Jacob Longoria is an expert in digital marketing. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Jacob has honed his expertise in marketing, leadership, and strategic planning, making him a visionary and creative storyteller in his field.
His track record includes spearheading marketing initiatives that have generated over $20 million in trackable revenue and overseeing a digital marketing team that achieved seven-figure revenue milestones in less than 16 months.
Jacob’s accomplishments have earned him accolades like the Clickfunnels 2 Comma Club Award for generating over $4 million through a single funnel and recognition on industry-leading platforms.
With a reputation for delivering results that align with growth and revenue goals, Jacob is a sought-after expert in copywriting, digital marketing frameworks, advertising, and attracting the perfect client.
What you will learn
- Jacob unpacks his transition from music to digital marketing
- Why you can’t afford to ignore digital marketing
- Discover the hook, story, close framework
- Learn why personal branding is essential in today’s marketplace
- Building Intentional Brands: Discover why intentionality attracts the right audience
- The little known secrets of personal storytelling
- The use of AI in marketing, and key tools and resources you need to check out
- Why human-centric marketing is so important
- Plus loads more!
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:04 – 00:01:10
Hi everyone and welcome to The Jeff Bullas Show. Today, I have with me, Jacob Longoria. Now, Jacob is a marketing strategist, former Chief Marketing officer at Projected Growth Consulting and an expert in digital marketing. We’re gonna talk a bit about that because we all like to, you know, grow our businesses or we know how to start them. So with over a decade of hands-on experience, Jacob has honed expertise in marketing, leadership and strategic planning, making him a visionary and creative storyteller in the field. His track record includes spearheading marketing initiatives that generated over $20 million in trackable revenue and overseeing a digital marketing team that achieved seven-figure revenue milestones in less than 16 months, Jacob’s accomplished have earned him accolades like the ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club Award for generating over $4 million through a single funnel and recognition in the industry leading platforms. Welcome to the show Jacob, it’s absolute pleasure to have you here and look forward to finding out more about how we can, what you would tell people how to grow their business and talk about what a funnel really means because some people don’t know what a funnel is if they’re not in the digital marketing world. So they think this might be something that they used to put into a bottle anyway.
Jacob Longoria
00:01:10 – 00:01:28
Thank you, Jeff. I gotta tell you, I’m extremely excited to be here. When I received your invite, it was the highlight of my day. So I cannot wait to speak about it. This is my love language, Jeff. It is digital marketing. So incredibly excited to be here.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:28 – 00:01:46
Great to have you. So, Jacob, you’re originally from Texas and you went and attended university there. So tell us a bit about your story and journey to being a digital marketing strategist. Tell us a bit about how it all started.
Jacob Longoria
00:01:46 – 00:04:42
Yeah, absolutely. So, my story is far different than probably, you know, many of the listeners on this podcast specifically, you know, I started from a creative aspect. I was extremely excited about the creative journey if you will, from being a musician to an audio engineer to a creative director as well, where I managed several numbers of creatives from videographers to storytellers to audio people and musicians, graphic artists, et cetera. The digital marketing world has always been exciting to me because my father was an entrepreneur and I’ve always had a really soft spot in my heart for entrepreneurs. And when I started trying to figure out exactly what career was going to be my career for the rest of my life, if you will, there were two things that needed to happen. Number one, you know, I believe that I was born for this, meaning that I’ve always had a tremendously strategic mind. I was always very competitive. I was the kid that was like, you didn’t want to play monopoly with, right? Like you didn’t want to play chess with. I’m no chess master but, you know, very strategic in that way. But the second piece is it had to scratch that creative itch. Storytelling, content, marketing really does that for me. And so, that was initially what got me excited about potentially making marketing, digital marketing specifically, but potentially making marketing my career. I’ll give you an example, you know, if there’s any musicians in the listening group right now or in the crowd, one of the most gratifying things is being able to perform and taking people, providing them an experience that actually, you know, takes their mind off of their struggles, takes their mind off of their, you know, their pains or maybe the stress that they’re dealing with in that day and really dive into the enjoyment of, you know, music, especially for music lovers. I really love the ability to be able to influence people’s reactions and people’s actions through storytelling. And so that was one thing that really got me excited about digital marketing as a whole because now that marketing has gone pretty much 100% digital. The ability to move the needle and the ability to influence someone’s decision to purchase a product whether or purchase a high ticket service is a skill that’s going to be incredibly important to every business over the next 10 years. As a matter of fact, I believe that personal branding over the next five to 10 years is going to be extremely important to every single business, including B2B and B2C businesses alike. So, that’s kind of my story in a nutshell, Jeff.
Jeff Bullas
00:04:43 – 00:04:55
So, tell us a bit about what intrigues you about persuasion. In other words, convincing people to buy a product or a service or whatever, what’s persuasion mean to you?
Jacob Longoria
00:04:56 – 00:07:10
Yeah, that’s a great question. Persuasion is the same. So what intrigued me about persuasion is the ability to deliver it in a way that actually cuts through all the BS if you will, right? An example of that might be your favorite teacher. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that type of experience. I’m sure everyone has. I know I have had that experience where one class was your favorite class because your teacher was just an incredible gem. And then the next class was the dreaded class because the teacher was not your favorite, you know, all of the little things that go into making someone your favorite or not your favorite, I think are similar to persuasion, right? It’s, you know, telling rather than asking, right? So maybe the teacher that tells rather than the teacher that asks and really collab, you know, it feels collaborative, for example, is a different experience, all of those experiences, the human experience is different if you will. And I think that storytelling is that way, especially as our attention spans begin to decrease or diminish rapidly. You know, I keep hearing, you know, hook story clothes, of course, Russell Brunson talks about hook, story, close, which I think is a phenomenal framework for simply explaining how you gain someone’s attention. But I think it’s deeper than that. I think it’s the intention behind what you’re trying to say, how you’re trying to say it and how it benefits your audience. And so when you can crack that code, then you can start to test out different ways of really grabbing someone’s attention. You know, maybe it’s a question, maybe it’s a statement, maybe it’s, you know, news, maybe it’s, you know, some form of big promise, but all of those and the way that they’re delivered and the intention behind them, I think makes a huge impact on, you know, on how profitable that campaign is.
Jeff Bullas
00:07:11 – 00:07:34
So, can you give us an example of a hook, story, close as an example for our listeners. What’s an example of a hook, a story and a close? So quite often people tell a story and then they make a point, okay, that’s usually powerful storytelling, isn’t it? In other words, what’s the point of the story? But tell us about hook, story, close, can you give us an example of that?
Jacob Longoria
00:07:35 – 00:10:03
Yeah, absolutely. So the hook is the actual. So today, let me backup for just a moment. So in today’s content, you know, content landscape where especially like the infinite reel, if you will, the infinite scroll, the infinite feed through TikTok and in some cases, even LinkedIn, you know, obviously YouTube shorts and Instagram reels and all of these different mediums during that infinite scroll, the hook is designed to grab someone’s attention long enough that they will pay attention to the story itself, right? So Eugene Schwartz talks about it this way. He says, if your first sentence is compelling enough to the reader, right? Because back then everything was delivered via print media. If your first sentence is compelling to the reader, they will read your second sentence. And if your second sentence is compelling to the reader, they’ll read your third sentence. And if your third sentence is compelling to the reader, the likelihood that they’ll read your entire advertisement is very, very high. And so you have to think of the hook in that way. If your hook is strong enough in your content, then the likelihood that they will pay attention to your entire story is extremely high. So the question is, what makes a great hook? And I think there are many ways that you can make a great hook. You can, you know, answer how-to questions, you can provide a solution to a problem that someone is dealing with, someone in your audience is specifically dealing with, you can provide brand new information, right? New info, you know, in our industry, check this out now. There are different ways to make a hook as strong as possible, but the hook is designed to draw someone in long enough that your story compels them to read your entire story. So or experience your entire story via audio and video. And so that’s the idea between hook and story. Now, the close is simply your call to action. I’m sure people on this podcast understand what CTA or call to actions are. And the close itself is designed to essentially get someone to take action after they consume your story. So the idea behind that story is it is compelling and does it connect the dots for your audience to be able to take action. The specific action that you want them to take.
Jeff Bullas
00:10:04 – 00:10:19
So the other thing you mentioned too, along with that you mentioned was about building a personal brand is very, very important. Why is building a personal brand in 2023 important and moving forward?
Jacob Longoria
00:10:19 – 00:13:02
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great question when I think about the landscape in terms of the way that content is being distributed today, you know, it’s mass distribution, anyone can distribute content today. Pretty much from anywhere, right? If you’ve got an iPhone or a Samsung or some sort of device, you can distribute content easily anywhere. So since mass distribution is available to almost anyone, I think that personal branding is extremely important. And when I say personal branding, I don’t mean specifically attaching one person to a company. Although that’s a strategy that would work. I’m talking about intention and attractive character for a brand, whether it’s a faceless brand or if it’s a personal brand, meaning you are attached to a specific company because people do business with people that they like and trust. And so personal branding since now mass distribution is on the rise in the way that I explain it is there’s this, you know, macro distribution with micro engagement, okay? So if we’re doing micro engagement, the question is, how do we gain that micro engagement, okay? It’s very similar to how a dinner party ends up, right? If we all went to a dinner party today and let’s say the majority of the dinner party were all invitees from all over the country or all over the world and very few people knew each other. You would start to see segments of people that, you know, have similarities and have likeness if you will start to gather up, right? It’s not 100%, you know, but for the most part, people who are intrigued by, you know, what somebody else does or who they are or their mannerisms or, you know, just their life in general, they’re gonna be drawn to that magnetic person if you will. And that’s how personal branding is going to be important to any type of content distribution moving forward from my perspective. Meaning if you have a faceless company, okay? How do we make that brand? How do we make that faceless company into a brand with intention behind it that attracts the perfect audience and a perfect segment in every single, a perfect audience segment in the marketplace if you will. And so that’s what I mean by personal branding. It’s telling compelling stories that allow people to be attracted to the company or the brand or the business or yourself
Jeff Bullas
00:13:02 – 00:13:27
Yeah, I think that’s very, very important because if you go to a website and it’s just, you know, got a lovely logo, but you’re going, who are the people behind this? How did this company start? So this is why telling your story as the founder or CEO or, you know, this might be a hundred year old company, for example, but I think it’s good to know the story behind the brand, isn’t it?
Jacob Longoria
00:13:27 – 00:14:20
The story behind the brand, the story behind the people, the intention behind the story. I mean, if you look at Apple’s marketing for, you know, since, you know, rest in peace, since Steve Jobs took over again, you know, it’s not about the how, it’s not about the product, it’s always been about the intention behind it, right? So the very best companies and that’s what I mean, when I say personal branding, I don’t always mean that a specific person needs to be attached to a company. Although that is a tactic that works. It’s about the intention, it’s about the why. Because people buy the why, they don’t buy your product. So that’s why we solve problems in the marketplace. We solve problems in the marketplace and we communicate how we solve those problems and why we solve those problems in the marketplace through storytelling, which is why I think that’s the next superpower for the next five to 10 years.
Jeff Bullas
00:14:21 – 00:15:11
Yeah, storytelling for me, certainly raised its head a lot. Russell Brunston was certainly, you know, a big promoter of good storytelling. The other thing that and behind that, then, you know, Joseph Campbell, for example, or not just Joseph Campbell with, you know, Hero with the Thousand Faces, the heroes, you know, The Hero’s Journey is really, really important. And I, so for me, is using that in other words, when you talk to someone and love this saying, what was your, what was the call to make you cross the threshold from an ordinary life to an extraordinary life? And then what did you learn along the way? What were the challenges you struck? And what do you bring back to the world? So that’s basically Joseph Campbell heroes.
Jacob Longoria
00:15:12 – 00:15:14
That’s exactly right. That spot on Jeff.
Jeff Bullas
00:15:14 – 00:15:46
Yeah. And I love it because it just makes things so much more personal. I love going to dinner parties and I’ve just read a great book How to Know a Person by David Brooks. And it goes way beyond listening ‘cause everyone wants to be visible, not invisible, they wanna be seen, they wanna be heard and I love going to a dinner party and just, okay, ask some questions and a lot of people don’t have their stories told.
Jacob Longoria
00:15:47 – 00:17:24
That’s exactly right. They don’t and that’s a real shame, you know, but I understand why the reason behind it is because to tell your story is to be vulnerable and to be vulnerable is to allow people to really form their own opinion of your story. And who you are and what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. So at the end of the day, the psychological component behind why we do what we do is extremely important. But, you know, Jeff, that’s why I am a proponent of the personal brand because the person that is prioritizing a personal brand is being courageous. They’re being courageous in their desire to put out their personal stories and their reasoning for doing things, you know, their priorities, their goals if you will and that’s what it’s going to take in order to sell massive products, massive services, high ticket, medium ticket and low ticket moving forward in my opinion. I mean, a perfect example of that is, I’m sorry for interrupting you, but a perfect example of that is, I mean, if you go to Red Bull’s, you know, Instagram, for example, you know, Red Bull very rarely do you see the product on Red Bull’s Instagram? It’s about the movement, it’s about who they are. It’s about the intention behind who, you know, what that product is and who they are. And so what I’m trying to say is that is the type of intention that needs to happen today because anyone who doesn’t make that a priority is going to be left by the wayside.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:25 – 00:18:48
Yeah, I love there’s a story I used to use in the presentation which is Dave Isay’s story, the storyteller behind, well behind StoryCorps. And he loved capturing the stories of ordinary people because behind the stories of ordinary people are extraordinary stories. And yeah, he told a story once which really intrigued me was he went into a men’s home in New York where, you know, basically they were homeless and they lived in this home and he went and interviewed these ordinary men and it was really fascinating in that he put together a book of all these stories. And he went back there once he’d written the book and showed some of the men their stories in black and white in a book. And what was really fascinating was that one of the men saw his story, his name attached to the story, he picked up the book and ran down the corridor and said I exist because Dave Isay has made him visible through storytelling. Yeah, and that gets the essence of what we all wanted. We all wanna be seen as humans, we all wanna be validated as humans. And I think the art of storytelling is a very powerful way to get a message across in an authentic way.
Jacob Longoria
00:18:49 – 00:20:28
I completely agree with that. Now, one of the questions that you proposed earlier to me was, you know, with regard to funnels. And so I think that storytelling and funnels go hand-in-hand completely. Now, when most people think about funnels. They may think about websites, they may think about landing pages, they may think about sales pages, they may think about automations, but in its simplest form I cannot take credit for this statement. This is something that I heard at a roundtable by a gentleman by the name of Steve Larson, if you know who he is or don’t know who he is, he’s great. But I was in 2020 in Nashville, I was at a round table and I heard him say this and it was profound, it made a profound impact on me. And the reason it made such a big impact is because it was the way, like, I was searching for these words to be able to explain exactly what a funnel was and he already said it and what it was was a funnel is simply a message with a call to action. And that is literally it, is a focused message with a focused call to action to try to get your audience to take the action that you desire. So what does that mean? If I become great at storytelling and I am on Instagram or TikTok or X or Threads or wherever you are, you could literally build a business through content and providing a call to action like message me, comment below and you can do commerce that way that in its basic form is a funnel. So funnel, storytelling and funnel marketing go hand-in-hand for that reason, I would say.
Jeff Bullas
00:20:28 – 00:20:49
Yeah. Okay. So let’s continue with that theme. So when you got the 2 Comma Club Award from Russell Brunson, who’s the genius behind ClickFunnels. And tell us a little bit about that funnel that you built and why it was successful. Can you take us through that story?
Jacob Longoria
00:20:49 – 00:21:44
Absolutely. So, there are many different types of funnels. Now that, when we talk about, you know, a funnel specifically, we’re talking about a focus landing page, not a website. So it doesn’t take you away from the thing that you’re trying to promote. And so there are many different types of funnels from opt-in pages to webinar funnels to sales pages, et cetera. My favorite funnel for anybody that is listening that has a very tight marketing budget but is wanting to scale and grow quickly. And I think this is relevant for 2024 as well because the CPM cost is going to skyrocket with, especially in the USA with it being a, you know, a voting year if you will, right? With all of the different campaigns that are going to be going out. My very favorite type of funnel is called a self liquidating offer. Now, Jeff, are you familiar with what a self liquidating offer is?
Jeff Bullas
00:21:44 – 00:21:47
I have heard of it but take us through it.
Jacob Longoria
00:21:47 – 00:24:22
Yeah, absolutely. So, a self liquidating offer is essentially an offer that you make that’s relevant to the marketplace for a nominal cost, okay? So an example of that might be if you’ve ever seen a free plus shipping book funnel, meaning someone is providing you a free physical copy of a book or a digital copy of a book for a nominal price, usually $7, $8 or less. Sometimes a guide for $20 or less. Something along those lines. The tactic that they’re deploying is a self liquidating offer, okay? Now, a self liquidating offer is not going to generate massive amounts of revenue initially for your company. But the reason it’s so powerful is because, a self liquidating offer, the goal behind it is for you to generate leads and new customers at least a break even if not a profit. So if I generate, you know, let’s say that I generate, you know, $1000 worth of orders, right? But for every customer, I’ve generated five to 10 leads, okay? Then that means that I can continue to reinvest that $1000 over and over and over again to generate leads and to generate new customers that have now given me permission to speak to them directly in many different ways through email marketing, through SMS marketing as well as retargeting if you’re deploying, retargeting ads. Now, so what’s the purpose? If we’re not gonna make wealth, you know, if we’re not gonna generate massive income through that, what’s the purpose? Well, the purpose is that you now have permission to make offers, whether it’s immediately or it’s sometime in the future, sometime further in the customer journey. And you’ve generated all of these leads and all of these customers at least a break, even meaning your net zero on your acquisition cost, which is in my opinion, exactly what every single business big or small needs in order to dominate in their industry. So this funnel that I built was a self liquidating offer as a book funnel that we deployed that had several different UPS sells. But at the end of the day, we were able to generate over $4 million in high ticket services because of this self liquidating offer, it allowed us to go from zero leads to 10,000 leads in our very narrow niche during my tenure as CMO there at Projected Growth Consulting.
Jeff Bullas
00:24:23 – 00:24:33
Right. So how did you get, so was that offer? How was that put to market? Was it paid? Was it an email list? How did you get it to the market?
Jacob Longoria
00:24:34 – 00:24:42
Yes, it was paid advertising. So we utilized paid advertising on social media as well as Google paper click.
Jeff Bullas
00:24:42 – 00:24:51
Right. Okay. So and basically what was it zero net cost to actually get the leads at the end of the day or?
Jacob Longoria
00:24:51 – 00:25:10
Great question. I actually lost money on every single new customer. I lost a little bit of money on every single new customer. But here’s the kicker. I think I invested, I think it was like $30-40,000 total in advertising spend, but we generated over $4 million in revenue.
Jeff Bullas
00:25:10 – 00:25:36
Wow, that’s great. So let’s step back to being, which I think is something you really love talking about and the most important thing to do first rather than going tactical is how do you approach the customer coming to you or you’re working for, you know, an agency, whatever, how do you approach a strategy? What do you, what information do you need and then what other steps to put a strategy together?
Jacob Longoria
00:25:36 – 00:28:50
Yeah, it’s a great question. I fully utilize the old copywriting greats methods. I’ve kind of pieced them all together and created my own in order to deploy a campaign even in today’s digital world. So I’m talking about John Capel and Eugene Schwartz and the Sugarman’s and you know, all of the old Dan Kennedy, you know, Gary Halbert, all of those methods that allow you to try to figure out if I am deploying a campaign for a specific product or a specific service. How do I figure out how to tell a compelling story that people are gonna get excited about? How do I figure out what the pain points are in that industry? So whenever I deploy a strategy, I start there, I start with the ultimate goal. So step number one is what is the actual goal that we care about? Right? So with the self liquidating offer funnel, the goal wasn’t to sell books, the goal was generate leads, generate customers and do it as close to a break as we can and then offer them something of value because they now have given us permission to speak to them. And that was, you know, all of those tactical things that we deployed based on that strategy was because we got completely clear about what the goal was and the goal was high ticket consulting and high ticket services. Those are what we wanted to do specifically for. That was the value that we wanted to provide in our marketplace. And so from that, I began to figure out, okay, you know, what’s the problem? You know, what are the problems that our avatar is facing? How do we provide solutions? You know, what’s compelling about our solution? What’s different, you know, why should they care about this asset that I’m providing for a nominal cost? How do they consume content? Right? Because what you’ll see is that I think LinkedIn is a perfect example of this, right? The people that are on LinkedIn actually consume LinkedIn differently than they do their personal TikTok accounts as well as Instagram accounts. So you have to be very, you almost have to think, okay, how are people consuming content and what do they need to hear in order to make an impact in order to gain their attention, generate brand awareness. And so before deploying a strategy that is literally the most important question, what is the specific goal? And I typically like to do 90 day sprints. So what I mean by that is I would go in 90 days when we get to the end of these 90 days. What is the actual goal that we care about? Because if we are trying to do too much, right? Even if you have, especially if you have a small team. If you try to do too much at once, then the likelihood of burnout and the likelihood of your campaign falling flat is very, very high. So I would say be focused in 90 days, but then be tactical every day, be tactical on all of the different actions that you’re trying to produce for a specific campaign.
Jeff Bullas
00:28:51 – 00:29:26
Right. So let’s talk about books. Giving away a free book, lead gen has been done for a long time. Now, I suppose eBooks and physical books are one where people make a small commitment, aren’t we? That’s what we were looking for, is that $7 commitment to get the book. Now, this book off that you did for your $4 million funnel, what did they, because the challenge is people go, well, I can’t write a book or what book do I write? So, what book did you use for selling high end consulting and services?
Jacob Longoria
00:29:26 – 00:31:58
Yeah, great question. So my CEO actually wrote a book, it was called Top 10 Profit Killers for the Industry. I would say when you’re thinking about, man, I can’t produce a book or I can’t produce a guide that someone would be willing to pay for, right? 80 page guide or something along those lines. Then I would say that’s just overwhelm and fear, if I’m gonna be honest with you, because if you are a leader in your market, then you have the knowledge to be able to produce an asset that someone cares about doesn’t have to be a book. It could be a course, a video course, it could be, you know, a workshop that goes deep on a specific tactic. There are many things that you could produce. But I think that once someone says, well, I can’t produce a book, you know, it’s more about their fear than it is about service to the industry. And once you approach your industry through service, I guarantee you you’re gonna have 40 different ideas and the next problem is gonna be which one do I focus on? So, the idea is to produce an asset and that asset is to over deliver in value. You want someone that consumes this asset to go, oh my gosh, if they’re going to give me this for $7, you know, what would they actually do in their high ticket offer? And so the reason I deployed the book and the reason I was excited about the book wasn’t because I asked my CEO to write a book, she wrote the book. And then I said, let me utilize this book for this self liquidating offer. And the reason I did it is actually pretty deep when you think about books in general, they’re a credentialing tool. There’s something psychological in humans that when we receive a book, whether it’s for free or whether we purchase a book, we have a hard time getting rid of that book, don’t we? I’ve got a stack of books that I very rarely read that I still won’t get rid of because humans just view that as valuable knowledge. The idea behind a book funnel was to provide valuable knowledge to our marketplace and provide an offer again, that is self liquidating so that we didn’t just spend money in advertising. We actually made some of that money back in order to invest more into advertising.
Jeff Bullas
00:31:59 – 00:32:05
Right. Okay. Do you think books are working as good as they used to or is it?
Jacob Longoria
00:32:06 – 00:32:42
I do, I really do. I think that books will continue to be a timeless asset. I think that video is extremely important as well. And I think that a well done video can be seen as impactful as a book. A well done video series can be seen as impactful as a book. But I think at least for now books are still, you know, the top from a psychological perspective. Of course, I’m a little bit of an analog junkie. So, you know, maybe that’s just perspective from a, you know, 46 year old analog junkie.
Jeff Bullas
00:32:44 – 00:33:33
Well, I do love books but I do, I’ve switched over from print books which I still love. I love having them on the shelf, but I switched to Kindle because I can highlight notes in an email. I use them as inspiration for writing. So for me and I remember that I left print books behind a little bit when I carted a Steve Jobs autobiography written by Isaacson around Italy for three weeks and it weighed about a kilo or two. And I went, I’m not gonna drag a book like this around because I love to read, right? But, so let’s move on and probably wrap it up. In the industry now AI is making a big impact. And what are some non technical ways to use AI that you’ve been experimenting with or have used or learned about?
Jacob Longoria
00:33:34 – 00:36:40
Yeah, that’s a great question. Two weeks ago, I think if you had asked me how quickly AI would be impactful in marketing, I would have said, the next 13 to 17 months are gonna be pretty phenomenal. I think that with all of the drama that’s happened around OpenAI so far over the last week or so, maybe we’ll halt that a little bit or maybe we’ll not halt it, but we’ll delay that time a little bit. But there’s no doubt that AI is already impacting, you know, what we do and how we do it. I think that the easy way to get involved with AI right now is to utilize AI tools to be able to generate content that you need to generate quickly, but to do it in a way that is, I guess in a way that is guarded, right? Or double checked if you will. So, I’ve actually have several friends that are AI developers and we’ve been having a lot of conversations about AI in its current form and what we think it’s going to do, especially in marketing and sales and all of the different ways. It’s going to impact this industry. And so I have a lot of ideas about it, but what I will tell you is the main issue or the main concern is specifically with ChatGPT or any of these chat, you know, AI products are how truthful they’re going to be. Because we’ve all heard of the instances of, you know, ChatGPT providing results that were untruthful or hallucinated if you will. And so the idea is number one, how do we generate truthful responses to, you know, specific content with that being said, I think that the ability to utilize ChatGPT to create ideas for content, create ideas for headlines and titles and those types of things is substantial. I would even say that AI’s ability to write email and to write blog posts, again, making sure that it’s truthful is also substantial and I think it allows us to get where we need to go as quickly as possible. But I think that the human component is still important. And this has been verified by AI developers that I know personally that are doing incredible things, which is, you know, AI still does not understand intention and persuasion and, you know, some of those elements, it can copy them, it can copy those ideas, but it still does not understand why, you know why a book funnel might work better than, you know, let’s say a webinar funnel in a specific instance, right? And it all has to do with the intention and the feedback that we receive in real time from the marketplace. However, I think that’s gonna change in the next 18 months, for sure.
Jeff Bullas
00:36:40 – 00:36:50
I think the thing that stands out for me is that AI is very good at information, but it’s not very good at inspiration.
Jacob Longoria
00:36:50 – 00:36:52
Great way to see that.
Jeff Bullas
00:36:53 – 00:37:20
And the thing that intrigues me too is I think that with AI doing a lot more of the heavy lifting on processes and nuts and bolts and so on, which is great. I think the thing that humans are good at is telling stories. We’ve been doing it for millennia, tens of thousands of years, around the fire, around the table at dinner parties. And I think as humans, I think the power of storytelling is actually only going to become more important.
Jacob Longoria
00:37:21 – 00:37:22
Absolutely.
Jeff Bullas
00:37:22 – 00:38:07
So stories and using certain frameworks that work such as Joseph Campbell’s story arc, which is number one, what was the reason you crossed the threshold, got the call? What touched you? What made you cross that threshold to start your journey? What do you learn along the way? What are the challenges you faced and what do you, what do you bring back to the world that can help us? And maybe that’s the best way to wrap it up is, Jacob, what are some of the lessons you’ve learned, in other words, top two or three tips for people. If they’re gonna build a funnel, if they wanna start with a hook, a story and a call to action, what are the top tips you’d like to leave for us today?
Jacob Longoria
00:38:07 – 00:40:27
That’s great, Jeff, before I answer this, I just want to tell you, thank you so much, this has been a very pleasurable conversation experience. I really thank you so much for this time together. So tip number one is ugly funnels work, meaning, you know, just get it done, just get it out there, get it tested, you know, now the importance of design, I’m not discounting the importance of design once you have a winner, like get it professionally designed. But if you’re a solo entrepreneur, you’re a small team, and you want to test out some specific funnels like a self liquidating offer or a course or something like that, just get it done, right? Because at the end of the day, ugly funnels work, they work well, specifically when you follow persuasion tactics. So that’s tip number one. Tip number two is if you wanna get good at persuasion, read everything you can about copywriting, okay? So when you think about copywriting and I’m talking about the titans of old, I’m talking about guys that used to invest tens and $20,000 or more into mailing lists and send envelopes to the door if you will, their ability to persuade people to action is everything that makes ugly funnels work because persuasion is going to be the superpower over the next 10 years for sure. Especially as AI starts to take over some of the different, you know, just, some of the different implementation things that, you know, humans do like media buyers, for example, setting up campaigns or, you know, I don’t know, there’s probably a huge list setting up automations. I mean, Zapier is already using AI to kind of set up automations for people. So I would say tip number one and two is ugly funnels work, get it done, get it tested. Tip number two is persuasion is all about the guys that used to send envelopes to the doors if you can figure out any of those sweet spots, those would be huge and I’ll tell you Great Leads by Ford is probably one of the easiest reads that’ll get you started in the direction of persuasion that you need to go.
Jeff Bullas
00:40:27 – 00:40:29
So Great Leads by Ford. Is that what you’re saying?
Jacob Longoria
00:40:29 – 00:40:42
Yeah, Ford. There’s John Ford and someone else co-wrote that forgot, I always forget the second author, but Great Leads is a phenomenal book for anyone that’s getting started down this persuasion path.
Jeff Bullas
00:40:43 – 00:41:07
Okay. That’s great. So, just one last question. What is the, I suppose if someone’s gonna start building a funnel or wants to keep its low cost and you mentioned a tool before, what’s a really low cost tool that you’ve found that people can use without spending too much money?
Jacob Longoria
00:41:08 – 00:41:45
That’s a great question. I don’t know if there’s a low cost tool but ClickFunnels 2.0 and GoHighLevel are my two absolute favorite tools that you can use. Now, there’s a little bit of a learning curve as there will be with anything that’s as robust as those two tools. I think ActiveCampaign has now started to incorporate some landing page designs and some things you can do there. But I would say, you know, if you’re looking at an entirely encompassing way to build a business, I really like GoHighLevel and I really like ClickFunnels 2.0.
Jeff Bullas
00:41:46 – 00:41:50
Right. I hadn’t heard of GoHighLevel before. So that’s interesting. So, are they competitors to ClickFunnels?
Jacob Longoria
00:41:51 – 00:41:53
Yeah, I think so.
Jeff Bullas
00:41:53 – 00:42:02
Because Russell Brunson sort of took ClickFunnels too, I think. Is it a, I don’t know, a billion dollar company now or something? I don’t know.
Jacob Longoria
00:42:03 – 00:42:11
I don’t think it’s a billion dollars. I could be wrong. I don’t think it’s a billion dollar company yet, but it’s definitely a 100 million plus company.
Jeff Bullas
00:42:12 – 00:42:24
So, Jacob, thank you very much for your thoughts and insights. And look forward to hearing more of your journey on the wire. Thank you very much for your time. It’s an absolute joy.
Jacob Longoria
00:42:25 – 00:42:32
It’s been my pleasure, Jeff. And again, thank you so much for this time. It’s been a very enjoyable conversation. Thank you.