Feb 13
Positioning Theory says you must start with what the prospect is already willing to give you. Outside-in thinking, not inside-out thinking. – AL RIES & JACK TROUT
Jan 5
When you use a recognized authority to give your product credibility, you are tapping a fundamental aspect of human nature and behavior. There’s security in not having to trust your own judgement. – AL RIES & JACK TROUT
Dec 13
Inside-out thinking its he biggest barrier to success. Outside-in thinking, from the prospects mind backwards, is the point of strongest leverage, and ultimately success. – AL RIES & JACK TROUT
Nov 7
The ultimate objective of all marketing: the human mind. – AL RIES & JACK TROUT
Oct 22
Very little of your message is going to get through and land int he mind of the prospect. Ignore the sending side (you) and concentrate on the receiving end. You concentrate on the perceptions of the prospect. Not the… Read More
Oct 17
You look for the solution to your problem not inside the product, not even inside your own mind. You look for the solution to your problem inside the prospects mind. AL RIES & JACK TROUT
Oct 7
Just published: Essential Reference Guide to Direct Response
The Essential Reference Guide to Direct Response Marketing
Click here to download as a PDF
Click here to download on the iTunes Bookstore
I just finished writing an essential reference guide to direct response marketing. Are you a creative entrepreneur or business owner? If so, click here to download this now.
Most of my direct response notes are hand-written, which doesn’t make them very accessible on the go. When transferring all of the notes to digital format so I could access them on my iPad and my iPhone, I thought, “why not publish all this awesome stuff so the rest of the world can check it out?”
Download it to any mobile device as a PDF, or even print the most important pages out to keep near your workspace.
Graham
Aug 17
7 Key Insights For Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
Many of today’s brightest creative entrepreneurs and startups try to be all things to all people, yet the current era of positioning is one of narrow market targeting and segmentation.
Here’s a few interesting bits I picked up in Positioning – 7 Key Insights For Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning: Read More
Aug 17
Language is the currency of the mind. To think conceptually, you must manipulate words. With the right selection of words you can influence the thinking process itself. – AL RIES & JACK TROUT
Aug 13
9 Marketing Strategies & Tactics for the Positioning Era
Business is not a sport like golf or swimming, it’s a close quarters contact sport like hockey or football. Those who succeed play by the rules of the game, not their own alone. This is what we need to do as creative entrepreneurs and startups in order to succeed in today’s incredibly competitive environment.
It’s important to realize that 99% of all businesses fail within the first 5 years. Another way of looking at this is that only 1% of businesses succeed. Below are 9 Marketing Strategies & Tactics to Succeed in the today’s Positioning era. Follow these 9 Strategies & Tactics and you’ll avoid being a part of the 99% of businesses that fail within the first 5 years: Read More
Aug 3
The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it. – DALE CARNEGIE
Aug 1
The 10 Tenants of Positioning Strategy Explained
The last 100 years of marketing and advertising comprises three major eras:
- The Copywriting Era or Poetry Era of Eugene Schwartz and Clyde Hopkins. The best copy won.
- The Image Era of David Ogilvy. Images and emotions rather than words won.
- The Positioning Era of the current age. Straightforward and clear language wins.
To be successful in today’s Positioning Era you must reject a lot of conventional marketing and advertising. Marketing and advertising fundamentals are essentially behavioral and behavioral psychology – that’s timeless. But the tactics and approaches to the marketplace must be suited to the current era, it must play by the rules of the game – and these do change.
Below are The 10 Tenants of Positioning Strategy Explained, or simplified. Stray from these 10 tenants and your business will be part of the 99% who fail within the first 5 years. Read More
Jul 27
Influencing Human Behavior
In the 1920’s, American writer and purveyor of modern psychology, Harry Allen Overstreet, wrote a great book called Influencing Human Behavior. In this book, he illuminates how to directly connect with a prospect and then getting them to take action:
“Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire… and the best piece of advice which can be given to those who wish to influence others is to first arouse in the other person an eager want by correctly determining their desires. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”
Jul 19
In communication, as in architecture, less is more. You have to sharpen your message to cut into the mind. – AL RIES & JACK TROUT
Jul 18
Never try to improve others, instead improve upon yourself. – DALE CARNEGIE
Jul 17
Who Was David Ogilvy?
When Ogilvy was 20 years old he wrote a document on door-to-door sales instruction manual. 30 years later Fortune magazine called it the best sales instruction manual ever written, and 30 years after that he sold his firm for nearly $1 billion and was the first advertising firm to go IPO. Read More
Jul 13
14 Marketing Frameworks from Positioning Theory
Those who create products and ideas are usually creatives. The future economy is a creative one. So it should then follow that creative entrepreneurs will succeed, right? False. Read More
Jul 12
26 Strategies for Outsourcing Your Life
The 4 Hour Work Week has a trendy place on many bookshelves, yet it’s not all hype – it has a fair bit of strong content. One aspect of the book that I found particularly interesting was around outsourcing, and getting systems and people in place to maintain a business.
Here are 26 Strategies for Outsourcing Your Life: Read More
Jul 10
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates
Jun 20
9 Strategies for How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking by Dale Carnegie
In order to influence and attract prospects into buying what it is you have to sell, understanding the essential mechanics of how humans make decisions is important. Dale Carnegie has some insight into how this works: Read More
Jun 13
High Price Strategy Simplified
Pricing often confuses startups and creative entrepreneurs. Humans naturally look for other products within a similar range or category to triangulate the perceived value of a product versus it’s price. Read More
Jun 12
Jay Abraham’s Proven Pattern for Selling Effectively
Once you’ve positioned your product properly, it’s time to pattern interrupt your narrow targets. To do this effectively, you must speak to your prospects in their unique language so directly that they feel as if you’re talking directly to them. Read More
May 28
“Overcome skepticism with shock & awe coolness. Demonstrate that you can solve simple problems. Give people things they can use immediately.” FRANK KERN
May 23
John Carlton’s Deceptively Simple System for Selling
Most marketers and business owners deliver the offer, yet fail miserably on the CTA. Most people answer questions the prospect isn’t asking. John Carlton, a great copywriter, has a brilliantly simple yet effective system for ensuring your CTA is highly effective, and it’s deceptively simple, too.
The idea is to keep it very short and draw a straight line directly to the prospects frustrations and fears, wants and aspirations – as fast and as simply as possible.
- “Here’s what I got” Tell the viewer directly what it is you have
- “Here’s what it will do for you” Come right out and say it
- “Here’s what I want you to do next…” This saves you from the ruin. 99% drop the ball on this part
- “Many back if you love it, or if you don’t find it useful.” Okay, he didn’t, say this part, but close it out by lowering and/or eliminating risk and you’re all set.
May 17
10 Essential Direct Response Marketing Frameworks
Creative entrepreneurs frequently have an addiction with creating amazing products or services. Unfortunately the best product or service doesn’t win, only the product or service with the best marketing. Does this mean mean that a lesser quality product can outsell a higher quality product 9 times out of 10 simply due to marketing? Yes.
This is slightly depressing news for us creative entrepreneurs. It came as a realization for me, personally, and I had to see it play out before I really understood the concept. As it turns out the power of the product comes directly from the mind of the prospect, so it’s really a matter of working backwards from the end goal to the product creation.
In Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout provide a number of essential frameworks. Here’s 10 Essential Marketing Frameworks from Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind:
Apr 29
13 Key Insights Into Prospect Psychology
Creative entrepreneurs often approach the whole game of product creation and then selling the created products it in the wrong ways. To build a truly world-class product, you must know who you are building it for and develop an outside-in approach if you want to hit consistency. This means understanding the psychology of your potential prospects.
According to positioning theory the easy way to get into a persons mind is to be first.
There’s a number of other insights that are incredibly important to consistently implement if creative entrepreneurs want to in the close quarters contact sport that is business. Here’s 13 Key Insights Into Prospect Psychology from the book Positioning: Read More
Apr 23
Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
Eugene Schwartz is commonly referred to as the best copywriter who ever lived. He’s also the author of what’s widely considered the No. 1 marketing & advertising book of all time – Breakthrough Advertising. Read More
Apr 4
32 Key Marketing Insights from Jay Abraham
Jay Abraham is most well known for his seminal $1,000 book, Stealth Marketing. Although it was published in the early 90’s, like so many other direct response classics it’s timeless, and worth every penny. All 32 key insights below come directly from Stealth Marketing. Read More
Feb 17
It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life, and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. Alfred… Read More
Feb 5
The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-serving. So rare is the individual who unselfishly tries to serve others. He has an enormous advantage, and little competition. – HENRY FORD
Jan 23
‘Positioning’ by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind is a book written by Al Ries and Jack Trout. This book defined a new approach to communication, and may have defined the new era of marketing called “Positioning”. This is a book is as much about marketing as it is human psychology.
So what is Positioning? Simply defined, positioning starts with a product. But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect. Read More
Jan 17
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other persons point of view and see things from that persons angle, as well as from your own. – HENRY FORD
Jan 12
17 Key Insights from Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie’s timeless How To Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, not only teaches you about how to interact with other humans on a higher level, but as an entrepreneur how to connect with prospects on a very direct level.
Here are 17 key insights from Dale Carnegie: Read More
Jan 3
When engaging a prospect to take action always ask yourself “How can I make this person want to do it?” – DALE CARNEGIE
