Hey, what’s going on everybody? Alex Branning here, Your Marketing Coach. I have been doing this podcast for six months, and I’ve taken a slight right turn. I have had an amazingly fun time just doing those educational episodes for the past 24 weeks, every single week. I have been working on giving you a PhD in marketing, going over different topics, sharing my knowledge, giving actionable tips. Now what I’m going to do is, at least for the next few months, I want to take you on my journey. I’m going to share with you what I’m doing, how I’m growing my business, what I’m doing exactly for my clients, giving real life, specific examples.I’m working really hard on taking my digital agency from a six figure a year digital agency, to a million dollar digital agency. I’m going to share with you everything I’m doing along the way. Mistakes I’m making, things I’m trying, successes I get, partners I end up working with, campaigns that end up going really well, campaigns that flop. You’ll be with me on the journey.
It’s going to be a ton of fun. Let’s go ahead and get started. I want to start this whole thing off by sharing with you where I’m at today, and what I’m doing to take myself to the next level. Here we go. A lot of people ask me, I was just visiting Southern California, right before. I got back yesterday. I was having breakfast with some friends, and they’ve known me for years now. We were in the car, and just chit chatting about life. She goes, “Alex, what is it exactly that you do?” Those kind of questions, they used to bug me, because I was really just doing one thing for the first major portion of my career. All we did was build websites.
Then when I started to shift into becoming more of a marketing firm, I got kind of frustrated because I’m like, “I’m still building websites. I’m just helping people with marketing.” But, they didn’t know that because I wasn’t doing a good job of explaining it. And so, I want to just talk to you about what the heck am I doing, what’s working, how am I making money, how much money am I making.I really want to take you behind the scenes. The Branning Group, the agency that I started when I was 17 years old is humming along. We build websites, we’ve always done that. Even though I don’t put a lot of marketing effort into it, the phone still rings on a regular basis with people who are looking for help creating websites. On a regular month, we will build from start to finish normally about 10 websites a month. Which, when we were doing … When I was, my agency was younger, 10 websites in a year was an average. I mean, we were building websites for Chrysler, and Billabong. We’ve had so much fun working with some major names.
But, 10 websites … Well, let me take that back. Not 10 websites a year, more like 10 websites a quarter, I mean because we just didn’t do a lot. Now we’re at 10 websites a month. Our rule is, we don’t take on websites unless we can finish them in seven days or less. The websites that we’re doing are a lot smaller, they’re a lot more powerful for our clients. Because, they are getting results. But, I say all that to say this, we build websites. We also build funnels. They are separate, even though to a user they’ll feel different. A website on WordPress is geared mostly towards the information towards building a blog for our client, and they have a place. If you go to AlexBranning.com, that is a WordPress website where there are ClickFunnels pages integrated within it.
We have a WordPress development team, we have a ClickFunnels development team that builds funnels out. We build on average, six to 10 funnels a week. This week alone, I think we’ve built about 14. We have a ton of funnels that we build out. And then, we focus on bringing traffic to the websites, and the funnels that we build. We do that using Facebook ads, Google AdWords, and other marketing campaigns. That’s the agency side of things. The Branning Group has been around for 17 years, and we are doing phenomenally well, thank God. I don’t take any of it for granted. Our regular annual revenue is about a quarter million dollars a year. We’ve been at that mark for a while now. We have a team of seven people. When you spread it all out, we do really well, and we have become much more profitable. But, it costs a lot to run an agency.
There’s a lot of stuff that goes on, there’s a lot of people that, I bring great people on my team, and I make sure they’re paid well. When you spread out that revenue across all the different people on the team, what sounds like a lot doesn’t feel like a lot when it’s done. But again, not complaining. My wife and I have a great life. We will live very comfortably.
But now I’m going, “Okay, what can I do to take myself to that million dollar a year mark?What can I do to hit that seven figures?” We’re doing a lot of things differently this year, than we have in the past. One of the things that I had to learn was, what kind of revenue opportunities there are out there for people like me who are heavily involved in the business community. There’s a lot of people that look to me for advice, even if they never hire me. And so, how can I take that trust, and those relationships that I have, and turn that into revenue of some kind?
I started doing a couple of fun things. Number one, I started using affiliate marketing. If you’ve never heard of that before, what that is, is me sharing a link to a product or service that I believe in, and then getting paid a commission if that person that I share the link to, ends up buying it. For example, within ClickFunnels, if I share my affiliate link with you, then ClickFunnels as a thank you, will send me a small portion of the revenue generated when you sign up for ClickFunnels. Also, Eric Lofholm, my business coach. I can share a link to you for one of his classes, and if you end up hiring Eric or one of his team members at any point in the future, he’ll send me a thank you with a commission for the revenue that was brought in.
And so, we started doing affiliate marketing. That alone, every single month, brings in $3,000 a month into The Branning Group. So, really, really successful. It’s a great way to not only earn revenue without having to deliver a product, but it’s also a great way for me to build a relationship with my affiliate partners, so ClickFunnels and Eric Lofholm. And, it’s a great way to start a relationship with the people that follow me, learn to trust me, and then give the things that I recommend a try. I don’t just share a link, I also like to add in different things like, “Hey, if you try this, here’s what I’ll give you.” And so, now they’re getting a little bit of The Branning Group experience, and that helps develop client relationships. That’s one of the things that we did.
Another thing that we’ve started doing to monetize the influence that I have, is we do some coaching now, which is just so much fun. I absolutely love it. I get so much fulfillment out of coaching, and running a mastermind. Every month, The Branning Group generates around $2,000 a month, sometimes up to $4,000 a month in coaching revenue. Some of that is on a recurring monthly commission from level 10. Some of that is our regular coaching clients that we have here at The Branning Group. And so, it just, it helps. It’s fun for me, it helps the company. Most of the coaching clients end up doing something else with us, whether it’s they use an affiliate product, or they end up hiring us to help implement. There’s something that goes along with it. It’s been a really good move for us to include coaching.
We’ve also looked at how can we help serve the people that are using the agency, or they come under my influence. How else can I help serve them? And so, we’re constantly coming up with fun ways to figure out how we can better serve and support our clients. That is kind of the overarching.
About a year and a half ago I was encouraged by my coach Eric Lofholm, to not only do the agency, but also go into creating the Alex Branning brand.Man, I had a really hard time communicating what the heck I was doing. The people who were following me were like, “Wait, are you still doing The Branning Group? Is this a new thing? Are you starting a new business?” Because, I started talking about motivation things, and encouragement. I just did a terrible job launching that whole thing. And so, people got confused. They didn’t understand what the heck I was doing, and it’s all on me. It’s all a messaging issue.
And so, had the Alex Branning brand, and that is the podcast that I do, the blogs, there’s other stuff that is out there. I had to separate the Alex Branning brand, to The Branning Group Agency. Because, The Branning Group Agency, that’s the done for you stuff, right? If you need a website done, or a funnel built, or a social media, because my night team does great social media calendars. If you need that stuff, then you’re working with The Branning Group.
If you are doing coaching, or involved in a mastermind relationship of some kind, or digesting my content, then you’re speaking directly to, and working directly with me, Alex Branning. It’s a little bit different, and the bigger my name gets out there, the more work we have at the agency. The more that we push Alex out there, and it’s hard to really connect to The Branning Group. It’s like, “What is that exactly?” Right? But, people can connect to Alex Branning, ’cause they get to know me, they get to know my story, they get to know my family, they get to know my mistakes, the things that I believe in. And, it’s easier to relate to me, Alex Branning, then it is to relate to the company, The Branning Group.
It’s like, “I don’t know what that entity is.” Right? It’s like, people don’t really connect to Apple, although in some sense they do because it builds that brand loyalty. But, they were really connecting with Steve Jobs, right? Because, Steve was the man. And so, The Branning Group, we’ve done great work, and we continue to do phenomenal work. But, it’s just hard to feel any sort of warmth towards a corporation, but you can get to know me, and learn to trust me. And go, “Okay, Alex knows what he’s doing. I feel comfortable with Alex.” It just puts a face to the brand.
So, we push the brand out there of Alex Branning. Building that up, I do a lot of videos. We do a lot of other fun things together, on the team. They all help with it, so it’s not … What I do with Alex Branning is not separate from The Branning Group. In other words, it’s not like in Aerosmith, Steven Tyler goes out and does his own thing, and Aerosmith is like this separate band. They are connected. But, the way that we market both of them is different. Because we see better results when we market Alex Branning, over The Branning Group. That’s kind of where everything is at. It’s really important, as we go down this journey and you hear the campaigns that we’re doing, the things we’re launching, the services that we are starting up. It’s important to understand why we do it, and what the separation is.
Because, you’ll go, “Okay, I remember that Alex Branning is that recognizable face, the relatable character. Got it. I understand why they’re doing this campaign with Alex, and not The Branning Group.” I want to talk about where we’re going, and then next week I’m going to share in depth kind of what the heck is going on, who I’m working with, who I’m learning from, what I’m learning. And, just kind of share with my journey. It’s not scripted. This is just me sharing what’s going down, and giving you what I believe is hopefully some encouragement, motivation, and actionable tips as you just walk along with me on my journey.
What I did before, for the past 24 weeks, scripted. We were very intentional about teaching certain things, and the way that we taught them, and making sure that we gave you resources that could help. Now, it’s a little bit different. We’re not doing all that anymore. We’ll still have resources, but it’s not as scripted. It’s just me kind of going off the cuff, sharing what’s going on in our journey.
So, where are we going? Well, right now we have our podcast.I was just asked to co-host another podcast called, “Sales Tips With Smart People.” I do it every Friday, so I do Fire Up Friday’s, and I hope you’re enjoying that.If you’re listening to this podcast, I hope that is revving you up, and giving you some great ideas, and getting you excited. I will be doing more webinars, I’m doing a lot of what I call, “Pocket webinars.” Very short, very high action, high implementation. Where, you can either look over my shoulder and kind of see what I’m doing. We’re going to be doing a lot of that over the summer.
We’re posting a video a day on our Alex Branning page, Monday through Friday. A video a day. We’re doing that, we’re having fun with it. I’m getting a lot of really good feedback. Our goal for the summer, is to 10X the number of digital courses that we sell throughout the summer. The reason is, is because we are going into a very fun, very busy season with The Branning Group heading into September through December. In the summer, we’re doing a lot of work on our courses, we’re creating a lot more content that will help you, the listener, implement things that we teach. We’re creating a lot of new stuff, going back through some of the older courses that we’ve been selling it, but they’ve been kind of sitting on the shelf for the past two years. We’re going back through some of that, giving it a refresh and update, and just really updating the library of things that we have. We’re having so much fun doing it. You’ll see a lot more about that if you follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn.
We are going to be launching a fun mastermind, which is going to be a very exclusive four to six weeks, we’re not sure the length yet. We’re going to be bringing in some experts. This is going to be geared towards those of you who really want accountability, who want that private coaching. And go, “Okay, what am I going to do to finish this year strong?” We’ll be launching that, that’s going to be a blast.
We’re going to continue to create content based on the feedback, and the questions that we get from you. From people like you who are listening and going, “Okay Alex, I get this part of the marketing plan. But, I don’t understand how to use this tool that you’re doing.” For example, we’re getting a lot of questions about marketing using the Facebook Messenger. We’ll be talking about that, mostly on our webinars. But, I will be mentioning what we’re doing here on the podcast, so you can just follow along in the journey.
This is the new, fun, Alex Branning, Your Marketing Coach Podcast. I’m going to take you on my journey. It’s unscripted, it’s going to just be real life, here’s what I’m doing, here’s what I’m learning. It will be, the episodes will be launched every Monday. But, it’ll probably be a string of some different things that happen during the week. The podcast length will still be around the same time. We’re going to get it between 10 to 20 minutes. We’ve been really honing in on that 15 minute time, that’s what we see is the best time for our listeners. This one’s going a little long because I’m diving into a little bit more explanation. But, the next one’s will be around the 10 to 15 minute. It may go a little bit longer, and it’ll be unscripted. You’ll be seeing behind the scenes, just learning with us. I’ll be sharing exactly what I’m going through, and it’s going to be a ton of fun.
Thank you for coming alongside the journey. My action for you today, is set bigger goals for yourself. Set bigger goals. Our goals determine our actions, and our actions determine the results that we get from our day to day activities. When you set bigger goals and you have bigger things to go after, then you actually end up doing more, you become more focused, and you hone in on what you’re going for. Having a great rest of your day. If you want to chat with me, let’s do it. Set up a free strategy session call at AlexBranning.com/Call. Have a great day.
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