The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (27 page)

MISTAKE NUMBER ONE: INEFFECTIVE MARKETERS

CONFUSE ATTENTION WITH SHOUTING

Shouting has its place in our lives. For instance, if you’re at a sports stadium or rock

concert the only way you might be able to communicate is through shouting. Yel ing at

people is also completely appropriate when they’re about to step off a curb into the path

of an oncoming vehicle. In that case, the shout telegraphs the message,
″Freeze

because your life depends on it!″

You’re most likely the victim of marketers misusing shouting. They seem to think,
″Hey,

if I can get people to stop dead in their tracks and pay attention, they’l buy more of my

stuff.″
No, they won’t. They’l just turn off to your hyped message.

One example of this nonsense is a famous ad that went like this:

SEX!!!

Now that I have your attention,

I’d like to talk about life insurance. . . .

Yes, many of us are hard-wired to pay attention to the “s” word, but this is a cheap

shot.

Other marketers are notorious for sending letters in those brown government-looking

envelopes with Official Tax-Related Business stamped on the outside. The normal

reaction is to tear open the letter, half-expecting an IRS audit notice concerning your tax

return. Instead the letter contains some nonsense like: “We at Schmedlap and Perkins

Tax Accountants would like to offer you a free consultation about your tax needs. . . .″

A third variation is the type of e-mail you’ve probably received with a subject line like:

“Emergency—Open Up.” When you open the e-mail it’s just the same-old ho-hum

nonsense about whatever product the marketer is flogging. There was no emergency.

I just scratch my head at this stuff. Whom do they think they’re kidding with al the fake

urgency? There is a theory that a smal percentage of the population wil be suckers for

absolutely anything. They’re the ones who give their life savings over to scam artists, and

who try to buy Viagra at a 95 percent discount through the mail from someone in

Singapore. Maybe that hype does work for the tiniest sliver of the population, or else we

probably wouldn’t be victims of so much spam every day.

This book is not about getting you a tiny sliver of business from zombie consumers

who wil buy anything. It’s about showing you how to sel with integrity and honesty, and

how to attract a far larger market that’s looking for honest marketers for a change.

MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: INEFFECTIVE MARKETERS BOOST

THEIR CLAIMS OUT OF ALL PROPORTION

This is a variation on the theme of shouting to get your attention. In this case, the

marketers can only find extreme words to use to describe things.

For instance, if they were let loose on an organic heirloom tomato product, they might

say something like:

And when you get my guide, you’ll be absolutely amazed at how you can

grow truckloads of tomatoes with ease!! And that’s not all! Your neighbors will

mistake your tomato patch for red pumpkins, they’ll be so gigantic. Why, as

soon as you plant a couple of these Secret Hybrid Tomato plants, you’ll have

so many tomatoes that you can easily make hundred$ of dollar$ by selling

them to your neighbors! But wait! There’s more!!!!

You know the garbage I’m talking about. As I said earlier, most people have highly

developed
B.S.
meters that detect and shut out that nonsense. When the hype marketers

notice that their sales materials don’t seem to be attracting many customers, what do

they conclude? Hey, we better kick up the language another notch or two!

That’s when we al get subjected to the nonsense claims of:
“Out-of-control
ATMs

spewing money at
you,”
and
“As
soon as you learn our secrets for picking up women,

super-models wil be al over you, shoving their room keys into your
pocket.”

Yeah right. When you hype people, two bad things happen: Either they turn off

completely, or they decide that they must find the flaw in your argument. In other words

they start to look for the catch. Instead of attracting them to you, now you’re repel ing

them because they think.
″This
is way too good to be true—what can I find that makes

my situation
different?″
They’l conclude,
″I
can’t grow those monster tomato plants

because I live in too cold of a
climate,″
or
″Girls
won’t date me because it looks like al

the successful guys they show in the ad are a different ethnic
group.″

Differences are the last thing you want them to focus on, as you know. So what is a

good marketer to do? First, you shouldn’t hype with nonsense, nor do you need to.

Because you did good research about a target market and its strong interests, you don’t

need to create interest, but just tap into it. Think of your target market like a high-

pressure water line and your sales material like the faucet that opens up their attention

and interest. The water wil flow to you. Lousy marketers instead try to pump their

general, bored market with lots of hot air.

The second thing you should do is include what’s known as a damaging admission.

Don’t have your readers search for the catch, but hand it to them. What did I do in this

very book you’re holding? I said right up front that it’s not a book about magic wands and

pixie dust that wil shower you with money. Instead, my system is a step-by-step plan

using only bits of time and straightforward actions. My goal was to get you thinking,

″Okay,
that doesn’t sound fake but it stil sounds desirable. Tel me
more.″
I guess the

fact that you’ve read this far means I succeeded.

If you’re sel ing the Schnauzer-grooming info product, your damaging admission could

be that the results wil not be instantaneous, but because the grooming system needs to

counteract years of bad grooming practices, ful results wil be achieved after 2 weeks.

That admission leaves plenty of room to talk about what a wonderful system it is, but now

that you’ve given them the catch, they can relax and stop searching for one of their own.

It takes a smart and brave marketer to provide a damaging admission. The typical dul

marketer thinks,
″Oh,
I could never do that. First, my competition doesn’t do it so I better

not risk it. Second, why would I insert a negative thought in my prospects’ minds? The

more I hype, the better I’l
sound.″

Wrong. Your competition doesn’t do it because they either don’t know about it or

they’re sheep fol owing the crowd. Second, you’re not introducing a negative thought, but

instead introducing a realistic perspective that makes your reader relax and stop

searching for the catch. Final y, the less you hype the better you sound and the better you

sel .

MISTAKE NUMBER THREE: WITH INEFFECTIVE MARKETERS,

IT′S ALL ABOUT THEM AND NOT ABOUT THE CUSTOMER

This one’s super easy to spot. You know you’re in the clutches of one of these guys when

the story they tel is al about how they started out dirt poor and made a ton of money.

Now they have jets and romance and bulging bank accounts and maybe you someday

can be like them!

Another way to spot this drivel is to do a quick I/You Ratio calculation. Take a page or

two of their text and see how many times they refer to I, me, my, our, and mine and then

compare that to how many mentions there are of you and yours. You’l usual y find a ratio

that’s grossly out-of-whack.

These guys just don’t get that people spend most of their free time thinking about their

own chal enges, problems, tasks, relationships, and goals. They’re living their own lives

and do not find the marketer’s life to be that fascinating. As I said before, most people

are tuned to radio station WI-fm, or What’s In It For Me.

I’m not being critical here, because I’m often focused on myself, too. If I hear al the

marketer-focused sales material I quickly turn off and gravitate instead toward the

customer-focused stuff. Because most people do walk around in their own bubble of

personal-focused thoughts, they love it when someone focuses on their needs for a

change. And when you provide solutions to their problems or talk about meeting their

needs, you’l be delighted to discover that people wil be more than just receptive—they’l

move heaven and earth to get what you have because it’s what they have been looking

for.

Gary Halbert was a bril iant legendary marketer I had the privilege of knowing who was

so successful that at one time his bank opened an entire branch just for the purpose of

processing al the money that was coming in for his products. Gary liked to ask

audiences, “If you were opening a restaurant and I could wave a magic wand and give

you one marketing advantage, what would you ask for?”

One audience member would yel out, “Give me a great location.” Another said, “I want

the best chef.” Yet another person insisted, “I’l take the freshest and very best

ingredients.”

Halbert smiled. “I’l beat every single one of you with what I would wish for. Just give

me a starving crowd.” No wonder the guy was a genius. He focused on understanding

human nature above al else.

MISTAKE NUMBER FOUR: INEFFECTIVE MARKETERS ASK

YOU TO BUY TOO SOON

Why is that not surprising, given that these are the same guys who focus on themselves

exclusively? Of course they ask you to buy right away because their primitive logic is: I’m

the center
of the
universe and I want you to buy so here it is. What are you waiting for?

You can spot these headlines a mile away. They go something like this:

How a Trailer-Trash Dropout Made Millions of Dollars by Discovering a

Secret Technique for Forecasting Stock Market Prices. . . . And Now You Too

Can Become Filthy Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams with My Simple,

Connect-the-Dots Coaching System that Only Costs $999.99 but Will Suck

Money into Your Bank Account Like a Nuclear-Powered Super-Magnet on

Overload!!!!