by Chef Keem
Fearless Marketing
April 9, 2009 in Introspection by Chef Keem
I‘ve seen a lot of discussions lately about pitch pages and the best sales techniques, e-mail lists, you know – the whole shebang.
One (free) trainings video from a few weeks ago specifically stayed on my mind. A well-known internet “Millionaire Marketer” analyzed a pitch page, sentence for sentence, word for word – down to the last details on doubling up some phrases and highlighting certain passages. One of the most famous “experts” even teaches that the longer the pitch text – the better your conversions.
This and many other materials hammering home the “proven methods” to manipulate your visitors into closing the sales made me think… and here are some questions I asked myself:
- How much longer are these “proven methods” going to work?
- What will happen when people stop paying attention?
- Why do we complain about loud, repetitive, and annoying pitch pages – yet we insist on using them for our own marketing efforts?
I’m not sure about the first two answers. But for number three, one word popped into my mind: Fear!
We’re afraid that if we don’t offer our wares through the same tired old “proven methods” that have worked for years – we won’t make any sales.
Wow. What if Michael Dell had felt that way? Or Zig Ziglar, Henry Ford, Seth Godin?
Anyone who has ever achieved any innovative, trend-setting success had abandoned tradition and created brand-new “proven methods”!
We might say: this is all nice and good but we are no geniuses. We have to work with what we have and try to make a living right now!
Sure. But we can play. And we need to eliminate fear from our lives!
- What if we designed one of our marketing campaigns with nothing but the tools of our own unique persona.
- We all know something about something.
- We all are intelligent, interesting human beings with lots of valuable experience to share.
- We all have our own target audience that’s waiting for us to speak up.
- No manipulations, no “proven methods” and tricks of persuasion.
- Only our specific message for only our specific audience that won’t need to be persuaded – only addressed.
I have the feeling that somewhere in these thoughts we’ll find the answer to the second question from above.
What are your thoughts on this?
Another powerful image from the Heather Katsoulis Collection. Thank you.
[ratings]
Overheard on twitter...
You’re kidding, right? Do you mean to say that we need to turn that big flashing blue light off?
Here’s what I know I’m going to find out; I won’t need to stick with one niche. The world is going to open up because as long as I can remain passionate about who I am, the rest is easy. If we drop our comfort zones that are built by the safety of tried methods, we are gonna find that we will be alone for only an instant. It won’t take long for people to see that they can trust us because we trust ourselves.
Maybe I need to market coffee makers.
Hear, hear! Follow your heart — especially if it tells you to be authentic. Sounds like it’s time for some Vigilante Consumerism. http://vigilanteconsumerism.blogspot.com/
MiMi’s last blog post..Lensmaster Shout-Outs
Sometimes I think we follow what the Big Marketers are doing because we think they know more than us. Lots of times they don’t have all the answers. We each have to find out what works for our own product. I think the sales or landing page is as long or short as necessary to get your idea across.
There are many marketers and some top name big time marketers that teach ways to game the system. I’ve not followed their teaching because I didn’t feel comfortable doing what they suggested. Not that I don’t think it will not work – I do think it will work until Google, Squidoo and the others find out and change the rules.
What do you think about having many accounts with Squidoo or Hubpages etc. and many email accounts with different names and even numbers as your name? For myself I don’t feel comfortable doing this. Plus it’s too much work having a dozen different names and accounts.
Is this your new blog, MiMi?