I read a book not long ago titled “Purple Cow” by Seth Godin (the second book of his I’ve read). It’s a great read about being remarkable in…well anything. The book focuses on business though- on why you should be remarkable, how, and why “marketing” itself sucks.
Marketing should be built into the product or service you offer. How?
Make it so AWESOME people can’t stop talking about it. This (not so coincidentally) frees up a lot of revenue from typical marketing/advertising campaigns, and allows you to put it back into developing/improving your product or service.
This is very counter intuitive, so it sat well with me.
Day’s later, I took action. I began work on what is now a part of my most successful venture ever- The 21 Convention. The site is essentially a cross between TED.com and AskMen.com (well, if AskMen were actually useful that is).
The21Convention.com is home to the world’s largest collection of dating advice in video format. The traffic it has generated via word of mouth is not only massive (and thus far stable), but continuing to rise.
Why is that?
Because it’s friggin awesome!
What better way to help people- and gain the convention popularity- than to make the footage free? I couldn’t think of one, so that’s what I did. It is now one step higher on the “remarkable” scale.
Every week it pops up on a new discussion forum or blog- costing literally nothing in the way of advertising, money that can go into better footage production and site development rather than stupid marketing campaigns and costs.
The moral of the story I learned from this experience?
Marketing as we know it is progressively less effective each passing day, and will soon be downright obsolete. It’s an entire industry built upon archaic foundations- the “TV-industrial” complex as Seth Godin puts it.
Many companies- including major ones that speak at my convention- pour THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of dollars down the drain to increase a “conversion rate” from 2.5 to 2.8 percent. That is, out of every 1,000 e-mails they send out, a few more people buy.
This leaves everyone else with an ever increasing influx of spam mail. It’s absurd, and scary to think I bought into it for so long.
I mean, why do I want to bother people who don’t already want what I have to offer? I’m not some annoying kid with a squirt gun at his older sisters birthday party, I have great stuff. Why taint it with gimmicky sales copy, photoshopped pictures, highly edited videos, and absurd affiliate schemes?
Now, before I go off on a full rant, I’d rather get to the point.
I’m now only interested in communicating with the people that matter (and getting massive value to THEM). This is actually a major reason why I didn’t transfer over my old blog posts- and the google traffic they brought in.
I wanted to start fresh, and I knew the long time readers would gladly hop on here. Why would I care about some random person who found an image of a woman running on my old blog?
I don’t, so I didn’t transfer over 200+ posts.
The people that truly matter are the people that greatly appreciate the content and value I put out. I’m not sure how many of you there are, but my estimate is somewhere around a few dozen- no more.
Sure there are a few hundred readers of this blog, but how many are actively e-mailing me, attending the convention, commenting, calling me, sharing blog posts/convention footage, etc?
In light of this, I have decided to focus more heavily on that small group of people. I have decided to do this in 3 primary ways (direct contact not included but is also awesome).
1. This blog
2. The discussion forum
3. Facebook/Twitter/Youtube (see the sidebar)
That means no more e-mails, hence I’m canceling my GetResponse e-mail marketing account. I think its an archaic way to communicate at this point, and I like blogging/posting on my forum a hell of a lot more than typing up some e-mail to a bunch of people I don’t know.
So, no more e-mail collection. No more paid ads, none of that crap. From now on, I make my stuff so awesome it spreads like swine flu, or not at all. Books, live events, websites, blog posts, videos, whatever.
Content also stays a lot more potent this way (especially /w Dream Vitality for those of you who remember the newsletter).
On the flip side of things, if you really did enjoy e-mails over checking the blog, you can just subscribe to the blog feed via e-mail and my posts will still show up in your inbox.
Also, by signing up on the forum you may recieve an occasional e-mail from me, but it would be very rare, and the reason would have to be massive to require anything more than a blog post with an accompained Tweet (like if I got in a car accident or something horrible).
In summary, to hell with conventional marketing/sales wisdom. Long live actually helping people, expressing my self, and putting out the best content I can.
Have a fun weekend
-Dream
Glad your breaking from the mold, Ive read the four hour work week and have tried venturing in Online Marketing and have gone halfway through the thirtydaychallenge.com and have always had a distaste for typical sales and marketing pitches.
Major props to you man. Honestly, every time I see a company use major marketing techniques, I begin to wonder if the product they are selling is worth the money.
It’s like seeing a guy out in the field who’s trying way too hard, you can see it – everyone knows it, and women see through his “fake” exterior to the truth – if only we as consumers to products have the same intuition as a woman to authenticity.
If you’re selling a product that is honestly awesome, you are right – you don’t need that BS to over hype. The only instance where I think you would need advertising, would be if you wanted to expand awareness, but make it light and never “bloated” or “over-hyped.”
Sometimes your product is awesome but you aren’t getting your voice out far enough – light a match (light advertising) and watch the wildfires grow (word of mouth).
Keep up the good work, keep dreamin’.
~A. Luce aka “Zen”