This new distribution channel may be the biggest thing since email.

I’m always saying how important it is not to get married to any SINGLE distribution channel or platform for your traffic… Like depending solely on Facebook, or Google, or Instagram, or YouTube, or email, or chatbots, or texts. Why? Because relying on just one source is dangerous to your business because algorithms change, policies change, rules change, and customer BEHAVIOR changes.

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I (and my entrepreneur friends) have found our traffic sources completely dry up or go bye-bye at one point or another. That’s why you have to protect your distribution channel.

That’s why I’m SO excited about this new platform that just came out called, Community. It’s a texting platform. What I love is that it bypasses all the same behemoth platforms we’ve all been using for years. With Community, open rates for texts are INSANE and click-through rates are CRAZY high.

How would you like to see it in action? I’ll even answer your questions! Then check out this Marketing Secrets episode and I’ll give you ALL THE DETAILS!

---Transcript---

Hey everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the marketing secrets podcast. Today, I want to talk to you guys about something very cool and very important, and it is adding more distribution channels to protect your business from the inevitable. All right. So if you've read traffic secrets, you've heard me talk a lot about this, about the fact that traffic changes all the time. Google snaps and Facebook snap. So all the things that are happening. And so for me, I'm always looking at how do I protect my business? How do I protect my distribution channels? And so for you, my question is what are you doing? Do you have a list? Do you have multiple lists?

There was a time when if you had a big fan page on Facebook, you post a video or something, you get millions of views. And now the reach died, right? Some people have email lists and they were sending emails back, 10, 15 years ago and getting 50, 60%, 60% open rate, where now you're lucky if you get 20%, right? You have your Instagram following, YouTube channel, all these things, right. And there's times when they're really good and you get a lot of traffic and things from it. And other times where it goes down and you can lose tons of the effort you put into something. And so I'm all about diversification and protecting your assets and protecting yourself. And there's new platform that just came out. I'm excited for, I've seen it for a while. I saw Gary V use it. I saw other people use it. And it's this really cool platform called Community. It's something that I fought against a little bit until this weekend.

I was actually speaking at Tony Robbins' event, hanging out with the speakers afterwards and Trent Sheldon, who, if you don't know Trent, he is awesome. He's such a cool dude. And he was showing me his Community platform. I think, I don't know exact numbers, he has almost a 100,000 people that are on his texting platform. And he spends time everyday trying to respond to as many people as he can. But then every morning sends out a mass text with different quotes and things like that. And then when he has a new video come out or a new offer or whatever his new book comes out, he sends a text message out, letting people know about, "Here's my new video, go check it out and go comment", or "Here's my new thing", whatever. And what's so crazy is it's it bypasses all the traditional things, right?

Bypasses email, bypasses Zuckerberg or YouTube or whatever. It bypasses everything and gets directly into people's phones. And he was showing me his stats and it's crazy. The open rate on his texts were 90 something percent, versus email, which you're lucky if you get 15 to 20%. But his click through rates like 23%, which typical email you're looking at like one to 3% click through rate. So it was crazy. And I got excited. So I started my Community... I joined the Community platform. I started sending out something to Instagram last night just to see how it worked. And I got hundreds of people who joined it. And I spent all my last night having conversations with people, it was so much fun. And my goal over the next year or so is trying to build that list up to a 100,000 people, right?

It's another distribution channel. Something that if email disappears, I still have this distribution channel that can bypass email. It can bypass other things. Right? And so it's really cool. In fact, if you guys want to see I'm doing experiment, in fact, there's an ad that's going to run through this podcast episode. I just create the ad to start promoting them, start putting this on every single podcast episode. I want you guys joining this thing because that way I'll notify you when every new podcast episode comes out, plus you can get free quotes and I'm going to be sending out different frameworks and whole bunch of really cool things to text everyday. And I want to make sure you're on that list. So to get on the list, all you do is text spirit out area code (208) 231-3797. Okay. One more time.

It's (208) 231-3797. If you texted me there, you're going to see the process and it's cool. You'll text me and you'll get a message back. Basically says, "Hey, you know, go join the community in that way". It adds you to my phone. And then I can see you and your name, how old you are, your birthday, all that of stuff. It's kind of cool. And they'll send you my V card where then you can add that to your phone and you'll see a message from me. So it's pretty cool. So when you guys test it out, you can see the process, but I'm sharing this because... And maybe you're going to use Community in your business. Maybe you won't, it doesn't matter. I just want you guys all thinking about adding multiple distribution channels to everything that you're doing. What are the new distribution challenges you can do?

You know where the other ones I'm looking at, a lot of... There's a really cool tool called PushCrew. There's a couple of companies that do this, but basically happens is it is on your Chrome browser. When someone comes to your page, it can drop down, says, "Hey, join notifications from Russell or from Neil Patel" or from whoever I see Neil Patel is probably the guy doing the best in our industry and you click on it and now he can send out broadcast to you through your browser. So, let's say Google shuts you down, but if you're using Chrome, you can open up and you can send notifications to people through their Chrome browser. Which is so cool for another distribution channel, which I'm going to be focusing on heavily in building that list up as well. I just, I don't know...

As long as I've been in business, I just know that lose your distribution channel, you're in trouble. You'll see some cool moves I'm doing in the next week or two. I'll probably be announcing next week, maybe two weeks from now, I'm acquiring a company specifically because I want their distribution channel. And it's a different distribution channel. It's an offline distribution channel, but I'm acquiring the company specifically because I want the distribution channel. Right? If you look at, I talked about some traffic secrets, you look at shark tank, like all the sharks that are there, are there because they, they understand, they know one distribution channel, right?

Like Damon John, his distribution channel is retail, right? He's really good at getting clothing down these distribution channels. He spends his career building this distribution channel. So if he has a new product, he's like, "I know my buyers want this". He can push it through his distribution channel. Right? Other sharks are good infomercials. Lori Greiner's really good to QVC. If she sees a product, she's like, "I can put this on QVC and make a ton of money because I know exactly how that game is played". Right? So every shark has a different distribution channel they're good at.

For us as internet nerds, right? What are our distribution channels? We have our email list, which is big. Which is still is probably the most profitable distribution channel we have in our company. So you have your email list, you have your social following. So your followings at Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, things like that. Facebook messenger was awesome for about a year as a distribution channel. And then it literally disappeared, it doesn't work very well anymore. For a while that was awesome. We were building up and having so much fun until it stopped being amazing.

You know, they're always coming and they're going, I think text message is a big one. I'm going to be focusing on now, PushCrew's another one. So it's like, what are the distribution channels you can build to give you and your business stability? Because the only thing that we know is not going to change in our businesses is the fact that's going to change all the time. So anyway, that's what I share with you guys is just thinking about that. If you want us to come and play in the new distribution channel that I'm doing, which is this Community app, which I'm really excited for. Then, like I said, text me (208) 231-3797. Just texts me anything. You can be like, "Blah". And then it opens a live chat with me. And then you can ask me a question. And right now in the last 12 hours, since I launched this, I've answered hundreds and hundreds of text messages.

Some people are freaking out, it's kind of fun. I won't be able to keep up the pace as they go from a couple of 100 people to a couple 1000, to hopefully a 100,000 people. But as right now, I'm trying to respond as many questions as I can. And I'm going to spend probably 20 to 30 minutes a day responding to questions. So feel free to come drop me a message and hopefully have a chance to respond to you personally. So I appreciate you. Thanks for hanging out. And like I said, give me a text. All right, thanks everybody, will talk to you soon.

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