The One About Even More Branding - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode#102

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. What do you have to say for.

Yourself today, like nail polish? What I have to say for myself, I'm getting over a little bit of a cold, and so I sound a little like Dean Jackson right now.

Cold free in 2013.

You're lying so far. Oh, and this year, Okay, I thought I'm sitting there thinking, all right.

Oh, in my life. No, no, no, no, no.

I was thinking, even just a few.

Months ago in 2013. But it's pretty easy when you're living in a place where it's sunny and 70 every day, right? Yeah.

You know, when you're always in the shadows of Batman, you tend to get a little cold here and there.

See how you do.

Yep. I mean, I gave you a total opening to turn that back on me.

I know that's the truth.

All right, so. All right, so let's talk about. For people that are brand new to our podcast, because we get a lot of new subscribers every day. Actually, we get over 4300 to between 4600 on average, new subscribers to our podcast every day. Is it gone up, Dean, or is that kind of right?

It's actually spiking. We've had. In this past few weeks here, we've had spikes up to 6,000.

Oh, that's cool. That means that you may not have listened to any of the past episodes. If you're new to I Love marketing, or you've been listening ever since the very first episode, episode number one, which is always good to go back and re listen to some of them because they're just good. And you'll hear them from a different perspective the more you learn and understand marketing. Some of the foundational things are before, during, and after your before unit, your during unit, your after unit, and the breakthrough DNA that is downloadable on ilovemarketing.com so read that. It will make all of these episodes make more sense as you listen to them and listen to that or read that on a frequent basis because it's just good stuff to go back to. I mean, even me and Dean will go back and look at our written stuff just to help continue to keep our brain calibrated and not getting off track when it comes to developing and executing effective marketing campaigns. And so, you know, we. Some of our recent episodes, we hit our hundredth episode, which was cool.

We did that live. Our hundredth episode. If we were a TV show, if we were A sitcom. We'd be in syndication now and we'd be rich.

Yeah, yeah. And I got a message sent to me from someone who's an avid listener suggesting taking our curriculum and putting it into colleges and universities. It was a really good idea and stuff that he laid out. And my reply back was, you know, it's a good idea if we decide to go forward with something like that along what you've described, I'll let you know. However, I'm kind of an anti bureaucratic sort of guy, and I don't like trying to sell corporations or institutions into thinking ways that they're usually not very good at doing. And so our core audience is really entrepreneurs. However, even on a past episode, I talked about my meeting with one of the top people at Arizona State University who is extremely bright. And I do have people in the higher education world that I do have as friends and colleagues and people that I work with and that sort of stuff. However, taking I love marketing to maybe one day, but for now, our audience are entrepreneurs that are out there spending their own money, not someone else's money, usually, and have to take responsibility for their own futures and take risks and that sort of thing. And so we did an episode based around an article that I had, you know, written called, you know, branding equals bullshit question mark. And to mention, like we did on that episode, it wasn't a declarative statement that branding is always bullshit. Although, you know, most of the time for any small business owner, if they're going to say I want to bullshit, then it's, you know, I mean, it is absolutely total bullshit in most cases because, you know, the path that's going to take them down is not one about getting results, but just trying to get people to know who they are. And that generated a. A lot of response on Facebook. It generated some response on. Most of the response was on Facebook, not on. I love marketing because I still say, you know, at the time of recording this, I still think we have kind of a lousy commenting system. And I'll admit that on our own website. However, you know, we have had a lot of people that have sent us messages, even people that we know personally that have read the article, listened to it, and the vast majority love it. And a lot of people have to be careful about being outspoken about it because there's such this huge community of people talking about building a personal brand and branding yourself and all of this stuff where you almost feel like you're going to get attacked if you say anything negative about building a brand. As if you're a bad person or something. A lot of people have been sending us messages about Joe and Dean. I don't really think you know what the term brand really means. And here's the definition of it. And I've probably gotten about 10 people that have written very long emails or letters giving me an explanation of what brand really means. It reminds me of an interview I did with Nathaniel Brandon a few years ago. He's a psychologist who's the father of self esteem. He wrote bunch of fantastic books, you know, the Six Pillars of Self esteem. And you and I, we did a.

Program together for him, too.

Yeah, yeah. And just a brilliant guy. And, you know, he said in my interview with him that, you know, when someone goes to a therapist, they're not looking for an explanation. They're looking for an experience. You know, and part of it is, you know, I don't need an explanation of what branding is or what even direct response is. What I need is the results that it's going to, you know, develop. And so we'll give explanations to explain things.

Of course.

However, at the end of the day, someone can get all of the explanations about what a brand is and what it means and how important it is that still is not going to pay their bills. I mean, you need to make sales. And so the things that we focus on is teaching, proven, not theoretical, not opinions, proven marketing methods that have made literally billions of dollars for our clients. When I say billion of dollars, and I'm not talking about this technique, made billions of dollars for all the people in the world that use it. I mean, between me and Dean, our clients directly from our advice, have made well over $2 billion that we can even loosely track. Speaking for myself, I mean, I know that just in the cleaning and restoration industry, and then I have my clients like Bill Phillips in the past and Dean Graziosi, and single individuals that have made millions of dollars just utilizing things that they have learned from me. And the same goes with you. I mean, if you take all of the real estate agents all over the world that have, how many millions and millions of dollars have been generated directly from ads that Dean has written? I mean, using them verbatim, that's direct response. So we're not here to win awards for how our stuff looks. We're here to dispense advice that works. And, you know, since we are not charging people for this podcast, we'll say whatever the hell we want to say. And, you know, we don't have any reason to, you know, try to Convince someone of something from a standpoint of, oh, you must consider this as truth. I mean, we're just sharing what works for us and what has worked for.

Thousands of our clients.

And if people don't like it or it doesn't fit, you know, I'm sure there's plenty of podcasts out there that talk about how to build a personal brand. Now, having said that, I will still say that there are many attributes and values of getting your name out there and getting a response back. And we would love to have everybody not only have successful results, but have a position in the marketplace, have people perceive them in a certain way, have, for lack of a better word, a very positive, powerful, effective, valuable brand. So we're not opposed to any of that stuff. And we would say build and use direct response in order to build your brand if you want to go down that route and also pay your bills as you do it, not throw money down a black hole. And so, Dean, what I was thinking we would talk about today is, since we have that subject is let's talk about some of the elements of direct response. Because, you know, one of the things we had talked about, you know, many times is direct response versus, you know, say, you know, name recognition or institutional or image advertising, which is also brand building when it comes to advertising and marketing is, you know, building a brand is about getting your name out there. And of course, people that really take the term brand literally will say, no, no, it's so much more than that. Well, okay, I know. I mean, I know it's so much more than that, but I'm just for purposes here, let's talk about it from the marketing and advertising standpoint. So, you know, one, like institutional or image advertising is about getting your name out there. Direct response is about getting your name out there and getting a response back. It is a direct response. It's like everything that you do has a specific purpose. And I wrote a marketing course for carpet cleaner many, many years ago for carpet cleaners. And over 7,000 cleaning companies throughout the world have become members of my organization, Piranha Marketing. And we have a rich cleaner system is what we call it. And it literally teaches them 105 strategies. And one of the strategies is learn direct response marketing. And this was written, the first version was written back in 1994. And what is a direct response ad? And this is before the Internet and everything. And it says it's an ad that contains the following. A headline.

Two, creates interest in the service or the product. Three, creates desire in the prospect four.

Has a specific offer and five has.

A deadline or cutoff date.

And then I, you know, have a whole chapter on. Well, here I'll read a little bit more. And then I want what I'd like to do, Dean, is have, you know.

Your perspectives on all of these things like a headline or what, you know, creating interest in the service or product which has to do with copy. You know, creating desire in the prospect.

Having a specific offer, having a deadline or cutoff date. So I want to talk on this episode about all of those elements and creating urgency and all of the things.

That good marketing accomplishes. So let me read this a little bit more and then let's get into that dialogue. So most advertising in magazines, newspapers, on radio and TV are not direct response. They are institutional advertising, also called image advertising. There is no way of accurately tracking the response since there's no specific offer. Why do advertising agencies like image advertising? They can't be held responsible for zero results. If an ad campaign increase sales, they blame it on one of the A the economy or B they tell you that you need to run these ads that didn't work over and over again and suddenly they will work. Out of the two, the second is by far the worst. Advertising agencies are notorious for saying, well, the public just needs to see your ads more often and then you'll get more sales. Many people then waste a lot of money and still don't get results.

The theory is flawed.

If an ad doesn't work at all once, it's not suddenly going to bring in lots of money. It doesn't work that way. There's a tiny bit of truth of it. A very, very small percentage of your respons people who have seen the ad before. This is the frosting on the cake. There certainly isn't enough to substantiate wasting more money. Advertising agencies are interested in being creative and cutesy. That's what wins advertising awards. I think this is absolutely ridiculous. This advertising field gives awards based on creativity, not results. Many ads that have won top awards didn't produce any substantial increase in sales. They have forgotten that advertising is meant to do one thing and one thing only, to get more clients. That's the only reason I advertise. I don't care about name recognition. I just want more clients. Building name recognition is only possible with a huge, huge advertising budget. There is a lot of waste in that type of advertising. But some really big businesses can survive that waste. Businesses like McDonald's, Domino's and Budweiser, they can afford this massive Waste. Of course, if they use savvy direct response techniques, they'd cut the waste out of their advertising and their sales and profits would dramatically improve. Small local businesses don't have that option. We can't afford to waste marketing dollars on ads that don't pull in immediate cash. Direct response is results oriented. You know exactly how much money you made from jobs that come from direct response methods. Emotional direct response marketing gives your prospect something they want and tells them exactly what to do to get it. It gives them compelling reasons to use you. It gets response and response means money. And so I go on to say, here are some rules when marketing. Never do anything that you can't directly track the results. Never run an ad a second time that didn't work the first time time. Never fall in love with your ad. This is a common mistake for people starting out with direct response. An ad is only good if it gets results, period. Don't fall in love with any ad until you've tested it and know that it pulls. Become a student of direct marketing. Learn everything you can about it. The more you learn about marketing, the more you'll make. And if you'd like to know more, blah, blah, blah.

So that was written literally when I.

Was like probably 26 years old because I just kind of got it. I got it early on.

Yeah, yeah. Now I'm 45 years old at the.

Time that I'm recording this. I just had a birthday recently.

And basically it still applies.

You know, the difference is there's different media now that wasn't available back then. Like the Internet. You know, it didn't exist back then. I mean, no one was using Internet marketing, so we were relying on that.

But the advice in the psychology is.

Still exactly the same. And there are ad agencies out there that have become far better. And there are some smart ones that are out there. There are some that are results driven, but the vast majority are not. The vast majority of. It's like Gary Halbert used to say.

The two fields with the biggest levels.

Of incompetency are psychiatry and advertising. And I would still say that that's.

Probably pretty valid today. Yeah, so anyway, I babbled a lot.

During this, Dean, and I know you.

Have a lot of insight on this, so I'll shut up for a while.

And let you give some of your wisdom on this.

Okay, where do we start? Headlines. Is that what you want to start with?

Yeah, whatever. Talk about the elements of direct respons. Because.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important and let me say just One more thing, too.

Okay.

Now that you didn't take it and run with it.

I don't know the documentary, I think.

It'S called Pink Ribbon, Inc. It's about the breast cancer. Yeah, it's a great documentary that I would highly recommend everyone watch. It's basically about how a lot of activists, a lot of activists I don't really like. I mean, I think a lot of. If anyone's ever read how. How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Brown. I mean, great book to read, written many years ago, but this documentary is really about exposing the. I don't know, I mean, the unethical things that are happening within a lot of the breast cancer awareness, the breast cancer movement, the pink ribbon thing, where it originated from, how a lot of the money never goes to accomplish much of anything and how it's become more of a business than about breast cancer and how the people that are running and supporting it really are wanting to do the right thing and they really want to help find a cure for breast cancer and support their friends and family who've died from breast cancer or who have breast cancer. And at the same time, when you part the curtain, you see all the corporate nonsense that's going on behind the.

Scenes.

And I'll not do it justice. People really should watch it because it's really, you know, I'm not here to take a position on that. I mean, you know, it's more just an interesting movie that shows how this movement has been created. There's one thing where one of the activists say in it, though, that has a lot to do with branding and how I thought about it, where she said, you know, they give you all these quotes and all these stats of how much, you know, breast cancer awareness has increased since, you know, the runs and the pink ribbon and all the movements. But just like, you know, but what has this awareness done? Has it done anything to get anyone closer to a cure? Has it solved anything? Has it stopped anyone from dying? As a matter of fact, they show where it's actually increased. People dying and getting breast cancer in some cases, which, again, I'm not going to speak to that. You have to watch the documentary. The point, though, is, is the thing of, like, when this woman on the documentary mentioned that this awareness, it made me think about how many people talk about, well, we've got this many hits to our website. HITS stands for how idiots track success is what HITS really stands for. And people talk about how many media impressions we got or how much exposure we've gotten or how much awareness there is out there. And you really got to ask yourself, okay, well, is that awareness translating into anything? Does everyone know about you, but no one's buying from you? There's people that get negative PR and negative exposure that actually convert that into making money, and people that get all this positive, you would think, positive awareness that doesn't result in anything. So it's a very interesting thing to think about. And I think people just spend a lot of time meddling with stuff that they think is important that isn't. And so if you want a really interesting perspective, watch that documentary, because I just think it's a fascinating documentary that I hope more people would watch, because it really exposes a lot of the stuff that's going on in some of the philanthropical world, which is intended to look like it's doing good when it really isn't. And then secondly, it has a lot to do with this whole thing about getting your name out there and thinking that somehow translates into, into creating results. So. All right, now I've spent a couple more minutes.

Dean.

Well, you know, you talk about the awareness and building awareness, and one of the best illustrations that I can think of that they use for that is when I was doing the big real estate seminars, we'd have six or seven hundred people every month. And I would point out to people, you know, because real estate is notorious for personal promotion, for this whole idea and concept of getting your name out there. And that's, you know, most small businesses that are run by a founder, entrepreneur, you know, on, in a local market or anywhere else are often follow that same kind of principle. If you look through local newspapers or you look through local magazines, what you see is page after page of ads that the most prominent thing in the ad is the name of the business and their logo. And then they might have some, you know, bullet points of what they actually do, but there's never any call to action or there's never any reason to. To call, you know, or to identify themselves in any way. And so I would say to people, because that rallying cry of, you know, you got to get your name out there and you got to build top of mind awareness and all these things that sound like they make complete sense, and that if you were top of mind and you did have, you did get your name out there, that more people would call you. But often that's not the case at all. And so especially if you're just starting out, I mean, if you're, if you're starting out and you don't already have full awareness of everybody knowing who you are, and you're faced with spending your limited dollars and resources and time on one path or the other, getting your name out there or using those dollars strategically, which is really what direct response is about, to strategically get your message to the right people. And so when we break it up, direct response in the eight profit activators is really about profit activator number two, compelling your prospects to call you using direct response and profit activator number three, which is educating and motivating them to want to meet you. Now, when you look at it, the example that I would use in the seminars is I just. I'd say to people, okay, you've heard this. You got to get your name out there. And, you know, you don't even know what that means. You know your name out there, whatever that is, wherever there is, you got to get it out there. And I would always suggest that the difference is that direct response is about getting your prospect's name in here. You know, it's more important for you to know who your ideal prospects are than for everybody to know who you are. So I would suggest imagining that the room was a five or six or 700 home subdivision and that every person in the room was the owner of one of those homes. And I would give people a choice. I'd say you can either come up to the stage and I'll give you one minute to tell people who you are, anything that you want them to know to get your name out there. I'll help you get your name out there to all 600 people. Or you can sit right down right there in your seat and I'll bring you an envelope. And in that envelope will be a piece of paper with the name and contact information of the 60 people in this room who are going to sell their house in the next 12 months. Now, it was never even a contest that every single person would choose the 60 or 70 names of the people who are going to sell their house. That's what is most valuable. Those are the only 60 people who it really matters that you're top of mind awareness with right now, this year anyway, you know, so if you could, instead of trying to get your full message, get your name out there in front of everybody, why not put that aside and do something that's going to get as many of those 60 people who are going to sell their house to identify themselves to you? And so what that requires is selflessness. You have to put your selfish desires aside, your desire Is that you are the star of the ad. And that's why when you look through local publications, you see it all the time. The logo and the name of the company and maybe a picture of the owner are the stars of the ad. They're the central characters and really good direct response ads. Your prospect is the star. The information that they're looking for is the star, the offer that you're making to them. The cheese, how we talk about that, you know, mice are attracted to cheese. And that when somebody's gathering information about making a purchase of something, the first thing they're doing is gathering information. So if you can identify what those conversations are that people are having, what they're already thinking, and you can be there to present them with information that's going to make them raise their hand and identify themselves, that's the most valuable thing you can do. So the practical difference would be if I took a personal promotion approach and I was mailing to that 700 home subdivision, that would entail mailing a postcard with a big picture of Julie Matthews, a big picture of the Julie Matthews group logo, and maybe a slogan that, you know, thinking of selling your house, Julie Matthews will get right on it, or call Julie and start packing, or, you know, all of these things that are like slogans that kind of, you know, build that brand awareness, you know, so that the consistency of it, everybody's going to kind of equate that with thinking about Julie. And hopefully when they think about selling their house, Julie will pop into their mind. They'll magically call her. Now, if you contrast that, what direct response is about is instead of getting your name out there, you focus on getting your prospect's name in here. And you send out a postcard that offers them information on what homes are selling for in their neighborhood. So you might send out a postcard that says that offers them the free February 2013 report on winter Haven lakefront house prices. Now, anybody who owns a lakefront house and is thinking about selling it, the first thing they want to know is, how much is my house worth? So you get the opportunity to provide that information to people in a way that they're going to raise their hand by asking for this information, they've identified themselves as somebody who is likely much higher likelihood to sell their house in the next 12 months than somebody who doesn't raise their hand. And that's really applicable across the board. I mean, we've seen this work in so many different ways. I mean, Joe, we had Adrian when we were in Phoenix doing The breakthrough blueprint event. You had Adrian use this exact approach to attract, you know, their, their target audience is Fortune 1000 companies and they do mainframe outsourcing with those. And they offered the same exact thing, a pricing report on mainframe outsourcing. They've, you know, got somebody to raise their hand in September or October and turn that into a hundred thousand dollar piece of business or $150,000 piece of business just from putting their own selfish need aside to send out their, get their name out there and focus only on who their prospects are, getting them to identify themselves.

Yeah, I mean, I remember a carpet cleaner and lots of them would use like this slogan, but I remember a carpet cleaner when I used to do critique coupons and consultation coupons. When I first started selling a marketing course, I literally used to package up where people would be able to get on the phone with me and do like an ad critique and I'd have them send me one of their ads and of course I would encourage them to change it and do everything that I'm suggesting in my marketing course. Because my marketing course actually just gives people ads that are already written, so they don't even need to rewrite them. They just like, we give them the templates, right? But people always like meddling with stuff, you know, they still, you know, it's hard to get people to let go of their ego. Especially when everyone they talk to is like going, oh, that shit will never work. No one's going to read all that long copy. You know, that doesn't look, you know, you need to have an nice logo, you know, all that sort of crap. And I was doing a consultation with somebody that had, I had them switch their, they had a Valpak coupon that had this line that said, we don't cut corners, we clean them. And you've probably seen that before, right? You know, because lots of carpet cleaners like say shit like that.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And I, I had them change it to free. Recorded message reveals how to have your carpets cleaned properly at the lowest possible price. And the key word was properly, not low price. Because what they were having is we don't clean corners, we don't cut corners, we clean them. And then they had price advertising. The problem with that is that's the best compelling offer that they have. Whereas I want to use the draw of how to get the best price, but how to have your carpets cleaned properly and instead of sending them the call and talk to somebody and then have an uneducated prospect make a phone call they would actually have them. They would drive them to a free recorded message and let the free recorded message sift, sort and screen the people, educate them and literally turn them into an educated prospect. So by the time that they're done listening to the recording, they now understand that the person providing the information on that recording, in this particular case, one of my clients was a smart person to choose, not just because of price, but because of all this other stuff they were getting. Of course, hardly any calls from this. We don't cut corners, we clean them. When they did get the calls, all the people cared about were a low price. I had this person change their ads to that and then they started sending out postcards and they started using that and PSS on their follow up letters, everything. And it just dramatically increased the response of everything that they were doing. And we're talking like just a few words. Free recorded message reveals that sort of stuff. And there's a big difference between carpet cleaning, here's a low price and the most thorough cleaning ever, or it's free. And even today you could do things like a free video reveals how to have your carpets cleaned properly at the lowest possible price and you can drive them right to your website or to a YouTube video or whatever. And that's what a direct response headline is. That's what a direct response call to action is. It's not just we don't, if you just contrast the two, we don't cut corners, we clean them. We've been in business since 1902. Seventeen years of experience, satisfaction.

In every industry there are certain, you know, catchphrases that catch on and spread around. Like, you know, in real estate, people use their name and so say, you know, Joe Polish a house sold name, you know, and, or things like, you know, called Joe and start packing. Those things kind of catch on, you know.

Well, you know, Dan Kennedy used to say this and it would always offend people because it's a pretty, you know, kind of hardcore. But he said that, you know, people commit marketing incest and they look at what everyone else in their industry is doing, doing, and they start doing what everyone else is doing and just like real incest, pretty soon everyone gets real stupid. And he's like, they would do that. And you know, everyone is copying all of the same stupid stuff that everyone else is doing, thinking that's the way to do it. And all of a sudden you've got the entire segment of an industry knocking off stuff that isn't even that good to begin with. And if you, if you look at something like, we don't cut corners, we clean them. Versus free recorded message reveals how to have your carpets clean properly at the lowest possible price. You are directing. That is a call to action.

That is direct response.

We don't cut corners, we clean them. Or putting your slogan or picture of your dog or your logo now, people would think, well, yeah, a lot of people know my name, A lot of people know my dog. A lot of people know my saying, just do it. Well, I'll tell you, if Nike just wrote just do it, but they didn't have like, you know, stores where people could go and buy their shoes if they didn't have, I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, everyone would, you know, people say, well, you know, how powerful is the just do it Nike slogan? Well, yeah, how powerful is it built on like about a million other things they did before it ever got to a point where it meant anything to anybody.

Right. You know, so, yeah, and that's part of it is that the reality is, what you have to realize is that a brand really doesn't mean anything unless it's built on the back of multitude of experiences that people have had that reinforce that in their minds. And so if you're, it's your brand, if you're focused on that, is really only going to be built on the experience that people have with you. And in order to really build the number of people who've had that experience with you, the brand, you really have to be smart about how you get the most people to have their first experience of you.

Exactly. Well, so let's talk about for just a minute, Dean, like a headline. I mean, I'm going to assume that everyone listening is not like an educated marketer, although we have some of the top marketers on the planet that listen to our podcast. Let's just assume people don't even know.

The value of a headline.

I mean, just as basic as you can get, what is a headline? Why is it important?

Well, the headline is really what, you know, has been called the ad for the ad. It's the thing that kind of stops people in their track, lets them know that this is for you. It's, here's what it's about. And if that catches somebody's attention, it stops them. And they know that everything is everything below that is going to be build on that. And it's, you know, you think about it. That's why the very best direct response ads all look like newspaper articles or like magazine articles. You know, they look like content, they look like valuable information more than they look like ads. And the reason is because we've been conditioned for so many years how to, you know, when we read the newspaper, we know that that format tells us that here's the bold thing, here's what this is about. And if you want to know more about it, read these two or three columns right below this big print. And so it becomes a shortcut for it. Wow.

Well, you need to stop that.

I thought I was going to sneeze for a minute there. And so can you imagine what it would be like to read the newspaper if there were no headlines? You know, it'd be very frustrating. And so often one of the mistakes that people make is they just go right into their stuff. You know, they have their. Their logo and their. Their name of their company, and then they just go right into the copy if they have any. Usually it's bullet points of really, you know, stuff like you were talking about just how long we've been in business and, you know, new patients welcome and all the. The crazy buzzwords and stuff that are in their own industry without really thinking what would get somebody who is their target audience to raise their hand, you know, to stop and look at this. And so I always like things like that. Like the headline I just said about the real estate saying, you know, the offering somebody the free February 2013 report on winter Haven lakefront house prices. If I own a lakefront house in Winter Haven and I'm interested in selling, the thought on my mind is, how much is my house worth? And when I see this label, when I see this headline, that's like, there it is. This is just for me.

Yeah. I mean, like, going back to your thing about the newspaper, like, if. And this would be a good experiment for people to do is get a newspaper next time you see one, and literally go through with a black marker and just black out all of the headlines, Just every headline, every subhead, everything, or put tape over them, and then just kind of flip through it and imagine trying to find anything of interest in having to filter through something. Without something calling to your attention to bring you to it. It would be very difficult to find what it is. That would be interesting for you. You. You need things that absolutely just stand out and grab someone's attention or one of the things we always have to tell book authors, because me and you spend a lot of time helping people that are authors how to market their books. Imagine if you wrote a book on exercise, and it was a really good book on diet and exercise. And if you called it a really good book on diet and exercise by, you know, John Smith, well, I mean, that just isn't going to cut it. I mean, if you had a really phenomenal book on diet and exercise, that would be more exciting than a really good book on diet. And. But still, that's not, I mean, that's not all it takes. I mean you really. So people, the value of the marketing has everything to do with just how powerful and how compelling and how irresistible those words are. But the words are just the starting point. Because if your stuff is crap, one of the things that gets misconstrued when marketers talk is that some people will say, well, in order to sell something, it doesn't matter how good it is, you just need to have good marketing. And that's actually true. I mean, you can have really crappy stuff with really good marketing and you'll get people to buy it. Now the problem with that though is like we teach in the eight nonprofit activators is go to activator number eight, orchestrating referrals. I mean, no one's going to refer something that they can't stand or they had a bad experience with. So part of this is relationship marketing and you have to deliver great stuff. You have to follow up and develop relationship with people. You need to deliver a dream come true experience if you really want to have repeat business. If you want word of mouth marketing, you've got to give people something more talking about. You're never going to get that opportunity though, if you screw it up on step one. Step one, of course is selecting a single target market and doing that right? And then using direct response offers to compel them to buy. And that starts with the headlines. That starts with really grabbing their attention. I mean, even a video on YouTube, you could have the greatest video on YouTube, but if you have a lousy title for it and it's not yet gone viral, I mean you're just not going to, people are not going to scroll down. And so even if you look at, at YouTube videos, you'll see a lot of people that will put an image of an attractive woman in order to get people to click on the video. I mean, there are things that will just draw people in. And so if you're going to use imagery combined with copy, it still needs to be compelling. What about creating interest in the product or the service and creating desire in the prospects? Talk about that a little bit.

Okay. And so that I look at those as different, as different steps. And so when we look at the profit activators. You know, we talk about compelling your prospects to raise their hand, basically, you know, especially if you are working with invisible prospects. And that might be worth talking about because you have a slightly different approach if you are dealing with invisible prospects versus visible prospects. And so a visible prospect, if you're marketing to chiropractors or to lakefront homeowners or to 45 year old men on their birthday, those are all identified, those are all visible prospects. But if you're marketing to people who are invisible, meaning you can't get a list of them, you can't point to them, they're not out in the open, you need to identify them from a group of people. It requires a little bit of a different approach. If there's only a small percentage of the people who are going to really do something in your category, whatever it is that you do, you want to start out by doing less expensive ads that are designed to get your prospects to raise their hand so that now you can spend more money proportionately to get your message to them because they are the most likely people who are going to buy. So if I, even if I say lakefront homeowners are a group of visible, that's a visible target audience, the fact that there are only 4% of them who are going to sell their house this year means that I don't. There'd be a lot of waste if I was trying to convince 96% of those people. If I'm trying to convince them to list their house with Julie Matthews, it's wasted effort because 96% of them are not going to do anything. So I'm spending money to make my argument to people who don't, it's falling on deaf ears and I'm only speaking to those 4%. But if I knew who those 4% were, now I can afford to spend more money and more effort and more time and more resources trying to get the full story to those people, trying to educate them about why Julie Matthews would be the best choice and to motivate them by offering them easy steps that are going to get them in the direction of getting their house sold. So that's why rather than trying and convince them of anything, we just compel them to raise their hand because we know what they're already thinking, we know where they're headed.

Yep, exactly. All right, so let me get your perspective on a specific offer. So when you're online and offline, because, I mean, if someone's just strictly an online marketer and we're talking about advertising. They're like, well I, I've never advertised. Even with our whole brand discussion. I had some people send me some messages about how they know people that have companies that have been built with zero advertising as if that's an accomplishment. And I don't really think it is if you can build a big company with zero advertising. And certainly I have plenty of friends that have never spent any money on advertising and have made a fortune. However, they're not sitting around twiddling their thumb because they put together a really great slogan and a nice imagery and a logo or even a really good product. There's other things that they have orchestrated. A lot of times people are doing really effective, clever, powerful marketing and they're not even aware that that's what they actually do. I mean, they don't even give it credit, you know what I mean? And so when it comes to making a specific offer, if you want to have the highest possibility of success, you need to direct people on what you want them to do. You need to make an irresistible offer so that somebody feels disturbed mentally if they do not take you up on it.

Absolutely, yeah.

And one thing I'll say, if someone has not watched my video at the Dan Kennedy super conference, first Dan Kennedy event I'd spoken at in years because I used to speak at a lot of Dan's events years ago. And basically I offer the Gary Halbert XXX program and I use a video sales letter that John Benson recorded in his voice for, for a product. A recording of two days I spent with Gary Halbert. And that is a, you know, it's the highest close in Glaser Kennedy history. I mean we put that videos up on. I love marketing for free. Just type in, you know, Dan Kennedy or Gary Halbert and you'll find the video. And if you watch that whole video, you'll see not only will you learn a lot from it, but you'll also see me make an offer at the end which you know, was worth a fortune. And so, you know, 500 people got in line in order to buy the stuff out of an audience of 1200 people. And it was very, it was very non threatening. But that's an example of if I would have given that whole speech, I would have given people great advice and if I would have not had a call to action if I made it off.

Thank you. Good night everybody.

Yeah, if. And I could see that's where people that like don't get it. You know, it's like really? Oh, you know, you just need to get up there and really engage the audience. Standing ovations do not result in people giving you money. Sometimes they do, but most of the time they don't. If you're there for the applause, that's different than there to. If you really want to make an impact on people, get them to reach in their pockets and give you money. That's a more difficult thing for people to do than clap their hands and say, I thought you were awesome, I learned a lot, and then forget everything that you talked about three days later, later, and not have any change in their life. But to get someone to actually reach in their pocket and invest money in something that you built a strong enough case and made a compelling offer to, where they actually put their money on the line to buy your stuff, you've really impacted somebody in a far greater way than just entertaining them or making them have a new perspective. When someone watches that speech, there's seven and a half minutes at the end. That just was the highest close in Glaser Kennedy history. And I did it robotically. It wasn't even me talking, it was a video. And see, that's the coolest thing about it. Because what people can learn from that is if you hate selling from the stage as an example, or you don't like anything about having to persuade somebody, I mean, you can automate persuasion. That's what all of the stuff we teach on. I love marketing. It's just like how to automate and turn this into easy, lucrative and fun methodologies. So anyway, the offer. Dean, what do people need to know about making an offer?

Well, so the first thing is, in the first stage, if you're trying to turn invisible prospects into visible prospects, you want to offer them information, something that would just be compelling enough for them to raise their hand and now put themselves in this pool of people who are potentially going to do whatever it is you do. So, like Adrian sending out the offer for the price pricing report on mainframe outsourcing and getting people to raise their hand. Now they've got a pool of people who are not only Fortune 1000 companies, but are Fortune 1000 companies who have expressed an interest in mainframe outsourcing. And so that's the first level of offering. Once you do that, then you've got to have an offer that's going to trigger them moving in the direction of taking action, of doing business with you. And I would suggest that you really think through what are going to be the things that if they were to start taking action, if they were to. To Start the process. What's going to move that along? What's going to motivate them to do that? And so if I use our realtor example, there, you know, something that would motivate somebody. Once they've raised their hand for the report on, on house prices, there are probably three thoughts that they have is how much is my house worth? Because we've given them the report on what all the lakefront houses are doing, but everybody knows that their house is special and there's something different about their house. So we want to offer them the opportunity to find out exactly what their house is worth. And some people might want to know, what do I do to get the house ready to sell? Should I replace the carpet or can I just get it cleaned or should I redo the kitchen? Should I store all of this stuff? Should I paint this room? All those kind of questions that people have. And so we might offer those people something that we call the room by room review, where they can have a checklist of all the things that they could and should do to get their house ready and all the things that they shouldn't do to get the house ready to sell. And then the other thing might be that they would sell if somebody would just offer to buy their house. It would just be such a hassle saving thing. So we talk about our silent market. We're just saying to people, listen, we're constantly generating interest in neighborhood of people who want to buy homes. And we may already have somebody who would be interested in your house. And if you want to put it in our silent market, we can let those people know and we may be able to sell your house without even putting it on the market. That sounds like a dream come true for somebody, right? So one of those three things is going to be the motivator that would get somebody to take action, you know, to get to meet with you. And so thinking those through for your own business is really going to be give you the clue as to what you should be offering.

That's what I'm trying to say.

That is what you're trying to say. But you got to make an offer though. You know, you've got to be overt about it. You can't just sit back and say, if there's anything I can help you with, please feel free to call us. You know, please feel free to ask. And that's. I said this in January when we were in doing the breakthrough blueprint in your office of. You know that I love how Jay Abraham says that people are silently Begging to be led. And that's absolutely true. And it's absolutely true for entrepreneurs, too, and salespeople. They're silently begging to be led. They're waiting for a prospect to say to them, can you help me? And they want to spring into action and would be more than happy to help, but they're afraid to take the leadership role and anticipate what these people are going to need and make an offer.

Yeah. You know, Dan Kennedy always used to talk about the Cavett Roberts saying, which is pretty hardcore about when you're thinking of just human desperation and wanting to be led. He said that Cabot Roberts had the quote, people are walking around the world with their umbilical cords in their hands, looking for someplace to stick it into in order to give them some nourishment. You know, And, I mean, it's really a hardcore imagery, but at the same time, there's a lot of truth to that.

Yeah.

You know, and if you. If you really got something that's going to help somebody and you're like, oh, you know, just, you know, give me a call. Look us up. Go visit our website. Visit your website and do what? Like, look at it?

Yeah, look us up on the web. Like us on Facebook.

Exactly. Like, like, what the hell does that.

Yeah. Restaurants all the time, right? Did you have a great time at the restaurant? Make sure. And like us on Facebook.

Yep.

Yeah.

I mean, I. At least I'm trying to think where I was. I. Someone actually just suggested, oh, okay. I went to a. An acupuncturist yesterday.

Yes.

And she actually said, do you use Yelp? And I'm like, I look up things on Yelp. I don't really write reviews. You know, I've not done that. You know. Why? Well, because, you know, I'm. I'm Joe Polish, and I just don't write. No, I'm kidding. So she, you know, she literally, you know, said, well, you know, if you had a great experience, I'd, you know, really appreciate it if you would, you know, write a nice review on Yelp. And I just thought that was really smart because how many places I've not had that happen now? Some do it, and I've seen it in print, but I've never had someone physically, while I was getting a treatment say that I thought that was just a smart thing to do. Now, there's a million other things she's not doing that she could do that would be really useful to her business. But the point is, just like you were saying, you got to tell People to do something like my offer for carpet cleaners. The very best offer is a free room of carpet cleaning with a carpet audit. And it all starts with generating a lead by offering people education, a consumer awareness guide, a consumer awareness message, the video, the consumer awareness video, and literally sifting, sorting and screening the right prospect. And then once you have them in your funnel, you're literally making a powerful offer. So even going into a home offering, not an estimate, a free estimate, which everyone does. See, a free estimate is okay if that's the best thing you got. But that's not as good as a free room of carpet cleaning and a carpet audit where we're going to evaluate the condition of your carpet and we're going to give you something for free that has no cost or obligation of any kind. And we're going to provide this service and if you love it, we're happy to give you a firm quote on what it would cost to clean the remainder of the area. And also know that if you decide to get any of the additional cleaning, it comes with 100% money back guarantee. I mean that's a powerful offer. That's much different than a free estimate or a price discount on your carpet cleaning. And just getting a cleaner who's a good cleaner to change the languaging of everything from their van to their business cards, to their website, to their email follow ups, I mean, I mean changing all of that verbiage changes the entire business. That's an interesting thing, is that someone could spend years getting training or learning the technical side of a business and they could be struggling, they could have gigantic college loans and debt. And you teach people the use of effective words and literally overnight you can change their income, you can change their clientele, you could change the relationships that they have, you can change their referability, I mean more dramatic than anything else. And that's why I always am annoyed by people that poo poo marketing. Because marketers have the power to change somebody. Well, I wouldn't say marketers, marketers that are listened to, I would say. But people that utilize marketers, people that utilize effective marketing. There's nothing that could make someone wealthy and richer quicker that I'm aware of of than just getting the fricking words right on the shit that you communicate and you say like you disagree or you're just.

No, I do. I mean that's absolutely true, you know, and so much of it. I mean the words, right, the right words are the right offer. You know how to articulate what your offer is yeah.

Okay, well, here's the deal. Since the last one that isn't the thing that I read earlier from my Marketing Strategies man that I wrote many years ago, have a deadline or a cutoff date, which of course, since this podcast episode is nearly out of time, we're going to have to cut off this episode here. So the last thing I'd like to.

Have you like how that fits right together.

Yeah, it's total good segue here. Just had to spin it into something here. Having a deadline or a cutoff date. So talk about that. Which is just really a crazy.

Well, our friend Robert Cialdini, Dr. Cialdini would say nothing is as attractive as something that is in imminent diminishing availability, you know, diminishing supply. There something that there's, you know, the sense of it going to be gone is, becomes immediately more attractive. And something, any kind of offer that you're making that is about to expire and I'm cut off, I'm not going to be able to make this decision is it's the most effective offer. If, if I've got a chance to delay, then there's no urgency or need for me to make that offer or take action right now. I can do it anytime. Yep.

So let me give an example too for like some people that may not understand this too because it applies to a lot of different things. Now the company 37 signals, I really like, they have some just great online tools and they're creators of Basecamp and Campfire and all these different online productivity, project management sort of web based apps. And I interviewed Jason Fried, who is the founder of 37signals. And they've written a couple of books, Getting Real and another great book called Rework, which I highly recommend. And they have, one of their things at 37 signals is they don't use sensationalized or hyping, you know, copy marketing and you know, so they're not running ads. Like, you know, amazing. This is awesome. You must, you know, sign up right now. You know, they don't, they don't do stuff like that. Although in certain applications those things as we know, work very well. And it depends on what you're selling. What they do do though, which many companies do, is they have like their trials. So they have like a 45 day trial I think is the trial period right now where you can use Basecamp as an example and so people can sign up for free. There's not some big major call to action. I mean they use testimonials and they have really cool Videos explaining how it works. I think they do a really good job of educating people of what it'll do for them and all that stuff. Now, if you sign up and you start using it, once you get close to the period of time, you're going to start getting emails letting you know that if you don't pay for this, then you need to sign up and pay, or you're not going to going to be able to use it. And so as that date grows closer, people that aren't using it decide either, well, I better start using it or I'm going to lose out on my trial, or they just say, well, the same for me, but everyone. And I even allowed myself because I already have a Basecamp account for my company. And so I wanted to just kind of see the way that they follow up and they do it. They create a sense of urgency. Even companies that are adamant about not using hype, sensationalized marketing, if you want to call it that, they're still creating a deadline. They're still creating a specific cutoff date and call to action. And there's a lot of that that happens, and a lot of people don't think of it as creating that diminishing supply, but that's exactly what it's doing.

That's absolutely true.

I mean, Costco always sends out this coupon book, and I'm not really a user of coup. Just they always have more stuff, and there's always these deadline dates, and, you know, they do really well with it, as do, like, about 100,000 other companies that use cutoff dates and deadlines.

Right, Exactly.

So, all right, what else?

Get one.

Yeah. So I think we're. I think we're kind of done for this episode. Dean, we can continue to talk more, but I think we should just see what.

Talk for 100 more episodes if we wanted to.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can't do this all day, so we kind of got to go. So anyway, so that's it. Oh, and one thing I'll say I really appreciate. There's many people that are. I love marketing listeners that wish me a happy birthday. My wonderful girlfriend rounded up a bunch of people to shoot videos for me. I had a surprise birthday party. I mean, there was all kinds of cool stuff. And so there's so many people that have actually discovered our podcast that sent me greetings on Facebook and various things. And I. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that did that. It's more than I deserve. And what else? By the time this episode is being put up on. I love marketing. I think on the day this goes up, I will be on a zero G flight floating around in the air with Peter Diamandis and a bunch of amazing smart people. And I'm doing an adventure trip with XPRIZE foundation, which is Peter's foundation that does all kinds of cool stuff. And it was my idea to put together this really cool trip that is put together. So we've got a couple of billionaires on it. We're going to have.

Steve Sims is going to be there.

Yeah, Steve Sims from the Bluefish is coordinating a lot of the stuff. We were going to go to Virgin Galactic. We're going to go to Qualcomm. We're going to have, I think, lunch with Elon Musk. We're going to go see the premiere of the movie Die Hard at the Fox Studios with Jim Giannopoulos, who's the CEO of Fox Studios. And so I will be doing some cool stuff. So when we doing the next episode or the one after that, I'll talk about it and basically just try to pretend like I'm cool.

I'll remind you.

You do that.

Yeah, I'll remind you to talk about.

So to all of our listeners, the call to action for you now is to just tell everyone about I love marketing. It'll help us build a really powerful brand, and that's what we're shooting for.

Let's pick a single target market. Let's tell people not to tell everyone. Let's tell people to tell. Who could they tell?

Let's talk carpet cleaners and then I'll sell some of my carpet cleaning stuff and then we can get paid.

Their favorite chiropractor about I love marketing this week or let's tell their favorite real estate agent about I love marketing this week.

One of those two things, carpet cleaners and real estate agents I like better than chiropractors because at least I got something to sell. The carpet cleaners that's more specific. Although many chiropractors have bought my Nightingale Conant program.

Perfect.

All right, everyone. Have a good night. Good night or good day or whenever the hell it is that you're listening to this.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.