Tag: Dan Kennedy

Relationships & Mastermind Groups (Bob Regnerus of Feedstories Interview)

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Bob from Feedstories talks about the value of relationships and mastermind groups and how he became a co-author with names like Perry Marshall and Robert Skrob.

Transcription

Brian: You’ve co-written books with some great names out there.

You have a book out there with Robert Skrob, you’ve got a book with Perry Marshall, how did you go about doing that? How did you go about co-authoring, with people that had a name in a different area?

Bob: Well, in that case, it’s about relationships.

So, you know, Robert Skrob is well known these days. I knew Robert before he was Robert.

One of the things I did early in my career, and I should say this, this is another thing I did is I took giant leaps by joining mastermind groups, not just like, hey, let’s get together on zoom five days a month, or, you know, this is like, I paid Bill Glazer, at that time, I think it was $12,000 a year, quoting Hamilton, I wanted to be in the room where it happens, right?

I was in there with people that were above my pay grade. But the reason I did that was I wanted the mentorship from a guy like Bill Glazer, mentorship from Dan Kennedy.

But then I wonder the relationships of people who are doing better than me, and there were some people that were below me. But when you’re in a group like that, it just pulls you forward.

And so that’s where I met a lot of people who I still consider friends and met friends that introduced me to others. By knowing Perry Marshall, I got to meet and become friends with Brian Kurtz.

I was in the same mastermind group as Ryan Deiss, before Digital Marketer was even a thought in his eye.

I got to know Jeff Walker before he was the Product Launch Formula Genius.

So part of it is you you know, there are these names that we all kind of revere, they’re just normal people. But I got to know them really, before they became famous, okay.

And they’re all more famous than me, by the way, which is fine with me. But I really was intentional about joining those organizations, attending conferences and networking, I’m not naturally drawn to do that.

Like, I’m really good with talking and sharing what I know I’m not really good at meeting new people, but I’ve had to force myself to do it.

And so writing the check and taking the leap really like makes you go I’m gonna make the most of it.

Outro: For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com.

Is Offline Content Marketing Possible? 📰 (GKIC NO B.S. Marketing Letter / JoCo Eagle)

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Brian shares some of his paid and free newsletters he’s gotten over the years to show examples of offline content marketing.

Transcription

Is offline content marketing possible?

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

Today I want to talk about content, I mean, we talk a lot about content marketing here.

It’s kind of the growing term, to refer to a lot of the things that I teach companies how to do. And so I wanted to kind of bend your mind a little bit and think more about the broad sense of what content marketing is all about.

Can you do something that’s mainly referred to just on the digital end of things, right?

Can you do that offline?

Well, of course you can, it all started offline.

Content Marketing has always been around, what is content marketing?

Content marketing, is having some type of content that provides value unto itself. And then on top of that is a marketing message.

So a whole lot of what you’re watching on YouTube is content marketing, guaranteed one way or the other, they’re trying to sell something, they may not be selling to you directly. They may be getting paid by YouTube.

But in general, it’s content marketing for somebody, since everything’s content marketing, even if you think it’s just entertainment.

But here’s a great example.

What I’m holding here is one of the first newsletters, paper newsletters that I received, from what is called the NOBS Marketing Letter. This is what I received, what at the time was called GKIC, now is the NOBS Inner Circle, and this is from April of 2012.

When I first came in contact, this was really the first time I had really thought about direct response marketing being a separate thing.

I’ve always known about it to some extent, because I’ve experienced it in different advertising and everything else out there. But when I read one of Dan Kennedy’s books in January of 2012, January and February of 2012, it changed my life.

And in a very short period of time, I became an acolyte, I guess you would say, and subscribed to his newsletter, became part of the club.

Now in this newsletter, you can see it’s good size, I mean, you pay for this, you get you got 24 pages back in that day. It’s very simple. It wasn’t very flashy back then, and it’s got an article by him.

It’s got advertising.

Well, here’s that table of contents.

It’s got some more little smaller articles directly from Dan Kennedy. Examples of advertising where he discusses kind of the principles marketing principles that are shown throughout.

He has ads for here’s that here’s an ad for one of his books, but it’s built into the content. So it’s content, it’s useful stuff, and you can see the highlighting and everything is all done by me.

It’s all useful, fabulous information.

But at the same time, it’s selling you other things.

Here’s another article by another guy as Dave Dee, who was working with them at the time, and a whole article by him. So he’s got other people writing articles.

There’s one by Doc Nielsen, here’s one by Rich Schefren one of these people still out there quite a lot, Alex Mandossian.

So you had a whole lot of other people writing articles Lee Milteer, fabulous stuff.

Whoa, here’s one by Ryan Deiss. Those of you who are familiar with him from Digital Marketer, boy, Yannick Silver, all these so many of these names still very present out there, Dr. Charlie Martin.

And so one thing after another, all fabulous content at the same time, I mean, at the very end page, here’s all the different things that you can purchase the value ladder that you can build your way up within the gcic system. Ways that you can go further and further by paying more money on a monthly basis, right?

I mean, that’s what it’s all about.

If you’ve got any type of club like that, you have to allow people to pay more if they want more.

And of course, another article on the back I mean, value on top of value on top of value for people.

For someone that isn’t interested in this. This is as good as toilet paper, right?

For someone who is interested. It’s like gold, I still have it. I don’t throw it away.

It’s valuable to me. It’s useful to me, not to everybody, but for me, it was worth what I paid for it and more.

It’s not just about newsletters, newsletters are fabulous, you could do newsletters on a monthly basis on a quarterly basis.

That’s a way of physically getting out information still to this day print still works.

You have to know your market, you have to know if they be up for it. And you have to have information that makes that makes a solid point by being in print, right?

Here’s another one newspaper.

This is not an average newspaper.

This is a, this is one that goes every door, direct mail. So it hits every door within a particular area. I’ve talked about this guy before. Richard Emmons created the Josephine County Eagle, fabulous little piece that goes out monthly.

What’s it have, it’s got advertising in it. And it has just local political information and stuff, both from politicians and editorials.

It’s still content marketing of some form, in a different way than we’re used to. Yeah, it’s got a newspaper, it looks like the old style newspaper, what we’re all familiar with, or most people are.

And for at the same end, it’s coming in through the mailbox, it’s coming in a different way.

You can do this in the same way that you would do on a newsletter, a book, I’ve got a book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

What do I do with this most often I mail it to people, quite often, sometimes I’ll give it to them physically. But more often than not, I mail it to people, and it’s content marketing, to offline market, the whole thing is full of a great a huge amount of value to you.

In terms of if it’s the type of thing you’re looking for, if you’re a business owner, or executive, and you’re looking for ways to make your business, basically competition proof by standing out, by showing yourself as being completely different from the competition.

This is the book for you, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com, so you get a digital version.

You can also buy a physical version there after you after you’ve gone past the free digital version. Or you can go to amazon.com and get one still content marketing I have offers in there for people to go the next step and find out more about the other tools that I offer businesses.

Content Marketing is virtually could be virtually anything at the same end. Digital allows us to do it for free.

Social media allows us to do it for free, not completely free, still takes time, if you’re really going to are going to want a lot of eyeballs and you really want to hit a specific crowd that you don’t already have access to. It’s going to take money.

It’s going to take a little bit of advertising here and there.

But there’s ways to get to people, there are hungry crowds out there that want what you have one way or the other.

If you’re already selling a product or service, you need to be using content marketing, to get your message out there more and more often, it’s going to be worth your time and effort.

If you’re doing it right.

And we talk about that here and I’m going to be offering more opportunities on how to learn how to do this.

How to train somebody to do it on your staff. So stay tuned or to check out more start with my book. Start from there, it will take you the next step, step by step.

It’s a short book, like I said, free copy AmazonProofBook.com.

You have a great night, we’ll see you tomorrow.

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

They All Go Lame 😶

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Brian goes over one of his favorite old sayings from marketing legend Dan Kennedy.

Transcription

They all go lame.

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

This is a show that we record live on a daily basis, bringing new business ideas, concepts, talk about principles, strategies and tactics in business, specifically for business owners, executives, the people that are in charge. So hopefully it’s find you good today.

This is a little lesson that I heard years ago from Dan Kennedy. And it is one of my favorites that I’m surprised I don’t think I’ve ever dedicated an entire episode to this one. But it is it was a big one for me. And it’s…we’ll see how this hit you.

So Dan is involved in race, in the race track business. And he has he’s had horses, and he’s raised himself and so forth. And he talks about this term called, they all go lame. It’s in reference to horses, they only have a certain span of life to where they’re useful on the track.

There’s a point at which they aren’t anymore, you know, age, injury, everything else that comes comes with the territory, right?

Well, he uses it in reference also to people. Because the plain fact of the matter is, especially if you’re an employer of people, or if your fear if your business is dependent on people, which most businesses are to some extent.

And the term, the idea is that they all go lame, that every person has a high point to where they’re doing really well. But there will always be a point at which they don’t perform at the same level, in that position long term.

It doesn’t mean you can’t work with them from that point on, but you can’t expect the same level of performance their entire life, it’s just not going to happen. It’s not natural, and plain fact of the matter is, that I didn’t quite get and I think it was part of my age, as being a very young and not seeing enough of life and not really having enough people around me kick the bucket is that people die, everyone dies.

It’s going to happen, eventually, you will not be able to be you will not be able to depend on anybody. Because in the end, everybody eventually kicks it. Or they go missing or they get, you know,

what’s it called, you know, lifted up to heaven, you know, and so forth. It doesn’t matter, but they’re not going to be here. They’re not you can’t depend on any human being. We’re all flawed. And we’re all we all have a body that eventually runs out on us. Right? And so that it’s just a fact, they all go lame. And we always get

amazed when someone who has done amazing things, stops doing amazing things at one point, they don’t perform whether it be an athlete, you know, your Tiger Woods, your whoever it is it any athlete, eventually, they slow down.

All athletes do that and that’s a very specific thing to think about, especially in terms of resources you think of from the physical, but it also comes from the mental, you know, any politician, any, let me think of a business leader.

An example that that Dan uses is, is Michael Eisner who ran Disney and saw the he oversaw the largest renaissance of any company of that size ever, in the history of human beings. Right. And it’s a big, pretty big feat for a CEO and eventually, you know, Chairman, CEO, and so forth.

That’s a big deal. But eventually, he went lame, eventually, whatever it was caught up, and he wasn’t able to perform at that same level when he got ousted.

Not directly, but eventually he got he got he moved on, and someone else took over. And that’s just what happens across the board. You have to this is two major pillars that I talked about.

One, it’s the negative pillar from being relationship reliant. So I talked about being relationship Reliant. That’s what life is all about. And business is specifically all about being relationship reliant, realizing that all that matters is your relationship with those around you, with your customers, with your employees, with your vendors, with anybody that you have a business relationship, the relationship is what matters most.

And this is a thing that kills relationships because people don’t last. People don’t last mentally, physically, eventually, that it’s just not it’s nothing lasts forever when it especially when it comes to people.

So that’s a big piece of being relationship alive. But because of that, it’s also all about being reality grounded. Were my other pillars for BrianJPombo.com, reality grounded is all about just seeing things for what it is.

Sometimes we can fool ourselves over and over and over again, into not paying attention to reality. The plain reality is that they all go lame. It’s a cruel way of saying it, but it’s true and it’s just part of life.

It’s not that big a deal. It’s nothing you got to get worked up over. But there are ways around it, there are strategies that you can be able to handle this. So in terms of employees, if you really want to make your company stable, start building plans to have more than one person at every position.

I know that’s mind blowing, that people can’t imagine doing that.

But as you’re growing, you need to duplicate the people that know how to do the same thing. It needs to happen because one of them, just statistically one of them is guaranteed to leave their job, get sick or die from some horrible accident, or just lose interest, and move on. Whatever it is. They all go lame.

Have these realities built into your business and you’re going to have a lot, let them you’ll always have trouble. You’ll always have stress, you’ll always have things that are unpredictable, but this is predictable.

You can build systems to deal with that predictability, which is the third pillar of BrianJPombo.com being system based. So hopefully that makes sense to you.

If you would like to find out more about how to build strategies to really make your business run, go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Okay, you can get a free copy of this over at AmazonProofBook.com. We’ll be back here tomorrow night. You have a good one. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Psychology and Mathematics 🧠

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Thoughts on an old Dan Kennedy line about psychology and mathematics and how they apply in your business.

Transcription

Psychology and mathematics.

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

What am I talking about, when I’m talking about psychology and mathematics?

Well, it comes from paraphrase of a quote, which I think it came from Dan Kennedy, is where I originally heard it, I have reused it so many times that until I asked myself today, where it came from, I forgotten that it came from Dan Kennedy.

I’m pretty sure that’s where I heard it, because he was basically talking about marketing, and how marketing is is nothing more than mathematics and behavioral psychology. But really all business is psychology and mathematics. It really is.

Think about it, and this word came to me today, because I was having a conversation with some entrepreneurs. And I was talking about that it really does all come back to numbers.

Then we start going over some of our favorite books on another topic. And I said, all these books are really just to get you to do what you have to do, which is to get the numbers, get the numbers up.

How do you get multiplication happening?

How do you get addition and then multiplication, and you get enough numbers.

Everything else takes care of itself, it’s mathematics.

It’s the purest form of mathematics possible. That’s what businesses mathematical, it’s a very cut and dry thing. The only problem is you’re dealing with people, which are predictably unpredictable.

In that case, you have to bring in the behavioral psychology first, it has to be done on you, right, you got to shrink your own head, and figure out what’s going on in there.

What’s holding you back, would you’ve probably done if you’re a successful entrepreneur, if you’re a business owner, or you’re an executive of a larger company, you’ve already had to do that trick, or are constantly trying to re trick yourself into doing what you know you’re supposed to be doing. That’s psychology and a whole lot of things play into it. I’m not saying, you know, an act of faith doesn’t play into it.

I’m not saying that your diet doesn’t play into it, those are all part of it. But the whole thing is, is to get your brain to do what you need it to do.

When would you know it’s possible. The second part is the mathematics which always have to come into play and they are completely amoral.

Mathematics is money itself is mathematical, it’s nothing but numbers.

It doesn’t care whether you’re good or bad, or anything. It’s a mathematical thing. It’s add or subtract, it’s in and out. That’s all it is all business can be broken down into the most basic mathematics.

Then the other part of the psychology is how do you get everyone else to do what you know they should be doing, which is buying your product or services.

Now, if you fully believe in your product and services, and you believe it’s going to make a better life, for them, it shouldn’t be that difficult for you to go through that process of conveying that message.

But you got to remember, all these different issues that come along with that. You’ve got to figure out what conversation they’re telling themselves. And you’ve got to enter that conversation through your marketing and you have it has to be constant.

It has to be before it has to be during your relationship and it has to be after they’ve already left. You’ve got to have a different plan for each.

We’ve talked about the before, during and after unit that that Dean Jackson talks about, it’s really important. But understanding just the two basic elements of all of your business, psychology, specifically behavioral psychology, and mathematics so important.

It’s important to really keep these things in mind when you’re going forward because it’ll keep you from over complicating things if you just realize, okay, all I really need to do is achieve these mathematical ends.

To do that, I got to have the right psychology both for me and my potential customers and current customers and past customers. It’s all comes down to its most basic form.

Hopefully that makes sense to you. Hey, go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can get your own free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

I guarantee it’ll be an addition to your life. If not, hey, I’ll give you your money back.

How about that?

Send me a message and I’ll send you a check. You have a great night. We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Boost Your YouTube: Tip 1

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Look back at Brian’s video – Dan Kennedy – Life Changers

Watch here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1cpsOei-Qc&t=31s

Transcription

Boost Your YouTube: Tip 1.

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

Today we’re going to be discussing how to boost your YouTube views. And this is part of a series, this is the first one out of the series. What I’m holding here is my wife’s old iPhone that happens to have a picture of my sixth, my currently sixth most popular video on this channel. We’ve been doing this show…almost 700 episodes, are well over 600 episodes that we’ve put out.

And during that time, along with a handful of videos from years past, I’ve kind of accumulated a handful of videos that have stood out and have gotten some attention.

This particular one is kind of interesting and I’ve got a link in the description to this one.

This is called, Dan Kennedy the life changer.

So why would this one be the sixth most popular one on my site? And I’m not by far no, in no means a huge numbers. I’m we’re not talking about that you go and look at the popularity on YouTube at this point. It’s not very high.

But in comparison to all the other videos that I have out there, it’s relatively higher.

So what would make this one roll? It’s not that far, it’s not that tough to really see why this one has done well. Because it doesn’t do as well now as it did when it first came out.

So a couple and I forgot to look at the date. So this was a year ago. So last year, there was a situation where Dan Kennedy was thought to be on his final days, okay, he was being put into hospice, he had gone into diabetic shock and all this stuff, people thought he was going to die.

Many people had already speculated that they thought he was already dead. And this was just, it was probably within the 24 hour period just after this broke that I put out this video because it hit me really hard.

I put a very impassioned basically testimonial to Dan Kennedy and his life and how it has it had touched me you can go and watch it. It’s but it doesn’t matter as much now because Dan Kennedy survived, ended up getting out of hospice and and has gone on and he’s slowly worked his way back to health.

But this was well over a year ago, close to two years ago, I think. Because you can see I’m still in the the orange office. And for those of you who are old viewers, you remember the orange office. And we have been there for a while. This was a this was a fun video to make. But I’ll tell you why it did so well.

Why did so well is this was fresh news and I was one of the first ones to start talking about it out there. So when it started hitting people were doing searches.

They were doing searches for Dan Kennedy on YouTube, they were doing searches for Dan Kennedy, is he still alive? And I think the fact that I call it life changer accidentally, I think the life word is pulling some rank, because people were wondering whether he’s alive or whether he’s dead, and is he still alive, and so on, so forth.

That happened for really the next six months. But right away, got a huge bump in views on that one video. And because of that, it continues to get views over time. Every month, it gets a handful of views and so that’s why that one did so well.

So if you’re able to take that idea, if you’re putting out videos on a regular basis, and you want to get some attention. Now, this does not only have to do with YouTube, I’m using YouTube as an example. Get something newsworthy, get something that everybody is talking about thinking about and typing in.

If you’re able to do that in the right time, and the right and you’re just in the right space, you might be able to catch a little bit of vriality off of that video, you might be able to get some more intention. Not that I did it for that purpose. But because I did it. I can see in retrospect how well it did.

I’ve had a handful of videos that have done well because you’re entering the conversation that’s already going on in the customers mind or in the viewers mind in this situation. So we’ve got more I’m going to go through the rest of some my highest watched videos and kind of guess based on that how well they did.

It’s not as much a guest says that these are pretty straightforward, why they’ve done so well.

Probably my top video is one of the ones I’m wondering the most about and we’re going to work our way up to that one. This is number one.

Tomorrow we’re gonna go over number two. Before we do that, though, if you haven’t got your own free copy of, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Yeah, you can go and purchase a hard copy off Amazon.com or you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com that’s AmazonProofBook.com.

It’s the, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. It’s all about how to make your business stand out you and your business or even if you’re not doing business, if you’re writing a nonprofit, if you are just trying to get your personality out there.

Go check it out AmazonProofBook.com we’ll be back here tomorrow with number two in this list and you have a great night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

A Super Shortcut to Getting What You Want

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Value of being focused and not being pulled in a bunch of directions to set yourself up for growth in business.

Transcription

A super shortcut to getting what you want.

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

This is an idea that I talk about a lot. And I like to put a finer point when the times come, you know. Earlier today, I was speaking with a group of people that are politically active here locally.

There’s a million things that a person can react to, regardless of which side of the aisle you’re on, or how you view politics. There’s always things demanding a reaction, right?

There’s always someone from your opposite thoughts that are putting things out there to get a reaction to get you fired up, and overreacted, what they’re doing it all sides do it.

But the real thing is to catch yourself from getting caught up with it. And the way I help people, whether they’re business owners, or whether they’re politicians or political activists or whoever if you really want to know how to how to get to what you want as quickly as possible, first you got to define it.

Your ideal has to be defined your the visible ideal in terms of what would I really like to happen that I can I can realistically see happening, or even unrealistically see happening, but you believe that it can happen?

What is that one thing that you can you can see happening eventually?

So putting that out there and then looking at, you know, how soon do you want to get there?

You know, what would be really good, in-terms of you getting there to that ideal?

What point do you want to get there?

If you don’t have that, yet, you’re always going to be stuck in reaction mode, you’re always going to be reacting to the other side. And if you’re building a business, you’re reacting to everything around you.

If you’re working in politics, you’re reacting to the other side, guaranteed, and reacting to all the day’s news and so forth. It’ll never work, you’ll never be able to get what you want. Because you’re you’re spending too much time reacting to everything else that’s occurring.

But if you know what you want, if it’s well defined, and you have an idea of when of how soon you’d like to get there, then the next thing is, what can I do right now to fix it?

What can I do right now to take one more step in that direction, a positive step, regardless of everything else that’s going on. And that’s why I love this book, the one thing, because the one thing, it all pulls you back to focusing on doing one thing at a time.

This is really opposite from or on face value. It’s opposite from the way a lot of people teach. So one of the things that Dan Kennedy who I’ve spoken about before, who’s a marketing, guru, and expert out there, he has spoken about how you really want massive action, you want multiple things happening all at the same time. And that’s absolutely true.

But to get yourself out of the gutter, and to get yourself focused on moving forward, sometimes you have to start with one thing at a time. Once you get one thing going and you have it systemized you have it, you have someone else working on it, or you have it automated via software or whatever.

Once you have one thing taken care of where it can run on its own, then you work on the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, but it does have to start with one thing. And there’s this focusing question. And of course, I don’t have it pulled up right in front of me.

So I’m going to flip through this book while I’m talking to you so that I can hopefully find it quickly. I love just the way that it’s worded in here, which is the focusing question all about which comes straight from the one thing Okay, page 102. We’re gonna run to page one or two real quick here.

So I can read this to you because this is what it’s all about. And I’ve had this memorized in the past, but it really comes down to this one question you could ask yourself, what’s the one thing I can do?

Such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary. Can read that back to you because it’s important. What’s the one thing I can do that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary. Now, this works at perfectly with a long term goal.

Once again, it doesn’t matter where you’re at or what you’re trying to achieve. It doesn’t matter if it’s polluted. Call, it doesn’t matter if it’s a family goal, it doesn’t matter if it’s a goal for your personal lifestyle or for your business.

If you’ve got this goal, and you know about how soon you want to get it, then the next question is, what can I do right now to start moving in that direction, and you start thinking offensively and less defensively, when you’re reacting to everybody, you’re on defense, you can’t win.

Because it’s constant, there will always be somebody putting offense on you, putting out targets to distract you, it’s it’s part of life, you can’t get away from that. And it’s never gonna slow down enough for you to catch your breath.

You have to start going out, you have to be on offense, you have to move forward, and happens one simple step at a time, which is why I love this book. I love the concept because it brings everything down into focus.

And eventually you get to the point to where you have enough things running in that direction, that you can layer it and create massive action that Dan Kennedy talks about, which is absolutely necessary in the long run.

In the short run, get your focus straight, get moving in a positive direction, and then you start piling on as time goes on. Hopefully that’s helpful to you. If you’d like more long term strategies to be able to help you out.

Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get your own free copy, you can go get a copy off amazon.com that’s fine. I make a little few bucks off of that or you can completely go around that.

Just get a digital copy over at my website, AmazonProofBook.com. AmazonProofBook. com. We’ll be back here tomorrow night. Come on back, we’ll have another talk about either a strategy, a principle or a tactic that can help you with your business. You have a great night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Direct Mail: Form or Function? ✉️📬

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Thoughts on direct mail using postcard campaigns and the value of A/B Testing.

Amazon-Proof Your Business➡️ https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook/

Transcription

Direct Mail, form or function.

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

When I’m talking direct mail, today, I just happened to be talking about postcards. Okay.

This comes from a discussion that I was having earlier today with one of my clients.

So we were talking about this because they were designed a postcard to drive traffic to a webinar, which is a great idea. If you haven’t used direct mail, to get people to do something online, it really is quite useful. Okay, it all depends on how you go about doing it and what type of results you’re looking for. That all plays into it.

But it’s something worth considering, especially if the whole idea of why you’re getting them somewhere online is to get money. All right.

So in the process of developing anything that has any creative aspects to it whatsoever, you’re going to oftentimes have a discussion that comes up of form versus function. In other words, does it matter whether something looks good or not, if it functions properly.

So she had produced a beautiful postcard to be able to go out. And I was looking at some of the functional elements and wanting to change some of them. And I’ll just give you an example. That ugly, can work just as well, if not better than beautiful.

This is the thing, I don’t really have much of an eye for beautiful. Now, sometimes it can go the other way around, these things all have to be tested, right. But this wasn’t a situation where there’s going to be an A B test of back and forth, where you send off and when a B test is when you have two different versions going out, and you see what type of results each version gets.

We weren’t going to be doing that. So it was kind of a one off deal.

And so I’ll show you this is a I’ve talked about Dan Kennedy’s group, the N0BS Inner Circle, they send me things in the mail once in a while, look at how ugly this thing is.

So there’s a little picture showing you what you can get. They’re trying to get you to do this on demand things. So they have they show pictures of all this on demand stuff. But it’s all words, all words you got you got a headline, a little bit of text. And the text is horribly ugly. It’s a, you know, it’s almost like typewriter type text, okay.

attempting to get a very specific reaction to get a very specific call to action, something very specific to be done online. So this is a very similar situation that I was dealing with earlier today.

When you’re dealing with that creativity is oftentimes very an emotional thing to begin with. And beauties in the eye of the beholder. So it all depends on who’s looking at it. And one thing, if you’re using a postcard, no matter what it’s seen as commercial, right?

I mean, something is unless you’re making it appear to be a personal postcard, which don’t happen as often as they used to, you know, people send in postcards, on vacation, and so forth. And if you’re getting it at work, it’s probably not one of those anyways. So unless you’re trying to hide it and make it appear to be something that it’s not, it’s going to be considered commercial to begin with.

That’s an automatic reason for someone to take it and chuck it as soon as they realize that it’s a commercial. But if you can grab their attention in any way, either by making it too ugly, or having a very captivating image, or text on it, to be able to pull them in so that they’ll pay attention long enough to get the message and move on it.

That’s the function of it and is it form or is it function. I always say that form should serve function when it comes to business mail, because we’re not looking to get an award on how beautiful it is. The beauty should be there only to serve the function so here’s here’s a quick way to be able to fix this.

Because there’s always going to be arguments about this back and forth. If you as long as you have someone that knows what they’re doing, you’re gonna have arguments back and forth, because there’s always going to be somebody defending making something more pretty or beautiful, or eye catching or what have you.

Here’s how you solve it.

Put out two versions, just like I said earlier, it’s the AB test, put out two versions and put them both out and see, you got to go to a wide enough audience. So that it’s not, the difference isn’t negligible.

I don’t think they were going out to a wide enough audience for this particular scenario. So I didn’t even suggested. But if you really want to solve the problem, have two different versions have a real ugly one that goes out and have a really beautiful one that goes out and see which one does better?

Sometimes, it can honestly go either way.

You’ll never know until you test it. It depends on what it specifically is that you’re asking them to do. How many people you’re asking to do it, how easy it is to be able to do it. And who that market is that you’re trying to get them to do the specific thing, right?

Very tactical, we’re talking very specific tactics, but there’s strategy behind the tactics, you just have to think a little bit longer about these things. And consider all options on the table doesn’t make one side right or one side wrong.

But like I said, when it comes to business form should serve function, as opposed to the other way around. It’s more of an of an order that things go in versus what’s more important than the other it isn’t, it isn’t one things more important than the other, just one thing precedes the other in the process.

So hopefully that makes sense to you. If you want to learn more about the wide spread strategies, the type of things that you focus on years ahead of schedule, and build up towards.

That’s what my book is all about, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, go check out a free copy you go get get a free copy that you can have for the rest of your life, digital copy over at AmazonProofBook.com. Or you can go buy a hard copy over at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or anywhere that you purchase books. Or you could type the name right into Google and see where it takes you.

9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business by Brian J. Pombo. You have a great night. We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

How to Use Valentine’s Day In Your Marketing 💗

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Hey holiday’s and events happen and when they do it can be a perfect time to touch base with your customers.

Amazon-Proof Your Business➡️ https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook/

Transcription

How to use Valentine’s Day in your marketing.

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

Let’s talk about Valentine’s day I’m recording this on Valentine’s Day. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re watching this 20 years in the future, the same thing is true because people never change.

Here’s the thing, every holiday can be used as a marketing message if you want it to, if you want to take advantage of it, it can be used.

Why would you take advantage of it even if you aren’t doing anything special for Valentine’s Day, even if you’re not offering something special, which you should.

But let’s say you’re not, if you’re not offering anything special for Valentine’s Day, if you’re not putting out anything there specific. If you don’t do gifts or anything that’s traditionally thought to be a Valentine’s Day thing?

Why would you do it?

It’s one reason it’s entering the conversation that’s already going on in the customer’s mind, we have certain points in our calendar that everyone is experiencing whether they want to or not.

It’s everywhere around people, you could be single, you could be newly divorced, you could want nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, you could hate all holidays, it’s still everywhere around you, the conversations going on whether you want it to or not.

So you can hijack, in a sense, what’s already going on in a person’s head. You know, whether they want it to be or not, it’s already there.

So you bring it up, it’s already going on, you’re making a connection, you’re you’re connecting with them on a level that that was not necessarily possible before.

But you can do it just like if you’re watching this now and it happens to be near Valentine’s Day or just past Valentine’s Day, or, or what have you. If you’re watching this, chances are you were thinking about Valentine’s Day, we’re thinking about how you can use this in your own business.

So that’s the thing, that’s the reason why you do it. So what it is, or where you go from there is relatively irrelevant gets better if you have some way of tracking, if you have some way of knowing that people saw your message, heard your message, read your message and that’s the reason why they’re coming to you.

So it’s good to make some type of offer that’s specific to the date that specific to the piece of marketing that you’re putting out even if you can. So that’s that’s available, that’s possible. That’s the reason why you do it.

It’s not just to be like everybody else, because you don’t have to be like everybody else, you could put out an anti Valentine’s Day message if you want, you could appeal to everybody who is single, or not celebrating Valentine’s Day or trying their best to ignore it. You could appeal to them.

But you’re still playing to a conversation that’s already going on. And what you have to ask yourself is, what is your ideal customer? Where is their mind out in terms of Valentine’s Day? And can you get even further in?

Beyond just talking about it beyond just acknowledging that it exists?

Where can you go from there and that’s a big deal. That’s a really big deal.

Because if you can get that about Valentine’s Day, you can get that about any holiday. And you get it about any national event. Any item that’s in the news that people were talking about, anything can be put out there. And you can grab people’s attention with a with very simple concepts of things that are already out there already in the public conversation. Hopefully that makes sense to you. It’s a simple idea.

You can take it in a million different directions. I know through the years I’ve ran across a lot of different marketers talking about this, I was just looking through this. This is an old, old deal from gcic, which is Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer’s old company, holiday promotions. This was a part of a package that I had bought. The the new company is is called, NOBS Inner Circle, you can go and check them out.

But there’s a lot of people talk about how to be able to market using holidays. But it all comes back to the same thing, acknowledge what’s happening, acknowledge what’s going on in people’s heads. And then find a way to take that from where that is over to the conversation about what it is that you offer your products, your services, what have you.

In whatever way is necessary in whatever ways the most clever that you think is absolutely possible.

You know, if you come up with something, try it out, it can’t hurt. So you want to find out more strategies to be able to explode your business that are along the same lines but stuff that can really change things in the long run.

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

Are you go buy a copy off of Amazon or any of the other places that sell books. Nine ways to Amazon proof your business by Brian Pombo. You have a great night. We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.