Who’s looking
Marian van der Elst
Marian van der Elst is a marketing and sales strategist and the founder of Ludusnovus. He works with owners who have been trading for years, and he finds the places in their sales process where the money is going.
How he got here
He read economics at Göttingen, then spent twelve years as an executive in trading, sales and strategy. One question in one meeting killed a 500 million project before the money moved.
He built four companies along the way and after it. The last six years have been direct response, the trade where every claim gets held against a number and nothing counts until it sells. A launch he wrote for a physician did 120,000 euros in ten days.
He hired me to run his marketing, because his ads brought inquiries that never turned into customers. I already had the new funnel in my head. Out of habit I laid his numbers out first, one step at a time, and there it was. His ads were beating the industry average. He was losing his money two steps further down, where nobody was looking. The new funnel would have fed the same leak at a higher price.
How he works
He starts where most people want to start building. Every step of the path you already run gets measured, from the first inquiry through to the repeat purchase. Then he ranks the places where more money walks out than has to.
Every business problem is a marketing problem. And before you need something new, you almost always need to turn one screw, release one brake, put something you already own back to work, or finally do the one thing nobody has ever done at that step.
It rarely takes a new analysis. It takes one person willing to ask the question everyone else skipped.
What he works on
Direct response marketing. Reading a sales process off its own numbers. Growing revenue without more ad spend. Waking up customers who already bought once. Offer and price design. Positioning.
He works remotely, in German and English, with clients across the German-speaking countries and the United States. He and his family live on the road, which is why the company behind Ludusnovus is registered in the US. Everything runs over video and phone.
What he offers
The Business X-Ray ranks the places an existing business is losing money and seals the costliest one inside sixty days.
The Rope is the second door. Five days in the Alps, eight owners, the new offer live by the last night. It’s for the case where the problem isn’t a step in the process but the offer itself.
Frequenz-Prinzip is a Ludusnovus brand. It builds positioning, websites and visibility.
Personal
He fell forty feet in 2015. He hasn’t sat on an uncomfortable truth since.
Thirty minutes, no charge. Bring what you have.