Tag: Dan Kennedy

Experts Are People Too 😉

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Thoughts on the importance of not getting too “caught up” with guru’s.

Transcription

Experts are people too.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

One of the things that you’re seeing right now around the world is questioning and worshipping at the same time expertise in all its forms. In terms of people that have degrees, in terms of people that have specialized knowledge, in terms of just across the board, on all levels, you a lot of people say that experts cannot be questioned.

Here’s the thing we have to keep in mind, this is not a political issue. It’s used within the world of politics but there is no political party that is free of this. There is no political philosophy, there are no people within any given philosophy that is not prone to expert worship.

If there’s something built into the human psyche, that causes us to first hold a person up, and then pass off all of our reliance on that person for judgment on any given topic.

Oftentimes, we’ll let them go far beyond what we consider their specialized knowledge. Because if they’re smart, they’re they miss, they must be smart in other areas.

So we saw this, we saw this quite a lot, you know, regardless of what side that you were on, during the COVID 19 pandemic, a whole lot of this happened where you were not allowed to question, expertise on any given level.

Then so that leads a whole section of the population to I don’t know if you could call it overly question, but to become to where they automatically assume that the experts are wrong, because it seemed safer than going along with the experts being right.

Neither side I think is in the right in that I do think that proper questioning needs to happen. Now let’s pull it back into the business. That’s what I’m talking about very broadly, I want to talk about this in terms of business, the same thing is true.

Whoever you’re looking to bring on as an expert, whoever you’re looking to bring into the fold, or to trust or to hire any of those experts, they’re all people.

People make mistakes, right down to the person I haven’t met yet, that is not making mistakes.

I haven’t met one yet. That isn’t, in most cases, really good at something. Most people are good at something. Some people are outrageously good at certain things, but you go outside of that realm for them. And they could be very wrong, deadly wrong, in many cases on things.

If we don’t acknowledge that for one thing, the desire for expertise, the desire for the wizard, you know, for us having somebody that knows much more than us on any given topic. The desire for us to hand over the reins to that person that’s built into humans, but also built into humans is the reality that they’re that experts are people too, and they’re going to make mistakes, one way or another.

Now, how does that come back to you?

This comes back to a phrase that I’ve heard only uttered by Dan Kennedy, where he says…and if you’re not aware Dan Kennedy, as a marketing expert, has written a number of books, you can go and look him up. Dan Kennedy said to be the wizard, beware of the wizard.

In other words, while you need to be were the wizards out there those people who we give almost magical abilities because they’re so far beyond us in a given field, you also need to be that person because in a sense, if you are out there, putting forth a personality in your marketing.

The concept of content marketing is one of the things I love to talk about because if you’re providing any type of content, heavy, commercial, or material out there, that is also working as marketing then you really need a personality involved either a real personality or a fake character.

You need to have somebody, you need to have a personality tied to it.

That personality is going to be an expert about something, whether they like it or not, it’s going to tie back to your product or service in some way or fashion.

You have to acknowledge that for that personality to be useful, they have to be some type of expert. Now they don’t have to be a doctor in lab coats and they don’t need to, they don’t need to have any specific degree.

They just need to hold themselves as knowing something that somebody else may not know or that it’s having an experience that other people don’t have, this isn’t difficult to do, because we all have experiences that other people don’t have.

We all know something that a portion of the population doesn’t know. And doesn’t matter who you are.

It doesn’t matter if you’re working on a cattle ranch, or if you’ve worked, in the halls of Congress in Washington, DC. Everyone has special knowledge. And when you can build that into your marketing, and just acknowledge that you are a different person with a different point of view, you automatically will become the wizard.

At the same time you have to be were the wizard that’s out there in everybody else trying to get us to put trust, put automatic trust, unwavering trust and unquestioning trust in them.

Yes, there are people that know more than you.

Yes, you do need to trust them to an extent but it’s the trust but verify the concept.

Beware of wizards, beware your own desire to hand over responsibility to them. It’s difficult. It’s an interesting balancing act. But experts are people too. And I talk a lot about this in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business is not a very big book, but I’ve got a whole chapter on being somebody about how to stand out and and by using the personality within your content marketing.

You go pick up a copy of the book wherever you buy books amazon.com or what have you. Or you can download a free digital copy at AmazonProofBook.com

That’s, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business gives it an AmazonProofBook.com. That’s all I have for tonight. We’ll be back here tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Business Movie: American Playboy 🐰

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Ok, two days in a row of Playboy content, I’m going to have to talk with Brian about this. 🙄

Transcription

Business movie, American Playboy.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Now, it’s not the type of movie that I run out and watch on my own. This was recommended by Dan Kennedy, in his recent interview with Russell Brunson with his kind of return to form and having his company recently acquired by Russell Brunson.

And so it was very interesting.

He’s discussed this before how Walt Disney is very similar in how he structured his company, too many other icons, including Stanley and Hugh Hefner, three people you would never really consider to be similar.

But you look at how they structured a whole lot of their branding, and their companies and so forth, and then you can see the similarities.

This was one of those things that I did not have a whole lot of knowledge on how the original Playboy company was structured, but it was very interesting.

Now, regardless of the controversy, or, you know, the controversy is endless from the very beginning. Playboy was started under the concepts developed by Alfred Kinsey in the 50s.

I think Hefner was in was in college at the time and came across this and it was this grand awakening that he was looking to spread the gospel of, through his magazines that he eventually came out with, and watching the transition of how that happens.

It doesn’t matter where you stand on it, morally or otherwise, if you can step back and look at the business aspect of it and look at what he was able to do off of very little started really out of his garage, in a sense.

Built on to that time, but you know, piece by piece by piece over time, and morphed with the times in order to stay relevant, as relevant as he could, was a very, very interesting documentary.

So this is just so you’re aware, this is a mini-series, specifically.

I could call it a TV show or a movie I just stuck with a movie because it has a very definite beginning, middle and end. But I believe it’s 10 episode miniseries that can be found on Amazon.

If you look at it from the business perspective, it’s worth watching for that because it is a documentary with elements of Docudrama built-in.

So what they ended up doing with this movie is they end up having people and I’m not going to spoil anything, but they do have clips in it that are dramatizing different sections of Hugh Hefner’s life.

They have actors playing all these famous people and not so famous people that you get to know throughout the course of the film.

It’s a very interesting way of doing a documentary. It’s not my favorite way of watching a documentary, I don’t mind a little bit of that it this is very, this has a very high-end high amount of, of Docudrama, built-in.

Now throughout that, they’re also working in clips and recordings, and so forth of Hugh Hefner and other people that knew him.

And also, you know, talking heads and famous people today talking about what they thought about what’s going on during the scene, you know, they start at the beginning of his life and go all the way to the very end.

It’s very worthwhile in terms of watching it from a business perspective. Beyond that, in terms of entertainment, I don’t know what type of things you find entertaining.

I like documentaries, especially by biographical documentaries, whether they like the person or don’t like the person, if the person had an interesting life I,

I enjoy watching it. It’s important to understand what this was. This had a whole lot of his children involved in it, and so forth in putting together this documentary.

It is very highly favorable of Hugh Hefner, okay, so if you dislike him, you just got to take it all with a grain of salt and realize this whole thing is very much put together to put him in a very good light.

I’m sure if you had people with more of a negative view on him, it would make it even more interesting documentary, but you take it for what it’s worth. It’s called American playboy. Like I said, it’s on Amazon. It’s on Amazon Prime.

You can go check that out. I recommend it in terms of its business content. There’s also a large amount of swearing, nudity and all the rest So probably not that great for kids. So just a warning there. I wanted to also recommend to you my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

If you’re a business owner or executive, and you’re looking to make your business more competitive proof. I wrote a book on it. It’s a short book, easy read, go grab yourself a copy or you can get a free digital copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

That’s all I got for today. You have a good one. We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Brunson, Kennedy and Customer Experience 😃

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Thoughts on customer experience from a recent interview Brian saw between Russell Brunson and Dan Kennedy.

Transcription

Brunson, Kennedy and customer experience.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Yesterday we were talking about the VIP treatment, and how Disneyland has been able to do that for years with their club 33. Very exclusive thing.

And I’m going to draw on where Walt may have gotten one of those ideas from in a future episode. But let’s continue the concept of VIP treatment, and how to really be able to offer as much as possible to the small group of people involved in your customer base that are willing to pay large amounts of money. Okay.

So, this, this harkens back to in fact, it’s a principle that Dan Kennedy teaches, which is ironic that Dan Kennedy was recently his while his intellectual property was all under the auspices of a company called magnetic marketing and magnet magnetic marketing was just purchased by Russell Bronson’s company Click Funnels.

And so Bronson and Kennedy are working together. And directly which is funny because Bronson learned a whole lot of what he got from Kennedy initially.

It’s a very good match, I would say, and what you’re starting to see some really cool stuff that Bronson is starting to put out, starting to take a lot of this material that’s been out there for a long time and make it a lot more accessible.

So there’s already been a gold membership for $97 A month and a, and a diamond membership for, you know, $297 a month. And they, these are amounts of stuff that you get in the mail or access to online.

That that gave you a certain amount, then you’re getting, you’re getting all this material in on a monthly basis to help you with marketing for your business. This is the basic idea of magnetic marketing.

Instead of going through the details, you’re welcome to go and look into it. It’s a great deal. They got a great organization over there.

What’s really interesting is that they introduced a third level, which has not, there hasn’t been anything like this for quite a while and magnetic marking previous to that GKIC and so forth.

That organization has not offered this third level. And they just came out with what they call the Insider Circle. And you can find out more the insidercircle.com. I don’t get paid or anything from Russell or Dan or anybody.

So I’m just showing you kind of an example of somebody offering a higher tier. So you go from $97 a month to $297 a month and the people who really want like, everything that’s currently available, or for the most part that’s for sale by Dan Kennedy, you can get that boy that looks horrible with my shirt hanging down like this.

You can get that the includes what they call the whole enchilada, which is most of everything that’s out there for sale by Dan Kennedy search engine that you can find this stuff though.

You’ve got people that can actually support team that will actually help you to implement these ideas and new tools to be able to do that that they’ve never had before.

They’re charging $1,000 A month or $10,000 a year for this whole big thing called the insider circle. It just shows you what’s possible.

What if, what if you can offer everything What if you can offer the moon? And what would be a reasonable price for it? It’s something that you ought to think about for your own business.

What if you were just after that small bout, I mean honestly, in most businesses it’s between the top one to 5% of all your ongoing customers, your regular customers, out of that group of regular customers is about one to 5% that will possibly fit in probably even smaller, they’ll possibly even fit that high end that VIP experience.

And that and not that they don’t have higher things. They have masterminds and so forth available for magnetic marketing, but this was the next rung on the self, the self help customer service, do-it-yourself side of the business, which is the initial side.

Especially with inflation and everything else, you’re going to see prices rise and you’re going to see more and more offers like this available, and it’s something you ought to consider in your business.

It helps to fund like I said, you’re only you’re hitting a very small portion of the market, like we were talking about yesterday.

But by helping that small portion of the market, you’re able to bring in an influx of cash cashflow, especially if it’s something that’s an ongoing subscription base or something of that sort, if you can have that in your business, that’s something you can use to improve all the rest of your business for all of your customers, including new ones that don’t even know you exist yet.

So something to consider go check out the video on that page. It’s very interesting, Russell does a very good job of lining it up. It’s a great light.

He’s a master of the kind of the infomercial webinars style of pitching, and all the different ways of the apples to oranges comparisons, it’s not this much, it’s not this much.

But for this low price right now, today, you can have it. These are all psychological processes that everyone goes through, when they’re buying anyways, all he’s doing is he’s taking advantage of it and using it to be able to encourage you to buy his thing.

So there’s, these are all very good lessons, just even if you don’t purchase anything from these people, if you just see how they go about doing it.

It’s and these are people that teach how to do it, okay, and they’re still doing it, and they’re still gonna make money from it. It’s amazing how well that works. You can’t even fight it.

When you understand how it functions. When you understand the psychology of it, you still can’t find it off, when it’s something that you already wanted. That’s been offered to you at a price that’s that is made to seem reasonable. So hopefully that makes sense. Go check that out.

Also, go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you want something to help you move to the next level. This is only a start. This has lists of books and other places that you can research beyond just what I’m talking about.

This is a great starting place, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can go buy a copy at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or you can get a free copy a digital copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

That’s all I got for tonight. You have a good one.

We’ll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Customer Research Methods 📚 (10 Smart Market Diagnosis & Profiling Questions)

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Brian chats about Dan Kennedy’s checklist, The 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions from his classic book The Ultimate Sales Letter.

Transcription

Customer research methods.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I wanted to talk a little bit of a piece out of this book and it’s really good for research.

Sometimes it gets tough in the very beginning, especially when you’re getting into advertising, and you’re wanting to learn more about your customers. And that’s really the beginning of the good direct response advertising is really knowing about but who, really know about who you’re trying to reach, and making that kind of your primary start.

If you’ve at least got that in your mind, you’re on a good track and sometimes if you start there, it’s like, Okay, well, what do I need to know about him?

I mean, there’s a million things, you got your demographics, and psychographics, and all these different things.

Well, this is a great checklist from Dan Kennedy’s book, the Ultimate Sales Letter, I think this checklist is in a couple of other formats floating around out there also but this is a good book to begin with.

I mean, this isn’t a complete review of this book but it’s an awesome book. It’s not just about sales letters, it’s about communicating a thorough message when you’re trying to sell something to anyone in any way, especially online, where you have actually sales letters printed on pages. On websites, you’ve got video sales letters, in a sense, you have audio coming through and podcasts and other formats.

There are a million ways to be able to sell people now more so than ever before. And it all really originated with mailers, and direct mail, and, and advertising that way and through magazines and newspapers.

It’s moved to today, but at the same time, the same things are true. And so when we’re looking to find out more about potential customers, we’re wanting to do research and really find out what they’re all about so that we can communicate properly to them, and be able to speak their language, then this is a great way of going about doing that this is from chapter one.

It’s the first step in his process of creating a good sales letter, and specifically a good sales message.

He says step one, get into the customer.

And he has this list. It’s called the 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions.

Okay, so there’s 10 of these, let’s go through them real quick, shall we?

Number one, what keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling?

And what keeps them awake at night is all bolded. It’s what really has your customer on edge, you got to at least know that whether it has anything to do with your product or not, you got to know where they’re coming from.

In general, once again, a whole lot of this is guessing unless you already have a customer, or unless you are already familiar enough with the market unless you know them personally. And you could base this off of one person to begin with if you needed to.

Number two, What are they afraid of?

There’s a very common thread throughout all of this. We’ll hit on that at the very end.

Number three, and then once again, that could be number one. Number two could be the same thing, right? It all depends.

Number three, What are they angry about? Who are they angry at?

That’s number three.

Number four, What are their top three daily frustrations?

Real similar trend throughout this whole thing, but you might be able to pick something up. And you may not have an answer all these questions, but you may be able to pick something up off of one or two or three of these questions.

Number five, What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or lives?

Number six, What do they secretly ardently desire most?

Number seven, Is their built-in bias to the way they make decisions? Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions?

Okay, for example, engineers are exceptionally analytical. So that’s kind of their bias is in a very heavy analytical side. So is that true of your market also?

Number eight, Do they have their own language?

More than likely they do depending on how defined you have your market down to if it’s a specific career choice if it’s a specific religious sect if it’s, you know, whatever it is that makes your people unique.

What is that language and they’re not just talking English versus German versus whatever, that’s not the type of language that Dan Kennedy is talking about is do they have certain terminology and everything else that other people may not even understand if you brought it up, it’s very important to know.

Number nine, Who else is selling something similar to their product and how?

So to your product, you know, is something is someone selling something similar and how are they doing it?

It’s a tough question, but it’s something you really need to know.

And number 10, Who else has tried selling them something similar and how has that effort failed?

Not that easy to find out. But if you really know the market, well, you may already have that answer. Or it may have been you maybe you’ve already failed at trying to sell something similar up until now. But those are very, very, very important questions.

Those are the 10 Smart market diagnosis and profiling questions when it comes to your market when it comes to your potential customer or client. Very important stuff.

That what’s the common trend. The common trend throughout almost every single one of those answers is emotion.

Okay, we’re focusing very, very deeply on the emotion that runs through your marketplace.

What are they feeling?

What are they angry about?

Where what gets them going?

What are they excited about?

These are all emotional ideas and emotions. You know, we are not our emotions as people but quite often we let our emotions drive us.

And especially when it comes to purchasing when it comes to separating from our money. A whole lot of that is an emotional process. In most cases, it was one of the things I fought a lot.

When I first started getting into the marketing arena, they kept saying that I’m like, Yeah, but it shouldn’t be that way. You know, people should be more logical about this type of thing.

I’m more logical, why can’t everyone be more logical, and you can’t get caught up with the way things should be. You have to focus when you’re coming out from a scientific perspective.

The whole Claude Hopkins, you know, Scientific Advertising, you come out from a scientific perspective, you have to look at the way things are, and not the way you want them to be.

And the plain fact of the matter is, you go out there and try enough times you’re going to find, you’re going to get a motion back over and over and over again, as the main reason why people do things.

And if you ignore that, you do it at your own peril. You’re gonna have a really tough time getting anyone anywhere, and getting anyone excited about what you’re doing.

If you don’t, at least acknowledge that that’s where they’re coming from. Now you can help redirect them and help help people to think better if you want, but you have to meet them where they’re at. And where most people are at is in an emotional state.

Especially if they’re going to be purchasing anything from yourself.

Hopefully that’s helpful. Like I said, great book.

I’ve got my own book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Just one book so far, but this is a good one. Go check it out small lots more than this one.

It’s a quick read, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. Go there right now for a free copy. AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

The Marketing Triangle & Your Business 🛆 (Dan Kennedy)

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Brian talks about Dan Kennedy’s Marketing Triangle.

Transcription

The marketing triangle and your business.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

What is the marketing triangle and why is it so important?

It really matters, and it’s going to mean a whole lot more to you if you’ve been involved in business for a period of time, basically, because it will show you why you’ve failed so many different things, or why things aren’t working properly.

And it was funny because it took it was probably around 2013, 2012, late 2012, 2013, that it came to me and I’m like, Oh, I get it.

One of the big pieces was reading this book, the ultimate marketing plan by Dan Kennedy. Great book, he talks about the marketing triangle in here in great depth, I’m going to cover it in very light manner.

Just to give you an idea of what it is and why it’s so important.

It really comes down to this. When you’re in business, oftentimes, when it comes to marketing, we focus on the media source first, that tends to be the first thing goes to our mind.

The old saying was, you know, it’s the Yellow Pages salesman that walks in through the door or calls you on the phone. And that’s what leads you to getting into the Yellow Pages.

It’s not because you thought about it, and you figured your market with the people you’re trying to get to use the Yellow Pages, all this stuff, it’s, we tend to be driven by the market.

So someone gets really excited about Facebook ads, or tik tok or anything like that. And then they say, Okay, now what am I going to put on there?

And then at the very end, they might get to the point where they say, Okay, now, what does my audience want. But that’s, that’s usually the last thing people think of.

Here’s the magic of the of the marketing triangle, it should be the first thing we think of is our marketplace. Our who, so we talked about yesterday about the who and why that is so important.

Another word for who is market. We’re wanting to focus on our market first. That should be the first thing that we think about is the who, who are we trying to help, right?

Who are we trying to help and what are we wanting them to do?

How are we helping them?

And the how is the message, because you start with the market?

You say, Okay, this is who we’re trying to reach.

Now, what are we trying to help them with?

How are we going to help them?

That’s our message when it comes to marketing, because marketing is just the communication of what we want the market to do what we want potential customers, clients, patients, whatever, what do we want them to do?

Right, that’s marketing.

It’s just the communication of it, and we’ll get into that in a second. But so you got your message, your market, and then at the end, that will lead you to media.

What type of media do I go to with that message for that market?

See, if you do it that way then you don’t get excited about the media source, except for the fact that it’s a good way to deliver a message to the market.

But most of us, we do it all backwards and then we don’t end up getting good results.

This happens only almost every single time. I know this from not only doing it myself, but from working with client after client after client.

This tends to be the only time they get excited about any type of marketing or advertising is when they get excited about the media source.

It’s not them getting excited about helping the end person. And this is a very human thing. It’s just one of these things we fall into. But really, ideally, you’re going to get the best bang for your buck by focusing on the who first and the what and how.

And then the where and when the media were when are we going to tell them what and how to do it and who are we talking to?

That’s the idea behind the marketing triangle.

It’s more of the order in which you do things and the importance in which you do them. And it that really helps hone what each answer is everything it’s all about communication marketing.

If you take marketing, you take the area that’s just called advertising and there’s that old story. There’s this old story by I think it was Albert Lasker that was talking about coming in contact with John Kennedy. This was back in the early 1900s, I believe in the 1920s, probably, you know, 100 years or more ago, they had this situation where he was studying advertising and trying to figure out, what is the essential point of advertising?

And he ran to John Kennedy, he said, I’ve got it.

He says it’s very, very simple. Advertising is salesmanship in print.

If you think about it back then that’s that was what advertising was that that’s the only thing you either had salesmanship, which was one on one communication, trying to get somebody to do something, or you had advertising, which was the print and advertising back then was print, it’s a sign, It’s a newspaper, it’s a magazine.

That and that’s about it.

I mean, it’s things in print, it’s a, it’s a piece of mail, a letter that’s been sent to you. But no matter what it’s what we would refer even to today as print. If you consider that around all marketing, because marketing has grown so much bigger than that nowadays, if you look at the entire lifestyle of marketing, it all comes back to salesmanship. in whatever form, you’re trying to reach a person.

That’s what it is, it’s salesmanship in a YouTube video, it’s salesmanship in a phone call, you know, all the different technologies we have, it’s still the exact same game, it’s a communication.

The communication is to a certain audience, to get them to do a certain thing via a certain source. That’s it, that’s marketing in just the simplest terms possible.

So if you get to wrap your mind around that principle, and the direction that we go in making that relationship, the main thing, it’s one of the main things I why I talk about, with BrianJPombo.com. That we have three main pillars, we talk about being relationship reliant, is one of the main ones, okay, relationship reliant, everything comes back to a relationship, whether you’ve known that person physically, you’ve actually come in contact with them or not.

They’re still a relationship, there’s communication back and forth. And if you realize that all businesses based on that you’ll do really well.

If you keep that in mind with everything that you’re doing that you’re talking to an actual person out there. towards all about that’s just another one of the principles in this string of videos that we’re doing on some of the main principles you need either start a business or to take your business to the next level, really focusing down on these principles.

Hopefully, it’s helpful for you. I’d love to hear what you think about the marketing triangle. As I said, I did not come up with it. But there’s a lot of people that talk about message market message media, and the matching of those three, so you have a great night.

Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Pricing Strategy: The Smart Way 🐂 (Dan Kennedy’s Price Strategy)

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Brian talks about Dan Kennedy’s list of 9 ways people fail at pricing in business from his Price Strategy book.

Transcription

Pricing strategy, the smart way.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Let’s talk about pricing strategy, shall we?

Because every business, if you’re selling stuff, you got to price things. If you’re pricing things it’s based on something.

Now there, I’m setting aside all the businesses that have very strict rules on how to price things. I understand if you’re in those industries, there are certain things it’s legal you’ve got to follow.

There are ways around, those are all the things that everyone is stuck in. But I’m not gonna get into the details, because that goes a little bit deeper. We’re not going to hit on that right now.

What I want to hit on is the general idea of pricing strategy, or my favorite books on this, and I’ll give you a review of it sometimes the no BS Price Strategy. This is by Dan Kennedy and Jason Maher’s.

Excellent book on this, like I said, I’ll go into more depth on this book in the future. And I’ve talked about it in the past, it’s excellent, it’s my favorite book on pricing strategy.

So when you’re sitting down and you are either pricing things for the first time, or you’re reconsidering your prices, and saying, you know, maybe I can go a little higher, or maybe my stuff isn’t cheap enough, you got to think about these types of things.

And my one of my favorite things in this book is right off the bat chapter one first page in the book, which is technically page three, but it’s the first page of the first chapter.

This is by Dan Kennedy in the chapter titled price and fee failures. Okay, there’s many ways to fail at price strategy. Here’s a short list.

So there’s nine things I want you to think about this. And whether you’re doing these things or not the first one right off the bat, number one, pricing by textbook formulas, industry norms, or other standard means.

Is that how you came up with your prices?

That’s a very common way that many people come up with their prices.

Number two, excess concern about competitors lower prices.

Once again, this is something that people fall into over and over again, I talk about this in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

If you’re consumed with competition, go get this book. It’s a short book.

This is a thicker book, this is a thin book, it’s a tiny little book that I wrote, you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

But I’ll continue with Dan Kennedy, the number three, this is these are the ways to fail at pricing, attracting customers who buy by price.

So if their main focus is price, when they’re deciding whether to buy from you or not, that might be a huge mistake for you.

Not always, but it can be a huge mistake.

Number four, predetermine belief system about what they’ll pay. Do you think you know what they’ll pay without having actual proof without having tested the limits on how much or how little they’re willing to pay for something?

That’s a big one.

Number five, permitting apples to apples comparisons. If you’re comparing things, apples to apples, and there’s a specific, there’s a specificity to that, and we’ll talk about that in the future. But that’s a real danger.

Number six, insufficient different differentiation.

Have you not made clear how different you are from perceived competition from perceived other options, for the same solution, whatever the solution is that you’re providing?

Number seven, not offering premium price options.

Okay, not having the option for premium price. I’m not saying you don’t have lower price things. But do you not also offer a premium price?

That can be a huge, huge problem.

Number eight ignorance or stupidity about business math.

That’s something we talked about a lot here. Math is really one of the main things in business math is just the concept of, do you know how to increase numbers just by switching around how you look at things. That’s pricing in a nutshell.

Number nine poor self esteem, business esteem or feelings of not deserving more.

So do you have something deep down that’s keeping you from raising prices because of something personal. Because you think that your business shouldn’t make that much or you shouldn’t make that much that once again, these are this just a shortlist.

These are nine things that he talks about right off the bat in this book, and goes into more depth later on in the book. But I mean that just talking about textbook formulas, many people would buy, I know I did, I bought this looking for a formula on how to do price strategy.

He doesn’t offer that he offers a way of thinking about it differently. And this book actually changed my entire perspective on business and took me in a direction.

More of the Dan Kennedy’s of the world, and the Jay Abraham’s and all these people that discuss business more in terms of very clear black and white principles, and also using direct response marketing, which is huge difference.

If you haven’t looked into these types of things, you should look deeper. Start with my book, check this out.

I also give you other places to go. I think I also mentioned this book in this book, because it’s been such a huge impact on my life, looking at pricing differently can dramatically change your business, just that one idea of changing your prices without changing anything else can change everything for you.

Hopefully, all that makes sense to you. We’ll go into more detail in the future. But that’s just a little taste for tonight.

We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Make’Em Laugh & Take Their Money, by Dan Kennedy 🐷💸💸

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Brian talks about an old Dan Kennedy book about using humor and your personality to attract people to liking you, to help you in sales.

Transcription

Make’Em Laugh and Take Their Money, by Dan Kennedy.

Great book.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today I want to review Dan Kennedy’s, Make’Em Laugh & Take Their Money, this is a good one, because the whole point of the book is, it’s very much playing to the content marketing person.

So if you’re looking to develop content of any sort, this is a great book.

It doesn’t focus solely just on humor, it focuses on how to basically make yourself more likeable. And there’s this great quote, in here, and humor is just a way of doing it.

Of course, I lost the spot, but I had it I had it highlighted, so it’s easy to find, okay.

So this is the beginning of chapter 11. He says, for most people, as a speaker, or in writing, being good humor is enough, you don’t actually need to be funny. You just need the audience to like you, and have some fun with you, and that’s really what it’s all about.

It’s funny, because it takes me back in that this was an intimidating book, for me, especially since I’ve always, No, I haven’t always, I’ve, in the last handful of years, found myself to be less and less funny.

And it’s one of those things where growing up, it wasn’t that case, I was a class clown.

Over time, I learned that my humor was very much with collaboration, it happened around other people, in the moment, off the top of my head that was most my humorous a lot of character based stuff.

That doesn’t always translate to everyday life, you know, you got to have the right people around you, for it to really work. It’s just my style.

In fact, I had committed to humor very early on. So for those of you don’t know, I was in a comedy troupe. And thought I was going to be a comedic actor from a very early age, and all the way up till my early years in college, and that all fell apart and life took a completely different turn.

But it was one of those things that’s always been in the back of my mind. And so you’ll see on occasion, I’ll bring up books that have to do with comedy and humor and acting, because it ties back into content.

Our whole discussion about content marketing, and understanding the humor end of things is a big deal. And Dan Kennedy, it’s a very unusual book for Dan, not in the fact that he doesn’t tear things up and make lists and put put little ideas together, he does.

It’s on a topic that I’ve never heard anyone really hit with the same gusto.

And so I don’t know if that makes a whole lot of sense. But this is a great book is really is a good book, because it helps put in perspective, the fact what really, the thing that he keeps saying over and over again, is that you don’t have to try to be funny.

You just have to know what you like what you find funny, and be open about sharing that with other people. That’s all it takes.

That’s in content marketing, it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to sell, or what you’re where you’re trying to lead people to. It’s just about being confident enough with yourself confident enough with what you’re talking about, that you don’t mind tossing in a low humor, just to ease things over and to get to know the person it’s all about knowing, liking and being known, liked and trusted by people, right.

So hopefully that makes sense.

Grab a copy of this book, when you get a chance.

Also grab a copy of my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

It gives you kind of a very broad sense of what your strategies that you can use in your business long term. 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can get a free copy of AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back tomorrow night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

👉 Content Marketing vs. Info Marketing 👈 (Evergreen Advertising)

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Thoughts on content marketing and info marketing and the value of evergreen advertising.

Transcription

Content Marketing versus Info marketing.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Let’s talk about content marketing, shall we?

Content marketing, as it’s kind of being referred to today, once again, is one of those phrases, that is explaining something that’s always been in existence.

But today has kind of a new turn on things. So when people talk about content marketing, today, what they tend to discuss is the regular marketing that you’re putting out there specifically tends to be on the internet, people tend to refer to content marketing when it comes to your internet marketing.

And it tends to be the stuff that has substance to it, it has content, it has value one to itself, that you’re putting out there, but it also has a marketing message within it.

So one way or the other, that’s kind of how I would go about defining content marketing, just off the top of my head.

Now, info marketing is something a little bit different.

Once again, something that’s always existed, has gone by different terms, by different people. But was really I’ve heard it most often called info marketing or information marketing, by a lot of the direct response marketers that came from kind of the Dan Kennedy School of thought, and that I believe that terminology was really, I know what was at least heavily promoted, and has been used through the years from people coming from that way of thinking when it comes to marketing.

So what is information marketing, basically, is using any type of information to market.

So you have, you have information that within itself is marketing, and can be either given away or purchased. So there’s a little bit of crossover with content marketing versus info marketing, I would say that content marketing tends to be most of the free stuff that’s out there.

And in fact, it probably is easier to call it content advertising, just people aren’t talking about content advertising, they’re talking about content marketing.

But really, it’s more on the advertising side of things.

It is your YouTube page, like this one, or a podcast that you put out a lot of that stuff is all considered content marketing. And then when you start having larger items of pieces of information, seminars and courses and things of that sort, they tend to start blending into the info marketing end.

So things that have so much perceived value that they can be sold separately. Now, it doesn’t matter whether you’re with your info marketing is made up of content marketing.

So I have a book that is sold separately, and it’s all but it’s all built out of content marketing. So I put together I had nine separate videos, you could go way back in the archives and find nine separate videos all about Amazon proofing your business.

I then took the transcripts from those videos, switched them around, actually changed the order around on some of them and made them a little bit more clear add a little bit more content added an introduction and all the rest and I got a block right off of my content marketing came in info marketing book, the whole concept of repurposing, which is a huge deal.

If you don’t understand that, then you’re really missing the boat.

And if you don’t understand the power of content marketing, let alone where it can take you to info marketing, then it I don’t care if you’re selling tires, I don’t care if you’re selling haircuts, it doesn’t matter what it is that you’re trying to get people to buy, having an element of content marketing, and then eventually adding in the element of info marketing can be huge.

And everyone’s going to have different definitions of these. So I don’t need a debate or anything. I’d love to hear what you think you can leave a comment down below wherever you’re watching or listening to this.

Again, if you don’t have a place to comment, go to BrianJPombo.com, find the video, and comment there. But I’d love to hear what you think.

In general, these are vague terms. These are things that everyone’s got a slightly different definition for there is no Webster’s Hoyles definition for this type of thing.

It is what it is, but we use it as kind of a shorthand to start a conversation. And then from there take you to step after step after step.

So I work with business owners and executives and eventually with their staff if we move forward on how to develop long term content marketing, and then if they’re interested in showing them how to then go about developing info marketing Have those content marketing resources that they’ve created assets, in a sense, especially if it’s ongoing.

The whole idea is if you can create something ongoing, and if you’re building things that are so valuable that they have an evergreen background to them, that they have the ability to what we were just discussing today, me and my podcast, producer Sean E. Douglas, we were discussing about how some of our most powerful videos out there most powerful pieces of content that come back out of nowhere and start getting a whole lot of attention are the Evergreen things that aren’t just set in today’s time period.

Yeah, you can get a whole lot of views, you can get a whole lot of lessons, you get a whole lot of clicks on something that is timely, there’s a value in that.

But the Evergreen stuff is something totally different that can go on and on and on and on.

Not only that, you can build products that can go on and on and on and on.

And continue to encourage people to go the next step in your process to becoming a lifelong customer or client or what have you. I hope all that made sense. If it doesn’t, make sure and check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

If you don’t want to buy one you can buy it wherever books are sold Amazon, Barnes and Noble. But you can also go to AmazonProofBook.com, AmazonProofBook.com, get a free copy, just go sign up over there.

I’m going to be back here tomorrow night. We do this on a nightly daily basis, so come on back then.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.