Before States And After States And The Power Of Contrast

Marketing Secrets (2017)

Listen in on this unique conversation after a late night mastermind outside the Clickfunnels headquarters.

On this episode Russell talks about contrast with Dave and Steven. Here are some interesting things to listen for in today’s episode:

• Why having contrast creates desire in customers.
• And what kinds of things about contrast Russell, Dave and Steven learned from the Chatbooks viral video.

So listen here to find out why contrast in your marketing is so important.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody? This is Russell, I’m here with Dave and Steven, what’s up guys? Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast, we got a special edition happening right now.

Okay, so we just got done. We had a little Boise Mastermind group, they meet every month around different places, and we never had a chance to go. But we actually hosted it here in the Clickfunnels offices tonight. So we put the kids to bed and come here and we’re here for 4 hours or so, talking about tons of stuff.

So we just had a really cool conversation while Dave went back in to go to the bathroom and he missed it.

Dave: It’s Alex Charfen’s fault.

Russell: Alex did this podcast about the number one supplement for entrepreneurs and it ends up being water and then…

Dave: 3 gallons later.

Russell: It’s really convincing, you guys should listen to it. We’re all obsessed, have you listened to it yet?

Steven: Well I know enough that I’m just drinking a lot of water.

Russell: It kind of freaked us out so we’re drinking insane amounts of water. It’s like bathroom breaks every 30 seconds. Dave’s like, “I gotta go to the bathroom.” And then he missed this huge conversation. So I gotta retell it and I might as well retell it right now with you guys because it was actually really interesting.

So what we’re talking about…I got a black face, let me come here in the light. Let there be light. Alright so what we’re talking about. So those who are listening you have no idea what’s happening, but those watching the video, we’re in front of the Clickfunnels offices at nighttime, we’re under the streetlight.

So I was listening to a podcast that Ryan Deiss did on the perpetual traffic talking about the Chatbooks viral video and he basically played it, paused it, talked about the before state and the after state of the woman in that video. Which you guys have seen the video obviously. If you havne’t seen the video go to harmonbrothers.com and click on the Chatbooks video. Probably the best, I would say probably their best viral video, it’s really, really good.

But he’s talking about the before state and the after state and how good that video did. Here’s where she was at before, here’s where you’ll be after the product. Before, after, before, after. We started talking about how the big secret to copy and sales is contrast. I was telling them ten years ago I went to a course with Matt Furey, he talked about contrast. He said contrast is the key to everything.

Because you have the contrast of where they’re at and where they want to go and then your message in the middle there is what creates the desire for them to go from this to this. He talked about an email that’s like, in the course I was studying with Matt Furey it was email marketing, he was like, “Every good email has tons of contrast. Light and dark, happy, sad, fat, skinny, rich, poor. The contrast is what makes it interesting and then it’s what creates the desire to go from the before state to the after state.

That’s the whole key, the contrast. A lot of people never think about that, but as you’re writing the emails, think about the contrast. The before state, again the way Ryan Diess explained it, the before state and after state, which was brilliant. In fact, I had never watched the Chatbooks video through that lens before, but if you watch it through that lens of the before state and the after state you see it over and over again. You see that she’s in the tub at first and she’s the smiling mom in the bathtub, so it’s like, this is a nice thing. Then she stands up and she’s fully clothed and the kids in the tub with her and she’s like, “I fell in while timing him holding his breath.” There’s the before and it keeps transitioning back and forth.

So in any of your communication, whether you’re doing storytelling, or writing emails, or sales letters, or videos, whatever, the contrast is the key. So with the contrast you’re thinking about that, if you told a story about how fit you are, nobody cares, there’s no contrast. It’s like, “I was fat, I was sick, I was unhealthy, I was whatever.” You tell that first and then you tell the contrast to the other thing and the contrast is what creates the desire for somebody to change, which is what they need to have to give you money and that kind of stuff.

So the contrast is a secret, in the before state and the after state, that’s the magic. We gotta rewrite the Expert Secrets book, stop the presses. Let’s add in this thing. So yeah, we just kind of had that epiphany as we were talking. So there you go. Contrast, add it in everything you do to create the before states and the after states. And it’s really fascinating. So watch that. Watch it in the viral videos, watch it in email. As you’re watching good marketers, try to notice the contrast. Because the better the contrast, the more desire is created. So watch how they do it, watch how I do it, watch how other people do it, that’s the secret.

There you go guys, marketing secret number whatever we’re on, hope you guys like that. With that said, it’s time for us to go home and go to bed. So bye everybody.