I need to level with you.
Growing up, I watched a lot of stand-up comedy. One of the comedians who had an influence on me was Jeff Foxworthy. Jeff’s claim to fame was his “You Might Be A Redneck ” jokes.
I can’t say I agree with everything he says but his style of down-to-earth humor is still insightful.
One of the things Jeff talks about was how ladies– since they’re complicated creatures– assume men are also complicated and always ask “I wonder what he’s really thinking.”
Here is what Jeff has to say:
“Ladies I will tell you what we are really thinking. We’re thinking, “I want a beer and I wanna see somethin’ nekkid.”
Truly profound…
Jeff also touches on similar points regarding what you will find in Men’s and Women’s magazines.
Women’s Magazine: “How To Get a Good Man,” “How to Get Rid Of a Bad Man,” “How To Turn A Bad Man Into A Good Man.”
Men’s Magazine: Pictures of nekkid women.
SaaS leaders make similar blunders when it comes to understanding their buyers.
A big mistake SaaS leaders make when marketing is making this assumption:
“Marketing Tactic X worked on me, therefore Marketing Tactic X will work on my target market.”
You don’t necessarily represent your target audience, so stop assuming and start testing.
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
Imagine if you had ninja powers to control how buyers perceived your brand.
Far-fetched? Think again.
Companies like Apple are already doing it.
Apple’s so good at it, it makes the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ugly-cry in their stale pizza.
Let’s take just one example: How Apple does it’s ninjutsu on television.
On Apple TV+, there are an average of 5 Apple products featured every 4 minutes.
A disproportionate rate of Apple products running on Apple-made series are shown in the middle of the screen–not the periphery.
It doesn’t allow villains in movies or shows to use Apple products. For example, they had a pedophile accused of murder use an Android in the show “Defending Jacob”.
I can only clap my hands in admiration at such a clever and ballzy strategy.
I can go on with the list of subtle marketing trickery Apple uses–but you get the point.
Now a pretentious arm-chair marketing peasant might say, “Wes, surely customers see this blatant ninja trickery and are turned off by it. These tactics can’t really work.”
Don’t be so sure, peasant. Apple has been doing this for a looong time. You’re attributing a level of marketing sophistication to consumers that most of them don’t have. Besides, do you see Apple’s sales suffering from this strategy? I think not.
Apple isn’t doing this because their being evil ninjas. They’re just being smart business ninjas who are following an important principle.
This principle is to control the buyer experience from A to Z. There is not a single salesperson out there who doesn’t try to do this, by the way. Study any successful salesperson from the last 100 years of books on the subject and you will find they controlled the sales process as much as they could.
Savvy salespeople know it only takes one tiny distraction to kill a deal or lose attention.
Since marketing is sales multiplied by 100 , the effects of losing control/attention are 100x more disastrous.
Apple is mitigating this risk by going on the offensive.
Marketing peasants might not like Apple’s approach but at the end of the day, I bet Apple’s ninjutsu is stronger than peasant ninjutsu.
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
Ever watch the show “South Park”?
It’s been running for 24 years and churned out 309 episodes so far.
I continue to learn more about life and business from this shock comedy cartoon than I do from a thousand virtue-signaling posts by LinkedIn gurus who love to humblebrag.
Anyway, several years ago, South Park aired an episode called “Ginger Kids”, where the obese, sociopathic Eric Cartman decides to spread hate against kids with red hair
At the start of the episode, Cartman makes these claims:
“Ginger kids are born with a disease which causes very light skin, red hair, and freckles…this disease is called ‘gingervitus’ and it occurs because ginger kids have no souls…because their skin is so light ginger kids must avoid the sun, not unlike vampires …and like vampires the ginger gene is a curse “
This causes ginger kids in the school to get bullied. But then, Stan and Kyle decide to teach Cartman a lesson and turn him into a ginger with makeup while he’s sleeping.
Cartman, now thinking he is a ginger, immediately changes his tune and forms a Nazi-like cult (the Ginger Separatist Movement) dedicated to the genocide of non-gingers (“The only way to fight hate- is with more hate!”).
This episode was influential enough that Facebook groups began popping up, declaring November 20th “Kick a Ginger Day”. Apparently, this led to over a dozen students beating up a red-headed 12 year old in Calabasas, California.
We here at the Sublime Persuasion Porte don’t endorse child violence….but we must admit to finding this case amusing!
But here’s the point:
People prefer to say “yes” to those they like.
No surprise there.
But research (as explained by Robert Cialdini) and practical advertising experience also tells us that if you can trigger a feeling of shared identity with someone (e.g. ginger vs. non-ginger), you’re more likely to influence them.
The problem is that marketers try to “hack” this phenomenon by glibly pressing on “emotional pain points” and using the “customers language.”
Yes, understanding your target market is important. But if all your marketing message is, “you get angry if you can’t 10x your income!”, you’re not going to make it.
There is a way to build rapport with prospects to turn them into a rabid cult for your brand but it takes expertise, discipline, and brass ballz.
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
You know how a lot of soccer moms burn for heart-pounding, leg-trembling, stocking-ripping, kinky romance in their lives?
Buyers have a similar desire for certainty .
Founders and business leaders live in in a perpetual Harry Potter fan-fiction daydream. They imagine they could wave a wand, utter some magical marketing phrases, and enchant these secretly lustful buyers with the certainty they’re looking for.
Here’s the problem, Merlin: there’s a vicious, fire breathing dragon in the way just hankering to melt your face off
And that problem is buyer skepticism.
When you offer prospects a solution that will solve their problem by doing it cheaper, better, or faster than the competition…
Their internal skeptical dragon can’t help but rear it’s scaly head and lick its teeth
But most marketers are oblivious to this reality. So their strategy to get people’s attention is through sheer hype.
“We have this incredible opportunity that will 10X your revenue blah blah blah”
Buyers ask tough questions when they see this kind of hype.
They raise their eyebrows and want to start due diligence immediately,
When you offer something that seems too good to be true, you’re going to get skepticism.
Hearing prospects verbalize their skepticism to your face is the best outcome you can hope for from hyped-up marketing.
Otherwise, they just want to get off the phone or click the unsubscribe button. They’ll run away without giving you any feedback.
Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. You’ve been the target of overly-fantastical marketing. You have a finely honed psychological spam filter that junks all these claims without a second thought.
The solution to slay this skepticism dragon isn’t to make even bigger and bolder claims–all that would do is make it fiercer and stronger
The solution is good ol’ fashioned proof.
Make sure you can back up all your marketing claims , and 80% of the battle is won.
The challenging piece for founders is how to prove their claims without being boring.
The #1 sin in marketing, after all, is boring your audience.
So, the last thing you want is to make write your promotional materials in the dry, soulless style of a consumer report or white paper.
I might not be able to unleash a buyers “inner goddess”, but I might be able to…
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
Let’s say you’ve landed a big new client and want to impress him.
And let’s say that your client invited you and your family to come over to his house for dinner
And let’s say that you arrive in style: everybody in your family is dressed well , you bring lavish gifts , and give the nicest fake compliments to the hostess
But then, your kids start fighting with each other.
Shoving each other.
Dropping F-bombs.
Even casting doubt and aspersions on the other sibling’s ancestry.
What do you think is going through the mind of your client as he gazes upon your two whiny brats?
Cohesiveness matters, whether in personal matters or business.
Everyone understands the need for effective marketing. But what a lot of business leaders don’t get is that their messaging needs to be cohesive
The sales copy needs to be cohesive within itself. Emails shouldn’t contradict the sales page.
The marketing needs to be cohesive with messaging of the sales representatives. LinkedIn content can’t make your salespeople look like liars.
Founders who talk over each other in a pitch meeting with investors can’t work cohesively as a team. They’re definitely not getting money, I can tell you that!
So you have to make sure everything your customers see is cohesive. If not, your sales are dead in the water.
Easier said than done, of course. There are specific things you need to do to create a unified message that makes your market want to buy from you.
So cut it out with the canned crap spewed out by AI.
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
There’s this myth in our culture that scientists and “experts” spend long nights using cold logic in the lab examining evidence and drinking stale coffee from Styrofoam cups–all so that they can make your life better.
What’s closer to reality, unfortunately, is that a lot of these guys are grifters trying to make a name for themselves.
If it means fudging the data, so be it.
If it means trying to hit the lottery with a seqsy “discovery”, all the better.
Recently a popular study in the world of life hacks seems to have been debunked.
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A Famous Honesty Researcher Is Retracting A Study Over Fake Data
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Apparently, the primary researcher on a study on dishonesty was….dishonest about some of his findings!
One of the main “findings” of this researcher was that if people sign honesty pledges on forms, they are more likely to be honest.
Whether or not this specific conclusion is true doesn’t interest me as much as the wider implications about the social sciences.
Which is this: The desire of social scientists to find a grand unified theory for human behavior is a pipe-dream.
It’s something that the great Rory Sutherland talks a lot about.
What you’re doing when you try and make something a science is you look for universal, context -free laws.
Take physics, for example. The laws of gravity behave (with slight differences) more or less the same whether you’re in Seattle or Sudan . These “laws” aren’t location dependent or context dependent.
For example, it didn’t matter what the context was: When I acted up as a kid and my Mom wanted to throw a sandal at me, the sandal acted predictably.
A major problem behavioral scientists are seeing, according to Sutherland, is the replication crisis. A lot of experiments don’t faithfully replicate
But the replication crisis isn’t a problem for marketers. As a matter of fact, savvy marketers know that the more universal mechanisms a popular book claims, the more likely it’s bunk.
Sutherland goes so far as to say that the fact that tiny contextual differences can make something true or false Is what marketers care most about
So, if you want your marketing to attract high-quality leads, you’’ll care less about hacking secret “universal laws” of human behavior and more about building a marketing plan that understands people don’t always make “rational” choices and that their choices are context dependent.
That’s why I’ll always give more weight to the hard-won experiences of a grumpy, cigar-chomping ad man over anything a “researcher” desperate for intellectual validation might spout.
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
Most businesses leave a whole lotta money on the table. This includes B2B SaaS companies where you really need every penny, especially when starting out.
The problem is this: Most entrepreneurs don’t do a follow up on prospects who say “no”.
They treat it as if they received a rejection letter from a college: Mutter a bit of profanity, shrug their shoulders, and move on.
Sales reps (and the entrepreneurs who hire them) seem to have this attitude regarding unconverted leads: “I wore my best dress shirt, cleaned my room, turned on the Zoom and gave my best demo, if he’s not gonna buy from THAT, why would I invest a whole bunch of time & money chasing after him?”.
Well, as the great Dan Kennedy points out repeatedly, the data shows the opposite to be the case.
With frequent (& smart ) follow up you will eventually turn a lot of the same people who said “no” the first time into paying customers.
The real question is one of execution. How do you follow up without being annoying?
I’m not going to go into the nuts-and-bolts here…
I need to reserve this competitive edge for my paying clients, after all…
But I will share this:
Your content needs to show the prospect that you’re a living breathing human who has something useful to say about the problems they’re going through.
Does this mean your emails need to be so “targeted” that you’re having sales reps spend 80% of their time sending 1:1 messages to different executives on LinkedIn?
Nope. Not an effective use of time or resources.
But it also doesn’t mean that you should ruin your reputation with robo-messaging that’s just sending out mass canned emails asking people for 30 minutes on the calendar.
With the right skill-stack and strategy, there’s a way to use low-cost email marketing to reel in previously uninterested prospects.
Get this right, and prospects will be chasing after you faster than a full-bladder Sonic the Hedge Hog sprinting to the bathroom.
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
Let me tell you a story about how indulging in your customers’s self deception can lose you money .
I was recently on Amazon looking to purchase one of the many books by the great Dan Kennedy.
I noticed an interesting comment by one of the buyers.
This portion of the Amazon review is a fantastic case study in the world of marketing, branding, and Lean product development.
———-
So if you have followed Dan for a while, you have read most of the concepts in this book. And he manages to throw in snippets of his far-right politics here and there, which made me want to throw the book across the room (he actually could have made more money from me over the years if he didn’t insert politics into his stuff, and it has always mystified me why he felt the need to alienate a big chunk of potential customers). But, since I am a member of the “herd,” I bought it and found it to include reminders of some important points.”
————-
What this reviewer doesn’t seem to understand is that his critique of Dan Kennedy is actually what makes Mr. Kennedy so successful. A huge part of Kennedy’s brand is in defying industry norms and going out of his way to NOT seek people’s approval.
Unlike most marketing gurus out there who try to present an overly-polished, vanilla, SJW- lite image, Dan Kennedy is the exact opposite.
He is more conservative on the political spectrum. He deliberately avoids using, not just social media, but even EMAIL . Dan is famous for being available through just phone or fax. Not to mention that-although he advises a lot of clients in successfully navigating digital marketing – he is very much an old-school direct mail guy.
You’d think a dinosaur like this would quickly go extinct in a tech obsessed 21st century marketing world . But Dan Kennedy’s brand is thriving despite most of the “influencers” who populate Facebook, Instagram and TikTok not knowing about him.
With that said, I can tell you that the heavy hitters in the performance marketing world look up to him and buy his products.
Dan Kennedy is a proof against this inaccurate idea that you have to manage your business according to customer expectations.
It comes from this attitude that the client is not always right. This is because if you’re truly marketing yourself as an expert, you’re going to run your business your way. You wouldn’t let a customer, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, or Google dictate how you run your business.
Since Dan Kennedy is an industry leader, he does things his way. A way that makes the cash register ring.
Does this mean don’t listen to your customers ? Not at all . But it does mean that customers gravitate towards somebody who is an expert in their field. Customers will follow someone who shows leadership and has brass ballz. Customers will follow someone who doesn’t blindly follow the herd.
Isn’t ironic that the reviewer openly admits to being part of DAN’s herd?
I should petition Alanis Morissette to mention this in her song
But anyway, the mere fact that this guy-who doesn’t agree with Kennedy’s politics or persona- is literally buying his book is proof that you should pay more attention to what customers do instead of what they say.
This is a huge factor in what makes Kaizen/ Agile different from other management systems. It is what makes direct response marketing different from other forms of advertising. We always care more about what customers do with a product or service as opposed to what they might fill out in a survey.
And I’m always gonna go with a person’s decision to pay Mr. Kennedy cold hard dinars instead of focusing on what he might say in a review.
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
Here at the Sublime Persuasion Porte, we witness with concern the increasing fragility of young people….
But will readily take advantage of it to enrich ourselves.
You can do the same.
I mean, look at the next generation of kids transitioning to the workforce.
Every other news story is about an athlete who drops out because they feel anxiety.
Recently, an Olympic gymnast performed poorly on the vault. She got her lowest score in a long time and so just quit and didn’t go to the finals.
This athlete was the team captain. She retreated from the arena in the middle of the competition without notifying her teammates. Keep in mind, these gymnasts didn’t have friends or family there to cheer them on. Evidently, the team was dumbfounded seeing their leader withdraw without so much as a word.
Her team ended up with silver, not gold, despite the fact that she was the number one ranked gymnast in the world.
Apparently, this star gymnast dropped out for mental health reasons.
Now, I don’t know the details behind these reasons and would rather not speculate.
But the worst part of all of this can be found on social media, with messages celebrating her for quitting under the excuse of “self-care”.
Can you imagine the uproar if Michael Jordan was like, “Coach, I missed that shot. I can’t play for the rest of the day. I just can’t right now, Okay!!! sniff
This is the first generation of competitive athletes that grew up in the “there are no losers” generation.
A generation growing up in sad, sad houses with rooms full of “participation medals”.
A generation whose conception of fierce competition doesn’t extend beyond arguing with siblings about who gets the top bunk-bed.
So anytime they experienced a setback of any sort, they have a meltdown of apocalyptic proportions.
We have now normalized teaching our kids that it’s okay to quit and all they have to say to save face is “I’m stressed out.”.
They are taught to be victims.
They are indoctrinated about micro-aggressions and how words are violence.
The only exception, of course, is rioters burning down people’s homes and businesses in the summer of 2020.
That’s not violence, apparently.
What all this means is that now, more than ever, the future belongs to the mentally strong.
It belongs to business owners and leaders with enough grit to see things through, even when the going gets tough (e.g. rioters “peacefully” looting and burning down your business).
It belongs to people who can not only bounce back from failure but can learn and get stronger from setbacks.
That’s the beauty of process improvement in general and direct response marketing in particular.
Every setback, every failure is a weapon to the entrepreneur smart enough to wield it.
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/
When I worked in sales cold calling people, one of our sales trainers admonished us not to “Tommy Boy” the sale .
He is referring to a rather instructive Chris Farley movie from the 1990s called-you guessed it-“Tommy Boy.”
Tommy Callahan is the son of a visionary car part factory owner-a wealthy businessman- who while at a wedding reception to marry a trophy wife, dies from a heart attack.
Long story short, the factory is now in danger from a competitor and the only way for Tommy to save the company his father founded is to go on the road and sell enough orders for brake pads and make the factory profitable.
The problem is that Tommy is an utter moron.
He gets a D+ in college and celebrates it as a win: “You know, a lot of people go to college for seven years”
Needless to say, the company execs are quite anxious about putting their fates in the pudgy hands of a doofus who took seven years to finish college.
Tommy has potential- he’s a really good storyteller. Nonetheless, his effectiveness as a salesman is hindered when he keeps saying stupid krap to prospects, like: “You can take a good look at a butcher’s ass by sticking your head up there, but wouldn’t you rather take his word for it?”
And accidentally lighting prospects’ desk on fire.
Things start looking bleak for Tommy Boy…
Until he learns to relax.
He stops seeming so needy, even as his factory’s fate is in jeopardy.
Once, he stops being so over excited, Tommy talks to people in a calm, casual, direct way and finally gets lots of sales.
Hell, he finally starts using his dead father’s script correctly: “I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull’s ass, but I’d rather take a butcher’s word for it”
So yes, you have to chase people to some degree when you’re selling to them.
You need to email them and have a conversation with them. Canned content is not allowe.
But you do it in a way where you’re communicating this attitude: “ I have something very valuable that solves a problem that I think you have but I’m prepared to walk away at any moment if it’s not a good fit.”
P.S. My book shows business owners and entrepreneurs the exact steps for using creativity to make lots of money. It costs around $30 everywhere else, but if you join my daily email list by clicking the link below, you can have a digital copy for free.
Get it here: https∶//powerpersuasion.net/