DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson - Book Review

Do you dream of running an online business? Heard of people building their business online and want a piece of the action for yourself? If so, then check out my book review of DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online by Russell Brunson to see if it is a book for you.

Please note: Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.

If you haven’t heard of Russell Brunson before, he the Founder of ClickFunnels and obsessed with all things online marketing, but especially sales funnels (hence him creating ClickFunnels, which helps anyone with no coding skills to easily create online sales funnels). I first came across Russell through his podcast Marketing in your Car (now Marketing Secrets), but it took a while before I finally decided to read his first book DotCom Secrets.

Russell makes big claims about the book. Reading the back of the book it states that “Inside you will find the actual playbook we created after running thousands of tests and perfecting what works online. You now have access to all of the processes, funnels and scripts that we use to scale companies online.” Now saying you are given someone the actual playbook is a big statement, but it is one the book lives up to.

The book has 4 main sections: Ladders and Funnels, Your Communication / Follow-up Funnel, Funnelology Leading Your Customers to the Sale and Funnels and Scripts. As you can see, it is funnel heavy, but even if you think you aren’t interested, or ready, to create funnels, there are still lessons you can gain from the book.

Introduction

One of the things about Russell is that he is like me in the sense that his passion for marketing started offline and in the beginning, the walks you through how old media (offline) has turned into new media (online). Too often online marketers are quick to treat pre-world wide web as obsolete, but actually there are successful principles from offline marketing that can be applied to online marketing.

Section One: Ladders and Funnels

This section of the book is laying down the foundations. In the beginning, Russell goes through the four questions every business owner or entrepreneur needs to ask themselves:

Who are your dream clients?
Where can you find them?
What bait will you use to attract them?
What result of you want to give them?

Then he goes on to explain The Value Ladder. The purpose of a value ladder is to have multiple products or services that increase in price. This means that you have a solution for everyone at a price they can afford, but also by having incremental offerings you are maximising your opportunity to move people up the value ladder and generate further revenue. Whilst the concept is pretty simple, Russell goes into great detail as it “is the key to building your marketing funnel”.

Once you have defined your value ladder you are then able to turn that into your first funnel (how exciting). Russell walks you through how to do that and then explores how to find your dream customers and the three different types of traffic (traffic you control, traffic you don’t control and traffic you OWN).

By the end of Section One you will know the basic for your funnel, but having the technical knowledge of what a sales funnels in and how to drive traffic isn’t enough. You need to know the words to use attract your dream client.

In Section Two: Your Communication / Follow-up Funnel, Russell explores how you should be communicating with your audience.

This section starts by exploring the idea of an Attractive Character. Russell describes an Attractive Character as “a persona that attracts clients or customers and helps you build your following to eventually makes sales”. Your job is to establish your attractive character so then all of your communication can be written in their style. Not sure how to create an attractive character? Don’t worry because in the book, Russell walks you through the different types of attractive characters there can be and then shares six basic storylines to help you start communicating your story. Then the book goes onto show you how you can start writing email sequences, which are an important part of your follow-up funnel.

Section Three: Funnelology Leading Your Customers to the Sale

I’m sure you have heard the phrase ‘no need to reinvent the wheel’. Well in Section 3, Russell shares how you can funnel hack by reverse engineering successful funnels.

According to Russell, there are 5 variables of a successful funnel:

Demographics
Offer
Landing Page
Traffic Source
Ad Copy

As if that wasn’t enough, the book then breaks down the phases and the building block of a successful funnel.

Then you get to Section Four: Funnels and Scripts, which is where Russell walks you through specific funnels that you can use at different stages of your value ladder. This is where everything you have learnt comes together and 7 funnels are broken down so you could easily build them for your own business.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is a great book for any aspiring entrepreneur or a beginner looking to learn more about online marketing, online business or online entrepreneurship.

As I stated at the beginning of this review, Russell made BIG claims for the DotCom Secrets, but I really do believe this is a great playbook. Yes, Russell is using the book as a way to get more people to sign up for ClickFunnels, but since he makes money from people using his software, there is no need for him to be secretive about what it takes to build a great sales funnels. As a result, he goes into so much detail that anyone should be able to start making their own successful sales funnels off the back of reading this book.

If you have been interested in creating a sales funnel then this definitely a book you should pick up, but even if you aren’t interested in a sales funnels per se there is so much value in this book. For example, Chapter 2 would be useful for anyone who is trying to build a personal brand or sells via email.

Overall, I think anyone who sells, or wants to sell, online should check this book out.