I got a text from my old boss, Jeff, this morning…
Jeff was one of my original marketing mentors. The guy whose job I filled (as he moved up to President) when I got my first gig running marketing for a multi-million dollar IT training company.
Jeff not only oversaw the near-tripling of revenue while I was there — he’d also more than doubled it (and I think I’m understating) before I walked through the door, and massively increased profitability.
Jeff is also a regular reader of Breakthrough Marketing Secrets, and someone I consider to be in my inner circle of my most-trusted business confidants.
Well, for the last couple years, Jeff has been the #2 at another company in the IT space — this time, a company that does high-level trade shows for IT pros.
And just like nearly every situation in the past where Jeff has risen to #2 in the company (a role he’s taken over and over again)… The company had huge gains in both top-line revenue and bottom-line profits as Jeff led the daily operations.
In fact, I’ve always wanted to hire Jeff as my #2, though unfortunately that seems more and more unlikely by the day…
Because Jeff told me this morning that a deal in the works for months finally went through:
“It’s official!! We told the staff yesterday that I bought the company!!”
Then, a minute later: “Thank you for being an inspiration to me. I appreciate your support and have a deep admiration for your success in your business.”
The respect is mutual, Jeff!
I called Jeff this morning. To congratulate him, for one.
But also, because he’d responded to a survey I put out in December about your biggest marketing challenges.
And like many, he said one of his biggest challenges is getting leads and more bodies in through the door.
He’s seen list performance lagging. More and more of his best prospects from the past are saying, “I get 100 contacts from companies like yours every day — I barely have enough time to keep up with them, much less respond to anything!”
I’d been meaning to chat with Jeff about this.
And when we talked — it turned out we were already on the same wavelength.
I brought it up, and Jeff told me about the crazy emails he’s testing.
And remember: this is for tech geeks.
Instead of things like: “Discover the top 5 IT infrastructure trends for 2018,” the subject lines he’s testing now are more like, “Have a beer with me next week?”
It’s the same dang offer.
An all-day IT conference, with a cocktail hour at the end of the day.
Great speakers all day. And it’s — as Jeff says — “the proverbial free lunch.” Because the sponsors and exhibitors pick up the tab.
All an attendee has to do is show up, sit through a few sessions, munch on some free lunch, sit through some more free sessions, and enjoy a couple free beers at the end of the day.
And yet, it’s hard to pry them out of their offices for this.
ESPECIALLY not for the content — the most valuable part!
What’s working best, today, in the marketing is: the fun!
Love it or hate it, people want free beer more than they want your content.
You could be the smartest, sharpest, most helpful person in the world. You could be able to hand them gold on a silver platter. But if there’s not a nice microbrew sitting next to that gold nugget, they’re not interested!
That might seem a little ridiculous.
Some might claim about the erosion of value in our modern society, the dumbing down of our population, and so on…
And heck, if that’s you complaining: I won’t disagree with you!
People shouldn’t go to these things for the free beer.
They should go for the content.
But here’s the thing: the market doesn’t give a damn about what you and me think they should and should not do. They’ll do what they’ll do, our opinions be damned.
That’s the lesson of direct response.
Good and bad marketing — no matter the definition of “good” and “bad” — is NOT decided in your head, or in a boardroom…
Good and bad marketing is decided by the market — and they vote with their wallets!
And what I’m seeing, more and more, is that entertainment and experience trumps EVERYTHING when it comes to generating a marketing response.
Jeff’s “Have a beer with me?” subject lines are just one data point.
But if you step back and blur your focus a little bit, you’ll see it over and over again.
For example, when the over one million people bought Porter Stansberry’s investment letter based on watching his “End of America” presentation, do you really think they were buying investment advice? The promo didn’t OPEN with investment advice. It didn’t even really promise investment advice in the earliest stages.
Study it closely, and you’ll find that the investment advice is really secondary.
Heck, the “headline” of that promo was:
WARNING: What you’re about to see is controversial, and may be offensive to some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
That’s NOT investment advice at all. That’s ripped straight off the front of more edgy TV programming, as a warning to turn off the TV if you or anybody in the room with you might be offended.
It’s NOT from the investment publishing world — it’s from the entertainment world!
Over a million people have flocked to Stansberry Research — and given their investment publications a bigger circulation than the Wall Street Journal — because they were entertained by Porter.
Not “entertainment” in a “make ‘em laugh” sense. But surely we’re talking the same kind of entertainment you get when you tune into the news, a documentary, or even a drama. Or perhaps one of those true crime shows that are often preceded by the same warnings.
All the best marketers and salespeople use this principle.
It’s not just a pitch — it’s a show.
Your role in selling then isn’t just to persuade. Rather, it’s to entertain the audience in a way that inspires action.
Done right, and you do something more powerful than get your prospect to buy your product or service…
You get them to buy YOU!
(Come to think about it, this is a critical aspect of my 3 Pillars of Highly-Effective Story Selling, as taught in The Story Selling Master Class. Your CHARACTER is central to who you are and what your ACT is as a persuader. Combine this with the right story and the right selling strategies — as I teach in The Story Selling Master Class — you can certainly work some sales magic!)
When you get someone buying you…
Instead of buying your products and services…
You completely transform the nature of your business.
Which brings me to…
That time I earned the nickname “The Funsucker…”
When I worked for Jeff, we had a really casual workplace.
We got stuff done. We sold a ton of IT training. But we also had a lot of fun.
Yes, this included the expected Nerf wars. Heck, even being on the phone with a prospect wasn’t always defense against getting hit in the face with a Nerf dart.
But there were other things.
Like the time one of our coworkers went on vacation, and came home to his entire cubicle filled with crumpled up newspaper. Five feet deep.
Or when, over the course of days, I gradually slowed down one of our more computer-illiterate coworker’s mouse responsiveness. Until finally he was having to drag his mouse across his entire desk to get the cursor to move a couple inches. (He couldn’t get me back with a tech trick, but he certainly retaliated!)
Or the time I took a screenshot of that same coworker’s computer desktop, made the screenshot his new desktop wallpaper, and dragged all the real icons into a folder. He clicked and clicked and clicked forever before giving up in frustration — I let him fume for a few more minutes before restoring everything back to normal.
Well, that coworker hated how I somehow often blurted out just the right thing to ruin his jokes and pranks.
There’s a side of me that takes everything too seriously.
And in the context of creating great content — it’s helpful. But in the context of pulling a prank — or being “in” on someone else’s prank — it can be my biggest weakness.
One day, in total frustration, he called me, “The Funsucker.”
The name stuck.
In fact, my kids today LOVE that I had that nickname at work, and when I’m being a boring dad and stopping something they think is fun, sometimes they’ll pull it out on me…
But I have to be careful about letting “The Funsucker” have too much control over my marketing and content.
If I want engagement and response, I can’t forget the entertainment. The fun.
And neither should you.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
