What Makes A Great Info Product (2 of 2)

Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast and especially to part 2 of what makes a great info product. Now, if you missed episode number 1, feel free to just go back. You can catch up and then start running with us right away. Now, at this point, we know what creates a good info product, but then how do we make sure that it stands out? Because in today's world, we're saturated with information products, all selling quite often the same information. So how do you make sure that your product not only sells once, but can be packaged and repackaged in order to create customers that last for a lifetime. Let's listen in as Dan reveals everything step by step.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons. They're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless. His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy. The last thing that's sort of interesting in an information product is this. proprietary language. A lot of people don't do enough with this. So truth be told, in the success category, I don't think there's anything new. And there hasn't been for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time. Like since it was on table carved with a chisel. So it's been made new mostly by just changing the language. Alright? In sales training, if you go and get sales books from the 1930s and you compare them with sales training of today, and you compare it very analytical and very objectively and very carefully, there's nothing new. Nothing. The way you get a sale made today is the same way they got a sale made in 1933. So how is it that we can keep selling sales training? We change the language. So proprietary language is important so that you own something. It's how you make the ununique unique to you. But it is more meaningful to people than that. Proprietary language gives people two things that they really want that your product can deliver purely by putting everything in it in its own proprietary language. Number one, it gives people a sense of belonging to a fraternity. You and they now share a language that others do not. Secondly, it gives them a sense of superiority because they know things no one else knows. That is represented by a shared proprietary language. So when you create the content for information products, you want to give thought to the terminology, what you are going to call this, that, and the other thing, what language is going to exist that makes an insider an insider and makes an outsider an outsider. Bill didn't do it for any deliberate purpose, but several times during the whole preamble thing up here, he sort of explained to the newcomers without explanation a term, "Oh, that's Glazer-Kennedy language." See, we do. We have our own language that you and I share. And the few, like, really rank new beginners who failed to stand up and acknowledge that I had made them any money, see, they also, they don't know the language. Now, the way people react to that, by the way, is about 1 in 10 get really frustrated by it and they just go away. 9 desperately want to get on the other side of that wall, get behind that closed door, be an insider, not an outsider. And as soon as they do, they feel uplifted and emboldened and better about themselves. So when you build this into your product, you are starting to make your product do more than just exchange for money, you're starting to make your product create lasting interest and relationship. McDonald's adds sugar to everything, okay? The stuff they fry the fries in, the buns, the meat itself has sugar added to it. So if you are going to eat fast food, by the way, we're all going to get sued now, I suppose, but if you are going to eat fast food, eat something other than McDonald's unless You know, you want to die. So they are deliberately building an addictive product, and they are correctly accused of doing so. By the way, I applaud that. I don't criticize that, okay? It's the parent's job and the adult's job to rein in their consumption Their job, if I'm a shareholder, is to figure out how to sell as much of that stuff as is humanly possible. That's their job, right? And they have figured out something that if you just put sugar in all of it, everybody will want more of it. Good. I'm all for it, all right? Now, that's what we want to do with our information product. We want to make them addictive. So if you want to like put a summary around everything we've talked about so far, it is the idea of building information product that is intellectually, psychologically, and emotionally addictive, okay? That makes people want what's next. And so Above all else, the job of a great information product is to create desire for and interest in more. This is not as simple as— although I was at a Gary Halbert seminar when somebody said, if you can't figure out any better idea, at least put volume 1 on everything. Look, it's— Bill Myers, for those of you that want trivia. It's not as simple as that, obviously, but that's what we want. We want to figure out how to put sugar in the burger. The job of your product is to be constructed to be addictive, to make people want more. Here are key salability factors. So one is what's called high concept. Now those of you that are IMA members, you got October, our special report, the info letter report, was all about high concept. So I'm actually not going to belabor it here, but I will point out sort of the evergreen nature of all this. So, you know, Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek was a huge hit. A few years ago, but you could go back to 1960 and find Joe Carbo with a huge hit called The Lazy Man's Way to Riches. They are fundamentally the same high concept. The Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, probably the number one relationship selling thing of all time, but the number one on TV was an even more interesting high concept. Ellen Creedman, I think is Ellen's last name, it's either Creedman or Friedman, I'm pretty sure it's Creedman, had a big decade-long run with products called— two separate products called Light His Fire, Light Her Fire. The high concept behind those products was in the relationship category, I think the smartest thing I've ever seen. The high concept was regardless of who she was talking to, so let's say it's the Light His Fire product, the core of that pitch was you don't need his cooperation. That was the core of the pitch. He doesn't even need to know you're doing this, because what's the failure of all the relationship stuff? The two people have to do it together, and at least one of them, generally the guy, balks. The guy's answer to this is usually, "Can we do it during halftime?" You know? "Because I'm watching the game." You know? The exception now this year is Dallas Cowboys fans. They would actually rather engage in relationship counseling than watch a Dallas game. That's how bad that has got. But, you know, this, by the way, from somebody who lives in Cleveland. So, you know, we've had 2 good games in a decade. And everybody's getting their hats back out, you know. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Again, one of those great enduring high concepts. Eric Weber was the first guy in the how to pick up women category. How to Pick Up Women, a very unsubtle approach. A twist on that high concept was John Alanis. Is John here? I know one of his friends. John, there you go. So John's twist was how to get women to approach you. So John's whole pitch for his online business is you don't have to be any good at picking up women. We'll sprinkle dust on you and they'll come to you. Okay? Well, that's, you know, that's a great high concept. Note that they all have "how to" in front of them. Okay? That's a conceptual idea. One of the great infomercials was "How to Get a Second Paycheck Without a Second Job." That's high concept. So these— so one thing about these, salability, is a big idea, a big concept that is fascinating to people. Another is it needs to be new, okay? So nobody wants— and keep in mind, it does not matter how well it works— nobody wants what's old. Everybody's interested in what's new. So I mean, which of these sounds more compelling? Look at the two examples. 'How to Get Your Novel Written in 29 Days' or 'The New Way to Get Your Novel Written in 29 Days'? Which sounds more compelling? 'Guaranteed Weight Loss', 'New Breakthroughs for Guaranteed Weight Loss'? Which sounds more compelling? 'Science of Persuasion: Close Every Sale', 'The New Science of Persuasion: Close Every Sale'? Which sounds more compelling? 'New' always sounds more compelling. A brief plug about tomorrow morning's breakout session for, as Bill pointed out, specific folks in the room, not everybody. So my session tomorrow morning is really all about new. It is really all about how to take improvement. So if you are in a business niche, a professional niche, an occupational niche, if you now sell to business owners, professionals, salespeople, etc., how to improve whatever— their business, their income, their sales, their management, their profit. If you sell improvement, you need to be in that session because I'm gonna show you a new way— new to you— to make that entirely new. So you arrive as a fresh face, no matter how long you've been where you've been, and no matter how well-known You are, and as Bill pointed out, it's for most new folks to information marketing, it's probably not the right place to be tomorrow. But if you're relatively established, if you're in a niche and you've been there for a few years or longer, certainly, and you need to arrive as new, the new concept I'll show you tomorrow in the breakout will be all about that. But understand that new is critically important And so we have to keep reinventing, redescribing, retitling, relanguaging, repackaging what it is that we do. So periodically, I mean, even magnetic marketing has gone through advanced magnetic marketing, new magnetic marketing, magnetic marketing for the new economy. Okay, so it's gone through 5 gyrations, 6 if you count its original Small Business Emergency Survival System, which all we did is change the damn title, but it's gone through 6 of these in 14 years. So, yes, it's an evergreen product so far. By most standards, it's evergreen. 14 years is a long time for a product in this business, but it's gone through 6 gyrations during that period of time. Every product category, not just ours, by the way. So if you look at Guthrie Ranker's longest-running skincare brand on TV is Victoria Principal. And Victoria Principal skincare, I don't know the exact number of years now. I want to say 10, 11, something like that. But under that umbrella, there's been 5 or 6 changes The newest one is new by 12 to 14 months, so it's still Victoria Principal, but the product has changed, the presentation of the product has changed, the name of the product has changed under her brand. If you're not coming forward with new and you are perceived as old, you're in trouble because that is not what people are fascinated with, okay? And it doesn't matter how well it works. That's not what drives the sale. Now that does have a lot to do with customer satisfaction retention after the fact, but that is not what drives the sale of information marketing. Perfect example, all right? So middle of last year, We had 200-some-odd people at the Social Media Summit. How many of you were at that? Okay, you learn more by looking at them than looking at me. All right? Now, if we had done the Direct Mail Summit, I want you to know it would have been a much harder job to put 200 people in that room. However, 90% of the information industry is still driven by direct mail. That didn't go to buy me a cup of coffee at Starbucks. If I'm going to sell that to you, I've got to sneak it up on you, or I've got to put it in something else, because it's not what we're fascinated with. We're fascinated with what's new. So it doesn't matter So like, we have— there's a number of you who are in the sales training business. See, it doesn't matter if you have a sales training system that gets to a 92% close every single time any salesperson follows it. If you keep trying to sell that system over a period of time in the same marketplace and you think that that fact about its superiority will drive its sale, you lose. 'Cause they get bored even with what works. They want what's new. So that's pretty important. Titles in the salability of information product are extremely important. And a lot of people get lazy and sloppy about it. They have a herd of customers, they have a relationship with those customers, a certain percentage of them are reliable buyers who pretty much buy anything that comes out the door. And so we start to get lazy and sloppy about it. But if you want that incremental business, you will pay close attention to how things are titled. Titles matter. There's a book Title escapes me, but you guys are adept at Google and Amazon. There's a book, I think it's called The Making of a Bestseller, or 100 Years of the Making of Bestsellers, something like that. And it tracks the New York Times bestseller list, like since the beginning of the New York Times bestseller list. And you can go through there and see the title commonalities, how again and again and again and again and again, certain approaches to titles have been winners over and over and over again. So if you look here, so Words That Sell, which is a book everybody ought to own, by the way, who writes copy, if you don't have it. It's essentially a— if you gave it the bland vanilla title, it's an advertising thesaurus. So it works like a thesaurus, but it's narrowed to stuff we would use in writing copy. So for guarantee, you can go to guarantee and here's 500 different ways to say guarantee. And you can go to half price and here's 22 different ways to say half price. So it's an advertising thesaurus. However, a title, Words That Sell, And then the subtitle, "The Thesaurus to Help You Promote Your Products, Services, and Ideas." See, that's a much better title than "Advertising Thesaurus." One has a little sizzle to it. It's kind of interesting, okay? So titles in information products are important, and they are important as salability issues 2 times, not just 1. So remember the tape example I showed you. They're important in selling the product, and they're important in reselling the product after whatever elapsed time has occurred between the sale and me getting my hands on the product and thinking about using it for the first time. There's at least 2 sales that take place. With every information product. There's when I buy it, and there's when I get it and decide to do anything with it or not. How many of you have books at home you've bought and haven't read? Of course, we all do, right? How many of you have courses, information products you bought and haven't cracked the Saran Wrap or the COVID Come on, raise your hands. It's okay. You learn more by looking around at them than you do looking at me, by the way. But in case you didn't, everybody but the liars in the room or the persistent non-buyers raised their hands, okay? We all got them. Why? Because the elapsed time stopped us. Now, so we bought that book at Barnes Noble. And we schlepped it home and we put it on a stack and now, 3 days from now, 5 days from now, 2 weeks from now, whatever, we're getting ready to go on a trip, we're constipated, something, and we go to that stack and we'll go pick one of 5 books. Why doesn't it get picked? And if it doesn't get picked like 3 times in a row, then it migrates, doesn't it? Away from the stack, into the library, into the closet, into the garage. Okay? All right? Same thing with product. So there's 2 sales with every product, at least 2. There's when we sold it and when they bought it. From the stage, from the website, from the catalog, from the sales letter, from whatever they bought it. Now there's some elapsed time before they are going to first read it, listen to it, look at it, pay attention to it, do something with it. That's a second sale. It has to sell itself again cold, from a cold starting point. So now titles are pretty important. So what do you have a better shot at? So I will read them to you, but again, the, the 6 tapes in the original Magnetic Marketing, every one of them has a different title. Now a lot of people are just lazy, right? Magnetic Marketing Tape Number 1, Magnetic Marketing Tape Number 2, Magnetic Marketing Tape Number 3, Number 4, Number 5, Number 6. Wastes a sales opportunity. So Tape 6 is the rapid results action tape. Step by step how to use this system to put money in the bank now. Listen to this tape last so you're ready, then take actions on its instructions immediately. That's the title of Tape 6, okay? See, titles matter in that second sale, not just in the first sale. Product-market match. Big salability issue. This is a very simple concept, but again, people get very lazy about it. The generic and evergreen product is the hardest thing to come by. The niched or specialized evergreen product is easier to come by, but from a salability standpoint, matched to a market always does two things: it helps you make the sale and it makes the price elastic, which also helps you make the sale because you could spend more money to make the sale. So time management versus time management for entrepreneurs are two entirely different things. Time management for busy entrepreneurs, better. Time management for entrepreneurs of mid-sized companies with 20 to 35 employees and field sales forces, even better. That's the, that's the DVD for left-handed golfers, right-handed golfers, one-legged golfers, Weekend golfers, avid golfers, a putt's a putt. Time management's time management. But we immediately improve its salability and add value out of thin air, alchemy, by matching the product to the buyer. Why? Well, because everybody thinks their situation is special. Now, as an aside, that's the last thing you want to do for yourself. The idea that your business is different and your circumstances are unique and you cannot learn from X, Y, or Z because they're in a big city and you're in a small town, or they're blonde and you're a brunette, or whatever, See, that's the last thing you want to engage in for yourself. But you must understand that everybody else engages in it, and if you are going to get them loose of it, which is something we work on at Glaser Kennedy, you need time. You need time to get them to make that disconnect.— it's a very difficult disconnect for people to make. It even challenges their very self-esteem, because their self-esteem is rooted in the idea that their circumstances, their personality, their life, their thing is as unique as their fingerprint. Whatever victimhood they're carrying around with them is the excuse for whatever it is they don't have that they want, That is unique, and when you say it isn't, you are challenging them at their core. Takes time to get that done. You don't have that kind of time in a sale. So when you're creating, when you're dealing with the saleability of an information product, to the greatest degree possible that you make it match the intended buyer. The more saleable it is, and has an extra benefit, price elastic. Saleability. Exclusivity. If I can't have it, I want it. If they're going to run out of it, I want it. In USA Today right now, not every day, but many days, you're going to find, and in many newspapers across the country, you're going to find the 2-page ad for the big safes. People bought a lot of guns and they bought a lot of gold. Now they need safes. So the safe is now a mass market product again. It comes and goes. Right? Liberty Safe is on Limbaugh and Beck and those guys every day on the radio selling safes. So people are having great big giant impenetrable unliftable safes delivered to their homes. Undoubtedly some of them are putting them in the bedroom and they're winding up in the basement, but that's neither here nor there. You're going to see these ads and you should look at them the next time you see them. 'cause they have mimicked Ben Suarez's Amish Heater ads. And you'll see this technique used again and again and again, where it controls the time you can call in to order by time zone. So if you're over here, you call between this and this, and if you live here, you call between this and this, and if you live here, you call between these hours and these hours, You understand that's all nonsense. If you call, they are not turning you down. You call and you want to buy the safe, and especially if you want to get upsold to like the $4,000 safe, the question will not be, "Oh, are you in the Eastern time zone? Oh, I can't take your order now. You're not allowed to buy now. You called at the wrong time. Goodbye." Click. That will not happen. As badly run as companies and call centers are, that won't happen. But why— so why is it taking up space in the ad? Why is it there? Because it creates the idea of limited supply, of rationing, of exclusivity, of I might not be able to get it. I have to follow these steps precisely or I might be allowed to get it. Disney does a take it out of the vault for a limited time thing, and they do it again and again and again with DVDs. I see moms nodding. Okay, if you are not a parent, you won't know. If you're a parent, you know, because the kid sees a TV commercial and comes in and tells you you only got 3 days to get the direct-to-DVD thing they made of, you know, Bambi's 48th Adventure, and it's going to go back in the vault on Tuesday, so we got to get it right away. And they pull that out and it works again and again and again. A favorite of mine, first time I saw it, is is the red herring about this. So again, there's an old mail order guy by the name of Dean F. Duvall. Anybody in here own any Duvall stuff? There we go, a couple hands in the back. Okay. So Dean, very interesting guy. He's another one of these guys, if you're really a serious student about this business, you will go Google him and you'll pay attention and You'll study the old-timers. A lot of people don't get that, but you have to understand, guys like Duvall and Cosman and Haroldson, all these guys, they were making fortunes in this business when the only media was print and direct mail. They were making money in this business before credit cards were accepted on 800 numbers. Somebody had to actually fill out an order form, write out a check, put it in an envelope, and not talk themselves out of sending in the envelope until they went to the post office the next day. There was no click. So these guys made fortunes under much more difficult circumstances than you have to deal with today. It's why they're worth studying. Anyway, Duvall had a product he called the Mail Order Matrix, which was his ultimate insider exactly how he did his business thing. And he advertised it a little bit all year long. Pretty much every time he sold anything else, he mentioned the existence of this product, and as I recall, it was priced at $19,000. Alright? And by the way, this is a 3-ring notebook of stuff. Alright? My deep-seated suspicion, I've never been able to confirm it, is he never sold one at $19,000. If he did, I'm certain he never expected to sell one at $19,000. But every so often, he would say he had 5 of them, and for some reason, it had rained a little bit on them and they were all wet in the corner, he was in a good mood, for whatever reason, he would have a reason, he was gonna let 5 of these go at like $5,000. Now I know, so I've asked this question a lot over the years, I know 11 people who bought it at $5,000, and every one of them has told me exactly the same thing. I wanted it, I wanted it, I wanted it, I wanted it, but I couldn't bring myself to pay $19,000 for it, and man, when they were gonna let 5 go for $5,000, I was like racing to be one of the ones who got it for $5,000. Well, all that is is an out-of-the-vault exclusivity play, isn't it? But every single one of us, me one of the 11, who bought it for the $5,000 has the same same story to tell. Okay? We were all set up and then we all raced to get the check in the mail. Last, there's two things about info product. I've alluded to it. There's what they want and there's what they need and even more importantly, what you need to create with them through your products. So what do they want? Well, first of all, they want one thing. They want simplicity. They want a pill to swallow. They want a thing to do. They want a thing to plug in. They want a magic wand. They want one thing. They also want the clarity of step-by-step. They want the certainty and the clarity that this is a step-by-step process, that they can't get lost, that they're not going to be confused. They want shortcuts. They want speed. Ever truer. They want some version of an easy button. They don't want it to be too difficult. No big learning curve. Not a lot of work. They want things to do and use, not just things to learn. Very important. The information marketing business used to be all about learning. We used to tell— we used to sell, and we've lost a lot by letting it go away. Which I don't have time to talk about, but we used to sell information product. Today this is almost laughable. None of us do it anymore. Brian Tracy, it's gone from him. It's gone from Tommy Hopkins. It's even gone from Zig. But we all used to sell a course on the premise of spaced repetition learning. This is from Earl Langdon. We all did it, and the whole idea was that you listen to every tape— so we would now say CD— 7 to 21 times before moving on to the next one, because it takes 7 to 21 times to form a habit. If you move into a new house where you haven't lived before, you'll be reaching for the light switch in the wrong place until 21 nights have passed, and then you'll get it every time. So to penetrate the subconscious takes 7 to 21 repetitions. Therefore, you're going to take these 6 home and you're going to listen to each one 7 to 21 times. All right, that's 42 times 148, I think, repetitions in order to get that. And then it will be permanently embedded in your subconscious and will be part of your daily existence. You're not going to hear anybody selling with that story today. You're not going to see it in a sales letter, and you're not going to hear a speaker say it from the front of the room. You know why? Because we're not going to sell anything, that's why. Not that it suddenly became invalid. It's because if I tell anybody to go and get 140-some-odd repetitions of this to get it, they don't want it. That's too many repetitions. That's just where everybody is. So everybody stripped it out of their sales presentation. All of us. Nobody uses it anymore. Okay? It used to be a big part of the sales presentation. Not now. Right? You can't use it. So they don't— this is not about education today. Whoop. There we go. It's not about learning. It's about things to do, things to use. For which I get a result. The Magnetic Marketing System is all about things to take out and use. We added the S&D envelope to the newsletter. You guys all get that envelope every month now with something in it that's basically ready to use. Why is that there? Because you want things to do. Visible, measurable, quick outcomes. So they want to see a result. Acceptance. They want to be given acceptance when they are part of your thing, when they are using your product, when they have joined you. They do not want you whipping them and shaming them for where they are at point of entry. Now what they need, and perhaps as important, what you need to accomplish with them. If they're going to have any real lasting value to you, they have to be willing to engage in complex thought and they have to become serious students. So how many in here have been to more than one of our events? Raise your hands nice and high. You learn more looking around at everybody else than you do at me. Okay. How many of you read? I don't mean capability, I mean regularly. Okay? I mean regularly read. Okay? How many of you regularly listen? Okay? How many have bought more than 5 information product type resources in the past 12 months? Okay? Now, if you were looking around instead of looking at me, you would see that most of the hands go up. That tells you— so when Bill said we're a lot better than everybody else at filling seats and we're about to spend 2 nights talking about how to put butts in seats, you just saw one of the secrets. You got to have a herd of serious students. If you have a herd of casual students, you will pay hell putting butts in seats. So you've got to grow serious students, and in part, so your products have to sell that idea. Go back, take the last 12 months of newsletters, take a yellow highlighter pen, go through every newsletter and see how much space and time is devoted to selling the idea of being a serious student. You will see a lot. We need them to have an interest in developing skills, not just getting results. If you don't get them interested in mastery of skills, there's a limit to their value to you. We've got to do some belief system re-engineering, because where they are when we start selling products to them is usually not in a very good place. We have to get them to focus and not have the next bright shiny object attention deficit to the extent that most people do. We'll never eradicate it, by the way, but we have to temper it. We have to get them to implement— if they're going to have long-term— they have to implement everything, But if they're going to have long-term value to us, they have to actually use some of the product they buy. They will only consume so much unused, and then they will stop consuming. But if they are using something, they will consume more, and we have to sell them on the idea of personal responsibility so that they're accountable and responsible for their implementation not us. So great information product is not as simple as what can we slap in a box in exchange for money if we want to accomplish anything above and beyond the exchange for money. And when you sit down to plan your product, you really want to consider the— all of the objectives you want to accomplish. You want to consider where they are going to be intellectually, experientially, and emotionally at the time that they start with that product. Where are they? And you want to remember the elapsed time problem between purchase and use. Hope this has been helpful to you. We are done with 19, 18 seconds to spare, so you have time to send a tweet or something, and I'll I'll see you later.

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