcast with just understanding a little bit about your backstory.

a little bit about your origin story. so tell me about young John, and you can go as far back as you want. That's relevant, but tell me a little bit about the origin story of John.

John Parkes (04:00.286)
Alright, this'll be fun. Yeah

John Parkes (04:05.985)
Man, I've been entrepreneurial since as far as I could remember and back, you know doing lemonade stands and shaved ice and walking around my neighborhood as a kid with With a wagon full of treats on it to the local the other kids in the neighborhood. So I have just always

Paul Povolni (04:21.624)
So where did that come from? Where did that come Like most kids don't grow up that way.

John Parkes (04:25.297)
Yeah, right. Yeah, I probably have to attribute it to my father who was always studying entrepreneurship. You know, as we would drive around town, he would be listening to talk shows on, you know, before there were podcasts on the topic or even cassette tapes, you know, that people would...

Paul Povolni (04:49.89)
Yeah.

John Parkes (04:51.835)
have produced based on the concept of entrepreneurship or building a business or sales or all these things. And so I think he just kind of built it into me from a young age.

Paul Povolni (05:00.418)
Yeah. Yeah. And so you started with the lemonade stands. You started with those things. What was next?

John Parkes (05:04.921)
Yeah, we had it. We had a great stand. We found the perfect location. It's all about location, right? And, you know, we started thinking through the things and really making sure we got the audience right, the product right, and we'd adjust things. We even had what Russell Brunson now calls irresistible offers. We were building irresistible offers. We had prices scaling. And then if you got to a certain point, then you got some free candy. And it was just, it was great. We learned all kinds of good stuff with.

Paul Povolni (05:08.27)
Right.

Paul Povolni (05:23.102)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (05:32.078)
Wow, upsells and all of it, wow.

John Parkes (05:34.299)
We really did. Yeah, it was really interesting. It wasn't just your typical neighborhood lemonade stand, but I've always been that way. And then, you know, what kind of launched me into my adult entrepreneurship realm was real estate. 2006, 2007, got involved with some different real estate investors who were basically teaching how to do it without money in there. I was just a college kid and I said, okay, I guess you can do it without money. And so I started to do their methods.

We got involved with a bunch of properties and it was working until it didn't work in 2008 when everything just crashed. That didn't work at that point, but that's part of entrepreneurship is that cycling. You cycle and you find that bottom again, but then the next bottom isn't quite as low and you cycle like that. It's an important journey that business builders and entrepreneurs go on.

Paul Povolni (06:09.006)
right, right.

Paul Povolni (06:19.553)
Right? Right?

Paul Povolni (06:25.909)
Right.

John Parkes (06:33.701)
But let's see, so there I was kind of at the bottom of that real estate slump and I came across Russell Brunson who happens to be my wife's cousin. Met him at a, yeah, at a family reunion. We'd been married for a year and we were headed up to the lake and to meet the family, the extended family and she's telling me about this aunt and this uncle and this.

Paul Povolni (06:48.322)
Wow.

John Parkes (07:01.905)
know this is who this is and this is who that you're to meet over here and I've got this cousin who's kind of entrepreneurial like you and his name's Russell and then this is you know I didn't get to skip a beat with it and then um find myself really connected with him and and he's like you know what just come and work for me once you're done with college in a few months and so I did.

Paul Povolni (07:20.086)
What version of Russell was that?

John Parkes (07:22.733)
wow, pre-ClickFunnels, pre-author, he hadn't even written a book yet. Yeah, he was just releasing info products under the brand .comSecrets. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (07:34.85)
Wow. And so what made you say yes?

John Parkes (07:38.831)
Well, I mean, part of it, because I was at the bottom of my cycle. And usually when you're at the bottom of your cycle, you're looking for someone to lift you up onto another step. You what I You need to get out of the slum. And so it fit that bill. I seem to get along with the guy great. I liked what he was doing and was quite interested in learning his version of entrepreneurship. The real estate investing thing hadn't worked for me.

Paul Povolni (07:50.445)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (08:08.013)
Right, right.

John Parkes (08:08.336)
And I know it was a timing thing, works for lots of people, but I needed a new path at that time.

Paul Povolni (08:13.998)
Yeah, and so what were you doing at that point for him?

John Parkes (08:17.489)
I started, I guess you would call it be a project manager. I started just managing, you know, a project of, let's see, getting, building a network marketing leg that he was a part of. And it was Send Out Cards. Send Out Cards is a network marketing program that's been around for a couple of decades now. I actually haven't looked into it the last couple of years if it's still going or not, but.

Paul Povolni (08:32.728)
Yeah.

John Parkes (08:45.635)
It was literally greeting cards and you could use it for marketing or you could use it for holidays or keeping in touch or making people feel good or all kinds of purposes of a greeting card. But it was literally an automated greeting card system. could even build, like us marketers like to do, could build up follow-up campaigns and sequences like that. So direct mail in essence with greeting cards, which rarely get thrown away. People open, if it looks like a card, a birthday card, a Christmas card, they're going to open it. They're going to read it.

Paul Povolni (09:04.159)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (09:12.59)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (09:15.333)
great open rate, really customizable. So it was a fun thing and I was the project manager there. Just kind of growing his pool of influence and then network marketing company and did great. And so then he had me started managing this other company and this other project and this other project. And pretty soon I was managing most of what he was doing and then became a partner. So I'm an equity partner in Russell's Ventures now.

Paul Povolni (09:37.985)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (09:43.168)
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, in that, that first endeavor post, you know, the 20, 2008, you know, crash, when did, was that, was that going well from the get-go or was there, was it like barely making it? And at one point, at what point did you think this is really going to be something?

John Parkes (10:03.813)
Yeah, with the real estate before the crash.

Paul Povolni (10:06.038)
No, no, no, with with joining Russell in his adventures, because at that point, you know, he wasn't, you know, Russell Brunson, you know, so.

John Parkes (10:08.533)
yeah.

Right, yeah. No, and that's really interesting that you brought that up because right out of the gate, we were doing cool things and finding success and it was awesome. And then Russell had his crash and he's talked about that quite a bit where literally he had to let everybody go. And it was because the merchant team, the people who take the credit cards all of a sudden said, no, internet market is allowed right now.

Right, so it was just a bloodbath across the industry and that day's forever memorialized in the OG internet marketing world. It was just wild and so everybody lost all of their revenue and subsequently all of their businesses and stuff like that. And was only a few who could figure out how to get through that gauntlet and Russell figured it out and we continued on. So let's say we really started to our stride a few years after that, 20...

I'm not even sure if I'll get the date check, but 2012, 2013, really. And we came up with this concept of click funnels and he has his whole story around that. And it's just been a wild ride since then.

Paul Povolni (11:11.042)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (11:18.83)
Yeah. So was, was when, um, click funnels became a thing when you felt that this was kind of going to continue or was it always on a steady climb? mean, was there ever a point where you're like, I'm not sure if this is gonna, you know, if this is working out or if this is, you know, uh, yeah.

John Parkes (11:33.873)
Oh, for sure. There was points like that. mean, yeah, it's just this, the business itself has gone through cycles. There was actually a point where, um, Russell fired me just because of lack of revenue and ability to pay. I'm just like, okay, I'll go my own, you know, do my own thing. And, know, I was always kind of an, with Russell been an intrapreneur is what they call it, right. An entrepreneur within, within an organization, which is an interesting thing. I teach an entrepreneurial class to the local high school.

Paul Povolni (11:57.559)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (12:01.807)
I teach them that you can be an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur and they're both entrepreneurs, one. One's doing it this way, one's doing it that It's interesting concept. I've always been an intrapreneur and there's a point where it's just like, there's no money left so can't pay anybody anything so bye. And then within 48 hours, I need you back. It's one of those funny things, right?

Paul Povolni (12:08.162)
Yeah.

Right.

Paul Povolni (12:21.908)
Yeah. The project manager is a pretty key role in scaling, right? And so, yeah, when you realize that things weren't getting done and, you know, the to-do list was getting longer, you probably realize, yeah, that was not a role to purge.

John Parkes (12:32.305)
Right, yeah.

Mm-mm.

John Parkes (12:41.553)
Right, and there's an interesting point, Paul, when, man, I should have out these dates better, but like, after that really, really low point, you know, where we were trying to scale and grow and get more traffic, right? And we realized, I remember the day exactly, Russell, he kind of put his hands down on his desk and stood up, so his head was above his monitor, which was looking out towards the three of us that still worked with him.

Paul Povolni (13:10.357)
Hahaha

John Parkes (13:10.607)
And he said, you know what we don't do? We're not running any advertising. We're not doing any ads. We're doing partnerships and JVs and affiliate things and even solo ads, which is where you exchange email lists and properly and things like that. the one thing we weren't doing is advertising. And social media advertising was actually super new at that time, if that dates me.

Paul Povolni (13:34.638)
Right, right.

John Parkes (13:38.033)
And people are doing this thing, running ads on Facebook. We should try this. And so he's like, you know, which of you three that are working in this four person company wants to take that on? And I'm like, you know, that sounds fascinating. I'll totally jump into that. And since then, really early on in the early days of social media marketing, I became the traffic guy. And that's what I've been ever saying.

Paul Povolni (13:41.57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:52.002)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (14:02.84)
So do you think that was the tipping point for ClickFunnels when you started doing the paid ads? Or do you feel that came earlier or later?

John Parkes (14:08.889)
Yeah, for sure. Yes, it was about it was about the click, the launch of ClickFunnels. If I have my my ducks, right? About at that time, I started running ads for ClickFunnels. It wasn't the ads that was the pivot, though. The big change that really gets first Russell and Todd had created ClickFunnels and they had this great thing and they launched it and then they got very few sales. We got we got very few sales and

We're like, this is such a great thing. Why don't people want it? And we tried to sell it this way and that way and this way and that way. And that's one of the things that you have to realize. Sometimes you create exactly what the industry needs and potentially, hopefully, what they want because people buy what they want often more than what they need. So that's something to think about when you have an offer. Right, Right, yeah. Think through your offer. Is it something that people want or is it just what they need?

Paul Povolni (14:55.234)
Right, right, absolutely. Say that for the people in the back. That's awesome, yeah.

John Parkes (15:06.853)
How can you reposition it so it's something that they want? Because that sells way easier. So it's something that we thought they would want. They definitely needed quick funnel building software that didn't exist back then. Building a sales funnel or even a website was weeks of code and design, and it was a nightmare. So we figured this really quick plug and play model. finally, Russell, he...

Paul Povolni (15:23.726)
Right, right?

John Parkes (15:35.601)
put together what he now calls as the perfect webinar, just this presentation. He studied all the great presentations he could get his hands on and the teachings, and he took from them. is one of his geniuses, is distilling information and restructuring it into these beautiful frameworks. And he built this perfect webinar framework, and that is what launched ClickFunnels because all of a sudden, we could explain it in a one and a half hour webinar.

with a beautifully resistible offer at the end and that combo, I could run ads to that all day long, fill up that webinar, hundreds of people would buy it, hundreds again, hundreds again, and all of it just took off. And then once you get that momentum, you get that brand momentum and you get the brand awareness to which doubles things.

Paul Povolni (16:09.815)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (16:15.864)
So was really a combo.

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (16:22.648)
So it really was a combination of both the ads and the webinar, right? Because just the ads by themselves were sending people to a place that wasn't converting. And then the webinar was that key ingredient that once you got their attention, you had a mechanism to convert them,

John Parkes (16:26.221)
Right, exactly.

John Parkes (16:31.312)
Right?

John Parkes (16:35.131)
Right.

John Parkes (16:39.897)
Yeah, exactly that. And that's an interesting thing to think about, Paul, when we've come to kind of own the concept of funnels and click funnels, right? We did that on purpose with our brand. And if you think of the funnel, the shape of it is intentional, wide at the top, and then it slowly scales in. But it's interesting thing I see with a lot of people's offers when they're running things online. Yes, they think they have a funnel, but the top isn't wide.

Paul Povolni (16:57.228)
Right, right.

John Parkes (17:06.897)
It's actually kind of narrow. And so they're trying to pour traffic per se into this funnel and very little is getting in. And so the funnel structure has no, it's not effective. So you have to figure out where are those constraints and open up that top so it actually is a funnel. And so it's not some wonky Christmas ornament shape, but it's actually a funnel. And that's what was happening with that webinar is that we had a major constraint early in our funnel. People weren't interested in the offer as it was.

Paul Povolni (17:10.894)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (17:16.941)
Right.

Paul Povolni (17:22.925)
right.

Paul Povolni (17:26.68)
Yeah.

John Parkes (17:35.333)
The webinar opened up that top and all of a sudden it became a true funnel.

Paul Povolni (17:38.602)
Yeah. And I do remember when I started seeing those ads that you guys were posting, cause I'm like, well, who's this 12 year old and what is he trying to sell me? know, yeah, baby face Russell. And so I do remember those getting my attention. I'm like, who is this kid and why does he think he has something to teach? know? so going back to that funnel and mentioning the, the narrowness of it.

John Parkes (17:46.103)
Right, right, babyface Russell, yeah. Right, totally.

Yeah, right.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (18:02.818)
How is that different to the discussion of niching? Because I don't want somebody to hear that and think, well, man, everybody keeps telling me niche, niche, niche, and now you're telling me I need to go broad, broad, broad. So it's

John Parkes (18:07.697)
Mmm.

John Parkes (18:11.673)
Right. Yeah, no, that's a fantastic question. Okay, I'll speak to that. know, I'll bring you a little piece of wisdom here. This is what I learned in business school. If I learned one thing in college, and you know, some entrepreneurs bad mouth college, I really enjoyed it. But the one specific thing that I learned from in college, many other things too, was that there's only three ways to win in business. One of them is to be a price leader, but you never want to be a price leader. That's what Walmart is. That's what...

Paul Povolni (18:25.996)
Ha ha ha.

John Parkes (18:38.257)
It's the hardest game in the world and there's no profit in it. That's not what you want to be. A quality leader, which is an awesome thing to be because you can charge whatever you want. Difference between Walmart $20 shoes or Nike selling you shoes for $200. The difference is perceived quality. So you could be a quality leader and win in business. But the third is to be a niche leader. And that's the third way to win in business.

That's kind of the only three ways if you really want to categorize things that way. So I'm not talking about not niche. What I'm talking about is looking at the steps in your sales process. So the steps in, and I'm going to say, I'm to draw them like this, upwards and downwards like a funnel, right? The steps. And where are there constraints? Where is there a clog in the funnel? Something that's not working. And the reason why I developed this

Paul Povolni (19:09.998)
love that.

John Parkes (19:34.821)
theme, this concept, is because I coach people all the time. We have consulting and coaching programs. And I'm often coaching people who are just saying, my webinar's not working. My webinar's not working. And I'm like, well, let's talk about that. What does not working mean? Well, I don't know. I've been trying to do a webinar, and this is my 10th time doing it, and I have no sales on the back. So then I slowly walk them back through the steps of this entire process. And we end up finding out that it's actually

the social post that they're using as their ad, that's what's not working. And so they have this constraint high up in the funnel, right? So early on steps. So I guess another way to think of it is this analogy that many people have heard is an airplane leaves the ground in New York and depending on just a few degree or a single degree of direction difference, it ends up in South Africa or in Norway, just depending on.

Paul Povolni (20:09.902)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:13.645)
Right.

Paul Povolni (20:28.822)
Right, right, yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:34.049)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (20:34.457)
on this is a slight degree. And so the early steps in your funnel amplify greatly down the funnel. So that's what I mean by a constraint. So I teach people to look at the very, very beginning of the funnel. That what's the very instant that somebody begins interacting with you or your brand. It's that social post. It's that moment where it's that podcast episode. It's something that's out there interacting with them. Okay, well what can we learn from this?

Paul Povolni (20:41.386)
Wow. Wow.

John Parkes (21:03.473)
constraints here is this performing as high as it could be? Is there of the last 10 social posts I did, there one that stands out? Why did that stand out? How can I lean into that a little more? So yeah, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, so when that comes down to advertising, which is kind of my specialty, if you had 10 different posts that are ads, and one of them is performing.

Paul Povolni (21:14.188)
Yeah. Yeah. So when it comes to, no, go ahead.

John Parkes (21:31.953)
gets twice as many clicks as the other for your money, then the one that gets twice as many clicks, you can see how that would amplify, you'd get then twice as many leads and sales and all the whole way down the funnel. Yeah, so some people really fail to put much effort into testing the ads. They think they have an ad that's good enough. Well, is it good enough? Do you realize how much that amplifies the success of your business the whole way down?

Paul Povolni (21:43.447)
Right.

Paul Povolni (21:52.397)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (21:56.216)
Right.

Paul Povolni (21:59.916)
Right, right. And getting that data and using that data then to make better decisions. So is that the first thing that you begin looking at when you're talking about the funnel or the marketing chain, as you've mentioned? Is that the first thing you look at is the advertising or is there something else that you kind of go even further back than that?

John Parkes (22:22.543)
Yeah, I mean, it is kind of a chicken and the egg, as they say. You do obviously have to have a compelling landing page and sales funnel for any of it to work. But assuming that there's something there and it's somewhat working, yes, I do. begin with a moment that the customer starts to interact with you, the ad. And there's metrics that I have there. What are you paying for an impression?

Paul Povolni (22:33.837)
Yeah.

John Parkes (22:49.413)
Are you within this acceptable threshold or are you outside of it? If so, then we can look at the next step. Okay, the next step, what's the click-through rate? Because that's what you ultimately want to do is to take people from your ad and have them click through and get to the destination, the landing page. Because if they're not getting there, then why are you in business? So that click-through rate is the rate good.

Paul Povolni (23:06.87)
Right. Right.

Right, right.

John Parkes (23:16.593)
We like to see from meta ads specifically in our industry, we like to see 1.5 % click through rate or better. If it's somewhere between 1 and 1.5%, mediocre above 1.5, that's good. Below 1%, you can do better. Let's try again.

Paul Povolni (23:23.203)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:31.522)
Yeah. And for most people hearing that number is probably a sigh of relief because, know, cause they, probably imagine it's got to, you know, to be successful, it's got to be way higher than that. But is like 1.5, is that like, that's like really good or that's like the beginning of good. Obviously if you, guess 50%, a hundred percent is way better, but is that pretty much the average that you've seen for a sign of success?

John Parkes (23:37.765)
Mm-hmm.

John Parkes (23:42.993)
Interesting.

John Parkes (23:56.273)
Oh yeah, no one's getting above exact. Yeah, 1.5 % is good enough for you to begin focusing on the next step. Because you could focus there forever and try to, you know what mean? And that's another problem you can do is you can have this perfectionism thing and never go through the funnel to make sure that it... And it's probably better that you go through in waves, Paul. That's what we do is the ad within acceptable thresholds. Great. Next is the landing page within acceptable threshold. No, it's not. Let's fix that.

Paul Povolni (24:04.386)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (24:08.214)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (24:25.937)
Because if they can't get through that initial lead capture page, they'll never see the sales page. And so we fixed that. Right now we have a funnel where we've identified that that is the step that needs improvement. And so if we don't improve that, we'll never see the sales on the back.

Paul Povolni (24:31.468)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (24:41.806)
Yeah, I love that. And I think for somebody hearing that, if they're keeping track that, um, understanding that once you have that metric at that place, move on, you know, and don't spend yourself in this endless cycle. I want to get it to two. I want to get it to three. want to get it, you know, because you can end up focusing and spending a lot of time in the wrong areas and distracted from moving to the next step. So I think for somebody that just heard that.

John Parkes (24:52.965)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Parkes (24:58.011)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni (25:09.586)
For them, that was quite a head smack. That was quite a moment for them to realize that for a company that is doing as well as ClickFunnels is for you guys to believe that. think somebody needs to pay attention to that. What about organic traffic? What are your feelings on organic traffic? that worthwhile? Why would somebody want to do that when you can get the results of paid? Where on the spectrum of...

John Parkes (25:12.701)
Awesome.

Paul Povolni (25:38.008)
things to do for business, does that lie and what's the value of it in that context?

John Parkes (25:45.777)
Yeah, that's an awesome question. Okay, so I'm gonna bring up some phrases that we've developed here at ClickFunnels. we have the traffic organic that you talk about, and we actually label that earn your way in. And then we have the paid advertising, and we've labeled that buy your way in. So you can either earn your way in or buy your way in. One is sweat equity, one's all the work, building out podcasts, collaborating with people, whatever it takes to...

Paul Povolni (26:07.144)
Nice.

Yeah.

John Parkes (26:15.035)
build that organic traffic, thinking of the next post and the next content creation, blogging, all those things. Lots of work, right? And it's work and it's a long runway and it's slow at first and then you hope it picks up. But what if it doesn't, right? It's also possible that it doesn't. Then there's the buy your way in, which is immediate traffic right now. You just have to pay for it, which means that you're

Paul Povolni (26:21.803)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (26:31.662)
Right, right, right, right. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (26:44.173)
Right.

John Parkes (26:45.325)
average order value and your revenues have to be in a better place than they would if you were just getting free traffic. So it's this interesting dichotomy between the two. Doing both simultaneously, I think is a very good idea. I saw this stat the other day that 85 % of small businesses, brands, individuals who try to build significant organic traffic

Paul Povolni (26:50.669)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (27:02.913)
Right, right.

John Parkes (27:14.161)
85 % of them never make it to a significant point. So you have a 15 % chance of that working. So I would never put all my eggs in that basket. With advertising, yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna contrast that with the advertising side. With the advertising, we call it buy your way in, but we also call it traffic you control, right? Because you can turn it on or off immediately. 500 bucks in today, and assuming you've...

Paul Povolni (27:18.348)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (27:21.88)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, and I would imagine, go ahead. No, no, no. I'll let you finish your thought.

Paul Povolni (27:37.228)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (27:44.347)
got a decent ad you immediately have traffic. So it costs, but you're in control.

Paul Povolni (27:50.584)
Well, and the other thing that just came to mind when you were talking about that too is with doing organic, know, if you don't have money, you have time and, know, and, you know, that's, guess that could work, but the one thing that you don't, the data that you don't get is, is your offer any good? Is your funnel any good? Is any of that any good? Because you're not getting the traffic to give you the information, right? And whereas with paid, you can.

John Parkes (28:00.303)
Right?

Paul Povolni (28:18.796)
get the information a lot faster and say, well, man, they did good at this point, but at this point they failed. And you don't get that information as fast when you're doing organic. And so you might have a flaw in your funnel or your marketing chain down the road, but you never understand that or know it or recognize it because you're not getting enough data to make that evaluation.

John Parkes (28:41.851)
Yeah, a really good point. And also the other thing with the advertising, obviously I'm biased because that's my gig. But the advertising is the other benefit there is it forces you to be better because you're taking colder traffic and trying to get them to click and react on your page immediately. And so it requires.

Paul Povolni (28:47.662)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (28:53.836)
Yeah.

John Parkes (29:05.837)
a better set up. You can actually get away with organic traffic. You can kind of get away with a mediocre offer and sales funnel and webinar because you've spent much time with these people on social media, on your YouTube channel, on your Instagram, on your podcast. And so they're very warm to you and there's this innate base foundation of trust. so no kind of, no matter what you're offering or saying, if they like you though, they'll be interested in it in an unnaturally inflated way.

Paul Povolni (29:34.54)
Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, since we're talking about ads, do you have any kind of a formula or anything that you look at that makes an effective ad? Because, know, somebody might say, okay, well, I've been doing organic, you've convinced me I need to do paid ads. And they start putting money into paid ads, but then they still fail. what would you tell them to look for or to consider when even creating a paid ad, that'll make it more effective.

John Parkes (29:56.229)
Right.

John Parkes (30:04.399)
Okay, great question. think one thing to keep in mind, and this is a marketer's adage that's been around, a confused mind always says no. So make sure that your post is very clear as to what value you're providing. know, why, what's in it for me is another thing to think about. So be very clear on a single what's in it for me proposal.

Paul Povolni (30:30.314)
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (30:30.885)
Does that make sense? Yeah, some people are like, well, I don't know, you could get this and this benefit and this thing and I don't know. They kind of ramble on and I'm really actually not quite clear on what you're even offering by the time the ad's over and I'm not gonna click through it. I'm not interested, right?

Paul Povolni (30:43.756)
Yeah. Yeah. I noticed you were very selective with each one of those words that you just said, because I think they all matter. And so say that again and then continue your thought.

John Parkes (30:49.518)
Yeah.

John Parkes (30:53.477)
Yeah, okay, so a confused mind always says no, so remember that. And so when you're trying to teach them a single thing that benefits them, so what's in it for me, WWFM, what's in it for me, right, is another marketing phrase that's been around for decades. But thinking about those two things in conjunction, so what's the one thing that's in it for them?

Paul Povolni (31:10.701)
Yeah.

John Parkes (31:22.139)
that I want to convey in this ad? And how clearly can I convey it?

Paul Povolni (31:24.59)
That's so good. Yeah, yeah, that's so good. And so they've done that. Obviously creative is important. And so they've got attention, they've focused on the one thing, the what's enough for me, why should I care, whole thing. What's the next step that you start looking at in that marketing chain, in that funnel, now that you've got the vehicle to get attention?

John Parkes (31:50.993)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni (31:51.956)
what's the next thing that you start looking at that needs to be in place?

John Parkes (31:57.073)
Yeah, good question. if we kind of think through, I mean, in a lot of these instances, as we go down this funnel or chain, we can zoom in on certain parts of it and see more things, you know what I mean? So like we might be thinking about the landing page and the conversion rate just isn't working there. Well, you can zoom in on that and there's a funnel inside of a funnel there. That's confusing as that is, there's the headline itself. If I switch that out, that gonna affect that? There's the call to action section.

Paul Povolni (32:19.33)
Hahaha.

John Parkes (32:26.043)
There's a layout of the page. Is the call to action that you're asking them to do, the button, it's usually a button click or a field to fill out. Is that high enough on the page? Is it above the fold is what we try to say, or at least close to it. Above the scroll is a digital way of being above the fold, the fold referencing the old newspapers.

Paul Povolni (32:40.778)
Right. Or above the scroll, which is kind of the new... Yeah.

John Parkes (32:51.885)
And so those kind of things. So when you zoom into these sections, there's ways in which you can really hyper-focus and figure out the pieces. On the video side, to kind of add another layer to what we just talked about, one thing you want to, when you zoom in there, one thing you want to make sure you focus on is the hook, is what we call it. The hook is the very beginning of the video. It's typically the first three to five seconds. And the hook can be...

visual or audio or copy or both. Okay. So one hook that was effective for a while, I mean visually, literally just kind of put your hand in front of the camera and pull it away because it creates a visual explosion. It creates a motion and we're drawn to it, right? And another hook can be you looking kind of adamant that you need their attention. Like stop scrolling, like listen to this video.

Paul Povolni (33:27.437)
or both,

Paul Povolni (33:37.838)
Yeah, yeah. Right, right.

Paul Povolni (33:47.394)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Parkes (33:49.233)
You know, some people will use a graphical hook or colors can be a hook. A picture, hyper-saturated, and now it stands out artificially, you know, and it starts out in a surprising way. Or flip it around, make it sepia or black and white, and all of a sudden it looks like it has historical value or there's a reason why I shouldn't pass this up. It has a museum quality to it. And so both of those are different than the typical.

Paul Povolni (33:56.066)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (34:10.467)
Right.

John Parkes (34:18.481)
You know, so you have to figure out a visual hub.

Paul Povolni (34:18.55)
And so.

Yeah. And so, so, and that's through, you mentioned video. is that something that you recommend that most people have on that landing page, you know, that people come to from, the, the ad or whatever it might be. have you found success in doing that? And that is a critical part of it, or is that just the suggested part or, how, how, how, how, how valuable would the video be for what you're talking about?

John Parkes (34:48.559)
yeah, great question. Okay, so who we tend to consult with and coach over here at ClickFunnels is small to medium sized businesses. Usually they have an attractive character, a personality that is going to be presenting or hosting a challenge or presenting a webinar or kind of the face in front of it all, Coca-Cola has since moved way on from any kind of personality and now they're just an iconic brand, right? So that's not who our target market is, right?

Paul Povolni (35:16.162)
Right, right.

John Parkes (35:17.679)
But for the typical small to medium sized business, it's often an icon, excuse me, an attractive character is what we call it. So yes, the attractive character makes the business building and growth and traffic so much easier. It is so helpful to have that involved. There are some brands that grow just based on a logo, but it's much more difficult for people to get emotional or...

Paul Povolni (35:46.904)
Right, Yeah.

John Parkes (35:47.035)
attached to the brand. And so that being said, if there is an attractive character involved, and if you, I'm gonna say you have two initial exposures to these people, one is the ad and one is the landing page, So on one, at least on one of them, you need a video because you need to build a rapport. And so I've seen both of these models be very effective and they can both work great. Where the ad is a video, a couple minutes long.

and you're able to first hook them and then clearly describe what's in it for them and a story, an epiphany works well. An origin story where it's like, was here and now I'm there and I described my journey to you in 90 seconds or less. And since you kind of went on the journey with me, you now kind of trust me. And I'm helping you understand the one reason why you...

Paul Povolni (36:23.564)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (36:39.989)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (36:44.197)
why you should believe that I can help you get here. You build that trust in the video and then you click through and then you hit a landing page where it's just an image and an opt-in form that you're registering for my webinar or whatever it is. That's very effective because they have spent some time with you. Or you can flip it. The ad can be an image that has a hook element to it, something visually interesting or scroll stopping. They click through and then they hit the landing page and on the landing page, they're greeted by you.

Paul Povolni (37:00.588)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (37:13.615)
in a video where they can then again start to build rapport on a relationship. Excuse me. then, but if it's not in either place, I see people have a very difficult time getting that relationship to progress.

Paul Povolni (37:27.702)
Yeah. Yeah. So what do you tell the person that says, man, I don't want to be in front of the camera. You know, do you tell them, your, business is going to fail or what? How, how did they get past that? Cause I'll have a million excuses with some relevant, some not. how do you encourage them beyond that fear of getting in front of the camera and being that face?

John Parkes (37:32.783)
Hahaha

John Parkes (37:41.328)
for sure.

John Parkes (37:49.361)
Yeah, that's really, it's a really interesting question. So there's a few paths you could take, right? You could find an attractive character, right? And you could have someone else. Yeah, a spokesperson, right? And Mint Mobile, for example. I actually have no idea what Ryan Reynolds relationship is with Mint Mobile, but he's obviously the spokesperson. You know, does he own the company? I don't know, but he's very effective as the spokesperson.

Paul Povolni (37:59.927)
A spokesman,

Paul Povolni (38:11.98)
Yeah.

John Parkes (38:18.705)
progressive shows flow that that gal who's always the front of their pictures you know their videos so I mean those are bigger brands obviously but just as examples so you could find a spokesperson and a lot of times you know one thing to realize in business is it a lot of times it's the who not the how that we need to focus on like Paul if I had to do everything in the business I'll never get the business off the ground

Paul Povolni (38:25.324)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (38:46.786)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (38:47.121)
But I could ask myself, well, instead of trying to learn how to do everything, I'm going to look for who can do those things. And so being able to outsource that attractive character can be really helpful. That's one solution you have. Another solution is just you. Buck up and do it. And I don't mean that harshly. What I mean is that you were often our biggest critic.

Paul Povolni (38:54.499)
Right.

Paul Povolni (39:01.293)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (39:06.766)
Get over it. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (39:16.174)
Right, right.

John Parkes (39:16.613)
You know, and we think for whatever reason we aren't attractive enough or eloquent enough or whatever it is where we have some kind of shortcoming. But the thing is, that for most people that can actually be endearing, especially your target audience, you're going to appeal to a certain demographic. And that's good because remember there's three ways to win in business. One of them is a niche. Your demographic can be your niche, right? That you appeal to a very specific demographic.

Paul Povolni (39:41.592)
Yeah.

John Parkes (39:45.741)
And so they're attracted to you and not in any way other than like interested in interacting with you, learning more from you, doing business with you, right? So when you're an attractive character, you don't have to be a model. Heaven knows I'm not a model, but I could be an attractive character because I appeal to an audience. And it can be that your method of speaking, the way you explain things, whatever it is, there's something about you that makes you unique to them.

Paul Povolni (39:58.222)
Right, right, right. Yeah.

John Parkes (40:14.853)
you've got a certain audience that responds to that. So leaning into that, you know, into my confidence that you're gonna do fine, lean on John's confidence that you'll be fine. Another thing to help is to, I wish I had McCall Jones here. She's fantastic if you haven't ran into her. She has this thing called charisma hacking, which I think is so neat. But she really helps people understand.

I guess you'd say authenticity, what you sound like and that it's okay to be you. So another example is when I consult with people, I'll be on a call, a one-on-one call like we are right now, and they'll be able to speak quite clearly their benefits and their offer to me. And then I put them in front of a camera and all of a sudden it's, I'm like, hey, where did Paul go? This is Paul 2.0 and I don't like it. I want Paul back, you know what I mean?

Paul Povolni (40:52.63)
right?

Paul Povolni (41:07.438)
Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (41:14.961)
And so for some reason we get this like strange pseudo layer that we throw up. Drop that. However, whatever it takes, there's a bunch of tricks you could do. One is that literally make your video 20 times. By the time you're on the 18th or 19th time, you'll literally be so tired of being the fake you that you're actually the real you. So that can help, right?

Paul Povolni (41:30.958)
I love that. Well, what's interesting is if you look at the companies that have fandom, that have, you know, people that, that really like them are the ones that do have a spokesman or the ones that do have an attractive character. You know, one of the, was just thinking about even Apple, you know, I used to be a fan boy of Apple, like, you know, late nineties, early two Ks, you know, I was

super fan of Apple because of Steve Jobs. Like when he came out and, you know, waved something in the air, you knew it was industry changing. It was going to change everybody's world. And it was, you know, everybody was about the Steve and you you knew that stuff's going to come out fresh and something's going to come out different. And he was always out there as the face. And when he passed away suddenly, you know, Apple became faceless, you know, it really didn't have a attractive character that they put out there.

John Parkes (42:03.665)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Parkes (42:12.006)
Yeah.

John Parkes (42:24.721)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni (42:29.766)
that kept the fanboys going. so now people like, yeah, it's great. You know, new iteration of the phone, you know, bigger camera, you know, round edges, square edges, blah, blah, blah. The fandom doesn't seem to be there as much because it's not personal anymore. It's just a device. It's just a, another upgrade, you know, whatever. And so, so I would imagine that that's some of the benefits that you would see from people that have put their faces out there in these videos.

and put, you know, created this content is because it does create a connection that builds more of a loyalty, right?

John Parkes (43:08.209)
Absolutely, yeah, you hit it right on the head.

Paul Povolni (43:11.458)
That's awesome. So, all right, so, you know, we're talked about, you know, you've got their attention through ads, whether through video or through something static. And there's a video at some point in that marketing chain, that marketing funnel, they've come to the landing page. What are the things that you've seen when it comes to that landing page that, you know, they've done the video?

what are some other parts or what are some other chinks in that chain that don't quite, work or get people to not convert.

John Parkes (43:47.855)
Yeah, so let's see. you got the ad, they click through, they hit a landing page. Is the opt-in rate, is it 30 % or better? That's kind of a threshold you could think about. Are they becoming leads at that rate? Sales page, the next page where you're actually trying to sell them something initially. You could see one, two, even 3 % conversion rates depending on your price on that page. So is that working?

If it's a webinar, one big drop off is actually between registering for the webinar and then attending. They register on a Monday and then your webinar happens on a Thursday. Huge drop off between the 500 people you had registered and only the 200 that showed up. How can you increase that attendance rate? Because if only, if a small number of them are showing up, then that's so many fewer who get to see the offer that you're going to offer.

Paul Povolni (44:26.169)
wow.

Paul Povolni (44:36.514)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (44:48.992)
Do you have any data around, you know, webinar signups and webinar attendance? Do you, far as what's good.

John Parkes (44:57.167)
Yeah, wanna have above 25%, I'm gonna say, attending. You can definitely get up to 50%, but if you're in that window, then nothing's broken. Then you just try to improve upon it, right? If you're below that 25 % attendance rate, you're pretty low from what the rest of the industry is seeing, and so you'll wanna improve that. Ways to improve it, this is really interesting.

Paul Povolni (45:04.354)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:11.608)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:17.858)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (45:26.053)
Think about the different ways and timing you can reach out to these people. You can send them an email to remind them the moment they register, but also the day before it's gonna happen and the day of it's gonna happen and maybe an hour before and right when it begins. Those are kind of the five email moments that make the most sense to us. As notifications are on mobile and desktop, it's nice to see that pop right then.

Paul Povolni (45:41.165)
Yeah.

John Parkes (45:52.529)
it is starting right now. was deep in my email. didn't realize, or whatever it was. And so that's good. Text messaging has a much higher open rate than email. So if you can collect their phone number and permission to text them, a similar cadence on the texting, the moment they register, so confirm that they're registered, the day before, it's coming up. Make sure your calendar is proper to attend.

Paul Povolni (45:56.302)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (46:21.905)
The morning of, it's today, remember it's today, an hour before, and then the moment of the beginning of the webinar. Both the texting and email, that can really increase show up rates pretty good. Another element though that people don't think about is the pre-frame that the registration page gives to the actual event. I'll jump into that because that has been a surprisingly important...

Paul Povolni (46:26.328)
Right.

Paul Povolni (46:44.43)
Okay, so talk about that.

John Parkes (46:51.953)
to the effectiveness of people showing up. So we have a case study that we like to point to when we teach this. Mike and AJ, we work with them and they had this landing page. Let's see if I can tell the story properly where the headline left no curiosity. It was come to this webinar where we will teach you how to build out a funnel hub and...

why that's effective for your business and how it can improve your traffic often now. okay, and so people register for the webinar, then the day comes around and they're like, I'm not sure I want to really learn about Funnel Hubs today. Sounds like more of a task to do than it is anything, right? And so there was no curiosity and that curiosity element is very important when it comes to attendance rate. And so instead they changed the...

Paul Povolni (47:27.95)
Ha

Paul Povolni (47:38.414)
Wow, okay.

Paul Povolni (47:45.965)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (47:50.373)
headline to be more curiosity based and the attendance on the webinar I think tripled.

Paul Povolni (47:56.191)
Wow. Wow.

John Parkes (47:56.913)
They went from 10 % attending to 30 % attending. And the curiosity, instead it's the same webinar, it's the same content, but instead it was come to this webinar where we will show you how to do this for your business and this for your business and you're gonna wanna make sure you attend, because this third element here for your business, most people are getting wrong. And you give them obviously some context around it, so too vague isn't good. But you need to leave some bait out there in the water or they're not gonna come.

Paul Povolni (48:17.527)
Right.

Paul Povolni (48:24.108)
Right, right, right.

John Parkes (48:25.873)
We're these silly creatures as humans where we talk ourselves out of previous commitments all the time. so you, as a sales, you know, as a marketer, as a salesman, it's kind of your job to help people overcome that human weakness of backing out of commitment or shying away from change. And so that's your duty, right? As a salesperson, as a marketer. So you're gonna, I'm gonna, you know, leave some, because the honest truth,

Paul Povolni (48:40.192)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (48:54.769)
Paul is that these people were making false assumptions as to what Mike and AJ were gonna teach them. They're making false assumptions, being like, I'm sure I've heard it before, you know? And so they talk themselves out of doing what's good for them because of these false assumptions. So leaving some of those loops open, these questions unanswered, helps.

Paul Povolni (49:03.788)
Right, they were filling in the blanks, yeah.

Paul Povolni (49:20.696)
Yeah.

John Parkes (49:23.173)
them help themselves and so they attend the thing that they obviously are interested in, they need, they want because they responded to your initial message.

Paul Povolni (49:24.824)
Ha ha ha.

Paul Povolni (49:32.63)
Right. But you've, but you've created, like you mentioned, these, these loops, these curiosities that comes from understanding the audience, right? Of what are some of their pain points? What are their felt needs? you know, what are, what are they really looking to solve? Right.

John Parkes (49:42.895)
Yeah. Right.

John Parkes (49:49.837)
Exactly, you know a fascinating study in open loops is what we like to call it, not closing the loop, not resolving it completely, but leaving it slightly open. Or things like soap operas, if you go back to the 90s, there's probably still soap operas around, where they might resolve last week's conflict, but in resolving last week's conflict, they've already opened two more. There's no end.

Paul Povolni (49:58.574)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (50:06.208)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (50:16.302)
Right, right.

John Parkes (50:18.533)
to the conflict, right? To the unanswered questions, to the suspense of the conflict. Or Marvel, the Marvel cinematic universe. I see you've got some superheroes behind you on the wall there. And their ability to intrigue you with curiosity and give you such anticipation for the next level that they're going to present, the next movie next year coming out. They'll introduce it with some kind of a snippet at the end of the credits that...

Paul Povolni (50:27.029)
Right.

Paul Povolni (50:30.99)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (50:43.544)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (50:47.886)
Right, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (50:48.241)
opens a loop. The whole purpose of it is to open a loop. That's the whole concept. And so you think about that in your marketing, whether you're getting them to register for a challenge, register for a webinar, even just click through from an ad. Where can you leave curiosity loops, open loops, just like these greats do who write these stories and implement that kind of a layer to your marketing that will really ramp things up?

Paul Povolni (51:15.776)
Yeah, yeah. Open loops, man. I tell you what, they are devastating. Like when a show gets canceled and they're left to... Yeah. Yeah. What was going to happen? And so, okay, so we're on the web page. We've created the curiosity. We've created the open loops. We've got them to attend the webinar. They've come to the page.

John Parkes (51:21.015)
I know. You almost need the writer to come in and just like write a blog post to just resolve all the loops. This is what we were gonna do, so.

Paul Povolni (51:43.276)
You know, one of the things that I've noticed, you guys doing is pretty long pages, long, long, you know, and, and I don't know whether that is a still a thing if, and what the strategy is to it. Like, cause most people think, wow, long webpage, you know, we need to keep concise and short and whatever, and not too much scrolling. what's, what's the strategy behind a longer page when somebody comes to it?

John Parkes (52:08.949)
That's fantastic question because we wrestle with it too, trying to find the best conversions. Sometimes we find that shortening is one of the things that helps. But yes, we do have a tendency towards long pages. The theory here, and it tends to play up, is the top part is very emotional on a page. Then the bottom part is for the logical buyers.

Okay, so the quick action takers, they interact with your fast moving video or with hook story and an offer in it and a snazzy headline and a call to action that's gonna deliver some product or register that for some webinar they're excited about, whatever it is. that first portion, maybe the top fourth of the long form page is all dedicated to the emotional buyer.

You know, and that's we make most of our decisions, humans make most of our decisions with our emotions as much as we think we're logical. I think it was Dan Kennedy who says we we buy off emotion and then we justify it with our logic. It's an interesting pattern that we do. So the rest of the page is is both for those who are trying to justify the purchase, sincerely want more information because there are people who just

Paul Povolni (53:02.338)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (53:18.68)
Yeah, yeah.

John Parkes (53:32.089)
It's Nicholas Kuzmich who taught me this one. He says, you know, if you go to the public pool and you're swimming laps for exercise, there is a fast lane typically and then a medium and then a slow lane. And the people in the fast lane, they both get to the end and back just as well as the people in the slow lane. It's just at a different pace. And both of them are effectively swimming the length of the pool. So you have to market to both of those people. People who make the quick decision and people who take some time to make the decision.

Paul Povolni (53:50.666)
Right, right.

John Parkes (54:01.263)
Both of them are effective buyers and worthwhile buyers. In fact, I'd even argue those who are slower to make the decision to say join your software, who has a monthly fee, are probably also slower to cancel. And so maybe they're even a higher lifetime value of a customer. So make sure you do cater to them as well. So the longer form page helps that.

Paul Povolni (54:15.778)
Right, Yeah.

Paul Povolni (54:22.614)
Yeah. So when it comes to, so I know you guys are very much about the data. So what have you found percentage wise between fast buyers and or emotional buyers and those that take a little time? Do you have any data around that of, you know, what percentage of people have you found that, that are in either category?

John Parkes (54:44.719)
Yeah, if the data I would have to reference, because categorizing them like that would be a challenge for sure. But the data we do have is heat maps on the websites. So where are people interacting with the website, clicking on the website, things like that. That emotional section, less than 75 % of the people interacting with your website reach below that.

Paul Povolni (54:57.57)
Right.

John Parkes (55:12.273)
75 % of them have made their decisions in that top fourth of your page. The additional 25 will scroll down through it, yeah.

Paul Povolni (55:16.94)
Right. Yeah, I would imagine you could track that by having call to actions all the way down the page and seeing at what point people click on the call to action to see,

John Parkes (55:27.865)
Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. I think we have, I haven't seen that data recently, so that's a good reminder.

Paul Povolni (55:36.364)
That's awesome. Okay, so selling online, you had mentioned the best of the best of what Russell has put together. Talk about that in our last few minutes here.

John Parkes (55:46.117)
yeah, I love that challenge. So we're running a challenge. We'd run it once a month, and typically towards the end of the month, and it's sellingonline.com. And it's a challenge where Russell's put together his, like you said, he's curated just the most effective and efficient way to get you selling online. And he talks about psychology, he brings in guest speakers, I think eight different ones.

Paul Povolni (56:10.253)
Wow.

John Parkes (56:12.035)
He teaches you exactly what it takes to start selling online because there's a lot of people who build websites online and put content up online. there's so many fewer who are actually making sales online and making revenue. What does it take? does it, you know, and a lot of, you know, the principles we discussed today are brought up in that challenge and expounded upon and applied directly to your business. And Russell's a fantastic teacher.

It's one of the best out there when it comes to how to sell things online. And so this challenge is great. We decided to make the cost of the challenge really low so that we could get as much exposure in the industry as possible. So it's only $100 to come and learn from Russell for three days and exactly how to sell online. So yeah, it's the favorite thing we've launched in a long time.

Paul Povolni (57:04.524)
So I know there was a time when free challenges was quite a thing. Why are you charging people for it now?

John Parkes (57:14.225)
Yeah, we're charging $100 because one, we know that the content is more than worth it. Two, because we've found that those who pay, pay attention. And so if we ask for a little bit of money, just $100, I mean, people pay a couple thousand dollars to attend a three-day event without blinking an eye. But if we could charge even just a little bit, it still is in the category of impulse decision. Like I just saw this thing, but yeah, I think it'll fit.

Paul Povolni (57:25.486)
right?

John Parkes (57:43.217)
I don't have to think about it a long time. I don't have to stew on it or even ask my partner, my spouse, whatever, for a smaller purchase like that. So having a low price point takes a lot of the excuses away, but it also makes you feel committed. I'm going to say this number hoping that it's about right. I think we have an 87 to 89 % attendance rate.

Paul Povolni (58:11.188)
which is way different from what you said for the free.

John Parkes (58:11.281)
Now if it was a free challenge or a webinar, we would be 20, 25%. And so we get so many more people attending because we had them commit with some money.

Paul Povolni (58:16.214)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (58:22.678)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And that's, why I brought it up. Cause you know, we had talked about, know, the percentage of turnouts for webinars being so low sometimes and from what people expect it would be, but that, know, if it's free, then, they're not going to be as committed as if you charge a small fee, for it. There's a little more commitment. There's a little more motivation to attend it.

John Parkes (58:28.805)
Mm-hmm.

John Parkes (58:42.533)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni (58:47.467)
because you've paid and you've made that decision to engage with it. So as we begin to wrap this up, what's a head smack or a question that I haven't asked you that you want to talk about?

John Parkes (58:58.311)
yeah, that's a good question.

John Parkes (59:03.146)
man, let's see what can we think of here?

John Parkes (59:11.651)
Advertising on other platforms? Why am I just on Meta? You know, that'd be a good question, right? Yeah, get what I say, shiny object syndrome. They hear about LinkedIn advertising and they hear about YouTube advertising and Google advertising and they hear about maybe I should advertise on the TV or on Reddit or all these other sources.

Paul Povolni (59:13.646)
huh. Okay. Okay. So tell me about it.

John Parkes (59:41.905)
It's not wrong. It's not wrong to think about that, but I'll just encourage people. If you haven't gotten into the world of advertising, the easiest place to begin is Meta. know, can, and some people might say, well, Paul, I tried advertising, I threw up YouTube ads and then just couldn't get any return on my investment. I would really encourage people to start with Meta ads. The algorithm is extremely...

effective at finding your target audiences and your customers. The cost is lower than any other platform that I know of. So it's just like, it's the easy place to begin your journey, to learn it, to cut your teeth as they say, and get good enough that you can then graduate yourself to other platforms.

Paul Povolni (01:00:32.77)
That is awesome. Great way to end this man, John, this has been amazing. I know you have a hard out and we've got a little bit over time already, but I do appreciate you coming on, man. Thank you so much.

John Parkes (01:00:43.183)
It's been my pleasure,