Hey there,

a couple of things that are fun, useful, or both:

A fun toy (or: Viral Poo)

Check out www.akinator.com

It’s a fun little artificial intelligence program where it asks you questions and guesses public figures based on your answers.

Apart from being addictive (the only one it didn’t get so far is Kevin Spacey…), there’s also a useful marketing lesson in there:

it’s one of those insanely viral things, that explode over night, you play with it, and then…

… well, get on with your life.

And the akinator will have made very little money in the process.

Ok, it depends on your definition of “very little”, but even if they sell a few ten-thousand apps at $1.99 each, it hardly goes towards “building a real business”.

So, these guys who have got a seriously good toy there, and it has gone viral for the very reason that it is so good, will make a little money.

So, when you look at all those gurus that tell you to cash in on ‘viral’ traffic (ideally by putting out ‘engaging’ memes (square(ish) images that are fun or controversial), my question is:

how the heck do you ever hope to monetize that in a serious way?

First of all you’re relying on luck (the Akinator is viral by design, “Gangnam style” has viral potential by design, … most meme’s are, well …), and secondly there’s hardly ever the question how you’re providing VALUE to the consumers of that viral piece.

Incidentally, there’s something even worse going on with most viral poo:

the consumers don’t give a damn who YOU are, they just want the fun or controversy.

Which usually results in YOU making even less money.

If you decide that viral is the way forward, make sure it’s by DESIGN!

And by DESIGN I mean: it has a high chance of going viral because it was designed that way, and – even more importantly – it’s designed to help you achieve your business goals!

The New Virus: Pyramid Coaching Schemes

I don’t know about you, but my inbox has been littered with ‘coaching offers’ beginning of the year, and they’re spreading like a bad cold…

And the vast majority of them I’d categorize as nothing better than pyramid schemes:

“Hey, look at me, I’m making tons of money … selling informati0n on how to make tons of money by selling information on how to make tons of money …. to unsuspecting prospects like you”.

The usual format is like this:

1. Step 1: The “Ghetto” Video: “hey, I just shot this ‘ghetto’ video …”: showing you that I no longer work in the office. Isn’t that what YOU want?
2. Step 2: The Webinar with a Twist. “hey, I’ll be up-front, I’ve got an offer at the end that will appeal to very few, so don’t worry, just consume the great content”. (heavy duty use of sales-psychology)
3. Step 3: The Webinar-content: “hey, people out there want information, you can provide information, and you can make lots of money doing it.”
4. Step 4: The FPSSDPJ (fookin’ Pyramid-scheming Self-delusional Price Justification): “hey, I’m making tons of money selling information (see the intro to this section…), so I’m super-qualified to sell you information on how to do exactly what I’m doing”
5. Step 5: The Pyramid: you’re now $5k down, and facing the task of finding other unsuspecting prospects who’ll hand over $5k because, well, it’s so easy to sell information online, and somehow get to the J of FPSSDPJ for spending $5k…

Don’t get me wrong:

coaching and mentoring is in my opinion THE #1 fastest way to achieve your goals. Leverage the experience, knowledge, connections and insights of those who have gone before you.

But make sure they’ve actually GONE before you, and not just picked up a nice new model for marketing information on how to do the stuff they haven’t actually ever done themselves!

In case you’re tempted (and tempted you should be, because in most cases they’re using heavy-duty sales-psychology, some of it very slick!), ask these 2 questions:

1. do you (dear guru) make any money outside the realm of pyramids?
2. what is the realistic ROI of this ‘investment’

Regarding the 2nd question:

if your objective is to sell information in the Internet Marketing space, ouch.

if the objective is to build an empire of adsense sites, publish tons of Kindle books or drive traffic to Amazon for pittance, then ouch.

if the objective is to do some viral poo, … well, you get the drift.

In other words: if the coaching offer doesn’t explicitly demonstrate how this is going to create massive value in the market-place, it’s probably really only well-sold pyramid-powder (which is the ancient Egyptian term for snake-oil…)

 

The 5 Marketing Lessons That Turned Into 10

In my recent marketing lessons post, the 5 original lessons turned into at least a handful more! Which I guess qualifies this for the ‘viral growth of marketing lessons’;-)

So, thank-you for the great feedback!

One of the biggest one that most people missed was that of asking for permission! Ideally as part of a “commitment and consistency” campaign.

It’s something that was first (to my knowledge) covered by Seth Godin more than 10 years ago in his book “Permission Marketing” and today it’s probably even more important than it was then.

Incidentally, “Permission Marketing” is Vol 2 of my monthly “Guru Cloner Series” which will go up in price significantly from Feb 2013. So if you want to get all that marketing wisdom condensed into a few short pages, now might be a great time to sign up!

If you follow the general “chatter” in the forums, and the leading Internet marketing blogs and sites, you’ll see that just like Google, we’ve now reached the point where we have too much content (it appears everyone is jumping on the ‘content’-wagon, some are even taking the ‘quality-content’-express…) … and Permission Marketing is going to play a HUGE role in getting people to consume YOUR content!

 

The Dr-BJ-V

As we’re on viruses today, I’ll leave you with a funny choice of domain name (the exact domain shall remain anonymous;-).

It’s the JV-page for someone who calls himself DrB(…), so his domain name reads like this ….drbjv….

Mhmm….. maybe it’s because my 8 year old son surprised us at breakfast with the question what condoms were for!?

We’ve got the feeling that he’s slightly worried that you have to wear them forever, as his main concern was how you pee when you have a condom….).

I had the pleasure of explaining the whole condom story in very child-friendly terms, as my 6 year old daughter was also present (and my wife was hiding in the fridge whilst I was trying to keep a straight face)

hasta luego

Veit

Hey there,

here’s a little brain-teaser for you:

Have a look at this short video which – apart from ‘proper’ music and hence great inherent value – contains 5 great marketing lessons:

 

How many can you spot, and what are they?

Leave a comment below!

Cheers

Veit

UPDATE: great answers, and you’ve got almost all of the ones I had in mind (but looking at the responses, there were far more than 5 marketing lessons in that little piece;-)

Phil’s observation about ‘blowing your own trumpet’ is priceless … especially when you’re from a more ‘reserved’ culture like Britain (James is so modest … “If you want to hear GREAT jazz….”). Also the point Phil makes that it makes people *feel* a certain way – the whole thing is about emotions, not hard facts!

I think David was the first one to mention ‘pattern interrupt’ – I think so too, but the big question is: which pattern is being interrupted?

I like Kev’s 4Mat dissection (the WHY, WHAT, HOW, WHAT IF) for the plumbing question, although John’s question was probably more around: “how can I make THIS style of presentation work for my local plumbing business?” My take: have a look at the main marketing lessons (throughout the comments, and in my summary in a sec), and you’ll see how you can apply the underlying PRINCIPLES to pretty much any marketing!

The one I’m still ‘debating’ with both sides of my brain is the ‘expert status/authority’ issue:

The 2 questions:

1. how can I become a recognized expert/authority, and
2. how can I provide the biggest possible value to my target audience

may well lead to the same solution, but the path there may be very different, simply due to the focus of the question alone (ME vs THEM)

Alright, here are my top 5:

1. Target Audience: James & his gang went exactly where his target audience hang out. But not only the “where” is right, but also the “when”: they are eating, drinking (by the looks of it some even alcohol), and it’s a social atmosphere. In other words: people are already in a good/great mood.
2. Social Proof: they’re using the ‘social proof’ concept very effectively (if not THE most effective way): they are creating the social proof right there and then. No fake testimonials, all you need to do is look around and you see plenty of approving ‘others’. (there are already a handful of extra ‘sub’ lessons in there….)
3. Charity: the charity angle obviously fits in with the target audience (who have the means to give, and feel good about giving, so it adds to the overall ‘feel-good factor’, all *obviously* due to listening to jazz…). But the really clever bit is not the charity part itself, but what they’re *really* achieving with the ‘donation’ act;-) Anyone care to guess?
4. Permission: I’m not sure if anyone spotted this: the very clever use of ‘permission marketing’ right in the middle: James asks for permission to give a little bit more free jazz. Incidentally, Vol  2 of my monthly book-summaries is Seth Godin’s “Permission Marketing” which is pretty much essential reading for anyone who wants to sell anything online these days! (or you could of course take the shortcut and join my monthly review/summary club;-). All he now needs to do is move them to the next level of permission…
5. The High Note: They are leaving on a high note! Notice how the ‘sale’ happens after a nice solid piece of content, er, jazz? Short, quick, to the point sale, nothing needy about it (another big lesson right there), then hit them hard with a short ‘n very sweet piece to finish. Compare that with your usual webinar or teleseminar …

 

 

Ok, at the risk of making some powerful enemies, I’d say

Santa is real!

Or more specifically:

Of more value to most people.

Easy video suite (EVS) is a new tool brand-new on the market – and it’s supposed to help you create highly converting videos very quickly.

EVS is the successor of easy video player (EVP).

EVP is a great tool because it takes all the ‘techy’ bits out of putting videos online.

So, in EVS their aim was to take the ‘techy’ bits out of the video production.

Meaning: you can put videos that make you money online very quickly, rather than having to fiddle with lots of different programs.
Unfortunately, the end-result is a beast that – from an evolutionary standpoint – resides somewhere between fish and fowl: (note, these comments are based on what I can see here: http://easyvideosuite.com/partners/the-product/, I haven’t bought EVS myself!)

• it has a screen-capture functionality which in theory should do away with the need for Camtasia (very cool idea, please someone make that happen), but it’s so basic that it competes just about with camstudio.

  The only real advantage is that obviously it interfaces directly with the EVS ‘storage’ thingy, so you can upload your screen-captures directly.Doing it the Camtasia-manual-upload way would take at least 5 mouse-clicks more.

  The fish remains Camtasia for a little while longer.

• I haven’t seen their ‘live video capture’, but I can tell you from experience:if you want to make compelling ‘live’ videos, you’ll need a little more than the ability to cut out bits of video.

  If all you do is cut out bits, you’re left with super-amateurish looking videos.

  The fowl remains any proper video-capturing and processing app like e.g. Sony Vegas which you can get very cheaply.

• UPDATE: This was a bit of a gripe about the lack of proper split-testing functionality, but Paul Clifford has just informed me that it’s almost all there.

  So, if you look here (thanks Paul for the screenshot):

  http://www.screencast.com/t/10ICwnFTY
  
  it is possible to do split-tests, even for different types of goals, which is great.

  The only thing that’s missing (IMO) is the ability to split-test ‘small sections’ (like just the call to action) without having to re-render the whole video.

  Then again, for smaller videos that’s probably not a big issue, but only really applies to longer presentations (like webinars) or longer video-sales-letters.

  So, all in all: the split-testing appears to be there and do it’s job, so thumbs up for that!

 

But, even if these weren’t any issues for you, here’s why I continue to put my money on Santa:

The real secret to making highly converting (and hence monetizable) videos is this:

You need to have a compelling message that resonates with (and provides value for) your target audience.

And “compelling message” usually involves proper market research, and a fair amount of copy writing.

In practice even more than e.g. writing a ‘normal’ sales-letter.

See, a ‘normal’ sales-letter can be (and is in practice) read in many different ways:

some people read it word by word, other look at just the bullet points (and then may decide to read it all once they’re ‘hooked’), others yet jump to the bottom and then read upwards (once they’ve seen the price;-)

With a video sales-letter on the other hand, you have only one way of consuming it … and that’s linear.

Meaning: your message has to be so compelling that you keep all those different ‘reader types’ engaged all the way through.

And that’s much harder to do, and requires a lot more effort than composing a ‘normal’ sales-letter.

Meaning:

The bulk of the work creating videos that sell is NOT in the few clicks for screen-capturing and uploading, but instead in, well, you guessed it: the boring, tedious fundamental work that no one wants to tell you about, because you’d be so turned off that you’d never buy their push-button, time-saving Easy-everything.

Well, I say: let the masses create ‘mass produced’ videos that’ll continue to create no sales, whilst we focus on what matters … even if it takes a few more clicks of the mouse.

Veit

PS: obviously, the above comments don’t apply if all you’re doing is create lots of little screen-capture style tutorials that don’t need any further processing. In that case EVS may well save you some time. My comments are based on the assumption that you’d like to sell stuff.

 

Alrighty, this is a dual-purpose post:

a) demonstrate the Hybrid Connect plugin

b) give you a live demo of how it works by ‘hybrid connecting’ the “How to create a successful IM business in 2013” training (which is held on gotowebinar) and a test-mailing list.

So, here’s the video that shows you how it’s all set up (and explains why the text in the signup form below makes no sense whatsoever;-)

and here’s the actual signup box (ignore the text and the image, it’s just an illustration. But: you can sign up to the webinar, so you can see how it all works in practice. Alternatively, you can sign up to the webinar through the link down below)

[hcshort id=”8″]

 

(all the above does is sign you up for this webinar:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/891990497

and for the hcconnect test list … which I’ll delete in a couple

of days, it’s just to demonstrate the whole concept;-)

 

Le voila, the survey results!

Here’s the link to the free “How To Structure An IM-Business For Success In 2013” Presentation

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/891990497

 

PS: the link above is for the “entrepreneurial mindset”, the “marketing mindset” is covered in the conversion bootcamp!

Hey there,

Frohe Weihnachten!

I hope you’re having a wonderful time with friends and family!

have a great finish to 2012

Cheers

Veit

PS: just a little scientific observation:

little people who get Barbie houses, play quietly for hours and hours.

little people who get skateboards and football boots also play for hours and hours, but certainly not quietly.

Note to self: next year, *should* we decide to allow skateboards, football boots or similar forms of entertainment, it will ALL be Barbie- branded … that way *surely* I’m guaranteed total silence;-)