Funnel Hacking – Why You Should NOT “Funnel Hack” Your Competitors

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There’s this unfortunate trend online at the moment where people advocate “funnel hacking”.

What is Funnel Hacking?

It’s the process of investigating the sales and marketing process of your competitors so that you can use the same model in your own business, sales and marketing. 

In some ways it makes sense:

  • A successful business person releases a new product…
  • You sign up and go through their funnel / marketing…
  • You read each email and copy them into a spreadsheet…
  • Finally, you replicate these emails / messages for your own product or funnel.

When someone like Tony Robbins, Jeff Walker or Marie Forleo launches a new product, they make millions. Their funnel is a huge success, so it makes sense to copy-and-paste and expect the same…

Right?

Wrong!

I see so many entrepreneurs ‘funnel hack’ only to regret it a few weeks later after they waste a lot of time and money.  Here’s why….

This is the problem with funnel hacking…

Funnel hacking involves looking at someone else and comparing yourself to them. This is a huge problem whether you compare business models, products, marketing funnels or launches.

The reason is, you only see what the other person wants you to see. You don’t know the whole story, and although you may think it’s making money, you don’t know for sure. You don’t have all the data, so it’s impossible to replicate it and achieve the same results.

Yet this is what I see entrepreneurs do all the time. They throw themselves into funnel hacking, expecting to hit a home run even though they don’t know the full story.

For example, a couple of years ago I launched a $997 product. Thousands of people came through our marketing funnel, and I could tell some of them were only there to ‘funnel hack’.

On the surface this made sense, except these people didn’t know our business model and didn’t know our end game. Which wasn’t to make money from this product at all, but rather to break even so we could acquire new customers and target them for other products later.

But all these entrepreneurs who were funnel hacking did so because they wanted to make money NOW. And although there are many ways you can make money with a $997 offer, replicating the funnel we used isn’t one of them.

This is what you should do INSTEAD of funnel hacking…

Funnel hacking does not work because you don’t have all the details. Those who hacked our funnel lost money because they didn’t have the next step. But it was the next step that we built all our success around, with everything up to that point a means to an end.

This is why funnel hacking doesn’t work, and although you should take inspiration from other funnels, marketing, message and copy, you should NEVER copy-and-paste without access to all the data.

Instead, it’s important you:

  1. Understand your business model…
  2. Understand your profitability model…
  3. Understand your lifestyle model…

Let me explain…

1: Understand Your Business Model

Your marketing and lead generation needs to be in alignment with your business model. This is the main reason funnel hacking doesn’t work, because your business model is unique to you.

That means I can have the best marketing funnel in the world, but it may not work for you because it doesn’t align with your product, your audience or your message.

So the first thing you need to understand is your business model:

  • Who is your audience and what do they need?
  • What is your message and how does it resonate with your audience?
  • What is your product and how does it solve a problem for your audience?

Stop comparing yourself to other people and instead focus on what you’re building. There is no marketing blueprint that works for everyone, only a marketing solution that works for you. Take inspiration from other people, but don’t assume it will work for you just because it worked for them.

2: Understand Your Profitability Model

As well as you business model, you need to understand your profitability model and whether you need short term success or are building for long term momentum.

You may find a successful marketing funnel that someone else uses, but it’s focus is to create a long term relationship with a new lead. This is fine so long as you’re after the same thing.

If not, funnel hacking will cost you a lot of time and money.

Personally, I believe short term funnels are a thing of a past. If you want prolonged success today, you need to treat your audience like human beings — not leads.

You need to play the long game and become an omnipresent force so you’re top of mind, all the time. This means you cannot place them in a funnel and expect an ROI within 30 days. Yet I see people ‘hack’ my funnels all the time with this in mind, and it results in the same thing each time…

Failure!

3: Understand Your Lifestyle Model

The final piece of the puzzle is to understand the ‘bigger picture’.

  • What are you building your business for?
  • Are you scaling your business so you can sell it?
  • Do you want to work 5-hour days or 15-hour days?

These play a fundamental role in what you create, because if you want to build a business so you can sell it in a few years, you don’t need to focus on your customer’s lifetime value. You want success and money now so you can pass it over to someone else later.

Whereas if your vision is to only work a few hours each day, your funnels need to become automatic, meaning what you build today is for the long-term (setup so you can enjoy evergreen success later).

You need to understand all three of these aspects for your marketing to work, and no amount of funnel hacking will make a difference without understanding each one.

The truth is, nobody has created something great by copying someone else. Inspiration breeds greatness, sure, but successful entrepreneurs see what other people are doing and ask: how can I make what they’re doing work for me?

Funnel hacking IS NOT the answer to this.

So the next time you’re tempted to compare yourself to someone else, take a look in the mirror. You are you. You own a unique business. You have an unfair advantage.

Tap into this instead of copying other people, because this is the only way to scale from 6-7 figures.

Full Video Transcripts 

So we have this kind of culture right now online where we talk about “funnel hacking”, all right? Taking other people’s business models, taking other people’s funnels on their online marketing funnels, and kind of like reverse engineering what’s actually going on.
And the number of people and entrepreneurs that go and funnel hack, and then come back and realize that they screwed up, is phenomenal. I see it every single day. And here is the problem. When we funnel hack,
when we are looking at somebody else instead of actually looking at ourselves, just like the comparison of looking at somebody else and kind of judging yourself based on it instead of looking in the mirror, what we do is actually create a bad situation for ourselves, a bad sequence of events.
So, here’s what I’d rather you do instead. See, the problem is, when we funnel hack, we don’t know the full story.
We don’t even know if their marketing funnel is actually profitable. We don’t actually know if it’s actually working.
So then if we don’t actually have all the information, if we don’t actually all the data, then can we really look at someone and say, “Well you know what, I’m just gonna take what is theirs “and gonna put it inside of my business”? I’m not saying don’t take inspiration from someone, but “funnel hacking” in its overall methodology’s
a little bit broken, because you don’t know their business plan.
You don’t know their profitability model. I’ll give you an example. Inside of my business, or one of my businesses, I had a 997 product. The thing is, is that the 997 product and the marketing funnel, the entire idea was to allow for that product to break even so I could acquire new customers for essentially free.
And I saw a lot of people “funnel hack” my funnel, but not have the next step inside of the value ladder. Not know my actual business plan. Not actually know that I was going for the long-term gain for the next 36 months.
I used to have some of these funnel hackers message me being like, “Hey, is that actually profitable?” “Is this this?” Or whatever it may be.
I used to see time and time again people copy my funnels, and then get the result that I got. But the problem was, is that their business model didn’t apply to what they are looking for, for themselves, versus what I was looking for. So here’s what I would rather you do. First, make sure you actually understand your business model.
Second, make sure you actually understand your profitability model.
Are you looking for profit right now, or are you looking at the long-term gain? Hint: the long-term gain is the one
that you should be applying. Third, look at your lifestyle model. Do you want to be hustling 16 hours a day,
or 4 hours a day? How do you actually want your life to be? Do you want it to be nomadic or be in an office?
And from there, create a very specific plan upon what your business actually looks like, because your marketing funnel and your lead generation really needs to be in alignment with what you’re looking for.
If you’re looking for profit today, it’s very different than if you’re looking for profit 12 months from now.
If you’re looking to sell your business, it’s very different if it’s just a lifestyle business. See, all these different elements are really important so when you’re creating a marketing funnel, and you’re looking for a return on investment, you’re not just chasing the dragon.
You’re actually chasing something that’s gonna be possible and it’s going to allow you to amplify your unfair advantage and actually be successful. So then the question is, “Well, you know what? “What do we do?”
“How do we do at this scale? “What models do we actually look at?” The very first one is actually knowing who your customer is. Actually knowing your avatar.
Actually understanding the message that’s going to resonate with them. You know what? Stop looking at everyone else’s stuff. Stop looking at everyone else’s marketing. The thing is that originality, everything that you need to know to be able to be successful, is inside your head. But the problem is that we’re so trained to look at other people’s stuff, and compare ourselves to them, that a lot of the time we pass up on our greatest strengths
because we look at somebody else and we think they’re doing better than us.
A lot of the time that’s not even true. So first, make sure that you actually have the right message and you understand your own audience. Second, forget about what everyone else is doing. Just focus on what you’re doing. Third, from there, is being able to be based upon the fact that your marketing funnel is not about just bringing in numbers of leads. These people are actually human beings.
So treat them like it. Don’t use scarcity. Don’t use all these tactics to be able to try to cheat them out of what reality is. People just want authenticity. People want to know what the actual situation is like. And if you illuminate instead of manipulate, you’ll have a much better customer, and a much more powerful situation to transform their life.
The next piece after this, is just simply being able to insure that you’re being relevant at the right time
and at the right place. See, as entrepreneurs and as marketers of our own business, it’s important that we meet somebody where they’re to. Do they understand their pain and problem?
If so, let’s bring them to the point of allowing them to see the process of methodology on how we can help them, and the fact that we’re an authority, and the fact that we are somebody who can help them. We are the expert to be able to help them. And further from that, if they understand that piece, well now they need to understand the solution.
They need to understand the fact that we can help them, and how we can actually help them, and what their life looks like afterwards. That’s what I always talk about with the SSF Method, or the relevancy funnel. If you want more about that, I’ve included the link above.
See, from there, it’s then about being omnipresent to those people. Being top-of-mind to those people. So instead of trying to spend all the time just generating more and more and more leads, what about if we actually just put good content in front of them. We want value first. Instead of just trying to scare someone into buying something, how about if we just allowed them and led them down the path of being able to illuminate their pain,  understand the process, and then understand the solution.
And we did this by being the Coca-Cola of our niche, allowing us to become the biggest name in our nation,
instead of just being the best-kept secret. See, online marketing doesn’t have to be about scarcity. It can be about abundance. It can be about having more than enough. It’s about being able to allow our customers
to evolve themselves, and to transform instead of just simply informing. And so this entire methodology on funnel hacking might be all fine; eing able to copy other people’s stuff so that you can get forward faster.
But if you really go back to it, if you’re funnel hacking, all you’re doing is trying to copy someone. And you’re trying to copy someone without even knowing all the data and knowing all the information. So why don’t you try being a little bit more original, because I guarantee you any greatness that is on this earth wasn’t from being copied.
It’s from allowing yourself to look yourself in the mirror and say, “I am good because I know you are good.” That’s a very important piece to understand inside of your life and inside of your business, because when it comes to marketing, you don’t have to be any genius. All you have to do is allow someone to see their pain,
allow them to see their vision, see the gap, and offer the ability to help them.
So when it comes to marketing funnels, when it comes to overall “funnel hacking”, do what you may. Do whatever you feel is the best option for you, but for me, I’m going to be about helping someone go from where they’re to, to where they wanna be. And I think it would be a good idea for you to do the same.
So with that said, Scott Oldford here, and if you’re still a funnel hacker, that’s awesome. But if you’re not,
click the link below and let’s see how we can allow you to go from being the best-kept secret to being the biggest name.
I’ll talk to you soon.

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