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What do you do if you only have 3 seconds to get someone’s attention today for your business? This is exactly what expert, Brendon Kane, has become an expert doing. So much so, he’s helped Taylor Swift, MTV, NHL, and so many other big players.
More about Brendon:
Brendan Kane is an outside of the box thinker, speaker, and author who empowers brands to scale by helping them stand out and beat the competition in crowded and oversaturated markets. He is the author of the international best-selling book One Million Followers and the newly released Hook Point: How To Stand Out In A 3 Second World, as well as the founder and CEO of the Hook Point agency. Brendan has worked with hundreds of individuals and brands providing business and digital strategy for more than 15 years, including MTV, Taylor Swift, Rhianna and many others.
Learn more about Brendan and his work at > https://book.hookpoint.com
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Transcription of Interview
(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)
Adam G. Force 00:03
Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host, Adam forest co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and life to go big, visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. All right, What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. We have a really great conversation coming up for you today. And it’s with Brendan Cain. Brendon has done a lot of incredible work. He’s a speaker and author. And he helps big brands scale by getting them to stand out right and beat the competition, you know, we have this whole three second world that he has mastered, in a sense of getting people noticed in three seconds or less, right, like, we have to break it. So he’s gonna break down, like what these pillars of his process are, and how this works. And all the great things you know, he’s done things with, like Taylor Swift and other incredible people out there. And so he’s going to share a lot of powerful insights. So stay tuned, we’re gonna get into some really cool stuff. Now, if you missed the last episode, it was with Taryn lroc, and how she went from being a models of creating a sustainable fashion business. I love seeing sustainable fashion businesses do their thing, because we need that, right? It is so important that industry is just a mess. And it’s great to see people chipping away at it with these great businesses. So dive into that episode. If you missed it, there’s lots of good little nuggets in there. Everybody, we have a really great new master class that we put together to go a little deeper on what’s going on in the market, and how, like the steps that you have to take in order to get really clear on your authentic brand story and what this actually means to your business from a marketing standpoint, a branding standpoint. And it’s going to be available, you can register for that masterclass, it’s a free training. And it’ll be at the URL, Change creator.com forward slash go big. So stop by Change creator.com forward slash go big, you’ll be able to get access to that free training. I can’t tell you how important it is today, especially after you hear this conversation with Brandon, you’re gonna see even more, you’re gonna get more excited about why you need to tap into the expertise around authentic brand storytelling and creating a captivating brand, right? Really important in today’s modern digital world. All right, guys, follow us on Facebook, join our Facebook group, be a Change Creator, we’d love to hear from you connect with you all that good stuff. And without further ado, we’re gonna dive into this conversation with Brent. Okay, show me the heat. Hey, Brendan, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today, man?
Brendan Kane 03:12
I’m doing well Adam, it’s awesome to connect with you and all the listeners out there.
Adam G. Force 03:18
Awesome, man. I appreciate it and appreciate you coming here. And taking the time this is actually just…your experience and this topic are something that I’m very interested in for selfish reasons and to share with the audience, right, we are big on storytelling here at Change Creator. In the social impact space, storytelling is just growing more and more significant. And as you know, more than anything, we have this whole, you know, culture of immediacy and the three second world as you call it, and your new book, hook point. So tell me a little bit just about your background just so people can get kind of grounded on where you’re coming from and how you got such expertise where you got to the point of working with people like Taylor Swift.
Brendan Kane 04:03
Yeah, so I started off my career in the film industry and I wanted to produce movies. And as soon as I got to film school to really learn about the business side of it, I quickly realize they teach you nothing about business and film school. So I had to quickly adapt and find a way to to get that experience that I was really looking for, and and find that education on my own. And I figured the best way to do about do that is to start a business of my own. And the most cost efficient way at the time and still hold true today is to create internet companies. So I created a few internet companies was going to college really to just learn and experiment. And then when I moved to Los Angeles in 2005, to pursue a career and film, it’s when the entertainment industry started to reawaken digital after the.com bust and basically, you know, as the subject goes of how do you stand out and capture attention and there in crowded markets, I just realized that there was 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other people moving to LA to pursue a career as a as a film producer. So I wasn’t really standing out and I just saw that there was a lot of questions being asked from producers, directors, screenwriters, actors on how this how digital after the.com bust, and just the emergence of social media could be leveraged to effectively promote these films that they invested so heavily and work so hard on. So I just leveraged that experience in forming those internet companies to provide that that strategic value and quickly went from you know, making copies and coffee to creating a digital division for a studio and, you know, helped oversee the the digital strategy on films ranging from $15 million budgets, which extended to helping you know, actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, and further syndicating their brand online. Yeah. And through that process, I just realized that the film industry, which everybody thinks is such a sexy creative thing is just another Corporation. And I am very much an entrepreneur at heart and decided that it wasn’t the right strategic fit to work within the ecosystem. So I, I left and I started building technology platforms and licensing them back to media companies. And they created partnerships and licensed technology to the likes of Viacom, MTV, Comedy Central, Vice magazine, Yahoo, paramount to name a few. And it was really the MTV partnerships that opened up the doors to work with Taylor Swift and to work with other notable celebrities, musicians, athletes, and you know, from there, I just continued into the digital and technology ecosystem. And I’ll just stop there, because I just threw a lot at you. And I can dive in further if you have other questions
Adam G. Force 06:59
Yeah, a few. Oh, there it is. There’s a there’s a lot that comes up there. And it’s really interesting. So just to give us a little sense, what were some of these original digital businesses that you put together?
Brendan Kane 07:12
I had done email marketing. There was a I don’t know if you remember back in the day, but Alexa was like the big website not the Amazon Alexa the Alexa for web traffic, we had created a system to increase your overall Alexa ranking. And there was a digital consulting thing, they came up with helping people strategize on how to get online as well.
Adam G. Force 07:37
Okay, so now, when you’re talking about hook point, so just so everybody knows who’s listening, you know, one of the his latest book is called hook point and how to stand out in a three second world which, you know, since the rise of digital, obviously, you know, this attention factor becomes like attention as this resource, right? And it’s something that everybody’s fighting for in the markets gets more and more saturated. So, Brendan, I guess over the years, I’d be curious to know your perspective of just how you have seen, you know, business in general changing like this fight for attention. Like, it’s, it’s evolved a lot, right with the rise of digital. So anything stand out to you of like, why we just live in this three second world now, like how we got there?
Brendan Kane 08:23
Yeah, there’s a bunch of contributing factors, one of which is that today, there’s over 60 billion messages sent out each day. And that’s billion with a B, that’s through your social media, push notifications, text, messages, emails, all this noise is sent out every single day. So when you think back to before social media before the internet really took off, there was wasn’t that much competition. But now, you’re living in a world where you’re no longer just competing against your direct competitors, you’re competing against every piece of content that’s published. So like it or not, the world that we live in today, you’re competing against LeBron James, you’re competing against Kevin Hart, the rock, Netflix, Paramount, all of these content providers. We’re all fighting for attention. And that’s where it’s just come, become so critically important to really capture that attention in those first three to five seconds. And as you started off the podcast, and one of the brilliant aspects of your podcast is storytelling. And the fact of the matter is, is your story is critically important to However, if you cannot win that first three to five seconds, they will never get to that story. And that’s where a lot of people struggling both people starting out and even, you know, major corporations billion dollar corporations that I work with is is that they they have to to When that first three to five seconds to get to their story to get to their message to get to their brilliance, and and that’s a huge mind shift for most people for most content creators, and I just see a lot of people really struggling with that they just dive straight into the story, they just dive straight into the sale or their product or their service or their message with really not understanding how they’re fighting against all this other content on these platforms each day.
Adam G. Force 10:30
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it is grown so much. And I’m mean, we get to this three second factor. And is that like, so you talk about that? And I, in my mind, I’m thinking for people that are listening, it’s kind of like, well, where are we fighting for the three seconds? Is it? Is it everywhere? Like when I go to their website, you have three seconds to get my attention? Or you put a video up on Facebook? Are you do a Facebook Live or Instagram Live? You have three seconds? So is it everywhere, meaning every touchpoint digitally that you’re fighting for that three second attention?
Brendan Kane 11:05
I see it offline as well. Yeah, definitely online. But even in the offline world, because a lot of the success I’ve had has been able to secure your high profile meetings and maximize the potential of those high profile meetings as well. And oftentimes, oftentimes, you won’t even get the meeting, if you don’t have that strong hook. And then in addition, it’s critically important, once you get into that room to really win it, win the attention up front now is it really three to five seconds, if you’re sitting in front of a boardroom, typically have a little bit more time. But if you’re taking a high profile meeting with a major CEO, celebrity or any of these people, like you need to you need to really grab them, otherwise they’re going to zone out, or they’re going to end the meeting early or, or they’re just going to move on to the other things that they have to do with their, their their day.
Adam G. Force 12:02
Yeah. And I mean, how do you so you know, give people a little taste, I guess of like, what, how do you define a hook point, like, what, what makes a hook point in your mind
Brendan Kane 12:16
A very high level hook point equals grabbing attention. And there’s three core pillars to to creating a successful hook point. Okay, the first part is what we’ve been talking about is, is generating that pattern interruption in the first three to five seconds to get somebody to stop, and just be like, I want to check this out, or I want to watch this rolling or read more about this, then once you have that attention, you have to tell a compelling story, you have to retain that attention, because we’re not talking about clickbait here, we’re not talking about tricking people, because we trick people, then they’re gonna fall off with the story, they’re gonna fall off of the message, you want to share them. And one of the biggest contributing factors to having success on social media is playing to what the algorithms are looking for. And the algorithms are looking for two key things. One, are people stopping when they see your content? And two, how long are they spending with the content that they’re consuming from your account. So it’s critically important that once you get somebody to stop, that you contextualize your message in such a way that it holds their attention for the longest period of time possible. And then the third core pillar is Do people believe what you’re saying? Do people trust what you’re saying, and all three of these key pillars have to play together? You know, because if you don’t grab attention, you’ll never get to the story. If you grab attention in your story, your message isn’t strong and you don’t retain it, then you’ve lost that attention. If you have a compelling hook and a great story, but people don’t believe it, that it all falls apart as well. So that’s really how I look at developing hook points for clients, both online or offline are essentially for any medium. Those key principles have allowed us to be very successful in our endeavors, and also for our clients.
Adam G. Force 14:08
Yeah, wow. No, that’s great. So those three pillars for everybody was pattern interruption, a compelling story. And then, you know, do they trust what you’re saying? And you’re right. I mean, people have, we live in a time where people’s defenses are up, right, like the old days of infomercials and all that, like, you know, like making up stories and just, you know, people’s guards are up and the red flags go up, right? I mean, isn’t that like an immediate response to people today? Like you have to almost break through their defense?
Brendan Kane 14:43
Yes, I would say I would say that, that in addition to their protecting the most valuable asset in the world, which is time, and we all live in a world where we get all of this content pushed to us. Thus, we prioritize our time. Yeah, it’s like for me, when I look at my email inbox, I probably get 1500 emails a day, between clients being cc on stuff that, you know, email newsletters, I’m signed up for promotions, all that stuff. And when I look at my email inbox, there’s no human way that I have the time to read every email, right, so I have to prioritize my time. And I’m sure this goes the same with every person when they check their email inbox, and it applies to all mediums, not just the inbox. even looking at social media, when you open up Instagram, there’s probably 1000 pieces of content that the algorithms can see to you. Right, they’re prioritizing on your behalf, which are the top ones and that’s why you’ll see accounts with large followings and low engagement or low reach. It has nothing to do with that they have a fake audience or it’s an unengaged audience. It’s just the algorithms that prioritize other content above it, and are suppressing that reach, right. The other way that I look at it, too, is just my consumption of television and movies today. Because like there is so much content out there, when I’m watching, even if it’s a show that’s recommended to me. And there’s several high profile shows that have been recommended that everybody loves, if I don’t get into it in the first five or 10 minutes, like I’m done. Yeah. Why? Because there’s 15 other shows that have been recommended to me. It’s not It’s not that like it was back in the 70s and 80s, where there was only like, five television shows, television stations, and like 15- 20 shows to choose from.
Adam G. Force 16:38
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, things have changed quite a bit. And, you know, as you have now, I guess, gone through you have your own process that you’ve created. What, before I even asked you about some of the case studies and stuff, what has led you to create the process? I know, you talked about earlier businesses and trying to stand out in the market. What got you to the conclusion of the three pillars that you have?
Brendan Kane 17:10
Well, in the book for hook point, there’s actually a five step framework that we use to develop hook points. So the three key pillars are what ultimately determines whether a hook point is successful or not got it. But I have been using this process for over 15 years. And it’s when people ask me, well, how did I close taylor swift as a client or to MTV? or How did I you know, get promoted to running a, a movie studio, a marketing arm? or How did I generate a million followers in 30 days? Or how do we generate billions of views for our clients? I had to really take a step back and analyze Well, what is the common theme? What is the through line that has generated all that success, and it really came down to standing out and being different, and you’re capturing people’s attention and very noisy and over saturated markets. And that’s where I felt that I could provide the most value to the world, and decided to create the framework and the pillars around that to contextualize what it is that that myself and my partners have been able to do to really reach the scale. And it’s also when I work with clients, again, somebody just graduated from college, or the CEO of a multi billion dollar organization. They’re often lacking that innovative strategy to continuously stand out to capture that attention. And second, barely, and just as important maintain it as well.
Adam G. Force 18:43
Yeah, yeah. Hmm. Yeah. So I guess I’m curious, you know, about some of the case studies you have done, were any of them. I’m sure some were more challenging than others, and have unique circumstances maybe they were dealing with so I’m sure. Can you give us an example, maybe of something that you got brought into and how that played out? Maybe some of the challenges that you had to overcome with that. And in setting this up?
Brendan Kane 19:13
Yeah, like I could start with the work that we did with Taylor Swift is, when we were brought in she was having problems with her official online presence. At the time, you know, the time spent on our site was like below 40 seconds, there is a 98% bounce rate off the homepage. And she was really struggling to connect in a meaningful way with her fans through this platform in the same way she was able to do so brilliantly through social media. So we had to really construct a strategy that matched her willingness and ability to connect with fans in a deep and meaningful way and translate it to an official website to a fan club. where it was notoriously not an engaging experience, not just with her, but with most celebrities and musicians. So we needed to really find a way to kind of flip that on its on its head. And we had, at the time built a technology, that literally you, you could dynamically change any element of the site yourself without writing a single line of code. So when we rebuilt her site for her, we did it in less than six hours. And when I walked into the meeting with her, I gave her the mouse I said, you can change every single element of, of this yourself. And that’s gave her that control and that flexibility to communicate through this. In addition, we had to really look at how we could scale the engagement level because for her she was so hands on one of the reasons that she was so successful is, she really understood the value and importance of fostering one to one communication with fans. Understanding that each time she signed an autograph with a fan took a photo, responded to a comment not only to turn that fan into a fan for life, but it turned that fan into a brand advocate. But because she was becoming such a huge global superstar that doesn’t scale. Even even with her willingness to do like a 13 hour autograph signing for an album release. Yeah. Like you can only reach so many fans with that. Yeah. So we partnered with a few other technology platforms to really foster that community by connecting fans to one another, and connecting them so that they can communicate with each other around their love for Taylor Swift and their music and things of that nature. And then we also looked at Well, we have all these brand advocates that we’re building, how do we give them more tools, and, and fun and creative ways to really continue to share Taylor’s brand at the highest possible velocity. And I was really thinking about a hook point with with my team of what could do that. And in our research, we identified at the time, there’s about 30, Taylor Swift fans, that actually took the time to learn how to read and write code. And that so that they could create their own official tail so fansite and really express their love with for Taylor’s music with the world. That Well, that’s amazing. What about all the other fans? What if we could give something like that to all the other fans without having them learn how to read and write code, because we all know that this is a very daunting and arduous task. And that’s where we came up with a concept and technology that we built, where we can automatically turn any Facebook page into an official Taylor Swift Fan site in less than 60 seconds. And what we did is, once you accepted the permissions, we would extract your name and your photos, and we would automatically pull it through the API and insert it into one of 15 different designs you could choose from. And again, once you click that button, that was it was done in less than 60 seconds was built for you customized for you. And then the little secret was that it was the same platform that Taylor Swift span, our website was built on. So really, fans were getting the same technology. And they could go in and customize it even further, if they wanted, we had some fans that literally deleted the entire site and created a brand new one from scratch. Because they had all these tools at their fingertips. And, and we went from 30 Taylor Swift Fan sites to over 35,000 in just a few months. And that was a hook that really amplified that connection between Taylor and her fans. It also made them feel like they’re part of the team and giving them tools to really express their their love for Taylor and again, feeling like they were a part of the team.
Adam G. Force 23:50
Yeah. Wow. So I mean, how do you define so in that particular scenario, you said this technology you created, create a website in 60 seconds? You know, you started off saying that we had to create more connection and give control like to have more meaning from Taylor Swift connecting with the audience and stuff. So how do you define a hook point here? for this type of process? You we’re calling the technology hook. So is that or is this a technology? It’s forming a hook point?
Brendan Kane 24:20
there is several hooks in that story I just told you, you know, first and foremost, the actual hook that I gave Taylor’s or did I express the Taylor Swift when I sat down with her, and it was, hey, Taylor, I built this site for you in less than six hours. And I know your frustration around your current thing, you can control every element of it. So it was you know, there’s a few things one is the last thing six hours, one was giving her the mouse so that she could customize any element and see that control. And another was you never have to deal with a developer again, if you don’t want to. Right then there was the hook for the fans. It’s like, hey, we’ll create a official Taylor Swift Fan site and less than 60 seconds by clicking this button, no code required. So those were, you know, different hooks one was the b2b hook in the, in the, you know, expression to Taylor Swift and to get her excited to get her engaged and interested in working with us. And then there was to the fans of you creating this custom Taylor Swift Fan site for you in less than 60 seconds with a simple click of a button.
Adam G. Force 25:29
That’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, I could see how obviously something unique like that, like you were saying, and you know, make something different. That kind of gets your your ears perked up and go, Wait a minute, what are you saying I can do this in 60 seconds? And you want to hear more? And now there’s actually an interesting story behind why you’re doing that too, right?
Brendan Kane 25:48
Yeah, absolutely. Again, that the hooks grab the attention, what you do with it still matters immensely, I just see that most people in the world have something amazing to offer, have a true genius have a product or service that is extremely valuable. What they lack is the way to really bring people into the conversation in a unique way I was. So for example, I’m advising the largest real estate company in the world, they have 180,000 agents. And I was talking to one of the heads of the company. And it was interesting, because what they’re saying is all of their sales associates, especially their top ones, they’re amazing salespeople, but they struggle with marketing. And that makes sense is their job is to sell. But when you’re entering this world, this noisy world, entering a world, especially with COVID, and everything going on and everything moving digitally and socially. You’ve got to flip that on its head and turn yourself into a marketer turn yourself into a storyteller to earn the right to sell. Because most people struggle with selling something because they’re just doing that they’re selling something when they haven’t earned the right to that part of the conversation yet,
Adam G. Force 27:05
right? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I love it, man. Yeah, this goes deep. I’m you. Have you hooked me I want to get I want to get the book. Yeah, I mean, this this kind of stuff. You know, as you know, we do like a lot of storytelling I mentioned earlier, and kind of focus on the power of storytelling for business today, an identity with your brand and things like that. And as you kind of get into pattern interruption, and then backing it with the stories and all these things, like it all ties in really nicely. And I think this culture of this three second, you know, grabbed the attention in a saturated market factor. If you can’t figure out how to break through that to your point. It’s just going to be an uphill battle forever. So I, I kind of love that focus on that, that breaking that right out of the gate.
Brendan Kane 27:56
Yeah, the world that we live in is oversaturated across the board. So if you sitting there thinking, my industry is not oversaturated you’re looking at the holistic picture, not in the wrong way. is is you are competing for attention in everything that you do
Adam G. Force 28:14
Everything, yeah, that’s exactly it. Yeah, it makes a big difference. And I don’t know that that it’s gonna go away anytime soon. You know, we can niche niche niche, But to your point, that the market, we’re still bombarded with, you know, thousands upon thousands of ads every day and different people trying to grab your attention for different things. And it’s exhausting. So if you if you can’t grab someone’s attention, you just, you’re not even getting, you know, a conversation with them at all.
Brendan Kane 28:44
On number seven, and also even if you’re going niche, niche, niche is you got to understand that, especially when you’re dealing with organic and it does have played play apply to paid as well is the more niche you go with your message, the more you’re training, the algorithms that that message is, is is for that for a specific niche, and thus they’ll prioritize other content over your content. And that’s a struggle I see people have when they go way too specific with their content. Oftentimes, they’re they’re not going to get the reach even to the people that are following them, or the people that have opted into it. Because the algorithms are just controlling that overall distribution. And that’s when we learn to work with clients what we try and reshape their their marketing strategy to develop hooks that can bring in that wider audience so that you can get that mass distribution and within that mass distribution, you will hit your core audience.
Adam G. Force 29:45
Hmm, that’s an interesting point. You know, you’re right. So we are being served information based on our interest and if you dial in extremely niche, your messaging will connect with that particular audience. But as far as to your point, the social media technology goes, you start kind of cutting your legs out from underneath yourself, in a sense, you’re saying,
Brendan Kane 30:10
Yeah, and it’s not just social media, it’s even like emails like email deliverability is impacted by what are the open rates of your emails? So it just again, it’s like how can you contextualize it to make it bigger to make a wider audience be attracted to it? So I’ll give you an example. Yeah, that I think really demonstrates this. So there is a real estate agent named Ryan, sir, hands on. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him. But he was initially on million dollar listing. But that’s not the reason that he’s like probably the most famous real estate agent in the world right now. It’s because of what he’s done on social media. And he works at the highest level, like he’s representing properties, like between 5 million and like 100 million dollars. So for him, he has a very, very niche audience in terms of who’s gonna buy his property. But what he did so brilliantly, is he understood everything that we’re talking about. And he started developing content, and developing hooks for the wider audience. So what he’ll do is if you go to his YouTube channel, and and sort by the most popular, he’ll go and tour, a $200 million mansion, even if he’s not representing it and give that tour, or Hill Hill go tour, the biggest closet in all of New York City. And what that’s doing is that those hooks bring everybody into it. Like who doesn’t want to see what a $200 million home looks like? Who doesn’t want to see what the the biggest closet in New York City looks like? So what he’ll do is he’ll generate millions and millions of views on those videos, and 99.9% of the people viewing that can’t afford it. But there is that percentage of people that can’t afford it that do tune in because the algorithms are giving it so much reach. He is he is openly expressed that he is sold properties because of his YouTube videos. Like people don’t even tour the home in person, they just see the YouTube video then put in an offer. killing it. He’s building this huge brand. And now he’s diversified into his own brokerage, he’s diversified into building his own media network. Whereas most realtors are just focused on how do I sell this one property do this and market it to this specific audience. He had a larger vision, he understands the power of these hooks to win attention. And by winning attention, he gets far more distribution through his social content than any other real estate agent out there. And same thing with Gary Vaynerchuk reason he’s so successful, his team has mastered that first three to five seconds as well.
Adam G. Force 33:00
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s interesting, two very different types of people. And you know, you think about because I guess when I think about going broader, like you’re saying, is this organic that we’re talking about, or for paid marketing as well? Meaning, you know, when we go broader, it does cost more money for us to reach a broader audience. So do you need $100,000 marketing budget?
Brendan Kane 33:26
Sometimes it costs less to go broader because the more the more variables you put into these ad platforms, and the more restrictive you say, this is the exact audience I want. Typically, your cost of the auction increases significantly. Now, I’m not saying never to do that. Like, listen, if you have a very if you’re just I’m, I’m need to sell this product to CMOS. And there’s only 500 of these CMOS in the world that obviously, yes, but I always recommend people test. Like, for example, I was working on a campaign for a company called chat books. And they were pretty sure they still are the number one online photo printer in the world at the time I worked with them, which was like two years ago was like a million subscribers. Yeah. And they came to me with a Mother’s Day campaign with some amazing creative that that my friend had produced. And it was like three to like 10 year olds talking about how their moms are like superheroes. And they said, We only want to target mothers 45 plus with this content. And I said, I’m willing to test that. But let me go broad and just see what happens. Let me test a few other audiences. And when I got into the data and launch these campaigns, what I saw what was happening is that it was actually resonating most with females 18 to 25. And I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. And I dug in deeper and what was happening is these females 18 to 25. were sharing it with their mothers and tagging them in it. So that’s What’s happening is we are actually hitting our core demo in a far more powerful way of bridging this this emotional connection between mothers and daughters by the daughter sharing it with the mother, in addition to the fact we opened it up to a completely new audience, and the correlative effect is because we went broader is our cost in the auction dropped as well.
Adam G. Force 35:22
Yeah, so I can see how costs go down. When you go broader. I guess the question would be, and you guys did end up reaching your target, meaning the people who would actually buy so if you spend more up front on ads to go narrow? Do you have a higher sales conversion rate, if we’re doing something specific for a product, but you know, in this case of what you’re talking about, for increasing reach and having, I mean, that scenario that you just mentioned, is pretty unique and interesting to see how the daughters are sharing. And then, because the moms may have never even found it. So by reaching them, there’s also a level of trust being conveyed, that it’s coming from the daughter. So there’s an interesting effect there, I think, too.
Brendan Kane 36:04
Yeah, absolutely. And each business is unique, each business is different, we’ve just seen far more success in helping our clients position for the broader scale of things than just Hey, let’s pinpoint this exact audience. And that’s all we’re really serving at the end of the day.
Adam G. Force 36:23
You know, we’ve seen that too, because we would go and do ads, like very specifically, and you’re right, you know, the more specific and niche you get, you’re gonna pay more for that that’s a high value, you know, group of people, for your business, but we loosened up our marketing, and we actually, you know, worked with some ad teams and stuff and kind of saw some things they were doing. And we’re just seeing that very minimal. Like, parameters were, were applied at certain campaigns. And they were very successful, because the algorithm does start to find the people that are most relevant, but you are reaching more people at the same time. So I think from a marketing standpoint, there, it does make a pretty fair amount of sense, the only thing we would do is one top level parameter, which could be like a country Plus, you know, they’re interested in entrepreneurship, right, very broad. And it starts to work its way through the algorithm, and it works well.
Brendan Kane 37:22
Yeah, and like my book is, is another my first book is another example is the hook, a million followers in 30 days is very broad, and appeals to a very wide audience. Yeah. And the strategy that I employed with that was by design is I wanted a strong hook that can bring in the widest audience possible. And within that widest audience, I will find my core clients that will engage with me on a deeper level. And that’s going to be less than 1% of the people reading the book. But I knew that by having a hook, like 1 million followers in 30 days, I could, you know, push a bunch of copies into the market and saturate the market. So that even if I’m not directly putting my hands into the book into the hands of the person, that is that ideal client, it will get there. Like, for example, that real estate company, yeah. I mentioned, it’s, uh, they got into the hands of one of their top real estate agents, they applied some of the tactics and you know, generate a lot of profit. And then then she sent it to the founder of this real estate company, and now I’m engaged with them. Yeah, top of that I just built, you know, massive brand awareness, a massive, a brand push by getting all these copies into the market at the same time.
Adam G. Force 38:47
Wow. Yeah, no, it makes sense to because if you have the right hook, you’ll get a lot more if you are doing any kind of paid marketing and stuff like because it’s going to just like, it’s going to be a little more viral, right? So do you do any tests for let’s say you call it like the title of the book like that hook? Do you test those things in any way first?
Brendan Kane 39:12
In some ways, like have been doing this long enough, that for both of my books, I knew that the overall hook was solid, there was certain tweaks to words, and then also tweaks to design and expressions of it, that we test. But we’ve got enough data and enough experience to really understand whether or not something’s going to resonate. And then also I have a network of some of the most successful people on the planet that I’m constantly having conversations with as well. And I’ll always seed an initial hook or idea to them to see how they respond to it. And also to see how I can express it and also hone in on the story that I tell once I have the hook coming in. So we don’t Do necessarily, you know AV testing on the overarching hook online I do most of that kind of through experience and also some of the the networks that I have. But once we have that hook, we’re going to test many different creative assets into it like for our ads into our books, will test hundreds and hundreds of different expressions of that hook to bring people in and different expressions of the story to bring people in.
Adam G. Force 40:29
Got it. Interesting. Very cool, man. I love it. Well, we are over our time so I want to be respectful of your time and we’ll wrap up here let’s just make sure everybody knows where the best place to go online is to find your book maybe learn a little bit more about you and your team and how they can even work with you guys if they wanted to stuff like that.
Brendan Kane 40:52
So I would I would start even if you’re interested in 1 million followers book I would start with Hook point because it really sets that that foundation and groundwork to be successful on social and they can go to book dot hook point com to get that if they do want to dive into the 1 million followers book or they can go to book dot 1 million followers calm and if they’re interested in working directly with me and my team they can either DM me on Instagram at Brendan Kane or email me at BKane@Brendanjkane.com
Adam G. Force 41:23
Cool. Awesome Brandon. Really appreciate your time today and love what you’re doing and listen, thanks for just kind of sharing these insights really valuable stuff.
Brendan Kane 41:35
Yeah, my pleasure. It was awesome connecting with you and everybody out there listening. I really appreciate it.
Adam G. Force 41:46
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