Interview With Jon Tarr

Bill: So, hey, this is Bill McIntosh again and I am here with Jon Tarr, so thanks, Jon for hanging out with us and doing this.

Jon: You bet, thanks for having me.

Bill: It’s been really cool, because I’ve been finding all these different marketers doing all kinds of different, selling different stuff and having different success with video ads. It’s been surprising how much of an open book they’ve been kind of showing us what’s working. Especially for you, because it’s not often that I get to sit down with someone who is running millions and millions of dollars in traffic. You’ve done a lot of paid traffic. Anything from the blackest of black hat stuff, all the way to just pure white marketing, you’ve done it all and have had some great success. So it’s cool to get you on here to share your insights, so I appreciate that.

Jon: Yeah, you bet, thank you. We spent a lot of money and our clients have spent a lot of money and I can’t even, like we were talking the other day, I don’t even have a count of how much of our own money we spent, let alone what clients spend and the revenue generated, it’s been in the hundreds of millions of dollars though. But as you know, every time you move and do something different and you change your variable, like going from a VSL to, or a webinar to video, it changes stuff. So it’s always fun to do paid traffic, it always changes, even though you have a lot of experience in it. So for that reason, it’s a lot of fun.

Bill: Cool. That one thing, too, I want to clarify for everybody, too, it’s kind of cool, actually. You’re joining us from the patio of a restaurant in St. Martin, right? That’s where you’re at right now, right?

Jon: Yeah, you bet. I have a house in St. Martin and so my wife and I spend a lot of time here. Every now and then my internet will kind of do its own thing and so I have to come down to the resort here and film videos or have a little lunch. It works out, it works out for me. Little wine, little salad, and it’s good to go.

Bill: Awesome, so interview from paradise, basically.

Jon: Yeah, it’s tough.

Bill: [Laughs] Cool. Tell me what you think about this, because I’m a real big believer that Facebook video ads is this, kind of being at the right place at the right time. You’ve been through it where you’ve seen a new type of advertising or a new method or technique comes and it’s super effective at the beginning. I think we’re there with Facebook video advertising, what do you think about that?

Jon: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think the video obviously it’s very powerful. If you think about back in the day, you got guys like Jonny Carson and these guys are getting their own television show and there are three networks and they’re in people’s homes and that’s a big deal and they get well known to do that. NBC is paying these guys a lot of money, but that was the only avenue at that time. Now, anybody can throw a video up and you can literally be in somebody’s house and that gives you tremendous amount of credibility because you’re not—not to say that VSL’s are not powerful or that people are hiding behind VSL’s, but when you’re on video and people get a glimpse of you and they get to see you, I think it’s pretty powerful. There’s no other media right now that’s more powerful than Facebook, so you put them together and I think it’s explosive, I really do, I think it’s amazing. I’m excited to see it, because I think we’re right at the ground floor of it, so I’m excited to see how it evolves.

Bill: You touched on something, too, I think I can roll right into kind of introducing what your offer was and we’ll break down your campaign. You’re going straight from cold traffic from Facebook to a—how much is your offer? $7, 8,000, something like that?

Jon: $7,500.

Bill: $7,500.

Jon: No payment plan, yeah.

Bill: $7,500, all down one time, no payment plan.

Jon: Yes.

Bill: So you go from cold traffic, somebody who maybe never heard of you before, to them giving you $7,500.

Jon: Yeah.

Bill: You think about that, think about the amount of trust building and rapport and everything that had to happen in a really short period of time. You can answer this, but how much did video advertising have to do with making that happen?

Jon: Well, I think it had a lot to do with it because one thing, social media is so powerful doing, and I think you’ll agree with this, is people get to know you, they feel like they get to know you, and video really brings that home, where they feel like they know you. So a lot of times I would get on the call with these guys, because I would send them to a strategy session that I did and we’d just be talking like you and I are talking and I would say, “Well, you know, I’m down here, forgive me if my internet connection goes bad.” “Oh, yeah, I know you live in the Caribbean, I know you’ve got a cute kid,” all that kind of stuff. They know me and Facebook and Facebook video makes that happen because people see your timeline and then they see these videos that you’re making and it’s very powerful. The social media combined with the video, that’s why I think it’s so just extraordinary, because people haven’t seen it before and they really feel like they know you.

Bill: I agree.

Jon: So it’s easier to close.

Bill: I agree. Let’s walk through your funnel from the ad all the way through. You start out obviously with a video ad on Facebook. What’s in that video?

Jon: It’s a hard-hitting, two-minute message and it basically, it kind of works likes a sales letter. I’ll scream out the headline basically on, for my guys, it’s like, “Do you want to make money with no investment?” Of course they do, right? It sounds too good to be true, but it gets their attention. So I have an attention- grabbing headline and then I go into a little bit about, “Hey, it’s Jon Tarr, this is what my deal is. If you don’t know me, this is what I do. If you do know me, you know that I do this. Here’s what my offer is in a nutshell. You can go find out more by registering, just click through this video.” So I give them a call to action. “You can go find out more in this presentation I have, you’re going to learn a lot, I’m not really pitching a lot, there is a little pitch at the end. Go check it out and then maybe we can work together.” That’s kind of what my offer is because the people that don’t know me, I want to hit them really fast with an offer and get their attention and then I’m going to indoctrinate them. I send them to a webinar because I’m going to indoctrinate them to me a little bit. So it goes from video to a web registration page where I have autoresponder sequence on that and then I do Stealth Webinar, so they’re just, boom—once they register, the webinar starts. It starts at the top of the hour and then—bam— they’re right into it. They come out of that, they fill out a form to do a strategy session with me and then I get them on Facebook chat, typically, and on Facebook chat, that’s where we have a conversation or sometimes I’ll do a Skype chat or something like that. Then close them, the end. That’s kind of my funnel.

Bill: Wow, it’s actually pretty simple.

Jon: Yeah.

Bill: So the video itself, you said about two minutes and is it just head and shoulder of you on camera?

Jon: Yeah, so what I do, what works well for me is I will do like a keynote presentation and it’s ghetto, man, and I’ll show the video, but it’s black and white. I mean, I don’t do anything fancy, it’s just a black and white slide presentation hitting the main points of the video that I want. Then down in the corner I’ll have the head shot of me talking while we’re going through this video, that’s basically what it is.

Bill: Oh, wow, so it sounds like you fired up Camtasia, had your webcam showing you in the corner.

Jon: Yep.

Bill: Okay, that’s simple.

Jon: Yeah. I’ve got a Mac, it comes up, actually the first time I ever did it, it happened by accident. I made this Power Point and I was a new Mac user and my picture was up there and my business partner is like, “I love that, how’d you do that?” I’m like, “I have no idea, I think I messed it up.” So that’s how I make those videos now, so it was completely by accident.

Bill: That’s funny.

Jon: Yeah, because you’re right here and people are like, “Oh, okay, this guy is out, it’s a head shot, but he’s telling me this. I’m listening, I’m watching, I’m watching him,” and say you kind of get into their home a little bit, get into wherever they’re at, I think it’s pretty impactful, but that’s how I do my videos. Completely ghetto, man. I mean, completely ghetto. I’ve done a lot of videos in the past years ago, so I’ve been in some high-level masterminds and you know, Frank Kern is a big video guy and I followed some of Frank’s stuff, I was in his mastermind, and it just bombed for me. I mean, it just bombed for me. I’m not very good on video and so this way was kind of utilizing my strength, which is my voice and maybe some of my presentation skills, but also you could see me. It was a perfect fit for me.

Bill: I like that. I like that approach. Cool, so you just went to an automated webinar, so you didn’t even have to do it live, so you just sent it through—you said you use Stealth Webinar, is that what you use?

Jon: I use Stealth, yeah, Stealth Seminar is who it is, Geoff Ronning’s platform, it’s totally awesome, cheap, stupid good. I get a better sign-up rate from that from anybody. I should be wearing a shirt, I would promote those guys, they’re so good. It’s made my life so much easier, I used to do it all live and I don’t anymore. So yeah, totally automated.

Bill: Cool. Okay, so you go right to the registration, so you’re collecting leads, too.

Jon: Collect them, autoresponder to follow up with those guys, so I’m going to definitely try to follow up with them and get some leads on the back end. Most of my customers though, what will happen, Bill, is they watch the video and they’ll register for the webinar and they’ll either—and here’s a lot of messages that I get, “Hey, Jon, I know you’re on a webinar right now. I’m so excited, I’m going to fill out this form,” because I tell them to start the webinar, like, “Hey, there’s an opportunity for you to work for me, I’ll tell you how to fill out the form later.” But then I go into content mode, like Frank Kern results in advance, but I get so many messages because they’re on the webinar and they think I’m live on the webinar and they’re Facebook messaging me telling me that they’re excited to talk to me, “but I know you’re on the webinar and can’t respond,” type thing. What will end up happening is then I hit them back after the webinar and I’m like, “Okay, cool, I got your message, let me know when you’re around to chat,” and then I take them through a strategy session where I see if we’re a good fit for each other. But that’s a lot of times how that stuff goes down, more often than not.

Bill: So then it’s a webinar, too, you’re getting them to fill out the application form and straight to a phone close, simple enough.

Jon: Yeah. The funnel is pretty simple, that’s the best way to put it.

Bill: Life cycle from when they first see the video, register to when you close them, how much time goes by to finish that close?

Jon: Half a day to a day, depending on when they’re around to chat. On our funnel we have two ways that you can chat with us. You can just hit me up on Facebook or you can set an appointment with our TimeTrade Calendar and so then I’d just use a strategy session over the phone but it’s not very long because like say the webinar starts at the top of the hour and so they watch it and then they fill out the strategy session form. It’s usually a day, day and a half, is about as long as it gets. And I’ll say this, which doesn’t have much to do with video, but the longer their strategy session goes out, the less likely they are to close. So it seems like the faster we can get them, the better off it is.

Bill: Awesome. Now that we know the whole offer and the funnel, tell us a little bit about your results. I know you did one campaign, what did you tell me? You spent like $1,600, I think?

Jon: Yeah, 16 total. Okay, cool. All right, awesome. I am the most technically illiterate guy, for all you people that are technically illiterate, you’ve come to the right place, so I will make you feel better. Here’s the first round that I compiled of stats. I spent $753, I had $18,825 views. I was paying about 4 cents a view. I had 612 clicks. This was to completely cold traffic, by the way. I had 612 clicks, I was paying $1.23 a click, I ended up getting 31 leads, I have all this stuff on there. I was paying $24.29 a lead. Now I put on here, when I run straight to the webinar page, which is a Lead Page’s template, I run about $13.38 per lead, that’s what I normally run, and I’m all about metrics. I track everything to the penny. I had 4 strategies off of this and 1 sale of $7,500, so it was a really good campaign. What I did to change some things up a little bit is I loaded up a custom audience with my list, I have a list of about 12,000 people, give or take. My list is not very big, because I sell high-ticket stuff. I’m not a big list builder. If you’re not a list builder, don’t get freaked out, but I loaded my list up and did a lookalike audience and then hit those people with the same campaign. What my thought process was, is that those people would be more interested in my offer because I know I have a pretty decent following in that space. When I did that, I had $642 ad spend, I had 10,700 views, I was spending about 6 cents a view, so it was, I don’t know, 50% more. I had more clicks to the lead page though because I think the people knew me, is my guess. 87 cents is what I paid a click, I had 59 leads, so my lead dropped to $10.88, 12 strategy sessions came through off the webinar, I had 4 sales there at $7,500, so $30,000 for that. Then I go through a little bit, Bill, of what I changed, what I liked, what I didn’t like, on this test campaign, because that’s kind of what it was.

Bill: Okay, cool. I mean, both of those examples are great. I mean, one is to completely cold traffic and then the other one is kind of to a retargeting list of the guys that are on your mailing list.

Jon: Yeah, and let me say this, what I was trying to do here, and this is something that people might be able to get some information on, or a context on, all I was trying to establish at this point was metrics. Because I’d never really done video before so I wanted some metrics. What did it look like if I was running to cold traffic? What did it look like if I was running to semi-cold? That’s why I did that, I was just trying to test some different things to see how it worked for me because I really didn’t have any watermark information on what a campaign should look like here.

Bill: Okay, cool. Based on that, any kind of best practices that you’ve figured out through that campaign or some suggestions you could make about people that might want to set up a similar one?

Jon: Yes, so think about this. If you’re out with your wife or you’re out with your family or you’re dealing with any situation that you’re dealing with, you’re in a situation where you can scroll through your Facebook and read stuff, but if you’re going to watch a video, you’ve got to have audio. If you’re in a movie theater, if you’re out to dinner, you don’t want your wife catching you on your phone or whatever, you can’t really do that. If you’re going to get somebody’s attention on video that’s actually watching it, you got to grab their attention immediately. Your headline has got to resonate with them because they don’t have time to set—I mean, people in our industry have been trained that videos are like 30 minutes long. They don’t really have time to get into that situation with you, so you got to get their attention so that they know it’s something that they want to look at. That’s one of the things that I can think of that would be very powerful, is to make sure that your headline gets their attention and you have to have a very strong call to action. Tell them what you have to do, because a lot of times that call to action and the Facebook stuff can be—I mean, it’s there, but it can be kind of muted, compared to the big click now buttons that we get on VSL’s, so you still have to tell them what to do. I found that if I can give them very clear instructions, like I grab their attention, give them clear instructions, so far, that’s worked pretty well for me. It’s not quite what I want it to be yet and I’m still a video newbie, but so far, those are the shifts that I’ve seen.

Bill: Okay. So grab attention early, make sure you’re doing something to really just get them to completely focus on you early on in your video and then be really clear to do a very clear and direct call to action, what you want them to do basically.

Jon: Yeah, and it comes down to the old marketing thing. I always say this in my webinar, which is nobody cares about me. Nobody gives a damn about you, what they care about is what can you do for them? If you know what that big problem is that they have and that’s the problem that you’re highlighting in this video— boom—you smack them right in the head with that, smack them right in the head with that problem that you’re going to solve for them and that gets their attention. Believe me, nobody is dying to spend $7,500 to work with Jon Tarr, right? That’s not what they’re dying to do. They’re dying to change their—they want to be working from the Caribbean as well, that’s what they want to be doing and with paid traffic and they haven’t quite figured out how to do that. I want to make sure to make that really clear that that’s what it’s all about. That big ass problem that Frank Kern always talks about, needs to be highlighted immediately in that video.

Bill: Gotcha, okay, cool. Then as far as campaign set up and targeting, any of the stuff in that zone, anything that you’ve figured out there?

Jon: Well, I mean, I just target it based on, one, the custom audience and the lookalike audience was obviously my second round of targeting. In my first round of targeting, I hit people that I thought would be a good fit for me. Like with Facebook, you’ve got the Anthony Robbins, the Jim Rohns, the Frank Kerns, I mean, people that are following those guys are more likely to resonate with me because I’m an internet marketer. Anything from my author, personal development and freedom is a good fit for me, but when people are targeting, just target those people—I’ll say two things about targeting on Facebook that I find to be really good. Target to people that hit home for you, so obviously people that are talking to— Anthony Robbins probably isn’t attracting a ton of lower-level corporate guys, or they might be lower-level corporate guys today, but they want to be entrepreneurs, they want to make their own way. Those people are in other places, too, so you’ve got to do a good job of cross targeting a little bit. What I always tell people is like in women’s weight loss, which I’m really big at, yeah, Oprah is a good target, but believe it or not, Betty Crocker is a good target, too. Why? Because women are baking, women do a lot of things. They’re not always where you look, so you have to build that avatar that you would normally build and then think about where your target market is going to be and then target accordingly. Here’s one thing to add, Bill. One thing I always do with paid traffic is I go to what I call “ground zero” and I test there first. That’s one interest and category that is going to be where your customer most likely is. So like in the survival education space, that’s going to be Glen Beck, that’s ground zero. If it doesn’t convert to Glen Beck, it’s not going to convert any place else. So I start testing there and then I branch out from there, if that makes sense.

Bill: Yeah. Also, the lookalike audience has been a really important tool for me on some of my campaigns. It’s been a life saver, especially when you get to the point where you want to scale. I’ve seen a lot of guys, you seem to be kind of middle of the road in your targeting and I’m finding guys that want to be laser precise with their targeting and then other guys that want to go really broad and then let their retargeting part of their campaigns and the lookalike audiences kind of help zero it in as they go. It sounds like you’re sort of in the middle. You’re kind of in the middle between those two extremes.

Jon: Part of it is probably a habit because in the markets that I deal with where I run a lot of traffic, they’re enormous, 20-30 million people. So what I just told you is targeted for me, you know what I mean?

Bill: Yeah.

Jon: Part of it is just probably habit. I think that one thing I have always found is the more targeted you can be, the more money you’re going to make, I mean, it’s just a fact. The more targeted somebody can be, I think the better.

Bill: Especially I think with your offer, too. It’s not a broad, I mean, not everybody is going to go through a strategy session and give you $7,500. Maybe you actually, because of the nature of the offer, you don’t want to be broadly targeted, because you’re going to talk to a bunch of people who probably wouldn’t be the right candidate.

Jon: Yeah, one of the things that’s really good for us and one of the things that we do is we’re going to go really broad, we’re going to build our list a little bit, then off that lookalike audience it seems like we do really well with these kind of offers, especially, I mean, we signed up 360-some people in about 7 months off of that offer. Obviously if you want more people like that, go find the people that are like that. Like you said, the lookalike and the custom audiences are really powerful for that, but you got to build it somehow. So if you don’t have a list, I mean, you got to build it somehow and so we start broad and then kind of taper down. It’s sort of our kind of traffic funnel.

Bill: Okay, cool. Any other tips or advice you want to wrap up with?

Jon: Not too much. One thing I see with entrepreneurs a lot is just know what your numbers are, know what your metrics are. Me, normally, if I see I’m paying $1.30 a click on Facebook or more than that, I don’t really want to pay that. Look at the big picture. If you spend $700 and make $7,500—you win. So keep doing that, don’t get caught up in the minutia. A lot of guys get caught up in the minutia and they want to perfect things, but sometimes it’s not necessary, just keep running what you’re running. Keep running those videos and tweak it as you go. You don’t have to be perfect, just get a video out there, start running stuff.

Bill: Yes, get something out there and I really like what you said about paying attention to the big picture. I know some of the numbers that you just went over, I think like one was like 14-ish per registration, I think was one of those campaigns? I know guys that would’ve killed that campaign, they would’ve gone, “Oh, $14 per registration! That’s too high!” Boom, kill the campaign and they would’ve lost out on like how much? Like $38,000?

Jon: 37,500, yeah. Bill, I’ve got to just emphasize that and I’ve talked to guys in our industry and I talked to a guy the other day and he said, “Man, Tarr, I’m running $40 a registrant.” I said, “Well, what do you make on a registrant?” He said, “$85.” Who cares? Keep doing it, right? If you’re doubling your money, man, keep doing it! I don’t care about industry metrics. It’s like just keep doing what you’re doing, but that’s why you have to know those numbers. You’ve got to know your metrics, you’ve got to know what the person is worth to you, you have to understand what it costs you to get in there and you know those numbers and you understand them, then you can make intelligent decisions to not kill a campaign.

Bill: Yeah, exactly. Don’t get caught up in the minutia of all the—there are lots of sub-metrics that you can look at, cost per click, cost per video view, cost per lead, and all these things, but they’re all just tools to help better get you the end result and that’s what you really want to remain focused on.

Jon: Yeah, exactly.

Bill: Cool, I like that advice. I think it sounds so simple but that might be one of the more powerful pieces of advice that I’ve heard on many of these interviews I’ve been doing.

Jon: Cool, good. I hope it helps somebody, for sure.

Bill: I’m sure it will. Cool, I think we’re going to wrap up then and if anybody does want to learn more about what you do, where can they find out more about your stuff?

Jon: They can PM me on Facebook. I literally don’t have a website. I’m on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn. Just how I like to do it, so just tell them to find me on Facebook. I’m the one, I think my kid’s my picture now, and a palm tree. So, yes.

Bill: So look Jon up on Facebook and hit him up, he’ll tell you a little bit more about what he’s up to. Awesome! With that, I want to wrap it up, so thanks again, man, I appreciate you sharing the inside info of this campaign and letting people know, it’s going to help a lot of people make a lot of money, I’m sure.

Jon: Cool, cool, I hope so. I appreciate you having me on and I’m an open book, so if I can ever do anything for you again, Bill, let me know.

Bill: Right on and likewise. With that, we’ll wrap it up. I’ll see you on the next interview and thanks again, Jon. Bye, everybody!