Build a Funnel that Actually Works w/ Jonathan Aufray

UX Marketing

Blake: [00:00:00] Okay. And on the podcast today, we have Jonathan who is from growth hackers, and we are going to be discussing a lot of different things from funnel building to building an ecosystem for your branding and not just having to pay for ads, but actually building something sustainable. But before we get into it, Jonathan, how are you doing

[00:00:24] Jon: [00:00:24] today?

[00:00:25] Hey Blake, I'm very good to this. Thanks for having me here.

[00:00:29] Blake: [00:00:29] What we'd love to get a little bit of context on you as a person. Before we dive into all of the details, I'm curious if you could just give us a quick story about your career so far, how you got started and how you got to where you are now.

[00:00:44] Jon: [00:00:44] Okay. So first maybe I should tell you a, your listeners that I'm French, so that's why the Exxon's is maybe a bit weird for people. One that's used to, so I'm originally from France, but, I live in Taiwan for eight years. So I go there, like I used to study marketing international business in Dublin in Ireland.

[00:01:03] And then I used, I traveled a lot like doing small jobs in England, in the U S in Spain and in Australia. And then you just walk in like, yeah, like a video, like a farming that way toasts. They're pretty small jobs. And then as I started to do a bit of marketing for small businesses, which was more the time, it was more like international service because I could speak English, French and Spanish.

[00:01:30] It was more international sales and marketing. So then when I moved to Taiwan eight years ago, I was working in international marketing. So, creating a website, creating marketing strategies. It mostly in English, French, and Spanish at work. I did this for a few companies in Taiwan for like three or four years.

[00:01:48] As then about five years ago, I joined a startup and I kind of move from, digital marketing to go cycling, where it will be more a gross focus was, it will be more, would be more kind of tactics. So as it would be. So for one year, I did just try marketing goals. I came for one startup, and the thing is, during that time I was, we were in an incubator in Taiwan, and then we got funded by an English, accelerate or, so we moved to England for a few months.

[00:02:24] And the thing is, why, why Lynn's incubator in Taiwan? in England, right? We work with many startups and all of them are, there were more like mostly tech founders as a needed app with, with a user acquisition. gross revenue says regeneration and everything. So I was working more as like, as a concert for many startups as the same time.

[00:02:48] And so seeing his idea that much time to work on my own startups, so I decided to quit. Yeah. And kind of through LaunchCode. Psychos was a good, was many startups as the same time or many companies 10 times, same time with marketing, was liking new generation. And so I've created course, I guess with my cofounder who is American and shit, I think invites from, it's from Hawaii, so that's pretty, I never been there.

[00:03:13] We should have wished I could go there. So, yeah, we created go psychos of four years ago and now, you know, we work with many companies from, which machine, if we were a us, Canada. was the Western Europe, Asia, not too much, I would say not too much since America or Africa yet.

[00:03:32] Blake: [00:03:32] Awesome. And it's funny how life will just take you one direction, right?

[00:03:37] You think you're going to go some way and then you end up a completely different path.

[00:03:40] Jon: [00:03:40] Exactly. It's a lot. So people you meet, in a way it's like a, I remember when I used to live in iTunes and Metro, the Spanish, so that's why I went to spans and Spain, a metal of Australian. So I went to Australia in Australia.

[00:03:53] I met my wife. We started it. So we did. I want to kind of, yeah, it's like you, you move, you don't decide where to go. It's kind of the people you meet, those expense you out. We knew somewhere.

[00:04:02] Blake: [00:04:02] Man. That's awesome. And I'm curious, if I were to ask you what you think you're one, you're one professional superpower is, what would you say.

[00:04:11]Jon: [00:04:11] I think it's a, I'm very, adaptable. I think it's because of my experiences. It's because I lived in many countries, so I had to adapt so much in different, language could chew people, background or anything. So usually, I can adapt to, to two, two people all through the situation of pretty easily.

[00:04:30] I think that's

[00:04:31] Blake: [00:04:31] one of the most underrated skills in business for any leader. Being flexible and able to grow.

[00:04:38] Jon: [00:04:38] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:39] Blake: [00:04:39] Awesome. So let's dive into the details here, because I definitely want to go into funnels and growth hacking and all these good things that you can help us with. Keeping in mind, of course, that.

[00:04:51] Most of us here are kind of at the beginning of our journey. So we're just starting out with a side hustle, or we're just founding our small business or startup, and we're just kind of getting going. So from the get go, how do you best determine, how do you determine the best funnel for your project?

[00:05:06] What's the process that you should take to start mapping out the entire funnel?

[00:05:12]Jon: [00:05:12] first I think first things first is you need to make sure there's a market. you need to validate your, you ID or you put it to your service. It doesn't matter what it is. You need to validate. You need to make sure there's people who's going to buy it.

[00:05:26]so you don't want to actually furnace without. Making sure that people lack what you do or like what you offer. So it might be news or first thing anyone should do is no matter what's your ID, what you want, what you want to sell, don't you? You might've been here. You don't feel you need to make a business plan.

[00:05:45]I don't know anyone. We'll make a business a five year business plan. We are going to respect it. It's going to happen the way they predicted, might've happened 20 years, years ago before it was born, but, it doesn't happen this way anymore. I think the best way is to create just a landing page first, just a landing page where you just talk about your product map, maybe a user story, what kind of, Why cannot you solve maybe the two benefits of your products? And, let's see. So the running page can be created within, within a day or two, or within a week if you're slow, and Zen and Zen shares this landing page, For free. You don't need to pay for ads. You can share a landing page with a wizard fellow entrepreneurs, with people in your industries.

[00:06:29] If you industry in retail, you can find people in retail on LinkedIn, or you can find people. You go to retailers next to your place and show the landing page. Just. Make sure that the people you show it to are within your target audience. Because if you show it to your mom, she's going to say, it's amazing.

[00:06:50] I don't think that's actually works. so yeah, like fines. validate your ID first. if people, so if you get, good feedback, if people are interested, Zen, you can start, you can start bidding, start building. where would you start? Where would you start? I will say, you, you should. You should start.

[00:07:10] To think about, revenue models, making cells, pretty quickly. You don't, you might not make sense for a couple of months, but you need to understand where you're going to make some money. Because at the end of the day, if you have a business, you need to make money, a steak, a lot of entrepreneurs, they're all, yeah, well, to change the world and wants to make the world a better place, all I want to get funding, I'm going to just going to raise money and investor's going to pay you.

[00:07:35] But as he knows, it is investors that we want. Oh, I say we want send money backsides. At some point you will need to have a revenue. You need to understand how you're going to make money, if it's, if it's from public service or no matter what your. No matter what you do, so understands how you're going to make money and Zen as then.

[00:07:55] That's pretty easy. Once you understand, let's say if it's a product or service

[00:08:03] you can make an eCommerce websites, beard shop to build the DP. So drop shipping. Just make a. She'll be five websites and start driving traffic to it. If you, if you are lazy in making a website or if she wants to make money more quickly, I don't know, sign up to Amazon or eBay, but to make a big money there.

[00:08:22]if you want to sell like services, make a website more than most than the landing page. How to make a website you need. This is where this, this is so important to have a, ah, I mean. For me, it's also so obvious as in for you, it's my song abuse too, but I know a lot of people met. A lot of entrepreneurs or engineers is it creates a product or not or like or something for six, nine, 10 months.

[00:08:48] Within Zig garage is it, don't have any websites, don't have any things, don't have a landing page to show their products. Right? That should be that. That's what people should start at the beginning, because you want to show what you're doing from scratch. And then once you go through a landing page, a website, you can sell your product or your service, on internet you need, you need to have, that's what I was talking about.

[00:09:13] You need to have, on just phones. Our people are going to be a, with your website, are you up or anything? you don't just want to drive traffic to your websites and pay for us right away. I know two people say, Oh yeah, Facebook has a amazing, or you can target pretty much any one of us are amazing.

[00:09:32]yes, there are, issue is there. Ah, when you, you know, always at work, he said, you don't, I understand how Facebook ads or Google ads work to China. Lose a lot of money very quickly. I was, Four or five years ago when I was doing Facebook ads for five views. Actually it was cheap because not many people did it.

[00:09:52] Now it's much more complicated and a Lido cell might cost you 10, 20, 30, $30. when you spend on Facebook ads. The thing is. One you want to Facebook as well as good to drive traffic and to make sense, but you need to make sure that you've got a strategy behind it. People go to your website from Facebook.

[00:10:14]if they leave the website, what's the strategy yet? You can be targets and you can maybe sends them an email because you've got the popup form. You can give them something for free, like a discount. You need, you need to grab people's attention. Bye. Well for offering them something. So it could be content, it could be something for free, free shipping, free projects, a free ebook, a free video.

[00:10:39] If you sell video courses, I don't know. Yes. Well, once you have people on your website, it costs you money to get the people websites. So you want to make sure that true. Chat you can, we target them, puts you much for free. Maybe they are not going to buy for humans. That doesn't matter. Do you need to have a system in place?

[00:11:00] Like I pay $5 for being that person on my website. I want to make sure that, I w I gave him, an offer. I gave him something maybe he buys, maybe doesn't buy base. Very important to have. Many different, channels to, to, to entice your visitors to, to pay. You don't want to always say you don't want, you don't traffic to your website chart to Africa.

[00:11:23] You don't really care. You want Leeds, you won't sell. If you got, I don't know, a million people on your websites, but you make zero says it's. I prefer to have 10 people visiting my website at once. There's a, so it's really understanding that business is not, it's, it's a solar boat says, and it's sort of at some point, so built a beautiful building.

[00:11:48] Too much in ads until you know, is that you can get, the stats we use, it's absolutely a metric. We use a loss. No, these are, Oh, a S like a return on ad spend for ads pretty much. And those kind of metrics are important. but. Use. Don't use, just add, use email marketing, use content to drive traffic, use social media.

[00:12:16] I would say organic. You don't need to pay for Isabella when you're on Instagram or Pinterest or Twitter. You can use Ash styles or you can target audience in Nixon is actually an amazing channel, to, to connect with people. I think that's how we connected first, actually. Yeah. so yeah, there's many.

[00:12:32] There's many challenges to work on. I think it's, before to pay for us. So work on your content, warn you, work on your email marketing, work on your branding, and then once you've got like, the system in place to, to, to push your visitors to, to buy from you, to, to get some things, then you can pay for ads.

[00:12:52] Yeah. From the beginning.

[00:12:53] Blake: [00:12:53] That's where I come on. I want to add, take it actually after this point because once you have. The idea, you validated that it works with some of your target customers. You haven't really spent any money on ads, but you've proven that it works and you know, now that you've got a system in place.

[00:13:07] Yeah. And it's time to run ads. What are some of the, the practical methods that you use to run effective

[00:13:14] Jon: [00:13:14] ads. Okay. Usually. So it's very first, it's very important to, to, I think everybody says to two tests as like this. I don't have like a formula to tell you, okay, that's going to work. But there's a few ads that will better, visit.

[00:13:29]first it should be targeting. Retargeting is extremely important because we are on Facebook or Google ads. Why? Because we targeting you only we target people's only people who are visiting you websites. those people have a much higher chance, two, a two to purchase from you, and at least they won't feel too offended because it already know your brands or know who you are, so that they are okay to see, not to be targeting us.

[00:13:59] Usually as a one walk a walk to the best. then, then. You can, you can have ads for you. if you got like very big competitors, I think it's OK to, to, to, to try to, to, to not copy them, but try to get inspired by you as they do or even target their keywords. For example, I don't know if you, if you, I don't know if you sell shoes, you, you create your.

[00:14:24] New shoes, brands. I'm sure lots of millions of people look for Nike's or Adidas or Reebok or anything. So I get Zack, I get their own keywords. You could put a target to a Nike alternative, best basketball shoes, or better shoes or Nike. I don't know, any kind of things to target a big people, a big competitor.

[00:14:45] So that's, that could be a thing. But, but what's very important with ads is what was said is, is testing. There's no, it's important to test the keywords. So that's more for Google ad words, but also some, so that copy you're going to write is very important, but so you targets as thing is like you, you're from Austin.

[00:15:06] But, I don't know. Maybe if I make a nod to move in Austin, my work much bitters, and if I do it in San Diego or New York, or I don't know, anywhere since the U S so it's important to, to, to target different demographics. Millennials, gen X is a matter, men, women targeting location targeting keywords.

[00:15:27] Is that right? So it's a good is to kind of cool. Make so many tests, Gaza data, and ASEAN, you will understand that. Okay. For my products, the best people are men from 25 to 35 years old who live in the suburb of Chicago and who like, an owner like a Kim Kardashian. it's, to find you're perfect ad bye. Testing a lot of it and finding what works the best. It kind of creates things. Perfect ads. a lot of testing. You want or you want to challenge. You're lucky, but. Usually what with advertising you won't get a positive hour or hour and within three days. I mean it's if you know someone, we can, we can do it cause that's, all a fine.

[00:16:18] I would love to know that person, but usually takes time to, to, takes a few weeks, few months. Sometimes, yeah, to kind of create the perfect answer. Perfect. kopi, pictures, visuals, targets and those things. It's a lot of testing. but that's why it's good with Facebook or Google, is you don't need to spend

[00:16:39] data. You can just set a 10, $10, $20 a day at the beginning shows to add two guys at that time. Once you find the perfect ad, you can double Donald's at one. .

[00:16:52] Blake: [00:16:52] I'm curious if we took it in a different direction and talked about personal branding or, or building a company brand, what would a good funnel for that effort look like?

[00:17:03] Considering that it's only a part of the business, but if, if there are people out here, side hustlers that are thinking in order to get my product out there, I need to build a good personal brand so that that has more impact. What would a funnel look like for that? Okay.

[00:17:17]Jon: [00:17:17] totally. Our personal bonds brand is very important to us.

[00:17:21] Go psychos. Pretty much everyone work with us. I mean, we work, we test them. You don't be on your business besides your personal events that people will, will connect more with someone. first. It depends on what you do. I think it depends really the audience. Because issue, let's say if your audience is like a gym teacher or like a yoga teacher, Instagram might be very important.

[00:17:45] LinkedIn point, not so much, but if you work like let's say in big data or AI or something, I don't think being on his side one would be here. You're building your brand on Instagram would be very good. I mean, it could be helpful, but it would be better to be on LinkedIn or Twitter. So it's important to understand where your audiences, then you build a, then you build, you, you start building your profile there.

[00:18:10] Zen being a personal brand, or you don't have a business brand. Content is, I mean, again, I think I would repeat what a lot of people said is because it's true. Okay. Content is, is, is a key. It's extremely, extremely important. Is quality content or it doesn't have to be quality. It has to be authentic.

[00:18:30] Content is a B to B content that, that first that you believe in. And is that also your audience going to, engage with it? One world. I will say you don't need to, only in contents, there's two things. You can create content and corroborate content. So it means that finding what other people's content and sharing it.

[00:18:53] a lot of people, like, entrepreneurs or founders or anything, the beliefs that just to create new content all the time. And I don't think so. I think of course creating content is important, but I think you can create content. Why? Because there's so much content out there, no matter which industry you are in.

[00:19:11] And this thing is. Let's say we talk about like a sport, let's say a sport, a sport, shoes, for example. the thing is there's so much content, about it on the internet already. So the thing is what you could do is fund that content. And let's say you, you create your LinkedIn or Instagram profile and...