The E5 Method for a Winning Acquisition Campaign – with Todd Brown

Running a business today means facing one challenge above all others: acquiring customers profitably. Many entrepreneurs spend heavily on ads that fail to deliver. Others wrestle with offers that don’t connect or chase tactic after tactic with little payoff. The result is wasted time, lost energy, and disappointing returns. What changes everything is building an acquisition campaign that consistently turns prospects desire into action. The key is creating profitable customer acquisition campaigns that produce steady and predictable sales instead of short-lived wins.

In this episode of The Best Business Podcast, Daryl Urbanski speaks with Todd Brown, a leading authority in direct response marketing. He is one of the most sought-after marketing experts in the world. He is known for the E5 Method and for shaping seven-figure marketing campaigns for some of the biggest direct response marketers and companies online today. With over two decades of experience, Todd blends lessons from legacy direct response publishing and modern tactics. Thus, he gives rare insight into how to build marketing campaigns that ultimately determine growth and scale. Marketers today chasing all those things from lead generation tricks to exaggerated claims that fade quickly. The real challenge is mastering the customer acquisition process in a way that brings true scale.

Learn how to predictably acquire new customers and new buyers while thinking like an investor. Todd shares valuable lessons on shaping a big marketing idea and crafting a marketing message. He also shows how to build marketing funnels that effectively differentiate you in niche markets and niches online. With a focus on unique selling proposition and unique mechanism, he explains how to reach the right audience with the right incentive. This approach drives daily sales, new clients, and more money. The important point is clear: use proven methods to bring predictability into your own marketing campaigns. Doing so turns uncertainty into a reliable engine for growth.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

• Learn how the E5 Method can help you consistently generate new buyers from cold traffic, just as it has for Todd Brown’s consulting clients and coaching students.
• Understand the psychology and economics behind the customer acquisition process in direct response marketing campaigns. See why intense buying demand is the foundation of long-term profitability in your own business.
• Gain clarity on the most common mistakes marketers today make in their own marketing campaigns. Discover how Todd Brown helps avoid them by focusing on what drives making money and lasting results.

Resources

• Todd Brown: Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
• E5 Method Book by Todd Brown
• Best Business Podcast with Daryl Urbanski - Where you can find more insightful interviews like this one.

Episode Highlights 

A Story That Sparked a Marketing Revolution

• Profitable marketing has high stakes, and every business either lives or dies based on its ability to acquire customers effectively.
• Todd Brown is reintroduced as one of the top minds in direct response marketing, responsible for shaping campaigns for industry giants, including big companies like Agora.
• Todd shares how a direct mail postcard turned his career trajectory. A fitness professional at the time, he was captivated by the idea of salesmanship in print and its scalability.
• This moment laid the foundation for what would become Todd’s lifelong mission.
• Reverse-engineering is what really works in marketing, Todd learned, and packaging it into replicable methods like the E5 Method.

Bridging the Gap Between Online Marketing and Direct Response Publishing

• Todd explains that his marketing method, taught through the E5, was born from time spent in two different worlds. Thus, it gives him a unique lens to spot the best practices in both.
  
• The E5 is a structured way to create customer-generating campaigns from paid traffic consistently and predictably.
• By taking full-fledged sales presentations and turning them into high-leverage assets, entrepreneurs can build marketing funnels that scale their reach and results.
• Todd stresses that while platforms and tactics shift, disruptive technologies don’t change the fundamentals of persuasion, psychology, and communication.

The Timeless Secret: Why People Really Buy

• Todd highlights that most people mistake tactics for strategy. While VSLs, webinars, and funnels come and go, the human reasons for buying rarely change.
• Buyers don’t simply want a product. Instead, they want a unique benefit: faster results, ease of use, or a lower risk way of achieving something.
• Today's prospects are more skeptical and jaded, meaning a message must genuinely stand out by offering a differentiated mechanism or value proposition.
• Marketers must show proof and present “sin offers” (Superior, Irresistible, and No-brainer) to make conversion frictionless and generate steady results.

Marketing Engineering: Inside the E5 Method Framework

The same marketing method unfolds through five key stages:

• Examine: Conduct detailed research into your market’s pain points, dreams, and competing offers.
• Engineer: Build out your messaging, identify your unique mechanism, and craft your sin offer.
• Evaluate: Launch your Minimum Viable Funnel (MVF) and look for baseline success metrics.
• Enhance: Optimize and build the full campaign after a positive test run.
• Expand: Scale up through media buying and traffic growth.

Todd emphasizes that marketers often skip or rush the offer-creation stage.

In contrast, E5 puts offer development before copywriting. It offers to drive the message, not the other way around.

The methodology is a diagnostic and scalable system that can be applied across different niches and funnel types.

Moving from Transactional Thinking to Investor Thinking

• Todd shares that the success of marketing campaigns ultimately determines whether a business grows or stalls.
• Instead of aiming to profit on the first sale, focus on the value of the customer over time.
• See how much they’ll buy at 30, 60, or 90 days, or even across an entire year.
• Like Netflix invests in subscribers who pay more over time, businesses should prioritize long-term Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) over front-end profits.
• “He who can afford to pay the most to acquire a customer wins,” Todd says. This higher CAC tolerance opens the door to more reach and growing, exciting businesses.

Common Pitfalls and Misunderstood Metrics in Marketing

• Todd warns against using surface-level metrics like open rates, click-throughs or conversion percentages to make decisions.
• True performance should be measured in cost per acquisition vs. customer value—the rest are diagnostic tools.
• Many entrepreneurs are plagued by “shiny object syndrome,” hopping from webinar to challenge to funnel without mastery.
• Todd encourages each business to choose one model and repeat it—because mastery and all this focus bring predictable generating daily sales.

Making Subscriptions Sell Themselves

• Selling subscription products, particularly information-based (e.g., newsletters), requires a different strategy. This is what Todd calls "premium-driven campaigns."
• Instead of selling content you haven’t created yet, sell the premium (bonus) that solves a current, urgent problem.
• For Netflix-style access subscriptions, the focus is on convenience, transformation, and long-term value. This is what marketers call dual brain communication of logic and emotion.
• The goal is to connect immediately with the buyer’s pain and present a unique mechanism that makes staying subscribed a no-brainer.

Marketing for the Long Game: Final Thoughts

• Daryl and Todd remind listeners that businesses succeed when they understand they are playing an economic game, not just a creative.
• Treat marketing as an investment. Know your acquisition costs, front-end value, and post-purchase expansion plans.
• The goal is not just a better conversion rate; the goal is more customers, higher lifetime value, and building the path toward an eventual millionaire outcome.
• For more, check the full resources on the marketing campaign website, where A-list entrepreneurs and others share their case studies.