How To Stand Out In A Crowded Inbox Even If Your Subject Lines Suck With Kevin Hokoana

List Building Lifestyle-033

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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at listbuilidnglifestylesshow.com. I also invite you to grab a free copy of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival Guide” at lifebuilidnglifestyleshow.com/survival and now once again it’s time to claim your List Building

Igor: Welcome back to List Building Lifestyle. This is your host Igor Kheifets and today I’m excited to host Kevin Hokoana, the guy behind DS Domination and a brand new company INFINii. Kevin, how are you today my friend?

Kevin: I’m doing great. How we doin’?

Igor: Well, it’s bright and early over here in Israel. I’m in the coffee shop. The espresso machine is still turned off so the day has not been great for me so far.

Igor: So the reason I invited you, Kevin, is because I know that you are a true conversion expert when it comes to the business opportunities space. I know that there are a lot of people out there that call themselves conversion experts but very few of them actually know what the hell they are talking about and even fewer will actually go testing an offer that they created with their own traffic. A lot of the times they will just push it out. They will tell their affiliates that it’s converting amazingly well now you go and you buy traffic and you will make sales and obviously a lot of people don’t make sales and there is like a whole mess with that. So you’re one of the few players in the game today that actually walks the talk, and actually goes out there takes his own cash out of his own pocket buys traffic with it and I know that you’re doing lots of different types of traffic. So you do solo ads and linked BBC and Facebook ads and pretty much everything which is awesome. So I’d like, if possible, for you to discuss some of the elements that you tried to spot or create within an offer that you believe makes an offer convert.

Kevin: Oh definitely, definitely. So for me whenever I’m looking at an offer and how it’s going to convert most people get stuck creating – trying to sell something that most people don’t want. It really starts from there. You look at a lot of the network marketing companies and there is a lot people in those, obviously, and they all want to get the same thing which is leads but the problem that I see with that is they look at the front end and they say that they have to get leads but they neglect the back end in being able to convert them. To be honest if we all could deal in sign ups then it would be a better world so the leads don’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you get 10 leads or 1000 leads, what matters at the end of the day is how much money came in the door from whatever marketing effort you had. So when I look at offers that I promote and typically they are my own companies and my own products, I structure those offers in a way that will attract the 99 “percenters”, the average person because I look at marketing as we are all swimming in this one pond and it’s easy to get sales in that pond but it’s going to dry up because it’s a very small pond so you have to go outside of that. You have to get outside the 2% that we know of in the internet marketing space and appeal to the consumers out there and appeal to that person that is looking for a business opportunity and understand what they want and don’t want and for me I know that they don’t want to sell anything. They don’t want to sell their neighbors, their friends. They don’t want to become a salesman. So when I structure offers it’s always to teach them how to grow an income without doing that and that helps those conversions on the back end and then leverage brand names and leverage things that are in their world like Amazon and eBay. That’s why I think the sales funnels that we’ve created have been so successful because we do that and I could talk about this all day long so stop me whenever. But I’ll tell you, it starts really when you look at a sales funnel and the typical sales funnel that I’ll put together, it always starts with the ad. It starts with the ad and it ends with that sign up and you have to look at that as the lifecycle of that campaign or the life cycle of that offer. So what kind of ad are they going to respond to and is that initial ad that they are going to respond to something that is going to be true when they get into the sales page. So if I put up an ad let’s say on pay per click that says we are going to teach you how to make $65 a day starting in the next three days. Is that something that they can actually do with your system? And if the answer is yes, then you can have a successful campaign, meaning I can run an ad that says okay I’m going to teach you how to make $5642 in the next 60 days with this little known strategy and that can be the ad. Then I will make the capture page the exact same thing as that ad because in the mindset of my prospects that they are looking at just like I found this out a long time ago actually running solo ads with you Igor. I learned this. When you look at congruency, if somebody sees an ad and they click on it and the capture page is the same exact thing as that ad then they have no where to go and they’re going to want more. They wouldn’t have clicked if they didn’t want it. Getting that first click is the hardest thing. So when they click on that ad what’s next, where do they go? It’s the same thing that’s on the ad. They end up opting in, becoming a lead. That’s how I’ve gotten high conversions in the cost per click world. So once they opt in now they are on your sales page, right, they are listening to your sales video. It’s got to be congruent with that message that they saw in that first ad and if it is then you’re going to get the sale. It can’t be, “hey go ahead and join this network marketing company to recruit your mom and your uncle and your dad. You can’t run the old play that they have ran 50,000 times where it’s we’re going to teach you how to make money just by getting two people who get two people who get two people that’s not going to work. That doesn’t work anymore. People have heard that and they are over it. So it’s gotta be some other angle and the angle that I like to use is with Amazon and eBay, teaching them how to grow an income with Amazon and with eBay. Why? Because they know that and they know what Amazon is and they know what an eBay is and so when you structure your ads that way and you get them in front of something that they know and that they trust to be a billion dollar company, obviously, you’re going to get better results and then it just comes down to follow up and follow up and follow up and follow up relentlessly. Definitely not as relentless as you do, [laughter]…

Igor: Oh yeah, I’m a whole different level of relentless.

Kevin: [laughter] Yes, you are. That’s what gets you the results, right? An email a day keeps the doctor away, I think you would probably times six.

Igor: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Kevin: I don’t go that far but I should and you’ll probably get better conversions. But yeah, I’ve always had pretty good conversions with the leads actually buying what I’m selling because of the way that I’ve structured the offer and I’ve stayed away from the things that most people do in our industry and that’s get two, get two, get two, go recruit, go recruit and build a [inaudible 0:07:32.9] plan.

Kevin: So that is where I kind of start.

Igor: I’m sorry to cut you off like that. I just want to go over what you just said just in case. Basically what you’re saying is the offer has to be congruent like lead generating message and your sales page and your pitch has to be congruent and what’s important has to be different. It has to be different from like the vast majority of the offers out there because in any market place as a rule 90% of the offers are exactly the same weather we go to the weight loss market, whether we go to the four X market or the land market, right?

Kevin: Exactly. You know to go even beyond that, you know I kind of feel bad for a lot of the companies that are trying to sell a product that everybody has. The network marketing company if someone’s in one and they are trying to sell the juice or the skin lotion or the pill unfortunately you know for those folks somebody can just walk down to Costco or CVS or right down the road and immediately when that company enters into that space what are they doing?

They are entering into a space where they have to compete with thousands of different products at a cheaper price that don’t pay out a commission. So definitely when you’re looking at offers if anyone who is listening and you’re in a network marketing company just be very much aware of that and change the conversation from your pill or your cream or whatever it is, it could be the best in the world, but you got to change that conversation and you’ve got to now explain it from a different angle. One of the angles that I’ve used to do that has been list building and exactly what you’re doing. Right? List building and explaining to people that for every person on your list is a potential dollar a month if you do it right. So that becomes the method and now the vehicle behind – that’s the vehicle but the engine under the hood and what makes the income would now be your network marketing company. And that conversation or in that kind of situation, it doesn’t matter what the opportunity is. It’s just something to sell at that point and you are steering them in that direction but you’ve got to be very targeted in teaching people how to do that kind of stuff if that’s the route you go.

Igor: You know I completely agree with what you’re saying because I try to never have a conversation about my product like whenever it comes to marketing, warming the lead up, etc., like I try to delay talking about my product, the actual gizmo or widget that I’m selling all the way until the very end when it actually does not matter anymore because the majority of the time is spent on talking about how is this going to improve their life. Right?

Igor: It’s all about that anyway. The spotlight of your pitch, of your presentation, of your sales videos and your sales pages and your emails has always – it has to be on the person who is reading the letter. It has to be on your target prospect not on you or your product. So yeah, that’s absolutely true. I’ve seen it done time and time again where leaders, huge leaders joined different companies all at the same time even and they almost never sell the damn company, like they might do one webinar about it but for the most part it’s the people that they join. It’s like the people they attract because of themselves, it’s not because of the company and you’ll see these people jump to the next company when the leader leaves.

Kevin: Oh yeah, oh yeah, that’s exactly – you’re spot on. The company is a side item. It’s a side conversation. What’s kind of cool about that is for an actual real world marketing lesson on that for the listeners knowing that – if you know that right up front, if we are telling you that the opportunity doesn’t matter. It’s all about talking to them about their situation and selling you as a person. Then you need to be doing that in the first couple minutes of your sales video because no matter what sales letter you put out there or sales video, you’re only going to get a small percentage that are even going to watch it. Right? So if you know that you have a 20-minute sales video that you think is going to rock it out, you better put yourself in the first couple of minutes. You better start with the problem that they are experiencing because you have probably been there yourself, start with that but then immediately transition to why they should listen to you and who you are, who you are so that they know your name. Say your name three times. Just have it right on the sales video, have it right there in front of them because what happens now is even if they make it five minutes in and close it down and life happens and they walk away, which will probably happen the majority of the time, at least when you send out that email, they know who you are because if you don’t do that then they are just getting a spam email from somebody they don’t care about.

Igor: Oh that is huge advice. That’s huge advice right here. And Kevin, I have to cut in. I have to because here is the ridiculous part about email marketing, we all change subject lines. We want the 10 hottest subject lines formulas for February; we want the 10 hottest subject lines for formulas for 2014. I remember Frank Kern releasing his subject line swipe file which is basically all of the subject lines he mailed in 2010 and everyone just jumped on it because supposedly he is Frank Kern so he probably knows what he is doing. It’s not like he tests or he makes mistakes or whatever. But you know, Frank is a great guy but people tend to over estimate the importance of a subject line. I think, and this is where I am in complete agreement with you, that the name that hits the inbox, the thing you seeon the left side, to the left of the subject line is way more important. A lot of times, I’ll open the email not because of the subject line but because it comes from somebody I know, respect and admire like if I see an email coming from Ben Settle, it is automatically, it is as if I’m the Terminator and my right eye turns red and now I’m scanning and all of a sudden Ben Settle’s email just pops out. I’m analyzing the thing; everything else is sort of like dark now and only his email stands out in my vision because his name carries weight. So this is the absolute single nugget of this call, I believe because if you get that, if you get that, your name is what is going to be even making them pay attention to the subject line in the first place you will get ahead.

Kevin: Oh yeah. And since we know that going into this whole marketing thing since we know that going in then again your sales videos and everything you do have to start with you, right? It has to start with you and give them some kind of value and let them know who you are, you got to do it. And even if you can’t make a sales video then use a sandwich page. I use these all of the time, I teach this a lot – use a sandwich page if you’re not good at making a sales video just make a page that goes between your opt in page and your opportunity and talk a little bit about yourself. “Hey, how you doin’? My name is Kevin Hokoana. I’ve done XYZ.” Or if I haven’t done anything, it doesn’t matter, guys. You can say, “Hey, how you doin’? My name is John and I’ve joined this amazing community of people and together we done XYZ.” Leverage your teams that you have out there and just make sure that people are paying attention to you above and beyond the actual sales message because they might not click to continue. They might not care but they’ll remember who you are. They’ll remember your name and that’s where it all begins, that’s where it starts. You’ll start getting your mileage and that income out of the list that you’re building. Sure.

Igor: This is great. I’m lovin’ this call. I’m lovin’ it. So you’re saying that even if we have no credentials whatsoever, we just started out, we could still do a sandwich page or some people might know this as the bridge page.

Igor: So what exactly do we talk about – like can you perhaps do a high wire act for us and I’m sorry to put you on the spot like that.

Kevin: Sure. Oh no absolutely.

Igor: Do a high wire act and pretend you’re Kevin Hokoana who just started online two days ago or two months ago maybe it took you two months to work up the courage to show the video, I can appreciate that. What would you say, like you have no income proof, you just joined a new company which you love and you believe in, like what would you talk about?

Kevin: Well, give me a company and we’ll run with that.

Igor: A company, sure, let’s try to promote Devon Brown’s “Easiest Sales System” which is a program where they outsource all the selling like you just get people into their landing pages and then they do all the selling. They follow up by phone. They provide education on how to make money online.

Kevin: Okay. So if I was going to make – let’s say I joined that today and I was going to make a video and had no experience inside network marketing or any of this stuff. First off, you don’t even have to get on the camera. So you can just make a Power Point slide and record it with [inaudible0:16:00.6] if you want, right, so you don’t actually have to be on camera. You can just put some stuff about who you are. But you know for those of you who are comfortable on camera obviously that’s a little bit better because people can see you. But if I was going to promote that then I would go ahead and probably do something like, “Hey, how you doin’? My name is Kevin Hokoana. I’m really excited that you got to this page and I actually feel responsible for you that’s why on the next page you’re going to see what I’m excited about but I feel responsible for you being on this page because I’m the one that drove the traffic to get you here. Meaning, I put an ad out there, you clicked on it and you came here. Now I’ve been doing this for awhile now and I’ll you what it’s been the most profitable thing I have ever been able to do online. Members and people on my team have done amazing with this system and with what you’re going to see on the next page but more importantly I just want to pop out and say thank you for being here because hey what you’re going to see on the next page is going to change your life like it’s changed mine if you let it. And I feel responsible for you being here so I’ll tell you what I just sent you an email; it has my contact information on it. You can give me a call, you can hit me up on Facebook, you can go follow me on Twitter but really I just want to pop out and say thank you for being here, I appreciate you and I’m looking forward to helping you succeed. I’ll tell you what I really do feel responsible for your success because I’m the guy that got you to this page in the first place and you know the online industry even though it’s online and you’re watching my video on this page, it really doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter because some of my best friends in the world are from the online space. People who I’ve met online are lifelong friends because of it. We could be lifelong friends or you could just let me help you make a lot of money. So either way which ever road you want to go down that’s fine but go ahead and click on that continue button below and see what I’m so excited about and why we are so excited about this opportunity and I’ll see you in your email inbox, on your Facebook, on your YouTube, I’ll see you all around, give me a call if you want to, if you need some help, I’m here for you. Take care. See you on the next

Igor: Give this man an Oscar. Man that was brilliant. That was brilliant.

Kevin: It doesn’t matter what the opportunity is.

Igor: Yeah, it’s pretty much – I’m not sure why you asked me what the opportunity was, you didn’t even need that. So I want to point two critical lessons of what you guys just witnessed here. Now most people listening to this might have said, “Whoa, he’s obviously got a way with words and the words were great.” And they were, absolutely. I mean it is a very good bridge page or bridge video. But what is even more important I believe that if you’re getting on a video and this is where you get it absolutely right is tonality and reason why. So your tonality was spot on like you were flowing, you were confident, and based on this tonality even a stranger would have had an easy time trusting you or learning to trust you over the course of the first 30 seconds of your own video. You know how there are some people out there, you just see them and all of a sudden it’s like I believe this person, like I trust this guy.

Igor: So that is what you want to create. Your tonality was really; really good in this particular example and guys I recommend you look it up, tonality in sales. Second reason why is advertising so – can you perhaps share with our listeners why did you decide to explain to them why do you feel responsible or why do you want to show them this opportunity, what is the thinking behind it?

Kevin: Well two reasons; hopefully if you’re entering into this space and trying to grow a home-based business you’ve got to understand that, it doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s people and their lives and what they are doing. The fact that they’re paying money and that money will flow into your pocket so you need to – if you don’t appreciate your list, if you don’t appreciate your customers then you probably shouldn’t be here, right? So whenever you get a chance to appreciate them, appreciate them. It doesn’t have to be you know a paying customer yet in my opinion because I think people are savvy to this and they understand that leads are really a form of currency nowadays. If somebody puts their email address in your form, they just paid you a buck. You know? That’s the way I look at it. It’s a form of currency and I think that people are waking up to the fact that is the truth so they know that when they opt into something it’s something of value or else people wouldn’t be asking for it all of the time, right? They know that they are going to get follow up with. So you got to immediately appreciate them and you’ve got to let them know that you appreciate them and that you feel responsible for their success because hopefully you do on some level and as long as that is the case then you’ll be alright. You’ll be able to help them and they will see that but it’s got to be sincere. You better really mean it and I think that they will really see that and people will respond to your emails and gravitate toward you and want to be around what you’re doing.

Igor: Yeah, I completely agree with you. It took me awhile to learn this by the way. I did not appreciate my market much. I always wanted them to pay me money first and then I would really appreciate them, you know what I mean?

Igor: But I learned it actually works the other way around and when the people who feel your appreciation without the money first or who look up to you as an authority will be happy to share their finances with you. But I also would love your take on the whole strategy on the reason why so you said, “I appreciate you because I brought you here or I feel responsible because I brought you here.” So that’s a natural thing for you right now, I mean I can tell it’s automatic like at this point because that is something that you use all of the time. So please share with us a reason why advertising, why does it work?

Kevin: Well, I think what it does is you know people – we kind, of in this time we are in right now a lot of people have almost a sense of entitlement that’s beneath the surface like the last 30 years of the human existence so there is a sense of entitlement there and when you go out there and you blatantly state that you appreciate that person and you’re excited to help them; you feel responsible for their success they feel like they’re validated. Like yeah, okay great this is cool. This person feels responsible for my success or why does he feel responsible for my success – oh because he drove the traffic to the system, right? And that right there for that specific example too where you’re talking about it’s a lead generation thing, you drive the lead, they drive the sales. You’re immediately edifying yourself as someone who can help them drive the leads to get the sales and what they are going to see on that next page for that particular opportunity.

Igor: So what you’re saying is you’re giving them a reason why so it actually makes sense, so it’s believable in other words.

Kevin: Yup. Yup.

Igor: Yeah and I find most of today’s lead generation ads are just bogus. It’s just hyped up stuff and very few are actually believable so I believe by using the reason why advertising where you state something and then you explain the why you stated that or why do you believe in that or why is it true that is adding a huge, huge chunk of points to your creditability score with the audience.

Kevin: Definitely, definitely. You know again, it’s standing out too. I saw a capture page actually quite recently of someone that I work with and he did a back flip into a pool. It was really cool. That was his way of standing out from the crowd. He talked his spiel about why they should opt in and then he said alright I’ll see you on the next page and he did a back flip into his pool. You can imagine the effect of that, right? It stuck in that person’s mind that oh that guy did a back flip in the pool. They are going to wonder what he does next. What’s he going to do on the next page? So there a lot of ways to get that across, to get them –you know for you to stick in their mind and one of them I think is just letting them know that you came here because I got you here by placing an ad and I feel responsible for your success. They are looking at you as that person that is going to kind of help them out and hopefully in your marketing message and hopefully in whatever company you’re promoting you are going to take that person under your wing and help them out as best you can. So if that’s the case then you’re starting the conversation off right.

Igor: Yeah and it’s like we all want for someone else to be responsible for our success, don’t we? I mean at the end of the day we want someone else to hold the responsibility on their shoulders so if something goes wrong we can blame them. Or if something goes right we can take the credit for ourselves.

Kevin: [Laughter] yeah.

Igor: Alright, Kev, so what are you up to recently? I know you got a new company launching so can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Kevin: Well, yeah, we’ve been running DS Domination for last couple of years and while it’s still going and vibrant and it’s going great, we actually looked at the distribution, how we ran the compensation plan and we moved over into the network marketing compensation plan and launched INFINii quite recently so we’re still – we’re just coming out of the beta launch of that and starting to hit some momentum so it’s pretty exciting. I just – actually it’s funny we just launched INFINii Network which is going to be our traffic and lead generation portal for our members so that’s pretty cool, kind of good timing when we are on this call because I’m ramping up a bunch of marketing and traffic and stuff.

Igor: Sweet, now you’re getting me excited or it might be the espresso being turned on or whatever. What’s different about INFINii compared to a bunch of other companies that are launching every 20 seconds or so these days?

Kevin: Well, unfortunately with most of the companies that we see kind of launch out there, they launch into a space where they immediately have a thousand competitors, so if your product is going to be a skincare cream or something like that you’re immediately launching into a space where people go what I can get that down the road. So you have to fight that objection, hey come join my company, why? Because it has a great skin care product, okay that’s great I got a great skincare product in my bathroom. I got it from Costco. So it’s getting convoluted a little bit and I think that the network marketing side of the world is hitting kind of a critical transformation like they are moving – there’s a really a transformation happening in the form of the idea or the thought or the actual process of saying, “Hey Bill”, grabbing your two friends, you know grabbing Bill and John and saying look at my network marketing opportunity and then they go get two and they go get two – people are starting to wake up to that and they are really getting sick and tired of it so while they are still a lot of that happening you can build in that fashion but you got to have something that will absolutely convert when you are driving leads and sales into the company. I haven’t found it outside of what we are doing. So when you look at the online space and building online, it’s the only network marketing company period out there that you can actually have an online sales funnel that picks up people and picks up customers, which is sorely lacking in our industry. If you don’t have customers in your MLM and your network marketing company then guess what you’re going to get shut down. So that’s a huge problem. And our model has been about 80% customers up until now, we just really needed to tack on to what we were doing a compensation plan that drove growth and depth and gave people a reason to help somebody 10 levels deep and that’s what we have done.

Igor: You’re saying all the right things. Man, you’re pretty much saying look you should join because it converts. That’s all we want to hear. Honestly, at some point we just say you know what does it convert, yes, okay, I’m in. I’m in, Kev, okay. Cool so where can we find out more about INFINii?

Kevin: They can just go to kevinhokoana.com or they can just go INFINii and take a look and check out but we’ve got – it’s really cool in the timing of what we are doing and the space because it’s an actual network marketing company that converts online, which is ridiculous, you just don’t find them. You have to revert to affiliate offers so it’s something that even if you’re doing something else and you decide hey I want to add a residual income to what I’m doing then there you go. It’s pretty awesome.

Igor: Sweet. Well, Kev, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate you stepping your busy schedule and recording this with us. It’s been tremendous. It’s very, very unique and knowledge – how do you say this knowledgeful – no – anyway there has been a truck full of knowledge on this call. Yeah, I’m still waking up, still haven’t had my damn espresso yet.

Kevin: You got to get that.

Igor: I gotta, I gotta. I can’t function without it. Well, yeah, that’s pretty much it. I think that’s a wrap. Kev, thank you again for doing this. I’ll see you next time.

Kevin: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode because who knows just one conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your business. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at listbuilderslifestyleshow.com and don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestylesshow.com/survival. This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

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