The Accidental Viral Moment That Changed Everything

Summary

Podcast Summary: Business Lunch – "The Accidental Viral Moment That Changed Everything"

Episode Overview

In this episode of Business Lunch, host Roland Frasier sits down with Ryan Deiss, a seasoned digital marketer and serial entrepreneur, to dissect an unexpected viral moment that significantly impacted Ryan’s business trajectory. Released on May 27, 2025, the episode delves into the intricacies of managing accidental virality, turning controversy into opportunity, and strategically pivoting a business model amidst unforeseen challenges.

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1. Introduction to the Viral Incident

Roland Frasier opens the discussion by referencing a recent viral social media post made by Ryan Deiss announcing his retirement from digital marketing. Contrary to Ryan's intentions, the post ignited a massive social media frenzy, blending both controversy and immense opportunity.

Notable Quote:

Roland Frazier [00:18]: "Most entrepreneurs fear going viral for the wrong reasons. But what if controversy could actually be your biggest business accelerator?"

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2. Ryan Deiss’ Background and Initial Announcement

Ryan Deiss shares his extensive experience in digital marketing, highlighting over 25 years in creating and selling marketing courses since 1999. The retirement post was intended as a "swan song" signaling the end of an era for his educational offerings.

Notable Quote:

Ryan Deiss [02:11]: "I kind of made the decision that I was going to sail off into the sunset with respect to marketing teaching training courses."

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3. The Viral Response and Miscommunication

Ryan explains how the retirement announcement was misunderstood by many, leading to thousands of impressions and over 300 comments across platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. The primary issue arose when the marketing manager altered the original email, stripping away the contextual explanations and presenting only the headline, which fueled confusion and backlash.

Notable Quote:

Ryan Deiss [13:13]: "I see this and I flip out. I don't get mad very often, but I was pissed."

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4. The Strategic Pivot: From Courses to AI Services

Facing a significant downturn in course sales—down to 20% of previous figures—Ryan and his team at Digital Marketer decided to pivot towards AI-enabled services. This decision was driven by market shifts, including the rise of free certifications from major brands and the advent of AI reducing the dependency on traditional marketing trainings.

Notable Quote:

Ryan Deiss [08:07]: "The pivot is into AI enabled services... if it's trained with all of our frameworks, models, our certifications, it gets really freaking good, really freaking fast."

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5. Managing the Viral Moment

In response to the viral post, Ryan dedicated himself to engaging with every comment, understanding that active participation would sustain the engagement and positively influence social media algorithms. He emphasizes the importance of reacting promptly and authentically to both positive and negative feedback.

Notable Quote:

Ryan Deiss [16:43]: "I essentially made it my full time job to reply as best I could to every single comment."

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6. Lessons Learned and Future Strategies

Ryan reflects on the incident, acknowledging that proactive engagement and transparent communication are vital when handling unexpected virality. He shares insights on utilizing data mining and sentiment analysis to better understand and respond to audience reactions. Additionally, Ryan discusses plans to host a live town hall meeting to further elaborate on the business shift and address ongoing questions from the community.

Notable Quote:

Ryan Deiss [23:46]: "If I had it to do all over it again, I would every day just record an iPhone video answering some of the questions that I was getting in the comments."

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7. Maximizing Opportunities from Virality

The conversation transitions to exploring ways to leverage the viral moment for long-term benefits. Ryan highlights the significance of integrating revenue opportunities, such as offering a bundled course package at a discounted rate, which not only capitalized on the increased attention but also exceeded their sales goals.

Notable Quote:

Ryan Deiss [31:53]: "The final kind of last chance offer for the course and certifications far exceeded the kind of best sales goals that we had for that particular promotion."

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8. Managing Diverse Platform Responses

Ryan observes the varied reactions across different social media platforms. While LinkedIn and Twitter users engaged thoughtfully and professionally, Instagram saw minimal interaction, and Facebook became a hotbed for both genuine and bot-driven responses. He advises maintaining composure and strategically managing interactions based on platform-specific behaviors.

Notable Quote:

Ryan Deiss [34:03]: "Facebook was freaking nuts. Like, the number of people... the difference between. It was comical."

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9. Actionable Takeaways for Entrepreneurs

Roland and Ryan conclude with practical strategies for entrepreneurs facing accidental virality:

• Engage Actively: Respond to both positive and negative comments to sustain engagement.
• Data Mining: Analyze audience feedback to inform future content and business decisions.
• Thought Leadership: Utilize controversial or unconventional viewpoints to spark conversation and visibility.
• Integrated Offers: Seamlessly tie promotional offers into viral content to maximize conversions.
• Platform-Specific Strategies: Tailor engagement tactics to suit the unique dynamics of each social media platform.

Notable Quote:

Roland Frazier [28:37]: "Think about thought leadership, provocation... challenge the Sacred Cows in your industry."

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10. Conclusion

Ryan Deiss’ accidental viral moment serves as a compelling case study on the unpredictable nature of social media and the importance of agile strategy in business management. By embracing the unexpected attention and strategically pivoting his business model, Ryan transformed a potential setback into a significant growth opportunity.

Roland Frasier encourages listeners to share their thoughts and experiences, fostering a community of learning and adaptation in the face of digital marketing challenges.

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Key Takeaways:

• Expectation Management: Not all viral moments can be anticipated or controlled; preparation is key.
• Authentic Engagement: Genuine interaction with your audience can turn challenges into opportunities.
• Strategic Pivoting: Being flexible and responsive to market changes can safeguard and propel your business.
• Leveraging Feedback: Utilize audience reactions to refine your offerings and communication strategies.

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Final Thought:

Accidental virality, while often daunting, holds the potential to accelerate business growth when managed with intentionality and strategic foresight. Ryan Deiss exemplifies how turning a misstep into a milestone can redefine a company’s trajectory.

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If you found this summary insightful, consider listening to the full episode of Business Lunch for an in-depth exploration of leveraging accidental virality in your business endeavors.

Transcript

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah. So the backstory is where I decided. You and I have talked about this. I've been making marketing courses literally since the year 2000. I sold my very first product online in 1999.

[Roland Frazier]

Going viral by accident. We recently accidentally created a viral social media frenzy from a post about Ryan's retirement from digital marketing that sparked unexpected controversy and opportunity. Most entrepreneurs fear going viral for the wrong reasons. But what if controversy could actually be your biggest business accelerator? Here's what happened in our case and also how you can capitalize on accidental virality in your business. Ryan, how are you doing today?

[Ryan Deiss]

I'm doing really well. Yeah. How about you?

[Roland Frazier]

I am doing well. I just want to know how. How is retired life going? I know that you posted that you were retiring from digital marketing and a nice black and white, kind of serious, you know, somber announcement format. And I'm just excited to hear, I guess you're on the golf course, you're hanging out with the kids, you're probably traveling. What's going on?

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah. Feet kicked up, you know, sleeping until noon, playing a lot of golf. No. Yeah. So the backstory is where I decided. You and I have talked about this. I've been making marketing courses late, literally since the year 2000. I sold my very first product online in 1999.

[Roland Frazier]

That's a quarter century. A quarter century, dude.

[Ryan Deiss]

A quarter of a century. So I'm 44 years old. I've been selling, I've been creating marketing related courses for 25 years, which means I've been doing it longer than I haven't. Right. That's. And, you know, and it's because as long as I've been doing business, the thing about the marketing community, because my very first product online wasn't about marketing. It was literally a product on how to make your own baby food, which that's its own kind of story for probably a different, you know, podcast episode. And I've always had businesses that had nothing to do with, you know, marketing and digital marketer and stuff like that. But at the same time, I've always talked about what I was doing.

[Roland Frazier]

Right.

[Ryan Deiss]

And that came out of the earliest days of the Internet marketing community where people were sharing and we were learning from one another and we benefited from the sharing of the stuff. And so I've always been teaching, always been sharing every year for the last 25 years. But I kind of made the decision at the end of last year that I was going to produce one more training. It was going to be kind of the last one, and that was going to be my swan song. And that was going to be it. And there were a number of reasons why I wanted to do that. But, yeah, I kind of made the decision that I was going to sail off into the sunset with respect to, you know, marketing teaching training courses posted up. And, you know, this kind of coincided with a big pivot we were making. A digital marketer posted up the announcement, didn't think much of it.

[Roland Frazier]

It was this picture of you kind of in a chair, full, full. You looking off into the distance. And it said. I think it said, I'm retiring, or I'm retiring from marketing. I'm not sure.

[Ryan Deiss]

It just said, I'm retiring.

[Roland Frazier]

I'm retiring. Okay.

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah. So.

[Roland Frazier]

Because I got a whole bunch of people texting me, oh, man, what are you going to do now that Ryan's not, you know, I guess, you know, y' all aren't doing anything anymore, et cetera, et cetera.

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah. And it was funny because it's the classic case of, you know, people not reading below the second line. And obviously, look, when I created the picture, when I wrote the post, I intended for it to be provocative. Sure, right, of course. Because I'm a marketer, and to me, this is like, this is my swan song. Right. This is kind of like I'm going out. And so I'm going to go out, you know, the way that a marketer should, by, like, let's. Let's have a solid headline. And so, you know, I wrote a. I wrote a really good headline. I had a really solid image to go along with it. We had a solid offer to go along with it. And I was just. Frankly, I was surprised by how much traction it got, and I was surprised by how few people actually read. It's the classic case of kind of people only read the headline. Nobody reads below that.

[Roland Frazier]

Yep. What happened?

[Ryan Deiss]

So, I mean, what wound up. Well, I can tell you what wound up happening. The, you know, the post. Let's see, so far to date, I can go back to the original post, pull that up. So it's received, you know, a couple hundred thousand impressions, which is more than usual for me, over 300 comments, which, again, I'm not particular. This is just on LinkedIn, where I'm not that active. Haven't been for a very long time. Facebook, there was even more. Instagram, you know, there was a ton. And again, I'm not super active on these different social channels, so a normal post for me might get 2,000 impressions because, like I said, I'm not a social influencer. So we're talking about, you know, a few hundred times the amount of engagement that it would get. And it was everything from, like you said, people being like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe, you know, you're retiring completely. You know, who didn't read to people being like, this is awesome. This is so, you know, cool. You know, congrats on the pivot.

[Roland Frazier]

Right.

[Ryan Deiss]

Both in your career and for digital marketer, because that's what it was to people being, like, really mad because they were like, how dare you? This is. Yeah, I can't believe that you would commercialize this, that you would say you're retiring when you're not actually retiring. And that was one that surprised me the most for a number of reasons, because, number one, I am retiring from something. I'm retiring from something that, for me, has been a significant aspect of my life. For me to say that I'm no longer going to create a marketing course when I've been doing it for 25 years, that is very much retiring from a pretty significant job. And for digital marketer, a company that has been in the training and certification space for the last 10 years, to say, we're going to stop selling courses and certifications, that's a giant pivot. But I guess, you know, in thinking about it, I get the cynicism because there have been a number of marketers, not to name names, who have said, I'm retiring, I'm pulling all my course off the market, buy them for a little bit, and then two weeks later, they're right back.

[Roland Frazier]

Well, and they're. Think about celebrities and musicians. How many farewell tours has Elton John and, you know, and people like that done? It's, it's like, you know, we're retiring, but now we're back. You know, it's so, it's, I think it's, it's interesting. But you were actually honest in the ad. It was a, you know, a little clickbaity headline in that, you know, hey, it's curiosity. And I should want, should want to read more than that. I don't just read the headline. And that's the, that's the thing, because what happened to the people that are mad is they probably went out and told a bunch of people. And then somebody who had read the ads, he's not retiring. He said he was pivoting. What. You know, so they embarrassed them or something. But let's talk about two things today. The first I'd like to talk about is why you posted that, because you are a private person. And it's not something that you would typically share. What was the purpose of it? And you know, did it achieve the purpose that you desired? And then let's talk a little bit about virality and how to take advantage of accidental, which is what this was. Virality, because you really, I mean, despite all the marketing that says that you can plan and create viral posts, the truth is you never know until you.

[Ryan Deiss]

Put it up there.

[Roland Frazier]

So a lot of times there will be something and then if you're not careful, it'll just slip away and you won't have taken the opportunity to optimize the benefit from it. So, so let's start with why did you make the post in the first place?

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah, this is good because I haven't talked about the to anywhere, the full backstory, because I wasn't planning on doing it. We had decided at Digital Marketer that this change needed to take place, that we needed to make this pivot. And I think that.

[Roland Frazier]

What is the pivot? I'm sorry, what is the pivot?

[Ryan Deiss]

So the pivoted digital Marketer is, you know, Digital Marketer again has been in the training and certification space primarily selling courses, certifications for the past 10 years. In 2015 we said that Digital Marketer is a certifications business. And over the last couple of years that has just fallen off a cliff for a variety of reasons. You know, certainly post Covid, there's not as many people buying courses anymore. Also at the same time you have big brands like, you know, Meta is coming out with their own certifications, HubSpot is, and they're largely making them free. Obviously there's more people on YouTube and there's great, you know, great content on YouTube. And then the emergence of AI just has a lot of people saying, I don't need to learn this because AI will just do it for me. So all of these kind of, you know, factors coming together specifically in the marketing space made it to where Digital Marketers courses course sales were down to about 20% of what they were not down 20%. Down to 20% of what they were. And that was if it was halfway decent. So we knew that if we didn't, you know, change the business model that this brand wasn't really going to be around irrelevant at all in 12 to 18 months. So we knew that going into this year and we had made, we knew the pivot that we were going to make and we knew that we needed to make some AI related pivot. We didn't going into the year know what it was going to be. And we figured it out at the end of last quarter and then set about executing it this quarter. And that pivot is into AI enabled services. And just briefly on that, I know you and Richard did a, did a, an episode on it, but what we realized is that a far better use of our courses instead of training humans who, let's face it, humans don't actually go through trainings. Like, the consumption rate is terrible and the, you know, the actual, you know, action rate, like people doing anything with them is even worse. Let's not take our courses and use that to train people. Let's take our courses and use that to train AI. Because AI is pretty smart, but it's not that smart. Right. And so chatgpt, if you ask it to produce you a marketing asset, it will produce you a marketing asset that is just, just kind of okay. But if it knows everything that digital marketer knows, if it's trained with all of our frameworks, models, our certifications, it gets really freaking good, really freaking fast. So that's what we said. Let's take this. Let's train bots, let's train GPTs, and let's give people access to these. This will be our new business model. So that's the pivot that we're making. And if we're doing that, then it doesn't make sense to have our courses out there. And I said, you know what, in the context of this, I'm also going to announce that I'm not making any new courses because I wasn't planning on publicizing that, but I'm like, I'll go ahead and do it. And I did that. I'll tell you as much for me as a forcing function as for anything else. Like, I didn't think it was a particularly great hook.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah.

[Ryan Deiss]

I did it more so that I would have planted a flag in the ground to say, okay, I'm not going to do this.

[Roland Frazier]

You.

[Ryan Deiss]

Because I know it's my tendency to go back. And so. And you and I have talked about this. Yeah, yeah, anytime. Okay. Got to generate some revenue, Ryan. Go create a course. Right. And I didn't want to do it. Yeah, I didn't want to do it. So that's kind of the backstory. So we, we're going to go out with this promotion. We're taking all of our courses off the market. Let's give everybody one last chance to get them all at one low price. That was the promotion. One last chance to get all the courses and training and that we have in Our library at one low price. Kind of like what Disney does. Last chance to get it before it goes in the vault. And the first email that was due to go out, you know, obviously this email is coming from me. The first couple lines was exactly what the first line was in the post. I'm retiring from digital marketing and I'm taking my company Digital Marketer down with me.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah.

[Ryan Deiss]

Now I wrote that because I knew in general I don't write the emails for digital marketer anymore. I have it for years. We got a copywriter. I wrote that and I knew it was a heater. Like I was like, this is good, this is good. And, and all I did was write that. And then there was a much longer email that went into the explanation about it. Well, this got passed on to our email marketing manager to send. And our email marketing manager, in his infinite wisdom saw this email, which was approved. Right. And it opened with this very aggressive, admittedly clickbaity type opening line, but then was promptly explained in the lines below about giving, you know, contextualizing it. And what he did instead was he removed all of the explanation, just left the top two lines with a link to the website.

[Roland Frazier]

Ah.

[Ryan Deiss]

And so when I saw that email hit my inbox with just the top two lines. And then when you went to the page, there was an explanation, but the explanation was below the actual offer.

[Roland Frazier]

I see.

[Ryan Deiss]

So basically you get an email if you're on the digital marketer list, you get an email that says, I'm retiring from digital marketing, from digital marketing. I'm taking my company Digital Marketer down with me. Here's a page with all the details. You click the link and all you see when you go to that page is the offer.

[Roland Frazier]

I see.

[Ryan Deiss]

So I see this and I flip out. I don't get mad very often, but I was pissed. And I asked this person who I now want to murder, why did you do this? This was approved. And he's like, I just knew it would get more click throughs if it didn't have all the stuff below. Now he's right. But that wasn't the point. And to me this, this message was very personal. Right. To me it meant a lot and it was just such a poor custom. We had a, we had a good talk. It was a good learning moment for all involved that once an email is approved, you don't just get to unilaterally change it. Yeah, but we had to move quickly. So Matt Swan, you know, our head of marketing, he took the explanation that was at the bottom, moved it to the top so that effectively if you clicked on the link and went to the page, you got the rest of the email. But I was frankly worried about blowback. I was worried about people seeing this and hitting me up on social and being like, hey, that was kind of an uncool email to send. So I went to social and essentially posted what the email was so I could preempt it. And because it was so quick and I wanted to make sure I got ahead of it, I basically just copied and pasted what the original email was as the social post.

[Roland Frazier]

Okay.

[Ryan Deiss]

That was it. I wasn't planning on it being anything. And then when I made the, when I, when I did the picture, this is a picture that is in my media kit and it was just the one that I grabbed. And so I pulled it in there, went into Canva, put I'm retiring over it. I knew it was, you know, I knew it was a good one and I wanted it to get noticed, but this was not planned at all. So that is the long winded, extended explanation of how this whole thing came about.

[Roland Frazier]

Okay, interesting. And, and then it was also part of a marketing campaign of sorts, right?

[Ryan Deiss]

Oh yeah. Well, the post became a part of the marketing campaign, but that wasn't the original, the original plan wasn't necessarily for me to be posting about this on, on my social channels in general. I haven't been posting about marketing and digital marketer stuff for a while. I've kind of pivoted my personal brand to be more business related, to be more related to scalable type things.

[Roland Frazier]

So.

[Ryan Deiss]

So I wasn't planning on posting that this week. Okay. So had the email person not messed up, it wouldn't have gotten posted. So it was kind of a happy accident. Okay.

[Roland Frazier]

So which is great because it goes directly to what we're talking about. Right? So we have the happy accident. Now what have you done? What did you do? Or what do you think are the best ways to take a happy accident like that, where now you've got attention which we normally have to pay for and that attention is focused on you now. Now what, what should you do? What should people do when they have that?

[Ryan Deiss]

Well, I essentially made it my full time job to reply as best I could to every single comment. And I wanted to do that because I wanted to keep the engagement going. And I know that that is one thing that helps. It doesn't just help with the people that are there, but algorithmically it helps. And so I, there were lots of things that I had planned to do that were on my big three to get done that week that I reprioritized to spend time essentially being my own social media manager. And I did pull in some additional help. So people on my team who manage it, I was like, hey, if anybody responds with something like this, just respond like this. Make sure we're going in there and liking the posts that you know, that are positive if it's a negative one or if somebody's like, hey, this is uncool, let me respond to that one. Because I wanted to see the negative one so I knew how to reply. So that was the first thing that I did.

[C]

So that's what I was also.

[Ryan Deiss]

Oh, sorry.

[Roland Frazier]

That's because I want to take it step by step. So that's awesome. And really you did the what? You know, I think the strategy playbook on this is, is that you really want to have both sides content, right? You want to, you're going to have good things, you're going to have bad things. People always love you, people always hate you. So create content that addresses the concerns from the critics. Don't just ignore them, don't definitely don't delete their posts. Use that to create engagement, which feeds the algorithm. Show that you understand the, you know, the different positions that they might be taking and that you can relate with it. And then a lot of times you can build credibility with people that you, that originally disagreed with you as you're having the conversation because they're like, oh, okay, you know, like maybe I should have read it for example. Or you know, or you can say, you know, well, this is why my critics are actually right about a specific point. And now that's helped me learn you're actually having a conversation and it's not one way, it's, it's not one sided, it's, it's both, it's empathetic and supportive and you know, that, that really helps everybody to feel good about it so that even though it might be controversial, it still has and you might have detractors. Most of those people you're going to want, there's always going to be some, you know, Yahoo that you're just going to be. Just, you know, you take your, your attempt to do it and then thank them when they say you're still stupid, you know. Okay, well thank you. I appreciate your opinion.

[Ryan Deiss]

Right, right. Okay, you see.

[Roland Frazier]

So what were you going to say after that?

[Ryan Deiss]

Well, just to stay on this point just for one second longer. It was probably at least 9010 positive, like very positive and a lot of people tend to taking time out of their day to talk about how digital marketer had impacted their life and how, you know, the certifications had helped them, you know, launch their career. And so there's just these glowing and gushing testimonials, which was nice because, number one, it made me feel good and to share it with the team, it made the team feel really great. But there were people who commented and said, you know, I was going to comment that, oh, this is just another marketing gimmick. But then when I read all the testimonials, it's clear that, like, this is legit. And so that felt really good. So it did just become this kind of, this snowball of social proof that I wanted to keep going. And I wanted people to see that, that I was engaging. And so it took a lot of time. And it's one of those things that's quote, unquote, unscalable. But I also knew that it wasn't going to last forever. You know, we had a little window. This offer launched on Tuesday. It was going to close the following Tuesday. So it was just a week that was there. Um, so, you know, we had that. At the same time, I'm gathering what are the most frequently asked questions and I'm, I'm figuring out what those are and I'm getting a chance to test out what are the replies that are making people say, okay, yeah, that makes sense. You know, I get that. And so what I then did the following Monday. So keep in mind like, so basically that that week, everything's happening and I'm just generally responding. I'm not, I'm not doing a bunch of new posts because I'm trying not to stomp the one that's up there. I kind of want to let it still, you know, do its thing.

[Roland Frazier]

You generally will have 72 hours or so of engagement before it fades.

[Ryan Deiss]

Exactly. So I was going to, I was going to let it go. I was going to let it, let it do its thing. And then on Monday, I went through and I. And I did a share post on all of them. And I don't know enough about the algorithm to know if, you know, sharing the original post or doing a new post was the best thing. The share post didn't get as much traction as I thought it would, so probably doing a brand new post would have been better, but I made the decision just to share the original. And then in that I, you know, I decided that I was going to answer and address some of the most frequently asked questions that we had starting with, you know, is this real or just another marketing gimmick? And then why would you commercialize this and why the change? Why now? And what was nice is all of these replies were tested, replies from conversations that I got to have with people in the comments. So I'll stop there.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah, I like it. So I think that really what you did and what somebody could do who has the accidental success here would be to data mine. So data mine, engage with both sides of content. Use it to gain a deeper understanding of the people who are your audience that are out there. If you want to copy the responses and replies and paste them into ChatGPT or Claude or something like that and say, give me a sentiment analysis and tell me what you know, what are the opportunities to engage further with these people? What is the general sentiment that they've got? You know, how might this be use to create better products, services, etc. One way to extend that that I think is worth exploring. So you mentioned that you tried sharing it and that didn't take like you were hoping would be to kind of do what like a BTS thing, like a behind the scenes documentary approach where you're showing the real story behind the viral minute like moment. So here it might be how I made the decision to retire, you know, and that's based on legitimate questions that people have because I'm sure people ask you that, you know, so that you can basically humanize yourself and the whole thought process that you got behind it. It could even be, you know, episodic content that you're doing, you know. Well, here's what happened first, you know, there were five things that caused me to do this and to make this decision and you guys are probably doing it too. So I thought I'd break that down for you. Here's the first one. And now you've got this, you know, this extension of the original that got the attention for anybody that was interested. It probably won't have the same take rate that that initial did, but I bet you get quite a bit from it. Particularly if you've got things that you feel people could really identify with and you could use that data mine sensitivity analysis, sentiment analysis to kind of inform the that documentary telling of the story where. What are your thoughts about that?

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah, if I had it to do all over it again, I would every day just record an iPhone video answering some of the questions that I was getting in the comments.

[Roland Frazier]

You know what could have been cool too? I'm thinking of retiring from marketing. Should I?

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah.

[Roland Frazier]

What do you think? Yeah, right.

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah.

[Roland Frazier]

Kind of a public decision, input, engagement kind of thing would have been interesting, right?

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah. And so just to open it up, but changing up the medium and the mechanism and going to go into video would have made sense. Again, this wasn't really planned. And it's funny, the way that it hit me, it hit me more. I was more emotional about it than I thought I would be, because I guess this was kind of the final nail in the coffin of, like, I'm not going to be doing this anymore. And it's why I got a little bit defensive with when people were like, oh, this is just a gimmick. Like, there's a marketer. You and I both know him, and he hit me up on, you know, on Twitter. He. He responded. He's like, oh, it's just a marketing gimmick. And I'm like, it's not like I'm. It's not a gimmick that I'm going to stop doing this thing that I've been doing for 25 years. It's not a gimmick that digital marketers pivoting after 10 years. He's like, oh, yeah, you know, come on, we're all marketers, men. I'm like, it's not. And he kept pressing. And I'm like, you should have just said, my bad, because you and I both know each other, and you piss me off. Right. And so, admittedly, I got a little bit defensive because this does mean something to me at the same time this week, you know, you know, this. I went, you know, on Thursday, drove up to Waco to pick up my son from college. So I'm hanging out with my oldest for the first time in a while. And so I'm not thinking as clearly or as strategically as I, you know, now looking back on it would. So, yes, if I'm going back, thinking about it, I'm. I'm busting out my phone, and I'm. I'm recording a video and uploading that every single day to keep this, you know, train chugging. So. But I didn't do that. So it. What. I can talk about what we continue to do, though.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah, let's. Let's do that. The other thing that I was thinking is, is obviously it's an opportunity to build your list. It's an opportunity to promote the posts that got the, you know, the initial organic virality so that you can reach larger audiences. But the one that really kind of I was thinking about is that in terms of podcast appearances, it's a great topic. And so all of the, you know, the industry marketing business podcasts to me would be worth, you know, mailing this out to and saying, you know, hey, I'd love to talk on your podcast about why I'm retired from marketing and you know, what the future of marketing is that, that would be to me very compelling to get a lot of extended mileage from, you know, know from what's going on.

[Ryan Deiss]

I was on a giant one yesterday and there's been more that have reached out. Yeah. So the PR aspect of this and even though this particular offer has closed.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah.

[Ryan Deiss]

And you know, the last thing I want that I'm going to do right now is reopen it and just play into what everybody said. It was like no way, no freaking way. But it's does still have an opportunity to talk about what digital marketer is today. So yeah, there is a great know, PR element. And speaking of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so speaking of that, what we then transitioned into and, and what I actually, you know, posted today is another pick of me and instead of, you know, I'm retiring, it's what's next. And so what we're doing is basically saying, hey, so I've answered a lot of questions, haven't been able to answer all of them. That's why I'm going to be hosting a town hall, you know, live town hall meeting where we're going to be breaking down, why we're making these changes, why I'm stepping away and what this means to marketers, the marketing industry, to you as a business owner and kind of where we're going moving forward. This webinar registration page, Roland has a 77% opt in rate.

[Roland Frazier]

That's awesome.

[Ryan Deiss]

We have never seen anything like this before. I mean it is a crazy high and we are currently like where we're sitting right now, some of the highest. It's going to be one of the biggest webinars that we've ever done and there's no promise of actual content. It's come onto this webinar just to see where we're headed to next.

[Roland Frazier]

Well, what you're answering, the question that I think you get asked more than any other when you're out there and you know, appear to be successful at all is if you were starting over today, what would you do knowing what you know now, that's really what you're doing. And so you're answering that question that's in their mind, oh my God, he stopped doing that thing. Now I can do what he does. Because he's starting out again. I'm like him. And I definitely want to hear what he has to say because he did it at least once before. And so this is going to be just right for me. I mean, that's, to me what that, that's scratching that itch. Right? Yeah.

[Ryan Deiss]

And I don't want to get into the sales numbers, obviously, you know, the actual revenue numbers, but what I can say is billions. The. That final kind of last chance offer for the course and certifications far exceeded the. The kind of best sales goals that we. Revenue goals that we had for that particular promotion. And I think the difference all came down to this particular social post going viral. There's no way that they all just came from the list.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah.

[Ryan Deiss]

Because when we look at the list performance and, you know, the number of clicks that it drove, the conversion rate just wasn't that high. So it had to come from organic people talking about it. And so I'm very, very, very thankful again for, you know, for that happy accident and for what can happen when organic starts to work in your favor. And now, and it's not over because now we're rolling into the webinar where we're going to be announcing the new digital marketer and where things are headed and the opportunities to work with us for where we're going. So I think it's going to be. It's going to be great. And again, for me, it was a forcing function to say, you know, this is what you're doing now, which is what I've been doing, but, you know, now I can't go back.

[Roland Frazier]

So if you were like confused as to why or, you know, as to how you might create something that has a chance for going viral, there's no guarantee or formula for making it happen. But one way to go about it would be thought leadership, provocation. So you're basically taking maybe unpopular but defensible positions that are in your industry or sharing contrarian thoughts that are, you know, I like that one especially is like a contrarian thought that goes against the grain, but it's backed by data or your personal experience or especially as personal story that you've got, starting conversations that other people are afraid to have. Just talk about things that other people are scared to talk about. You do have risk of being very polarizing, but polarizing can be very good as a marketer. And the other that is one of my favorites is kind of the Sacred Cow Challenge where you're questioning some widely accepted industry practice or you're proposing some significantly different alternative approach to things that are happening right now. And then ideally again, you've got personal stories, case studies or something like that to back that up with. And then what I think that you did so well is what everybody should be thinking about is how do you integrate revenue into what you're going to do? And I would ideally think about that in advance. Even though it's accidental, particularly when you're taking these kinds of positions, you have a decent chance at it. And so how can you build your controversy response into, number one, into your calendar, and number two, what product service tie in kind of thing can you bring in to do this? And I don't think we were clear enough. So would you just, very quickly, because I know we're out of time, very quickly, talk about how did you tie in an offer to the announcement?

[Ryan Deiss]

Because I said, you know, I'm retiring from digital marketing, I'm not doing marketing courses. And because digital marketer is pivoting away from courses and certifications, we are making for the last time ever, all of our courses and certifications available as a bundle for one low price, like $495. I mean, and this is literally for what they used to sell for tens of thousands of dollars worth of, you know, retail value, like not made up, inflated type stuff, like what they actually sold for in the past, a la carte. So that was the promotion that we had going. And so it was very easy to say, I'm done with this digital marketer's pivoting. This is your last chance. It was highly congruent. And it was also funny because people were like, if this is such a big deal to you, how dare you commercialize it? And it was nice because I was able to push back and say, well, we supposed to do just take it all down and not give people a chance to buy it. Well, also, that is amazing. Where's the rule?

[Roland Frazier]

It's like, I'm retiring, here's my last hurrah, right?

[C]

Business sale.

[Roland Frazier]

That's no different from a going out of business sale.

[C]

You get mad at people for that.

[Ryan Deiss]

We're marketers and you're business people. Cry me a freaking river. And up with the pearl clutching. If we didn't do a sale, it would. What would you say?

[Roland Frazier]

I'd say, you know what, what I would do if I were you is not buy any more marketing courses from me after this.

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah, exactly.

[Roland Frazier]

And I literally won't have them.

[Ryan Deiss]

If we hadn't done the sale, I think it would have invalidated probably 25 years of me calling myself a marketer. Like, it's like. It's like a dentist who gets pissed off when, you know, people buy too many toothbrushes. It just like, this is. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. So. Yeah, that was. That was not it. One more observation before we go. You got time for it? Yeah. The different social channels responded so differently to it. Okay, so LinkedIn, generally positive. Even the people who disagreed were very thoughtful in their disagreement.

[Roland Frazier]

Right, so they're like, more professional.

[Ryan Deiss]

Yep, more professional. I mean, and they. They would be. They could be very critical and even, like, harsh, but you could respond and they'd be like, yeah, fine. Twitter, same kind of thing.

[Roland Frazier]

Like, highly engaged, maybe smarter than.

[Ryan Deiss]

Yeah, still. Still pretty thoughtful. Instagram, I didn't get much engagement at all from Instagram because I think on Instagram, people want to be entertained and this wasn't entertaining.

[Roland Frazier]

And you're not. You don't have a ton of presence there anyway. Right? You don't.

[Ryan Deiss]

No, exactly. So. So for me, that was just kind of low engagement. Dude, Facebook was freaking nuts. Like, the number of people, if you go viral on Facebook, the number. And I think a lot of them are just bots trying to rage bait, but the number of just absolute crackheads on Facebook who will respond, it's insane. And so just know if that happens, do not take it personally. Do not engage. I was kind of bored one night and so I engaged with a couple of people just for funsies. But in general, you. You can just delete some of those, especially if they. If they get a little Nazi on you, because some do. But yeah, it was just the differences between. It was comical. Comical. I love it.

[Roland Frazier]

Awesome. Well, if you guys enjoyed this, please let us know. I think there's some good tips for you in the comments. How to deal with the accidental viral gift that sometimes the social media gods give you, and also some suggestions on maybe how to create some of that accidental success. And then obviously tying it into revenue can be a good thing for you. If you enjoyed it, let us know. If you didn't, then make this viral by challenging us, and we will all make money from your virality. So that's what this is really all about. But anyway, share it if you liked it. We'll see you next time on Business Lunch.

[C]

Hey, Roland Frazier here.

[Ryan Deiss]

If you're looking for a way to.

[C]

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