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.

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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.”

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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/