The One About Education Based Marketing - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #96

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. Look at us. I'm in Florida.

There's no first or second. I just said the third because it sounded funny. I don't know what I'm even talking about.

I don't know what that means.

I should talk into the mic here because I'm talking into the phone, because that's how me and you hear each other. But the real thing I need to be talking into is the mic. Yes, that's right, the mic. And I'm adjusting the mic right now as we talk. Okay, so, Dean, listen. Today I would like to record Listen. Yeah, you got that? Listen. That's a command. I would like to do a episode that we can direct people to so when they listen to this episode, as soon as they're done with it, they send me money. Okay, I'm kidding. I'm not gonna. What I want to do is be nice, but that's not. That's not necessarily the point. The point is to direct people to a recording so that they kind of understand some of the psychology of what I love marketing is all about. Now, if people are not listening to every single episode we're getting close to at the time we're doing this one. A hundred episodes, they're all about these eight profit activators going over the before, during, and after units of your business. With the first one being narrow your focus and select a single target market. Second one being used, profit activator. When I say second one. Second profit activator using direct response offers to compel prospects to call you. The third activator, patiently and systematically educate and motivate prospects to meet you when they're ready. We're going to really talk about this third one today. Fourth being present your unique service offers in a way that makes it easy to get started. The fifth, deliver a dream come true experience designed from your client's perspective. The sixth one is provide after sales service even after you've already been paid. The seventh one is nurture lifetime relationships and focus on lifetime value. And the eighth activator is orchestrate referrals by giving your clients the opportunity to feel great. Now, these are kind of like they should be used before every marketing meeting, like people do in 12 step groups where they read the 12 steps, so it brings them back to it. I mean, I think marketing really should be reading the eight profit activators before any discussion about marketing with anyone. What do you think Dink, we started a movement.

Well, I think it would help. I mean, you know, can you imagine how much more focused meetings would be if you knew which profit activator you're focused on? Gives clarity. Yeah.

I'm going to eat an almond too. So if you hear any weird noise in the background, it's just me eating almonds while.

Perfect.

Do this call. Right? Yeah. All right. Now that means I'm going to talk with my mouth full of almonds right.

Now, but I want to be slightly more annoying than when you talk without it. Exactly.

I'm here to annoy. So the reason I mentioned all of these is that one thing that we want to keep coming back to is fundamentals. And before we started recording, I suggested to Dean that let's do an episode on education based marketing. And you said, yeah, not just educating people, but motivating them. Because if you just educate people but you don't motivate them to buy, you got nothing. Which I absolutely agree with and I would like to be able to have an episode to. Well, you know, I'll let our listeners decide after you listen to this. If you have people that you're trying to explain this marketing stuff to or you're trying to get them to understand why your ads or your websites or your emails or your whatever form of communication you're doing, mobile phones on billboards, on wherever you're advertising or promoting or messaging stuff about your business that they, if you need to share with your team why you're doing what it is you're doing, that you can have an episode that you could have them listen to and it would kind of get underneath the, you know, the psychology, the method to the madness. And so that's why I want to talk about education based marketing, which is where me and Dean really started our marketing businesses by educating people. And we've talked extensively on previous episodes using consumer awareness guides and free recorded messages and videos and all of that stuff. And so I want to really go deep with that on this episode and talk about things that we've even talked about in the past, which is fine because we really want people to get it. And my whole comment about reading this, you know, I love marketing eight profit activators, before you have any discussion is to get it back into your head. I mean, you know, there you don't need a million tools in your toolbox. You just need to know how, you know how and why these things work. And educating people intelligently and motivating them along the way is the very best method of enrolling people into what it is you're doing. So, Dean, what is education based marketing? Why should someone educate people? And let's go from there as a jumping off point because I've got plenty of stuff I could say.

Well, you know, the, the easiest thing to answer that is that, you know, education based marketing is probably most effective because people subscribe to a questions based buying process. So the education is about making sure that they get all of their questions answered. You know, when you come into a buying situation, what you're looking to do is get educated on your options and make sure that your needs are going to be met. Make sure that you're making the right choice, make sure that you are examining all of the options not going to get taken advantage of. There's any number of things that somebody might be thinking as they're going through the process of, you know, deciding which product or service to buy in your category and so being the one who educates them and lets them know all the, you know, answers, all of their questions, those all need to be answered before somebody makes a decision. People aren't generally going to make a decision until they get all their questions answered. And sometimes, you know, we think about, in, in sales, people talk about objection handling. And you know, I've always thought that's funny is just like that whole confrontational thing because it's really, you know, objections are really just an unanswered questions, you know, that they have that, that didn't get answered. But I just, I've always been kind of, I've always kind of. That's funny, you know, the whole positioning of a question as an objection.

Well, you know, it's kind of funny if you actually, what you just said, you know, if you think about objection handling. Well, what if you just answer all the objections in advance and then you.

Want to handle that? Exactly it. That's exactly it. One of the things I recommend is a, and I talk about this at these, at the breakthrough blueprint events, this book by Steve Scott called a Millionaire's Notebook. And in that book there is a chapter all about his process for how he writes a winning infomercial script. And that one chapter alone is worth the entire book because it basically goes through the process of looking at answering every single question that you could put possibly think of that a person would need to know before they buy or every reason why they wouldn't buy something. You know. And so the, the example that he uses in there is for Laurie Davis hair Care. So he goes through and explains the Whole process that he went through of, of how to create it. And so he writes out every. From the voice of the, of the customer, every single objection or every single reason or question why somebody wouldn't buy something. And then he makes it a point to address each of those in an elegant way that's not as sort of clunky or transparent as having an FAQ that has loaded questions that are clearly just there to set up your answer for the question, you know?

Right, yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. So what else?

Oh, you want me to keep going?

Okay, well, I mean, I got again, like I said, I got. Oh, yeah, but I just want to see how smart.

Yeah, exactly.

You gotta toss it over to me and I throw it back at you like a boomerang.

That's this. Yeah, exactly.

It's not even very nice.

I mean, it wasn't really very subtle even. Um, so part of the thing is, and you know, I'll talk about this, the elegance of this too is that it's about addressing what that dialogue is that's going on in their head. We always, you know, we talk about the, the whole process of really getting inside your prospects minds so that, you know, what are the conversations that are going on in their head. And it's so valuable to think that process through and to really put them on paper and then think about what would, what could I say? How could I educate them? How could I present new information to them that's going to address that concern so that it doesn't even come up? So it's not even an issue, you know?

Yeah, yeah, well, you know, like what, what prompted a lot of this today for me is like earlier today I went and had lunch. I won't mention his name, I'll mention him in the future. Maybe we'll even have him as a guest. It might be kind of interesting. But this is a very high up individual. I mean, one of the top people at Arizona State University. And ASU is a very large public university and we're talking about the branding of universities and the difference between ASU and like Ivy League schools and how a lot of universities will focus on what it takes to go to the university coming in versus being concerned with what happens when the students are going out. Mike Crow, who's the president of asu, this guy's going to meet with him tomorrow, talk to him about our meeting today, and set up a meeting so we can talk about all this stuff, which is something I've never really done. Go and Talk about branding for universities. I communicated real clearly my thoughts on universities that I think many universities are a total joke when it comes to signing people up and having them take prerequisite courses. Just as a way to keep people locked in so that they can get a degree and they don't drop out. Because if it wasn't for degrees, if you weren't giving people a great education, why would they stay? Right? So there's a model in place to keep people in continuity versus you just produce really great classes. And what he communicated to me and he said, Mike, what Mike Crow wants to do is really have the university. What their whole focus is that when people come to ASU they actually learn stuff there that allows them to get a result, not just go to school, but you can come out of there with something really useful. And I said, well, do you got data to support improve this? He went through a bunch of data points that shows the results that students are getting. Now obviously I'm going to delve much deeper into this, but the whole point is. So we started having a conversation about education based marketing. And I told him about in my carpet cleaning business, stuff that we've talked about on I love marketing before is that one of my favorite ways to sell and position something is by simply teaching people what it is that they need to know in order to make an informed, intelligent decision. And all of the things that people don't know that they don't know. And when it comes to someone buying something, if they're buying based on price, it's because it's the only criteria that they know how to make a buying decision. And so we started talking about the branding of a university and what do you need to say to the students? I spent basically about an hour talking with him about education based marketing. And the number one questioning going on in people's minds is who can I trust? And that's something that I first heard our friend Richard Rossi say, who can I trust? And he said in the right now there's such confusion, there's so much noise in the world about education. And he was even talking about online classes that they offer for free based on many lifestyle related things. And of course that's a recruiting method for the university is if they put stuff out there for free, you know, talk about moving the free line, it'll get people introduced to the university. But he said one of the things is that all the confusion, people don't know how to make a decision because there's so much noise out there. And of course the best way to address that. And I said to him, I said, you know, wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunity. And so if there's like this big anxiety in trying to, you know, attract people to go to your university compared to all the other options they have of other schools or not going to school at all, which in many cases is what I people that want to learn business I'm very much big on, read this book, listen to this podcast, go to this seminar. I know for a fact that most of the stuff that we teach from a marketing standpoint is way more valuable than what people would learn in college as it relates to marketing. Through this whole conversation, for one, I identified that if what he was telling me is actually true, that they're really focused on making an offer that don't come to our college because we have all these classes, but come to our college because you're going to get a result. One of the things I'm going to explore as to what ability can they actually guarantee that, you know what I mean? Then secondly, looking at what do you need to say and what do you need to teach people about learning before you actually get them engaged in learning from you? And so I walked him through my consumer awareness guide, which, like you mentioned earlier, was based on questions. 8 mistakes to avoid when choosing Blank. 7 questions to ask a carpet cleaner before you invite them into your home, how to avoid 4 Carpet Cleaning RIP offs. You know, I mean, just basic, simple stuff that we've talked about over and over and over again, but it's so relevant to whatever it is you're doing. And more than anything, I think today it is becoming more complex. And because of technology, people are wanting to make really lame content appear great because they can make it look pretty with videos or with editing or whatever, but really getting to the substance of what it is you're selling and going to the result and the outcome that you want your, you know, you want your clients to have. And so one of the things what this is leading me to is having all of our listeners, you know, you can do education based marketing, you can motivate people and stuff, but what the heck do you even, you know, when you think about your product, you think about your service, what does it deliver to people? What is the result they get? What is the thing they do? When I do consulting for people, I like using the word glop, you know, because people say, oh, I sell a supplement and this supplement is the greatest thing in the world. It does this, this and this, and I'm like, okay, well, it's glop. It's glop in a jar. Or I've written this book, and this book is awesome because it has this, this, and this. Or I'm a graphic designer, or I have a course that teaches people how to play music. And it's like, okay, well, it's all glop. So what is so great about your glop that you need to say in order for people to. Before they even pursue your glop? But just buying glop in general, why is your glop better than everything else? And I've never used this website, but I do own the name beyond glop.com, you know, because I just think it's. I think it's kind of a funny name. But you know, what takes it beyond the glop? And if you look at all of the glop in the world that people have, you know, what is the missing ingredient to explain, you know, why this glop is better than every other. Every other glop. And the thing that you need to do is you need to educate people. So it all starts with education. And then last thing I'll say about asu, about our conversation, then I'll shut up and let you comment on this is one of the things he talked about. Their focus is on asu, which is different than other universities, is access. They really, while a lot of universities want to position it around status and who gets in, they really want to give people access. If they don't, from a money standpoint, they just want to help people that can't easily get a college education in some areas. The second is they want to focus on excellent content, excellent combination of different disciplines that they take people through and how it's delivered. And then the impact was the third thing he said. He's like, we really want people coming out of the university really impact it. Not just going to university so we can sign them up and make money, but we want them to come out. The question is really, how do you actually structure that message so people get that? The reason I brought that up is as this progresses, I will talk about it and share it on the I Love Marketing podcast. But what I want to do is take this as an opportunity to win myself over to certain ways that some universities do stuff, because in a lot of ways, I've been very anti, you know, college in certain topic matters. Of course, not all, you know, I mean, no one's going to become a doctor without going to school. But the point is Is like there are certain things where formal education is necessary, but there's a lot of things where sometimes it's a, it's a handicap. So in any way. So those are, those are just some of my ramblings. Now it's your turn.

What did they say about, I mean, what did they think about this whole idea of, were you recommending you make any recommendations for them?

Oh, well, this was sort of a, this is our first. We had, we had met before at skysong, which I remember kind of their, the, you know, the Silicon Valley of Arizona, I guess, really cool, you know, place for startup companies and technology that they've done. We're talking about AI. I mean, this individual has done some, I mean, very highly educated, very smart dude, very nice guy. This was sort of like a meet and greet. But he very much bought into it. I mean, I was surprised how much we thought alike. And his real focus was really about not what's in it for the university, but what's in it for the students. And that's what really struck me. I was like, wow, this is really cool. But I said, I said, I haven't told him. I said, my experience with college is, I think most of it is a joke for so many areas because, you know, you have these. Here we are as marketers and we, in order to keep someone signed up on our stuff and continuing to pay us continuity, we literally have to create value for people. You know, someone goes to a college or university and they want to get a degree at this particular, at a particular university. I mean, you may be forced to take classes that have absolutely nothing to do with anything, you know, but that's the only way you're going to get your degree. And in a lot of ways I'm like, well, you know, and I mean, look, how many times have you had people come to our seminars and tell us that I learned more in your three day event than I did going to college for four years.

Yeah, exactly.

I've heard that like a thousand times, you know, so I, you know, I sort of have a jaded perspective on it. But you know, when he was telling me about all the stuff they're doing online and I was very impressed. So, you know, I'm, I'm interested to, to see what they do. But see, but here's the, here's the beauty of it, because what I told them, you know, I said like what you're telling me here, if this is actually indeed true and you can deliver on that result, everyone needs to hear about it. All of your prospective students. That's education based marketing. That's what it is. It's taking these private conversations and intentions and actually making them public. And of course, a dream come true for us would be any marketing that's taught at any university should be the eight profit activators. Before, during and after. I love marketing. Education based marketing, delivering a dream come true experience, teaching lifetime value of a client, showing people how to. We talked about a value creation monopoly because one thing I mentioned is, well, if you're the only electric company in town, you can have the crappiest service in the world and people still have to buy from you. But the best monopoly is a value creation monopoly, which is a term Dan Sullivan came up with. He has a process around this where the client grants you the monopoly, not vice versa. I mean, you can leave any time, but you don't because you just love them so much. And so my thing would be working with any sort of educational process that is so good that people are just like, yeah, you know, why would I want to leave? And you know, one of the things I said for the longest time for Piranha members is that Piranha Marketing is a school that pays you to attend. If you simply use the methods, the templates, the sales letters, the campaigns, the offers that we give you, you're going to make multiples back than what it cost you. And so could you imagine a public university though, offering a 100% money back guarantee?

How great would that be? I mean, you know, there's, that's the thing is that you're right, so much of it, it all threads back to what kind of an offer can you make? Because you can educate people into, you know, understanding the value of your offer compared to other offers. You know, that's really what the, that's, that's the value of educating people is really understanding, you know, helping them understand why your choice is different than the other choices, you know?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, and I also mentioned too, which you've seen me use in speeches is that I basically never got a degree in anything. I failed owning and operating a small business at Chandler Gilbert Community College and I got a circle minus in marketing. Right, I love that. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I've got, you know, I always love the line, you know, how'd you get your education on marketing? People ask me, I mean, I'll say, you know, just like Abe Lincoln, I was self taught and I told him I've read over a thousand books, mostly on business and I've spent Over a million and a half dollars on my personal marketing education. So I've spent far more time and money educating myself. I don't really care how someone gets their knowledge, it's just the fact that they do it and they do it effectively and they do it efficiently. The same thing applies to how you sell your stuff too. I mean, it's our job as marketers that we need to position our companies by doing the best job humanly possible to give people clarity, give them direction, confidence and capability so that they can make an informed buying decision and positioning it in a way to where it's easy to understand where you are really focused on what's in it for them, not what's in it for you. And that's why brand building and ego based talking about how great you are may seem like the thing to say in your advertisements or on your website or whatever, but it's not what attracts people to you. It's kind of like fishing because you really think your boat is cool or you're pole is cool or your hook is really cool and therefore the, the fish should bite on it. Because you know, you've been fishing for 20 years and you've got many years of experience by keeping your bait in the, in the water. You know, I mean like focus on what's in it for the fish, not why the fish should. You know, I really want the fish to bite so therefore you should bite on my hook. And I know that sounds corny and goofy, but honestly is, isn't that pretty much what most businesses do?

It really is, you know. Yeah. And that's not like they're. Yeah, I was going to say that. One of the big mistakes that I see people make is in, in profit activator number three is just focusing on the educating. You know, they'll run ads, they'll run ads in profit activator number two, compelling ads offering a free report. And then they'll send the free report and, and then, or they'll bring people to their website and they'll opt in for a free report and then they'll just bombard them with more free reports. They'll just continue to send people more education without anything that is going to motivate them to take action. You know, you do need to educate, you do need to let people know. You do need to answer their questions in a way that answers them without them even being spoken because you're not at this point in a conversation with them. But the more time that you spend really getting inside their mind understanding what are the things that they need to know to make a decision and educating them on all of those, but also being crystal clear on what's the next step. You always have to lead to the next step. And that's the thing. People, as our friend Jay Abraham likes to say, people are silently begging to be led. And I think that the, that's one of the biggest missing pieces that I see is that they're, you know, just continuing to educate people but not having any way of indicating what the next step is aside from you ready to buy yet, you know, it's not. That's the only thing that they're doing in their, in their follow up, you know, and realizing that it might take a while to educate and motivate somebody and being okay with that.

Yeah, because see, because selling is a process, not an event. And when people expect it to just be an event, and sometimes it is, you know, I mean, look, I've take restoration companies versus carpet cleaners. You know, a lot of carpet cleaners also do restoration where someone has a flood or fire, they come in and they will clean up, they will help, they will assist with that. Someone has a flood at 3 in the morning, they're not going to wait three weeks to get educated about how to clean up a flood or make a buying decision. I mean, they need someone like right now. Now the people that are most likely though to have to get called by them is people that have been sending a newsletter monthly have done something and hopefully a company that has cleaned their carpets that also does restoration or at least can recommend a restoration company. But they're two different timings when it comes to making a buying decision. One affords the ability to drip on people and to educate them and take time. Other things are just emergencies. And the worst position for a consumer to be in is to have to make a decision about something without any prior criteria or that anyone's ever helped them along the way. Some things you're not out looking to get educated on certain stuff because you're thinking you're going to have an emergency. But it certainly from the business owner standpoint, it certainly helps. I mean, in your experience, Dean, with how well you've trained Realtors to actually be, you know, servants instead of just salespeople.

Right?

I mean, how many of your Realtors get called for, oh, do you have a plumber you recommend? Oh, do you have a roofer you recommend? Do you have a pool guy you recommend? Do you have a painter you recommend? Simply because all of these Realtors were so engaged in the education process of helping people. You know, there's a lady that I recently met that has a company staging diva.

Yeah, we met her together.

Right? Yeah, Deborah. And you know, it's like, I mean, it's like who. She has to educate people on how to stage their home in businesses for sales. But it's like in the process of doing that, it opens up the door for all these other opportunities.

Yes, yeah. And that's part of it is that, you know, you have to educate people. But again, the. You talk about the real estate and one of the examples that I always use just to show how it all ties together is that, you know, you can't sort of just isolate the educating and motivating because it's. It starts with Profit Activator 2, with what you actually get them to raise their hand for how they, how they get into your world. And you know, Profit activator number three is just a gateway into Profit Activator four where you get to meet with them and present your unique service offer. Now, you know, when somebody comes in from the real estate side, the example I use are lakefront homeowners. We send postcards every month offering the free December 2012 report on winter Haven lakefront house prices. And that is something that we send every single month. There's no commercial intent visible in the postcard at all. We're not saying, we're not trying to convince anybody of anything. We're just offering the information because we know that the conversation going on in a lakefront potential lakefront sellers mind is, I wonder how much my house is worth if somebody's going to sell their house, that's the first thought that they have. So why not just find out who among these 2,000 lakefront homeowners is thinking about how much their house is worth? Because that's the precursor to actually putting it on the market. So we do that, we get people to raise their hands, then we educate them on what lakefront homes are actually selling for. And we include with that a booklet on how to sell your house for top dollar fast. Now we kind of start educating them about the home selling process, but we always know what the next step is. We're going to motivate somebody to take some action by offering them something that is exactly what they need to address one of the questions that they have. So we spend a lot of time and we thought about what is it that home sellers are thinking? What's the conversation that's going on in their head? So one of the conversations, once they get the report on what all of the lakefront houses are selling for. The next thing they want to know is, well, how much is my house worth? Because they know what all the lakefront homes are selling for. But now it's going to be valuable for them to know what their house is worth. They want to know, what should we do to get the house ready to sell? They may have a list of things they may have questions about. Should we replace this carpet or should we just get it cleaned? Should we repaint? What color should we choose? Should we rent some storage space to get all this clutter out? Should we redo the kitchen? I mean, there's a million questions that people might be motivated to find the answers to about what do they do to get their house ready and get the most money for it possible? And then the other thing they might be thinking is like, boy, I just wish somebody would just buy the house. You know, we didn't have to go through this whole process. So we know that those are the top three conversations that are going on. So we packaged up offers that address each of those things. We didn't ask them what they're thinking. We thought it through ahead of time, and then we offered them these three things. So we offer, for the people who want to know what their house is worth, a pinpoint price analysis where we come, and we'll tell you exactly how much your house is worth compared to all the other homes that are for sale and sold. And we guarantee to sell your house in at the pinpoint price in less than 60 days. That's a. That is addressing that issue. If people want to know what to do to get their house ready, we offer them our room by room review, where we start at the curb, we go to the closets, and we go through everything in the house with a checklist telling them and making recommendations on what they should, should, and shouldn't do to get the most money possible when they sell their house. Then if people are just wanting to sell their house, we offer our silent market, where if you're not quite ready to put your house on the market yet, but you'd consider selling it if we had a buyer, we've got our silent market where we're constantly generating new buyers and we may have a buyer for your house and be able to sell it without even putting it on the market market, that those three things address the three biggest conversations and they're motivated. We're motivating them to take the next step because we've got these things for them. We talk about them as cookies. You know, we talk about them as making an offer rather than waiting for people to ask us to direct us. You know, just like J. Abraham says, people are silently begging to be led. Well, business owners are people, too. And the psychology behind this is that they are silently waiting to be led as well. It would be much easier for them if they just sent out information and then people called them and asked them to come over and tell them about all the things that they should do to get their house sold, because they'd be happy to do it, but they're not thinking that ahead and making that offer in advance, you know?

Yep, exactly.

That's what you were trying to say.

Sometimes gonna say, but then I. Then I forgot.

Well, you know, we talk about that as the difference between sitting somebody in the living room and saying, there's lots of stuff in the fridge. If you want anything, go ahead and help yourself. That's one thing. But it's very different to sit somebody in the living room and come in and offer them a plate of freshly baked cookies and say, would you like a cookie? It's already done. You've already done the work. People don't like people to go out of their way. That's the way we're societally wired.

You know, one thing that you did say, now I remember you're talking about, you know, we didn't ask them what they. You'll have to correct the way that you phrased it. But, you know, we didn't ask people what it is they were thinking. We just did the thinking for them.

Mm.

Okay. One of the geniuses of Steve Jobs, because, you know, there's many conversations that I've heard where people are like, well, you know, Steve Jobs didn't, you know, create all the computers and stuff. He was just the head of the company and kind of like, oh, you know, he only did, you know, kind of dream up and guide and direct one of the, you know, largest companies in history. You know, he didn't really do anything important. Plus, he was a, you know, a maniac and kind of an asshole, so he doesn't deserve any credit. You know, that sort of stuff. And certainly there's no argument that he was a very strange, interesting guy that if you were on the wrong side of him, was, you know, tough to deal with. Now, that being said, you know, he hated focus groups from as far as I could tell from people that knew him and from what I've read and stuff, and that he, you know, wasn't going to ask people what they wanted. He would just think through what it is they wanted, did the thinking for them, have it created and then sell it to them. Nobody knew they needed an ipod until he presented it. Nobody knew they needed an iPad or an iPhone until he presented it and invented products in markets for things that didn't even exist. And I think that goes very deep into education based marketing because marketers, as we've said many times, do not get the respect they deserve. It's one of the most, if not the most important thing needed in order to have a successful business. And a lot of people treat it as if it's like a sin that you want to use marketing. The thing with, if you look at Apple from their headlines, the original iPod campaign, 1000 songs in your pocket, you know, great headline. And then the keynote presentations that were done, all education based marketing, you know, getting people in this, displaying and explaining, you know, the benefits. And you know, Robert Cialdini, we'll have to. There's a new animated video that Robert Cialdini put together. His wife Bobette sent it over to me today. We'll have to pop it up on the I love marketing podcasts at some point.

Cool. Get him on again. I mean, yeah, aside from did we had him at the conference, but we'd be good to do an actual episode with him.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, one of, you know, he talks about, well, now I'm forgetting what I was going to say with it on this video. Well, let's see. Okay, so he has. Robert Cialdini's thing is about reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking and consensus. Those are the forms of influence. And I've known Robert for over a decade. And basically the thing as it relates to Apple, like one of the things with using influence techniques is if you like scarcity as an example is something that all smart marketers use because if it's always plenty and available, it doesn't matter how great it is, nobody seems to want it. People seem to want things more when the availability of them becomes limited or if they can't get it at all, then all of a sudden they want it. I mean this is psychological. And so the thing with so a lot of it is selling based on loss. What you're going to lose if you don't have that. And as I've watched like Apple keynote presentations like the ones with Steve Jobs and what's great is you can go watch all of these old Apple keynotes online and you can see just master sales pitches being done by Steve Jobs. One of the things that happens is that you feel like you're really going to lose out or miss out if you don't have this damn technology. Steve actually was a master creating this pain that people would have for needing and wanting and desiring something when none of it was a necessity of them living. It's just something that would instill that sort of feeling and that belief. But the point is he did it through education. We're always selling people on the benefit of marketing. Now this is going to seem like an aside, but there I don't know if you read. Our friend JR sent over an article like about, I don't know, like a few days ago, Business Week, they wrote an article about the science behind the Obama campaign, right?

Yeah. The science between short personal expecting reply emails, right?

Yeah, yeah. And I want to read a couple of highlighted notes that were in the email that he had sent over to me and you. And it says of Obama's 690 million, most came from email marketing. Email marketing using direct response marketing. That's what they say in the article. Then we did extensive AB testing, not just on the subject line and the amount of money we would ask people for. Says Amelia Showalter, director of Digital Analytics. The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your inbox from other people. Falls graph said says hey was probably the best one we had. Over the duration, Obama's email fundraising team tested hundreds of grabby success subject lines. The most successful hey brought in millions of dollars. And then another one every time something really ugly one, it would shock me. Giant sized fonts for links, plain text links versus pretty donate buttons. Eventually we got the thinking, how could we make things even less attractive? That's how we arrived at the ugly yellow highlighting on the sections we wanted to draw people's eyes to. And then another one. Most people have a nearly limitless capacity for email. The data didn't show any negative consequences to sending more. Now what's funny is this was sent to a couple people on our team. One of them said, that's pretty stinking cool. Finally, direct response marketing gets some props from a main mainstream source. What's funny is how they act all surprised at their discovery, as if no one has ever tried this approach. We've been doing this stuff in Piranha marketing for over 18 years. And so it's like, you know. And then another quote from one of my team members said, but, but, but I thought DRM was invented by the government, which I think is funny. But you know, the point Is whatever, someone dmv. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Direct response marketing, drm. But the point is, like I even said it, I said, you know, that the reason Obama won was better marketing. And people will argue with me and they'll go, you know, but the bottom line is it was marketing that did it. And you know, and there you go. So, and it was a lot of, you know, a lot of education based marketing about their side and that sort of stuff. So the point is this is the way to do it. This is how the biggest companies and the biggest campaigns in the world are actually won. So the key is if you're not going to do this on your small business, then that's your choice. So let's talk about some ways that people can actually utilize it, Dean, and kind of go back to the profit activators. I'd love to have you walk people through. I mean a lot of people that listen to our podcasts are very experienced marketers. They understand, you know, copy, they have sales letters, they have dream offers. They've thought this stuff through. If you were to like, if someone brand new, this was the first episode they listened to from I love Marketing. And they're hearing this education based marketing stuff. And the question is, you know, where do I start? You know, I've got a company. What would you tell them to do?

Well, I think that. Let me read you, I'm going to read you page 194 from A Millionaire's Notebook. I just grabbed it, I've already got it highlighted in my, my copy of the book here. But it just says where do you, you know this, you asked the question where do you start? Here's what this is. His personal inventory for success. Number one, describe your listeners and listen their desires or needs that your product or idea will fulfill. So that sounds a lot like what would be a dream come true from your client's perspective. Right? So that's where you start. You start with that. Then number two, he says, state why your product fulfills these needs or desires better than any other product or idea available to the listener. So when you understand what it is that they really want. And then you can start the education process with showing why your product or service is going to get that for them. Number three, list and prioritize every possible objection and excuse your listener might use for not purchasing your product or accepting your idea proposal. And that's pretty interesting, you know, interesting words that what you really are doing is you're trying to get somebody to accept your idea or proposal and it's Pretty. You know, when you start thinking about that, if you think from their perspective, that's where all the magic is, is when you understand that, you know, then is this like an off? You know, it's like a tennis match. You know, you're starting at number one. You think from their perspective, Then you go over to your side and state why you meet all of those desires and wants. Then you go back to their side, list and prioritize every possible objection. Then you come back on your side, number four, list and prioritize how your product or idea overcomes each objection. Or, excuse me, those are the fundamental building blocks for how you go about educating and motivating people. You know, and then he goes through this whole thing of how to script a sales presentation that uses all of those techniques. You know, I would. I would highly recommend this book because it's just about the. The process, the thinking process, which is really what's valuable, you know, Our friend Marty Chouinard, do you remember his automated software marketing software system or whatever it was? Essentially, he never told anybody this, but I knew because I've read this, such a rare book that not many people even know about this, but essentially his whole software thing was those questions, you know, straight from the book.

Yeah. Well, I met Steve Scott, like, several years ago. He was the funniest thing.

Well, does he still live there in fear?

I don't even know where he lived. I haven't talked to him in probably, like, five years. He was doing a. There was an event next door at the Embassy Suites, like, right next to my office, and someone. And Dave Kekich, you know, had recommended his other book, which was called Mentored by a Millionaire. Is that his other book?

Yeah, he's mentored by Millionaire. Yep.

And so, you know, and it's funny because, you know, Dave had just told me, oh, you really need to get this book. And I swear to God, like, about three days later, I get introduced to Steve Scott completely by accident. But, yeah, I mean.

This is one.

Of those situations where. Watch all the spikes of sales for that book as a result of this podcast episode.

Yeah, exactly. We should leverage that into getting him as an episode, because he's done a lot of stuff. People don't know who Steve Scott is, but they. The Total Gym Richard Simmons deal, a meal, where there's a will, there's an a. You know, the American telecast is the name of the company that they started, and they're one of the most successful infomercial companies ever, so. Well, there you go.

And even in the notes section here, under his name, I have infomercial I ordered a product for on October 1, 2006. So funny. All right, so what I want to. Dan Sullivan has these things called the multiplier mindset cards. And he has 50 think, you know, 50 very smart people, me being one of them on there because I have a card for me. So I had to say that. And one of them is David Ogilvie. He puts their law on the front of the card. And I wanted to read this. We've talked about this in past episodes, but I really love this. And it's David Ogilvie. His bio is. Born in 1911, died in 1999. British advertising executive Ogilvy was known as the first father of advertising and identified the importance of direct advertising. His advertising mantra followed four basic principles. Research, professional discipline, created brilliance and results for clients. He's the author of Confessions of an Advertising Man, Ogilvy on advertising. And anyway, he had this law, which is it is of no use being an original creative thinker if you can't sell what you create. I love that too, because a lot of business owners will just argue that they have great ideas, great products, great services, but if you cannot sell them, then who gives a shit, you know what I mean? So part of this is, well, okay, so you have your product, you have your service, you have your glop. So the challenge here as a result of this episode is what are you going to do in order to start educating prospects on what it is and why they should care and how are you going to crawl inside their heads and determine what it is they're thinking and taking their objections before they even express themselves as objections. And educate people so that by the time they watch your video, visit your website, read your email, email, you've moved them one step closer to engaging with you. Just like the profit activator, patiently and systematically educate and motivate prospects to meet you when they're ready. And Dean, you know, like one of the things we've constantly have discovered about people that, you know, try to follow our advice is we'll say, okay, you want to send out, let's keep it in the direct mail world as an example, you want to send out a letter or a postcard and you want people to call a free recorded message. And on the free recorded message they're going to request a report and then the report is going to share with them things about your product or your service, educate them, and that's going to make an offer so that they can Buy from you. And people are like, okay, yeah, I'll try that. And then they'll take the letter, but instead of putting in a free recorded message, they put in their actual office letter number, and they want people to call them directly so they can just talk to them and sell them immediately. And then they'll send out the letter and they'll change. You know, everything will stay pretty close to the same. But instead of having a free recorded message, it goes to an office number. And they kind of left out the whole. Get them to request the report, send them the report, or email them the report, and then start that process because they're impatient, and they immediately want to make a sale, and they don't think it's important. And then, of course, the campaign doesn't work. And then they say, well, I tried your letter, and your letter doesn't work. And we've heard that sort of bullshit, like, enough times to know that. Well, yes, you're right. It doesn't work because you're not mailing our letter. You change the recipe. It's like you had a recipe to bake bread, and you left out the yeast, and then the bread doesn't rise, and you're like, I followed your recipe well. Yeah, you left out one of the ingredients. Well, so what was. Yeah, but one of these ingredients makes it work or makes it fall flat, just like baking bread. So the offers and everything is the yeast. So my question to you is, with that long setup is, what's the difference between patiently and systematically educating and motivating prospects to meet you when they're ready versus someone just wasting a lot of time not getting any response or moving someone ahead? Because on one hand, people need to be patient, and they need to really do this strategically. But we don't want people to just spend time just for the sake of spending time. I mean, we don't, you know, as far as me and you are concerned, we'd love to eliminate any wasted time in the communication process that leads to where you, you know, the result. However, certain steps you just cannot skip. So how would you address that? Because that's one of the biggest challenges is that people want to see, you know, they want to listen to this podcast. Boom. You know, let me get something out there, educate people. But I need business, like, right now. I don't have the time for patience. And the unfortunate thing is, well, you know, you got to figure it out.

Yeah. The good news is that you can scratch both of those itches. You know, that part of the thing. The good News is that once you compel somebody to call, once you've gotten to raise their hand, profit activator number two has done its job. Now they're in profit activator number three. And number three can be a holding tank. You know, it can be quite some time before they ever move on to number four. And so the good news is that most businesses have already tried something like this and they've got this pool of people who, they generated leads, you know, six months ago or nine months ago or a year ago, and they have that bad experience that, well, I generated all these leads, nobody bought anything and that didn't work. But sometimes the very easiest thing that you can do is use that group and send out the amazing nine word email that you can revive those dead leads by just sending them a short little email. Are you still looking for a house in Georgetown? Or are you still looking for stylish motorcycle jeans? Or, you know, whatever, whatever it is that you, that you do, you send that out and now you're, you're kind of, you know, reactivating all of those people so that you don't have to wait for the new people that you're going to generate to go through that sales cycle. You know, so much. That education cycle is really about how long it takes people to get all of their questions answered, get all their ducks in a row, get to the point where they make a decision that they're going to move forward. And that could take quite some time. Most people like to start educating themselves on something well before they ever take action on it, you know. And so if you can patiently realize that and understand that, you know, it could be 12 months, it could be 18 months, it could be whatever, whatever amount of time before somebody's actually going to take action and be ready and there when it is time for them to take action, you know, and meanwhile, still focusing on the people who are ready to go right now. I often talk about this. You know, there's a book.

Where I.

Read about this company called the Inquiry Handling Service. And they just handle all kinds of leads, reader information requests, which is really about education based marketing. If you see in magazines where they have those reader service cards or you go to trade shows and people fill out a request for information, those things are requests for education really, if you think about it, when people are asking for that kind of information and so they handle millions of inquiries and they track everything by doing what they call. Did you buy surveys where they'll go and every 90 days they'll call and they'll ask people, hey, you inquired at the home show about new faucets. Have you bought new faucets yet? And you know, they do it at 90 days, at 6 months, at 9 months, at 12 months. And they find that only 15% of the people who inquire about something will buy what they inquired about within the first 90 days. But 85% of them, 85% of the people who buy will be longer than 90 days. And just over half of anybody who asks for information about something will actually buy what it was they inquired about within 18 months. So that's the best sort of cross industry, you know, across all sorts of industries, data that I've ever seen that kind of, you know, explains the buying process, the gestation period between the time somebody gets an idea and the time that they actually take action on it.

Yeah, well, here's the thing too, that always helps me when it comes to starting something new because I'm sitting there thinking about people that have not engaged in this yet and having themselves get overwhelmed with the, the time period and stuff. And you gave some great ways obviously to address this and contend with it. Is that quote, the best time. I don't know where it's originally from, but the best time to plant an oak tree was 20 years ago.

Right.

And the second best time is right now. So no matter where you're at, this is something that you either going to do it or you're not. And in the interim, there's plenty of other ways to generate business. And so part of this was all a setup too, because one of the things now after all of this conversation, one of the things that I'm going to recommend is we do follow our own advice. Our education based marketing process is called Breakthrough DNA on I Love Marketing. If someone goes to I Love Marketing and puts in their name and their email, they can get on the list, they can download Breakthrough DNA. It's a free report. It's not really pitching anything other than listening to the I Love Marketing podcast. And you'll go through the eight profit activators and if you've already read it, read it again. Because with this new information, you will read it, absorb it, listen to it and learn from it in a much different way than if you had not listened to this particular episode. So go and read that. And anyone that really doesn't understand marketing, and if you need to train somebody in your company to assist you and help you with the creation of effective marketing that works, one of the first things we recommend you do is have them read Breakthrough DNA. And if you need more extensive information, then listen to the past episodes of I Love Marketing. If you want it all in a book, you can get our I Love Marketing book, which is, you know, online. It's the, it's, you know, it's the best of the first 50 episodes that is put into a beautiful.

I just realized we're coming up on the, we're coming up on the next 50 episodes here. What the second book out soon? 51 to 100.

Yep, exactly. And so, and the thing I'll, I want to kind of end this episode with and then any final thoughts you have. Dean is the the multiplier questions from David Ogilvy, which started with it's of no use being an original creative thinker if you can't sell what you create. The three questions are, what is the single most important idea you have in your head that you haven't sold to anyone and when will you sell it? So if you could think about right now to our listeners, what is the most important idea that you have in your head that you've not yet sold? What is that? Write that down. And if you want to just take a couple minutes after this episode and just jot down what's, what's the single most important ideas that you have but you haven't sold them, then ask yourself, when will you sell it? Of course, how's someone going to sell that? You're going to use education. The starting point is everything we talked about on this episode. The second question is what is your company's best idea that is underperforming because of weak sales? How can you improve it? Well, the way to improve it with weak sales is use education based marketing and not just educate people. But as Dean said, you need to motivate them. You need to actually, it needs to be compelling. The third question is which of your clientele are always the best buyers of your new ideas? How can you maximize their role in your future if you sit and look at people that are your very best buyers of your new ideas? There's gold. And not only offering things to these people from the mere fact that they will buy it because you have rapport with them. Trust and rapport, which all came as a result of bonding, which was probably a result of education based marketing even if you did it in person. But they're the very best people that you can get feedback from that you can test new things on. These assets lay hidden and undiscovered in most businesses because they simply don't think about it. This way. But as a marketer, you always think about things this way. Those are my thoughts, Dean, anything you want to wrap up with. And then we are done with this episode.

Start educating.

That's it.

Start educating.

That's all you got.

But don't forget to motivate.

Okay, well then why don't you pitch them on coming to our event in January?

Well, here's the go. You know, we've been educating. I would say that the I Love Marketing podcast is an entire education based marketing system that we've been educating people for 96 hours now. All about the eight profit activators, all about the before unit, the during unit and the after unit. All about all the ways that we personally have applied these and created breakthroughs in our own businesses and in other people's businesses. And, you know, having the opportunity to spend three days with both of us in a room where we'll be able to spend one on one time with them in a small group of people. I mean, this is something where, you know, typically when we do events, there are hundreds of people and we never get a chance, chance to interact more than 30 seconds with anybody. You know, I can't tell you number of people. You have this happen too. We go to other conferences and people tell us how much they loved our conference and we've never laid eyes on them before, never even had any interaction with them, you know? Right. It's easy to hide in a 500 person event, but in a, you know, 30 person event you can't hide. You can look right in their eyes, you can, you know, be there and give people one on one attention. So on January 10th, 11th and 12th, we're going to have that opportunity. We've got I don't know how many spots we have left, but I think we only have five or six spots left, I think to come and spend those three days with us where the whole time all we're going to be doing is making sure that everybody in the room has a crystal clear blueprint for 2013, for not incremental improvements in their business, but for breakthroughs in their business. And all those things come from picking the absolute best target market, completely understanding from their perspective what the dream come true scenario would be for them, crafting the very best offer that you could possibly make, how you can get results in advance for somebody, then what you can do to compel those prospects to raise their hand and then educate and motivate them. So we'll spend time thinking through and really brainstorming and getting inside the mind of your prospects of your clients to craft the most motivating offers that we possibly can. And then we'll talk about in the during unit, how to really look at what you're doing and where are the strategic opportunities to increase by a minimum of 50% the value of everything that you do in your during unit and then in the after unit, how can we nurture lifetime relationships with the people who already know you, like you and trust you, and then orchestrate referrals? And some of the things, I mean, these are simple, easy things that you can do. And when I say easy, I mean it's not easy to think of these. It's a lot of work, it's a lot of effort that you're going to put in identifying what the very best things to do are. But the execution of them is going to surprise you, how easy it is and the dramatic results that you get. So I'm very excited about it. I've been doing these events with 10 or 12 people and for the chance for you and I to do one together is I'm excited about it. It's my new favorite thing.

Yeah, it'll be awesome. And so the question is, how much is this thing cost? Well, the real thing is the value of it. So it'll be worth, if you, you know, probably easily worth $100,000 or more. And some people, it will be worth a million dollars to their career in order to get the planning and get the strategy and taking the time to lay it out with us and a team of people. So it's not just we're going to talk about ideas. I mean, you're going to walk out of there with written templates. You're going to have what you need for your business and that's for the measly, tiny, miniscule, small, very scarce investment of $5,000. Then you need to get your butt signed up and call our office. I'll just give out the phone number too, because, you know, I'm not even going to drive anyone to a website. Although we do have that. Just call 480-858-0008 during the business hours of 7:30 to 4:30 mountain time, currently at the time we're recording this and in Arizona. So just think Arizona time and you know, speak with Eunice or Victoria and tell them you're interested in the breakthrough blueprint in January and they'll tell you all about it. Okey dokey. And that's for serious callers only, not wannabes, not lookie loos. If you need notation on that, then read Breakthrough DNA. And if that doesn't show you how awesome just even that is for free, then you can imagine how incredible it would be to spend three days with us going over this, which is super cool. All right, Dean, I'm done babbling. Until next time. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I love marketing. Tell your friends and neighbors about it, unless you don't like them, and we will see you on the next episode. Bye.