Social Media: The 3 stages of a revolution
Sometimes when a brand new, revolutionary thing comes along, hardly anyone notices. Except a few visionaries who do notice. They quietly make a fortune. (Think Microsoft. Computers were for geeks and then when everybody realized they needed one, Bill Gates made a bloody fortune.)
Other times, the brand new, revolutionary thing comes along, it’s fairly obvious to everyone that it’s going to be a BIG deal. (Think Internet. Everybody knew in the late 90′s that it was going to change the world.)
When that happens, hardly anybody makes a fortune. Instead there’s just this massive sea of chaos that’s all hype and no substance. (Remember?)
That’s Stage 1.
Stage 2 is, everyone gets disillusioned with it and takes their toys and goes home. Things calm down for awhile. (Think ‘Post-Dot-Com Crash.’)
Then in Stage 3, now that sanity has returned, the real practitioners go to work delivering real value. (Think ‘Pay Per Click.’)
Social media online is going through that exact same cycle. Social media is at stage 2.5 right now. The intense windstorm of nonsense is subsiding and the real players are beginning to emerge.
For broad social media strategy across all the various networks, I’d be hard pressed to name a more tuned-in, ruthlessly pragmatic specialist than Don Crowther. Don is releasing his Social Profit Landscape today and he’s assembled a series of outstanding video tutorials.
Today I’d like to encourage you to avail yourself of this resource. For 2 years, the buzz about social media was more annoying than your neighbor running his chainsaw on Sunday morning. Things are different now:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/socialmediavideos/
What to do when your entire industry suddenly crumbles
Imagine this: You’ve dominated the world market for centuries. Leaders in your business enjoy secure incomes and workers earn admirable wages. You’ve created a tradition of dignity, respect and superiority.
Then, unexpected foreign competition swarms in like carrion fowl. Within 24 months they crater your market share, destroy your margins and drive the major players into bankruptcy. Morale plummets, panic ensues. Wholesale economic destruction is imminent.
What will you do now? The future dangles delicately in the balance.
This is a true story. It already happened. An unlikely contender stepped on the playing field. A “dark horse” staged a dramatic turnaround and led not only his company, but an entire nation, to higher ground.
Do you feel the maw of the beast breathing on your neck? Get the rest of the story and a fresh dose of inspiration here:
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Many entrepreneurs are struggling right now and desperately need leadership and new confidence.
My commitment to you is to deliver to you the increased confidence, marketing knowledge, and most important, the business savvy that you need to overcome whatever challenges you confront right now.
My #1 channels for doing this will be Renaissance Club, Mastermind Club, and a new offering (not yet available) called Mastermind Pro. In the coming weeks you are going to see a wholesale re-invention of my membership programs so keep your eyes open.
Meanwhile I want you to always keep this in mind:
The solution to whatever problem you face right now already does exist, either in whole or in component parts that can be assembled. All you need to do is ask the right questions and present those questions to the right people.
That’s it. It really is that simple. As long as you remember this you’ll be level headed, even in the tunnel of chaos.
Today I invite you to ask me your questions in the comments section below. I will be able to respond to some of these directly right here on the blog. In other cases I will respond to them in upcoming emails. Please be as specific as you possibly can.
Your business and your success are important to me and my team and I are committed to delivering the finest Pay-Per-Click and online marketing education available.
Thanks for spending time with me today, and remember – just like the Swiss – you can re-invent your business and your industry too.
Perry Marshall
How a good man died because of bad marketing
My wife Laura is is by no means a “Marketing Maniac,” but she’s learned a thing or two from years of sleeping with a guy who is.
Laura is heavily involved with relief agencies that serve the poorest of the poor in India and Africa. Last winter she went to a conference in St. Louis where hundreds of charities were recruiting workers and raising funds.
Her comment to me upon arriving home:
“It’s incredibly depressing that the very people who are doing some of the most precious work in the entire world are the most abysmally horrible marketers.” And she plunks down a stack of brochures to prove the point. She says, “Half the time you had no idea what these people were doing, let alone why you would want to help them.”
A good man literally dies every day because those organizations haven’t bothered to master the art and science of communication. Heck, a 100 good men die every day because of their incompetence, maybe even 1000.
Early this morning I recorded a conversation with UK advertising legend Drayton Bird (The MP3 will be posted for Mastermind Club members). Drayton has been writing ads for literally 50 years now. In one sentence, Drayton explained why these organizations’ marketing is so bad:
“They think people are going to be interested in what they do simply because it’s good and important. They think their cause is so noble that they forget to think of anybody but themselves.”
Amen Drayton. And I gotta tell ya, this is a nearly universal affliction. I’m as guilty of it as anybody. I almost never hard sell, even when I should. I’m completely serious when I say that there are people out there whose business failed because I didn’t convince them to buy something that I sell.
Whatever it is that you do, there are people whose life is LESS good because you didn’t convince them to give THEIR money to YOU. Because what you sell is worth MORE than what you charge and you know it.
The better the product you sell, the more obligated you are to shout it from the mountain tops.
The irony is, it’s often the people with the most crappy products who invest the most effort into selling them. If you doubt me, turn on the TV and watch the infomercials. How many of them are selling some totally cheesy product that breaks after 1 week or doesn’t deliver the what’s promised, yet they’ve crafted and tested a brilliant sales pitch?
Why is it that crappy product = great marketing and saving lives = bad marketing???
Is there anything wrong with this picture?
NEVER let the virtue of what you sell lull you into laziness. If you’ve fulfilled the obligation of creating a good product that delivers the goods, then you have a 2nd obligation. Which is to sell it with gusto and enthusiasm.
You’ve got the goods. Now, stand and deliver.
Perry Marshall
P.S.: If you live in Europe, not being at my London seminar with Drayton Bird will cost you £50,000.
The most precious commodity is ATTENTION. How to get it:
There’s nothing harder to obtain – or more valuable to possess – than a few minutes of your prospect’s exclusive focus.
To get it, you don’t have to shout or be annoying or obnoxious. All you need is ONE clever idea, one arresting hook. Then suddenly she is listening to you intently.
On Thursday July 22 I’m doing a teleseminar on how to make that happen.
This session is precisely about discovering that magical, attention-getting hook. It’s at 12:30pm London Time (11:30am GMT, 9:30pm Sydney time, 6:30am US Central Time).
My guest is Drayton Bird, who for years was the right hand man of the legendary David Ogilvy. He has churned out hundreds of absolutely brilliant advertising campaigns. Now in his 70’s, he’s a legend to insiders in the business. Drayton is a guest at my London UK seminar September 10-12 (www.perrymarshall.com/uk).
He’s going to teach you his formula for finding the extraordinary within the ordinary, of making the familiar new and exciting.
If you come to this teleseminar with a desire to re-invent just one of your marketing campaigns, by the end of the hour you’ll know how to do it.
Date: July 22, 2010
Time: 12:30pm London, 11:30am GMT, 9:30pm Sydney, 6:30am US
Cost: Free
The number is a US telephone number, Country Code “1″: (+1) (646) 519-5860
Pin number 2665 followed by the # sign
Talk to you then!
Perry Marshall
Escape Velocity, Gravity, and Focus
Ever notice, as an internet entrepreneur, the temptation to diversify your focus into a multitude of markets, partnerships, joint ventures, sources of traffic, conversion methods, and marketing techniques is seemingly irresistible?
I think there are MANY factors driving this rather neurotic tendency we all seem to struggle with (including, and perhaps especially, yours truly!)…
- Traffic sources are inherently unstable. Google’s always changing the rules for both Adwords and SEO. Social Media is a wild new animal hardly anyone really understands yet. The email landscape is subject to various laws, filters, and conventions (people have been crying “email marketing is dead” since I first started studying internet marketing back in 1998), there are constant mergers and acquisitions, talk about taxes and online restrictions, FTC regulations, etc.
- A Tremendous Number of Skills Are Required to Succeed: Research, copywriting, pay per click, blogging, systems development, market evaluation, human resources, management, legal, communications, emotional marketing and imagery, time management, accounting, html, javascript, blogging (you can outsource these last three - oh yeah, you gotta know how to outsource well too)… I could go on and on. The point is, NOBODY really is strong at all of these, so we’re all constantly searching for partners, JVs, and vendors to fill in the gaps
- Dreaming is a LOT More Fun Than Doing: Setting up a marketing system (and the business to support it) is a lot of WORK. It’s a lot more fun to consume the latest marketing package than to EXECUTE the latest marketing package. (I still remember when this hit me. In the midst of near bankruptcy back in 2003, I LOVED nothing better than to fill up my MP3 player with PPC and Copywriting gurus and just go walk in the mountains all day long. It’s GREAT that I did this… I wouldn’t know what I know at this time if I hadn’t. But the point is, we all need to ensure we’re “dreaming to live” and NOT “living to dream”)
- We Live With Constant Disappointment: Because it’s rare that people thoroughly do their research and cash flow projections for a project… and then put in the necessary time, effort, and resources against a very realistically estimated growth curve, what happens to most entrepreneurs can only be described as episodic mania followed by severe disappointment (and depression). It’s only human nature to run to the NEXT project dream when this happens.
Now, I’ve been fond of telling people “it takes 85% of a rocket’s fuel to achieve ‘escape velocity’ and get into outer space… the rest of the ride to the moon is mostly coasting and steering.” I say that in order to assuage people’s anxiety, and to help motivate them through the “hump” required to get their projects off the ground.
But suddenly it hit me…
If it takes 85% of your fuel to get off the ground, then trying to launch four rockets at the same time is a losing game. You simply can’t put 25% of your fuel into each rocket and expect it to do anything but fall back under the weight of the Earth’s gravity.
So, DESPITE the fears, insecurities, and constantly changing landscape of the internet, or perhaps BECAUSE of them, the spoils really go to those with persistence, fortitude, and FOCUS!
If you’re a member of Glenn Club, you know how psychotically I focus on choosing the right keyword conversation for your market, so YOU can narrow down your focus to exactly the right competitors, do exactly the right survey and interview research, and really dominate that keyword space.
But I’m talking about something way beyond your keyword space, I’m talking about your whole business.
What’s the single most important project in your business? Are you focusing 85% of your resources on it?
Something worth thinking about, don’t you think?
Dr. G 
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