Artwork courtesy of Beeple.
Sometimes in order to better understand how a online marketing strategy works, its best to look at yourself and see what causes you to buy a particular product or service…
Over the last year, I’ve been studying a new online marketing strategy from a guy named Mike Caldwell who was one of the first ClickFunnels Certified Consultants.
It just so happens that I recently invested in a $297 weight loss course by Thomas Delauer to help achieve my personal goals…
So, I decided it would be a great marketing exercise to see if the principles I’ve been learning were used on me to buy this course…
My Weight Loss Journey
In late September of 2016, I made a decision to get back into shape and lose weight…
I was 280 pounds and I hadn’t exercised in almost 8 years…
I knew that had to change if I wanted to live the life I wanted…
So, I started walking 3 days a week for 20 minutes at a time…
I also started watching what I ate, upped my water intake, and reduced my diet soda intake significantly…
To my surprise, the weight started coming off!
Then, I plateaued at around 240 lbs for about two months…
I found that increasing my walking time to 30 minutes and walking for 5 days launched me back into fat-burning mode…
As of this writing, I’m 217.6 lbs and I’m stuck again…
It seems that even with my strict diet and exercise plan, I can’t seem to shed those last 30 lbs…
The Course That Gave Me Hope
So, just the other week I was goofing off on YouTube watching some top 10 list when this ad interrupts and a woman starts talking about the top 3 reasons eating breakfast actually hinders fat loss…
However, instead of her explaining it, she has a guest named Thomas Delauer who I’ve watched on YouTube before…
I’ve found his previous videos very informative so I was intrigued to see what he had to say…
I watched the ad then clicked over to his website to learn more (effectively ending my goof off time)…
After watching a 45-minute video about his new course The Science-Based Six Pack Abs Program…
I was hooked and bought the course…
When the excitement died down a bit, I started realizing that this guy is using the online marketing strategy I was studying…
The Online Marketing Strategy And How This Course Uses It
The strategy taught by Mike Caldwell is called Empathic Marketing and covers these 5 primary areas:
1. Client Avatar
The Client Avatar is the key to having this strategy work…
If you don’t have customers, then you won’t sell anything…
However, those customers have to be the right ones that your product will benefit…
It’s easy to think a product is suited for everyone, but when you narrow down the ideal customer you want to serve, you will find that sales increase…
I originally learned about the Client Avatar from Russell Brunson, but Mike takes it to a new level…
He focuses on really knowing the pain points and dreams of your client avatar so that your message appeals to their needs…
Mike also emphasizes the importance of understanding your customer’s level of awareness…
Are they Unaware, Problem Aware, Solution Aware, or Product Aware?
So, when I came across this weight loss course, I was already Solution Aware…
I knew there were products available to help with weight loss…
However, the messaging directly hit my pain point of being stuck losing the last 30 lbs of weight…
It also hit another pain point of not wanting to eat a strict diet all of the time…
I’ve held on to a strict Paleo style diet, but its not always fun…
So when Thomas tells me I can lose weight using this program and I have the flexibility to eat what I want, that catches my attention…
This leads into the next part, which is the Promise…
2. The Promise
The Promise of your message offers to heal the pain points of your client avatar…
It isn’t necessarily a single statement, but its the overall message of hope that your offer will bring…
The Promise is spread throughout your sales message…
Here is Thomas’s promise:
By following the specific strategies of using intermittent fasting, along with breaking the fast correctly, I will shed the pounds, reveal muscles and turn my body into a fat burning machine…
He also promises I can eat what I want even as late as midnight and not gain a pound by following this strategy…
3. Big Idea
The Big Idea is all about grabbing attention and creating curiosity for the client avatar…
Most of the time, the Big Idea is wrapped up in the headline of the page…
Here are the four U’s of the Big Idea:
- Useful: It has to be useful to the client avatar…
- Unique Mechanism: It has to be something unique that delivers the result to the client avatar…
- Ultra-Specific: The results should be very specific instead of generalized…
- Urgency: This is only used when the offer is truly limited in time or quantity. You don’t want to create a sense of false urgency…
So how did Thomas use the Big Idea in his messaging?
Truthfully, the headline on his sales page wasn’t very strong…
However, he delivered his Big Idea through a very powerful video…
His Big Idea is if I want to lose weight I need to follow his intermittent fasting strategy of WHEN I eat, not necessarily WHAT I eat…
This strategy is delivered through a video course which is useful because I can learn at my own pace…
The Unique Mechanism is his special quick meals strategy for properly breaking the fasting period to maximize the fat burning effects of intermittent fasting…
Plenty of health experts talk about intermittent fasting, but he is the only one teaching a special meal plan to break the fasting period and get the best results…
He doesn’t specify how fast I can expect results, probably because each person’s body is different…
But, he does say that my body will begin burning fat even when I’m not fasting after using his intermittent fasting strategy for a month…
Regarding the urgency of his offer, the price is discounted during the product launch…
4. The Platform
The Platform is the emotional and logical foundation you provide to support your promise…
No matter how great your sales message is, there will be objections to overcome…
The Platform addresses your client avatar’s false beliefs about you, your product and themselves…
Thomas’s platform also addressed these areas…
For someone who doesn’t know him, he provides proof that he is credible and has the largest health channel on YouTube…
He also shows images of himself on popular fitness magazine covers…
Finally, just looking at him, you can see he’s ripped and must do something right…
Regarding the product, the video covers the science-based research on why intermitted fasting works…
He also provides several testimonials of people who are getting results from using his strategies…
Unfortunately, he doesn’t use video testimonials, which I believe are the strongest form of credibility…
There is also a detailed list of what is included in the course…
Finally, on the sales page he shows a contrast between the typical hard diet plan and how easy his plan is…
So, it becomes easy to see that the average guy can follow it…
Also, he highlights there are two levels of the program; the Base Track and the Fast Track…
For someone who is just starting with intermittent fasting, the Base Track plan lets them ease their way into the program and gives them the flexibility to eat what they want…
If someone wants the hardcore fitness model approach, they can follow the Fast Track which will get the results a lot quicker but is more strict…
5. The Offer
The other parts of this online marketing strategy are designed to support The Offer…
The Offer is the solution you are presenting to your client avatar that will either fix their pain points or fulfill their dreams…
It really needs to be good enough to stand on its own…
If the offer sucks, people won’t buy it, even if the price is low…
With the Science-Based Six Pack Abs course, the offer is to buy this new systematic way to use intermittent fasting that promises to help me lose the weight I want to get rid of…
The system is presented through a video course that will teach me these new strategies…
Also included is a shred fast workout video series that when combined with the intermittent fasting strategies will speed up my results…
There is also helpful PDF files I can download and chart my progress…
Unlimited access to Six Pack Abs coaches for any questions I have…
An easy to use App so I can watch all of the training videos
When I understood everything I was going to get, I was almost ready to buy…
However, with a price tag of $297 I was struggling to jump on board…
I’ve got a family to feed and bills to pay…
But, the final part of this offer is what took me over the edge…
For a limited time, I could get this $297 course for only $97…
So I checked my finances and realized I could afford the $97 and jumped on the offer…
For me, this really was a no-brainer offer that was irresistible at the correct price point…
The Best Place To Learn The Empathic Marketing Strategy
When I first started using ClickFunnels after reading the Dot Com Secrets book, I knew that sales funnels were the next big thing and I needed to learn everything I could…
The only way I believed I could master sales funnels was through Russell Brunson’s ClickFunnels Certified Consultant program…
I had seen Mike Caldwell’s testimonial about how the certification program had changed his life…
Anyone in the ClickFunnels group knew who Mike was…
Then one day I come across a post on Facebook where Mike is talking about a new Marketing Medic Apprenticeship Program he started…
The light bulb went on and I realized I could learn what he paid $10,000 to learn…
So, I signed up for the program and I got way more than I ever bargained for…
Here is a testimonial that I recorded for Mike after taking his apprenticeship program…
Mike takes the best of what he learned from Russell Brunson and Todd Brown (another sales funnel master) to teach his Empathic Marketing Strategy…
He has spent well over $25,000 to learn everything he knows…
Yet, he practically gives that knowledge away at a fraction of the cost…
I’ve found Mike has this amazing ability to explain marketing in a way that just makes sense…
Mike also has the highest level of marketing integrity…
He makes promises he can deliver on and will quickly point out false marketing tactics…
I no longer feel the need to become a ClickFunnels Certified Consultant to understand how to create effective sales messages…
If you are looking for the best online marketing strategy to implement for your product or service, the Marketing Medic Apprenticeship Program is going to be the clearest path to get you there…
Final Thoughts
I feel I better understand the Empathic Marketing Strategy taught by Mike by analyzing my own buying behaviors…
I hope that by breaking down the WHY I bought this course over others that I’ve come across, you can understand the importance of a great online marketing strategy…
I’m also going to update this post once I’ve completed the program to report on the results of Thomas Delauer’s claims!
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below…
Update
While the main point of this article is to analyze the marketing used by Thomas, several people have wondered about the program itself and if it worked for me.
The simple answer is no.
This doesn’t mean it won’t work for you, but it didn’t give me the intended results I was seeking.
I did learn a few things that have helped me so I don’t consider it a wasted investment.
If you want to learn more about the program, go to Six Pack Abs and sign up for yourself and see how it works for you.
so, did the program work??
Hey Khaled thanks for the comment. I’m still in the middle of it but I am seeing results. Once I’m done, I’ll post about it. Thanks!
So? Did you make it? How much lost/gained?
Hey Dude,
No I didn’t make it. I’m going to be restarting the program next week because I do believe in it. Don’t let that stop you from starting and creating your own success.
Enjoyed both parts of your article, but was drawn because of the abs initially. Mind if I asked why it didn’t work for you? I was thinking of doing it, but want an unbiased opinion, which are hard to find it seems!
Andy,
It seems like as I was fasting, instead of burning fat, I was holding on to it. Also, I’m diabetic and even though fasting should have been burning the sugar in my body, my sugar levels were higher after my fast was over a lot of times.
Perhaps I stopped too soon but I was gaining some weight again and made a decision to go back to what I was doing before.
I’m trying the program again because I do believe that intermittent fasting works but I’m going to have to start with the strict diet of phase 3.
For a normal person that doesn’t have diabetes I think the program will work fine.
hi Daniel
is there an affiliate program for Thomas course?
Hey Mike,
Last time I checked there was not an affiliate program. I just checked again and don’t see any kind of affiliate link.
Sorry my friend.
Thanks,
Daniel Boswell