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Marketing: Attract Attention & Build Demand

Lesson 6 from: The Personal MBA: The Foundation of Effective Business

Josh Kaufman

Marketing: Attract Attention & Build Demand

Lesson 6 from: The Personal MBA: The Foundation of Effective Business

Josh Kaufman

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Lesson Info

6. Marketing: Attract Attention & Build Demand

Lesson Info

Marketing: Attract Attention & Build Demand

So marketing is all about attracting attention and building demand for this wonderful thing that you've created and marketing solves a really important problem if nobody knows that you exist they can't buy this wonderful thing that you've created right so marketing is all about the process of taking this wonderful thing of value whatever it is and going out into the world and attracting attention and building interest in the service of finding people who may ultimately be interested in purchasing it so all the things that we'll talk about in marketing are how to attract attention how to build demand and how to get people to raise their hands and say yes I am interested in more information about this thing they have now the first part of marketing the prerequisite to all of this is attention and the most important rule of attention is that it is very very limited we're all busy we all have too many things to pay attention to and too many things to do and we don't have an unlimited amoun...

t of time and energy during the day like everybody is in this situation there are more demands on their on our attention than attention we have to give and so the first most important rule of marketing marketing is all about attention and if you want to get attention you have to find some way to make sure that what you are offering or can offer is mohr worthy of your prospects attention than all of the other things in the world that could possibly compete for that attention at that point this is the primary challenge in the primary opportunity of marketing now you don't just want attention so uh all attention I should say is not created equal some attention is more valuable than others. The attention that you're looking for is attention from a prospects who are qualified to purchase this thing of value we have created right? So for example, you can get a lot of attention uh if if you go full crazy and turn yourself into an internet soap opera right, a lot of people will pay a center to you write that attention isn't very valuable right? Because it's not the attention of people who are ultimately going to purchase this thing that you've created so you are looking for attention from your ideal customers people who are just right for this thing of value that you've created no receptivity is a measure is how open the prospect is to your particular offer. All right, so take for example a classic example if at png there was a very large business selling of baby care items pampers is one of p and g's big brands how interested do you think? Ah person who does not have kids is in a papers advertisement yeah, while babies are cute so there's a little bit of that element going for it, but if you don't have kids, you could probably care less about diapers and strollers and formula and medicine and all of the things that are involved in having a baby, right? So people generally tend to ignore things that aren't relevant to them or things that they don't care about, and so the form and the customization, what you talk about and when you talk about it and who you talk about it to makes a really big difference in whether people are going to pay attention to you and give you a chance reward you with some of their limited attention or whether they're going to ignore you completely, okay, so we're trying to get attention, but that attention is limited and scarce and very difficult to get ok now, the easiest way to attract attention and in terms of getting the attention of people who are receptive to our message is what's called remark ability and being remarkable so be having something that is unique or compelling is the best way to attract attention. So what makes your offer worth noticing? Why should have should someone spend a valuable seconds minutes, hours of their day evaluating what it is that you have to offer? Uh, if possible, and this is where marketing intersects with the, uh, the value creation process if you can build something into your offer that is remarkable in and of itself people will pay attention to you and people will talk about you for example james you want to show everybody your shoes hey internet high internet so those are can you explain what those are? These are vey broom five fingers which really look funny they're my wife's least favorite in the entire world and but you know they're incredibly comfortable it's like walking around barefoot um only if they've got the vibram soles which are also in mountaineering shoes so if I step on something sharp it's not going to hurt now and I don't know if the cameras can get a close up on these shoes but the remarkable thing about them is they have little toes they look like socks like toe socks issue and uh I have a pair of these things a cz well, I've been wearing them for years and we were living in new york city. You know, new york has this reputation as being this like gruff, uncaring people don't talk to each other bump into each other on the sidewalk kind of place never in my life I'd wear these out for a walker on a run and people would stop me on the streets like where those why are you wearing them? You have your feet, your toes are showing and it was it was built into the product there was something worth noticing about the shoes and as a result, people notice they pay attention, they talk about it so the product, in a very real sense is a form of marketing for vibrant the viral five fingers sell themselves by being remarkable by being different, it would have been really easy provide room to have a little extra flap of weather and just close the toes off, but because they didn't there's something worth noticing there, right? So that remark ability, if you could build it into your offer from the beginning, can really help you attract a lot of attention doesn't make sense any other examples of things that are built to be remarkable from the beginning, the google glass google glass, right? What is that for people who haven't seen it? So they are basically a wearable internet appliance? We're like glasses and so you can use voice text or, uh whatever like you would a phone on lee it's it's wearable so you're not your hands are free and also you I can see a screen in order to interact with it, right? So anything that causes people to say whoa that's cool or whoa that's weird, um is a distinct marketing advantage. It helps people by breaking certain expectations that helps you attract a lot more attention, then you would otherwise make sense, okay, now since we talked about all attention is not created equal, we're looking for very specific types of attention. The question is who do we want to attract the attention of? And the answer to that is what's called a probable purchaser and your probable purchaser is the type of person who is perfectly suited, whatever it is that your offer offering, so think about it like your ideal customer, the person for whom this thing that you've made is absolutely wonderful in every respect, and they should totally buy it because they're gonna live. The more you understand about your probable purchaser, the more effectively that you can come up with, ways to attract their attention, and the more you can focus on getting the attention off the people who actually matter, the folks who are most likely to purchase whatever this, whatever it is that you are offering, right? So if your marketing time and money and resources and energy is limited, it's in your best interest to not focus on getting the attention of everybody because that's really hard, impossible, it's way better to focus on your ideal prospects, your probable purchasers and spend all of your time, all of your energy, all of your money, finding people who are perfect for this thing that you've created, you spend most of your resources there, you're going to get the best results because you're targeting the people who are likely to find who are likely to be receptive to your message hey so they pay attention and also likely down the road actually give you money which is the whole point of this exercise right now sure what air some ways of so let's go back to letting track because by not sure there's a lot of competition as as photographers and your your client is overwhelmed because they're looking at a very expensive thing that they're planning which they've never done before I don't know just ways I don't really know what I'm asking all of a sudden but how to stand out in that crowd to figure out who that probable purchaser is without being inundated by all the other people that are doing the same thing damn sure um how would you describe your ideal client the person who absolutely perfectly suited to your services um well engaged yeah so one step prerequisite for your um you know they're there if we're just going for demographics for my client you know twenty five two forty usually a dual income type of the household they really enjoy laughing and being with each other and their friends are very important friends and family and more important necessarily then um tangible thing is the memories are are what gears them they think poop jokes are funny has because that's just human lucifer yeah. Yeah, you know, um things like that where? I guess I'm not very good at figuring out you know I don't know where they shop I don't know like all those things I don't know if I just don't care where they shop or should I care no not necessarily it's mostly um what type of people are they what do they tend to value and what do they not tend to value as highly and then one of the things that you can do when you understand a lot about how they think or how they make decisions is too in the service offerings or how you present or how you market or give them information in ways that really hit all of those things. So so for example um when my wife kelsey and I got married we hired a wedding photographer mark cafiero from from denver fantastic photographer and we particularly liked this this was going to be um because our families are from different geography is this was going to be one of the on ly events where they were all in the same uh area at the same time and so we wanted somebody who was incredibly good at getting photos of everybody in the wedding party party portrait style without them really noticing and so looking through portfolios we found that mark was exceptionally skilled at getting candid moments from far away that were really awesome and he treated those photos he processed the photos in a way and with a style that we really, really liked, and so when we when we talked with mark, it was it was a question of we really, this is what we value in this package, and he was exceptionally well suited to do that. So a lot of it is just understanding what makes the customers that, del your your offer, the most that pay you the most money are the best to work with, that you love serving. What characteristics do they have in government? What are all of the things that they tend to value? And how can you make sure that you are offering mohr of those things and not focusing so much on serving folks who do not fit that probable purchaser characteristic? I had one of my clients, uh, tim girl, who runs, runs a, a marketing group called out think group was building websites for lots of different people, and what he noticed is that he, the folks he likes working with the best, actually authors in the process of of coming out with a new book. And so he decided to stop serving all of the other people who are not in that category and just focus on serving authors and helping them launch books. Um, his profitability went up by eight times, and his marketing has become incredibly efficient, he's booked solid in his happier because he's focusing on talking to his probable purchasers and people who just need a random web site could go someplace else that makes sense so a lot of it it's not necessarily even getting down into into age gender geography all of those things it's more like what what of all the trade offs we talked about what do they value and what do they not value so much and how can you make something distinct and remarkable that really really hits them in the right way for us it was mark uh for wedding photography worked as a photo journalist we really like that style and we really like the way that he was processing that hit us and that was enough to make us purchase with him versus going with somebody else that makes sense one quick question from a line on this yes aren't topic that's ok yeah it's going from sam cox uh this is an interesting question. Is the probable purchaser sometimes not so obvious given the example of a teenager who wants a car but relying on mom and dad yes to purchase it exactly ok so you may have um two constituencies you want to get the attention of but one has the wallet and the other does not the thing is it and that's very market specific it depends on how you need to talk to both constituencies actually when I was working a procter and gamble doing doing consumer goods we had to really major constituencies we had to talk to the end consumer so the person who goes into walmart and bison bottle of dawn dishwashing detergent we have to make it relevant for them too we also had to sell it to wal mart the buyer at wal mart was competing with lots of different offers for shelf space right? They're the ones that paid p and g's bill's not necessarily the end consumer in an indirect way so a lot of times you have these dual constituencies you have tio decide who has the wallet but if they're depending on somebody else to make a purchase decision you have to talk to both and you may talk to them in very different ways and speaking of mom and dad and it made me think about her photography business people getting married they may not be the ones actually paying for her photography services that could be mom and dad that the same way with png we had to talk to two markets she may have do the exact same thing no it's similar in the in the wedding industry my wife kelsey sold wedding dresses for a long time and it was the same thing the bride makes the purchase decision but mom cuts the check and it can be a very interesting dynamic when you have two major constituencies that both need to be happy before something happens if you're in that situation, it's really helpful to know that you're in that's it ok now the enemy of attracting attention uh is a wonderful idea called preoccupation and preoccupation is basically what are your prospects already paying attention to and what are all the things in the world that are competing for that limited amount of time and attention? Um, in order to earn the attention of a prospect, you have to divert their attention from what they're already being attention to to you, that could be really, really difficult because we're all overloaded, so it's safe to assume your prospects are not sitting at home all day, every day thinking about your offer, right? You see this a lot in business sales with if you go in and talk to somebody and say, give me some material think it over the rule of thumb is they're not thinking it over when you leave the room, they forget that you ever exist and they won't think about it until the next time you're in the room, right? We're all preoccupied, we're all busy, so in order to get someone's attention, you have to be able to break that preoccupation give them something more compelling than the things that they're already paying attention to. The best way to do that is to provoke some type of intense feeling could be curiosity could be surprised could be concerned. Something that is urgent enough to say this is worth paying attention to right now is what you need to attract attention. There was a really wonderful story, I think. I think ziegler, the sales sales guy, talked about this. There was there was a sales person that was selling safety glass. So so when the glass companies came out with, like, automotive glass, that was shatterproof. Um, the company corning was sent out their sales force to try to drum up interest in this thing, and nobody was buying. And there was a sales person who came up with the idea of taking big panes of glass in two qualified prospects who would probably be interested in buying large quantities of it. And what they would do is do a meeting. And the first thing the sales person would do would go into the prospects office, put the glass on the table and take out a hammer. And what the hammer on the glass in a wooden shatter. It was really loud. It attracted a lot of attention in the glass wouldn't shatter and the person on the other end of the desk would be like, and the sales person would say, how much do you want? And they sold a lot of glass. That way, right? But it was a big dramatic thing that the person on the other end of the desk was preoccupied had a ton of things that needed to be paid attention to but it was a demonstration that was just surprising and provoking enough that it caused them to stop what they were thinking about and start considering this thing right in front of them, right? So part of our job as marketers is to come up with something that is emotionally compelling enough for prospect to stop paying attention to what they're normally doing and start paying attention to this thing that you want make sense an end result is the thing that your ideal customers want it's the thing that they actually buy and a old and venerable quote by theodore eleven, who is an economist and former professor at harvard business school uh people don't buy quarter inst drills they by quarter inch holes in their wall because the only reason to buy a drills if you want a hole in the wall our whole and something else right if you can deliver that and resolve they want the thing that you offer so the question as a marketer is what is the end result that people are buying? What what's the payoff what do they get if they pay attention to you and may be purchased this thing if you can figure out what the actual and result is you can sell more effectively on the things that actually matter matter right that's why you're going back to the example of social signaling rolex advertisements do not sell we keep time really well right it's not the end result they sell what actually matters right any examples of selling an end result that you khun you can think of from my home inspection business I can think of people that air but want to buy a better home use using a home inspection process if I know what's wrong with the house so when I try to sell them on the value of the product is trying to tell me is that if you're going to go with a cheaper inspector potentially could miss him very important things in your house and so if you go with the best which is key inspection services dot com you'll be able to find out a lot more detail about the products and about your house and what's going on in the house. So yes, they're trying to sell a benefit a way of talking about this is when you are marketing or when you're selling it is more effective to focus on the benefits that you are offered provides instead of the absolute features right? So you may do a certain a particular test to a house and you could say we do this particular test that's a feature the benefit of that is we can make sure your your home is safe or you project your investment value or whatever it is that that test tells you that is valuable to the end result of it all right so in general you want to spend most if not all of your time selling the benefits of your offer and as little time as possible on the features that get you there right now in general the end result that people are purchasing is usually an experience that's directly related to one of them but five court drives that we talked about earlier right? If you can connect the benefits of your offer to one of those five fundamental things it's probably going to be compelling enough to pay attention to go clear now qualification qualification is the process of determining whether or not a prospect is a good customer before they buy from you so not all prospects are good prospects not all customers are good customers. So it's helpful to you as a business person and is a marketer toe have some process of identifying who are the folks who really want to talk to and pay attention to and who are the folks who are probably not a good fit for us and qualifications important because it helps you avoid wasting time and energy on customers that just aren't good that for you remember the tradeoffs and alternatives conversation you can't be all things to all people so who are you? Are your ideal customers? And how can you find them? Focus on lee on them and let everybody else go someplace else? We talked about this a little bit earlier with the progressive insurance example, right? So when they started that that's a really brilliant example of a qualification process, tell us a little bit about you and your vehicle in your driving habits, and we will give you quotes of progressive insurance and three comparable things, right? Brilliant marketing because progressive will do your auto insurance for you, here's what's happening progressive is using that information to do a risk assessment on on you is a driver and they're using that as part of their underwriting process, their qualifying use a customer. If you're a really good risk, that is highly likely to pay premiums without causing any claims. Great, they will ensure you, and they will make really darn sure that their price is better than any of their competitors. Price because they want to the customer. If you are a bad risk, that is highly likely to be in a very expensive accident. At some point in the future, uh, progressive will very kindly send your business to one of their chief competitors so they can go out of business, not progressive, right, it's brilliant. And it works because progressive has a very clear idea about who they want to ensure that they don't so by doing this it's a way of providing a benefit to the customer will do your shopping for you and making sure that they qualify and get the very best uh, customers that they possibly can right any examples that you've you've seen of qualification of or uh intentionally turning business or customers away you brought up ra meet uh earlier yeah, his courses and uh I've subscribed to those in the past and it's interesting that he is very explicit and who he wants teo to sell his his courses to and he doesn't, um and basically goes through if you've got if you've got, you know, x y and z, you know, you know, there were better things for you to do with your money than pay for my course right now absolutely and it's in his best interest to focus on the folks that he can really serve and people who are in a position to get results from the course, and if they get results from the course, they're highly likely to recommend it, they're highly likely to sign up for other courses inter makes a tremendous amount of sense ok, so the better you're able to identify your probable purchaser you're absolutely ideal customer, the more effective you can qualify and the better you qualify, the more time you spend serving the folks that will ultimately get your business or your what? I wanted to go go, any questions from the internet about this, they're actually hanging on your every word right now, all right, just like soaking in all the information. Perfect. All right, let's, keep going point of market entry related to remember we were talking about baby products, and until you have a child, either yours or in your life in some way, shape or form, you really couldn't I care less about that segment of the marketplace that's an example of what's called a point of market entry, so a point of market entry is the point where a potential customer becomes receptive to your offering. So, uh, any other examples of something that you probably don't care about until you reach a particular point in your life? Wedding photography, clear point of market entry, right? You get engaged all of a sudden you are a prospect, you one minute you weren't now you are right, very clearly defined threshold, I think home inspection, very clear defined point of market entry, medicare supplement, medicare step exactly, medicine in general, right? There are lots of treatments that exist in the world that we probably don't know, exist and don't care a bit but if you are diagnosed with a specific disease all of a sudden you care a whole lot right life insurance life insurance any type of insurance right tax help tax hell yes right around now yeah and so sometimes sometimes the points of market entry are um our life event based sometimes their time bound so how often do you think about your taxes in october you should be you should be you really should be or not but you know the interest level is way lower at certain points in the year then then then later so there could be points of market entry all of a sudden you care about something because because it has appeared in your life that could also be points of market exit two so if you have children at some point when they're eighteen you're probably not going to care about diapers anymore right hope not right s o so there is a entering a market and leaving a market now in markets that exhibit this this type of behavior it's really in your best interest to do as much as you can to make sure that the people you're talking to we are past the point of market entry because if they they haven't you couldn't care you couldn't care less you're wasting running um so if you can get a prospects attention immediately after they crossed that threshold into into caring about a certain market that is the absolute best time when they're most receptive and most influenced by whatever it is that you tell them right? So that is why for example, if you have ah baby in the u s in a hospital um I worry a lot of other in the u s and other places around the world they send to new parents home with this big gift basket with diapers and formula and appointment and all of these things toby, you take care of your new baby? Yeah uh companies spend millions upon millions of dollars it's an audience aggregation business right hospitals air where lots of babies air delivered right so marketers will pay access and deliver samples and lots of things to make sure they have the attention of new parents at the time we know they're receptive it's instant extraordinarily valuable marketing tactic and point of market entry is why so when do your prospects become interested in things? If you can reach them a right at that point your marketing is going to be much more effective then well after the point goal now address ability is a measure of how easy it is to get in touch with people you who might want what you're offering so there are some markets that are very easily addressable um what's something that you confined in pretty much every town something that people want you need post post office for mailing services right if you need to overnight something, you could go to fedex or ups or d h l um it's a very addressable you can find people who are interested in in in mailing services, right? What's something that would be more difficult to find. People who are interested in something. Yes, exactly. People don't don't go around advertising. Hey, we're in the market for a divorce. Divorce lawyer, right. Harder to reach them as a marketer. They usually find it's the other way around, right? People are in the market in the market for getting a divorce. That sounds really bad. But it's actually a thing in the market to get a report divorce in the may search to have somebody perform that service. Right? Um, there are some so let's talk about this in terms of geography, there are some countries around the world in which it's really difficult to reach people in a cost effective manner. In terms of advertising, there are some let's take medicine for. For example, if you are selling a prescription medication for a very specific type of chronic disease, those folks don't publicly advertise that they have that type of information. All right, so some markets are way more addressable than others, and if you have a choice, it's, way better to choose to serve an addressable market so a market where you can identify that people are interested in something, then it is to try to track down people who are in a much less addressable market, right? So address ability is a measure of how easy is it to reach the folks who may be good candidates for whatever it is that you're offering right makes us desire desire is the part of marketing that people start to feel really, really uncomfortable about because there's this public perception ofthe marketer as shadowy master manipulator who's making people want things that may or may not be good for them, right? We've all everybody's seen mad men and when whenever there is there is a depiction of the process of marketing in public media it's all about, I'm going to hypnotize you until winning this thing that's not necessary right doesn't work that way doesn't work that way actually, the best way to lose a billion dollars in marketing is to try to force people to want something that they don't want in some way shape or form. You can't force someone to desire something what you can do and what you should do because marketing is really the process of attracting attention, creating interest in provoking a desire I want this thing right whatever it happens to be and if you are able to provoke that desire response, you're doing a really good job is a marketer ok the trick is you can't mix make someone desire something you can call attention bring their attention to things that remind them of a desire that already exists in some way shape or form right so you the key is understanding your probable purchasers well enough to know what they already want dan's to tune your marketing to make sure that you are emphasizing things about your offer that tune into those things that they want right? So we've been talking about luxury goods, social status all of those things a great example of a of watch advertisement that works tremendously well what is it omega? What are their ads for watches and it's david beckham for one right through the other is, uh I believe still are the official uh watch company that hires the actor that happens to be playing james bond at any given point in time from their entire advertising strategy is daniel craig I'm wearing a tuxedo with a watch that pretty simple um for folks who have some subconscious desire to be an international super spy pretty cool that form of advertising is really effective david beckham similar thing you want to be a professional athlete who is rich and famous and has all of these really high social status qualities about him this is the watch he wears and we'll talk about how how the association works in all of that but your job is to connect whatever it is that you're offering to some aspect or some quality that your prospects already won in some way shape or form the more effectively that you do that the more effective your marketing is that makes sense one of the most significant times that I've experienced that kind of marketing was hearing scott harrison's talk yes in you can tell the live audience who scott is yes scott harrison is ceo of charity water which is a provides water in in underprivileged country so places where where people are dying because they don't have access to clean water and I mean it's a it's a fabulous organization they have got one hundred percent accountability for the money so when when you donate or someone else donates then you can actually see the gps coordinates where the well was built that you invested the money to build but that he spoke at a group of chris gila bos conference where they're a bunch of people there who want to really make they're make their leave their mark on the world really make an impact and andi he challenges them all to make an impact in in a way that that really was was clear and was and basically activated the desire to help in all of the people in the audience but it was it was it was you could feel it in the air the desire toe don't help because the story he was telling is if you value changing the world, this is one of the very best things that you can possibly do to get this thing that you already won t make this big difference, and it was I was in the audience with you at that event, and it was it was really amazing there was there was a strong desire in a certain type of person that was in that audience, and scott spoke directly to that desire and gave people awaiting get that thing directly, and I worked really well continues to work very well, right? That makes sense any questions from the internets about this? We do have one from colorado and it's regarding desire is persistence in presenting your offer important just like repeated presentations biltmore desire overtime or you or do you hit a home run the first time? And I didn't find the desire and capturing that potential customers attention it's a combination of both, so a certain amount of repeated exposure definitely helps so anywhere from so one exposure is is typically not enough repeated exposure to a certain point and then the threshold is usually five to seven exposures is the maximum amount of of effectiveness after seven, eight, nine exposures people tend to get really sick of it, and they start to get annoyed, and that starts to work in the opposite direction, so little bit market specific there but as long as you're talking about something that people legitimately want repeated exposures definitely helped versus just one so just don't blast eighteen tweets and facebook posts out there takes more of a committed exactly in that yeah like eighteen, eighteen posts in the day is not going to do any favors to scare people it's it's funny when I was a png did managing television advertise which kind of does this thing too and they actually graft it's you can see a curve and the more repeated exposures the effectiveness goes up and up and up and up and up and then people get sick of it and then goes down and down down down and at that point you know we would switch advertisements or do something new uh so yeah the repetition works but only to a certain point all right a run raj is asking what could be the cheapest ways to create desire among prospects yeah I will show you again you're so clairvoyant you know things that are going to happen next idea okay so the million dollar question how do we get people or encourage people to desire this thing that we have and the best general method of thinking about how to do that is an idea called visualization and visualization is just simply helping your prospect imagine what their life is going to look like after they have purchased this thing that you are offering right so the more effectively, you can help someone imagine all of the good things that are going to happen in their life. As soon as they take the step of purchasing your thing, the more they're going to want it, the more they want it, the more likely they are purchasing. So, for example, let's, take the classic case of a a car salesman when you step on the, uh the lot a dealer's lot to buy a car. The salesperson has one and only one objective. Get you into the driver's seat of the vehicle as quickly as they possibly can. And the reason is, when you're standing on the lot, you're looking at a vehicle from the outside it's really easy to pretend to be rational about the buying decisions, right? You could compare features, you could look at gas mileage, you can crunch numbers, you can do all sorts of different, very abstract things. Once you're behind the wheel of a car or or another vehicle, you start to imagine what your life would look like if you were driving this thing every day, right? How impressed the neighbors are going to be when you drive this this into your driveway, you feel the acceleration you see, you see all of the amenities on the inside of the vehicle you start to imagine. What your life for what your world would look like with this vehicle in the picture what's you start to do that assuming the vehicle meets your needs, you're going to start to want it once you start to want it, you start evaluating a purchase decision so something that would be very difficult to convince you to do outside the vehicle becomes almost natural when you're on the inside, so the most effective thing that they can do is get you into the driver's seat of a car write anything that you can help your prospects due to visualize what their life would look like with your service, the benefits they're going to get um is going to help encourage that desire so the implementation how you help people visualize is very different very market industry specific, but the fact that you need to get people to visualize is key in every single offer that make sense now one of the things as you're talking about this or helping people visualize what their life is going to look like, the idea of framing becomes very important and framing is is the active emphasizing and de emphasizing details to improve the persuasiveness of what you're talking about? Okay, so because we have limited amounts of time and attention, we can't include all of the information that we might possibly that anyone might possibly want about everything right? We can't, um uploads upload information directly to our prospects brains we have to choose and so if you're going to choose what information to talk about, what to what not to talk about, it helps to know who are you talking to? Is it a probable purchasers? Is somebody who's really qualified and what are they likely to care about? Remember, we're talking about the the apple ipod where instead of talking about the number of megabytes, this thing held apple was talking about a thousand songs in your pocket that's a framing decision it's focused on this aspect of the device which you really care about, which is the number of songs you can carry around with you, right? So by emphasizing certain benefits of your offer and de emphasizing certain things that you're best customers don't really care about, you can make your offers much more persuasive than they otherwise might be. The key is you really need to understand how your probable purchaser is because that directly influences what you talk about what you don't now important caveat here and this this kind of goes back into the market or a shadowy master manipulator public perception think framing is important because it allows you to be more persuasive what framing does not allow you to do or give you permission to do is lie to your customers about things that are important, right? So if there's important something important, eh danger a something that it might not be a good fit for them the classic example is pharmaceutical ads, right? They can talk about the benefits that you would get by taking a particular drug and they can also, you know, usually list like eighty things that might happen to you uh if you actually take it right so there's a certain amount of yes emphasize what's most important yes de emphasize what's not important, but if there's something your customers genuinely have a right to know, you should tell them so home inspection is a great example when somebody is selling a home, there may be things like structural damage to the house. The buyer of the house has a right to know that up front before the purchase decision is made in part of what you do is make sure that the buyer of the house actually does no that or the cellar of the house knows it so they can fix it. Um so it's really critical not to leave out important information as if if people know what they need to know you have an enormous amount of latitude and what you're emphasizing what de emphasize an example ways who had dinner last night and on the menu they featured an eleven ounce steak but I ordered scallops. They didn't say that it was roughly five to six ounces of scallops right because typically people I want to know how big their stake is going to be versa but but it was so that was interesting to me that I cried like that yeah and that might have been a a very particular choice because, um cost preparation all of those things dictated a certain portion size um yeah if restaurant menus our amazing if you want a case study on how to frame things um look at a fancy restaurant menu and look at how it's designed look at how they describe the particular dishes in the words that they used to convey certain information. There's an enormous amount of framing framing that happens in how would this is described, how it's prepared and what it goes with and all of that the committed difference in terms of two to three times in terms of the family we have an interesting question from bradley nelson coming from a shot room and that is at what point does framing and become overselling or underselling negative features of your offer? Yes. Ok, so we will talk about something early tomorrow morning called the expectation effect which really helps you helps you think about what is going to be a satisfactory experience for a buying customer in general you want to make sure that expectations air set appropriately high enough that people buy what you have to offer in the first place but not so high that when they actually get the offer? They're going to be disappointed because it didn't live up to that expectation, right? So what you want to make sure is you are over delivering on the expectations that people have when they're going in, um and not setting expectations so high that it's an impossible task to actually get to that point, right and that's that's something that a lot of new business people are entrepreneurs it's it's a pretty classic trap you want people to think this is the greatest thing on the face of the earth um and we'll talk about a couple ways to set expectations appropriately high enough without over promising one thing that can help you get an enormous amount of really good quality attention. It's an idea called free giving away something valuable for free is a really easy way to get people's attention because people like valuable stuff they also like not paying for that valuable stuff, and so people are willing to break their preoccupation and pay attention to you for at least a certain amount of time, right and what's nice about providing free value is it's good for both you as a business person as well as the people that you're serving because the people you're serving get a chance to experience what did it, whatever it is that you do get some of that value and they don't have to give up anything right? So the test drive for a car thiss creative life the free the free part of this creative life course that's what we're doing right you're getting hopefully everybody on the internet is getting an enormous amount of free value from this class and it's an awesome experience and that's going to be a good happy thing all around it's great um so what's also nice is by providing free value it's a very cost efficient form of marketing to you is a business person right doesn't usually cost a whole lot of time or attention or money you give people an opportunity to test drive and as a result you are in their attention now it's critical to remember that attention doesn't pay the bills at some point the folks that you are offering free value to need to convert to some sort of paid purchase where it doesn't make sense for that to continue happening right? And so if you focus on giving away real value to people who are really good prospects for whatever it is that you do providing free but free value is a really great way to earn a lot a lot of attention very, very quickly uh the key is focusing on giving it to people who are highly qualified qualified to begin with don't make sense, you know josh, we hear the word about add value create value can you just just break down a little bit with that value means for example someone comes to your site and download something free you put a lot of time and effort into that you're not talking about just a given just anything like really you give away some of your secrets those types of things of value is like inherently it's a real thing yeah I mean I think about giving away free value in the same sense of what would someone find find it worth purchasing in a sense? So so what's the end result they're looking for how does this thing help them get that? And then by providing some of that value for free you give people a good opportunity to get the benefits of that without the risk of a full purchase decision. So when when I'm creating free stuff I wanted to be the absolute highest quality holding nothing back valuable things so people can really have a good experience and hopefully be encouraged tio do more do more things I mean the personal mba for the longest time was run entirely free. Everything is up on the web site um over time that allowed me to build up enough readers so doing things like the book made sense doing things like courses make sense and all of these people who have received something valuable free in the past know that its quality material and are much more highly likely to pay attention when something new comes out so it's what I really like about, uh, giving away things for free it's a there's there's a really sound business reason for being as generous as you possibly can, right? You're earning people's attention the more you give away, the better experience they have with you, the more likely they are to pay attention to you when something new comes out it's great for everybody, will you give away something for free that that is incredible quality like the content of your book? You will you activate the reciprocity tendency? I mean, when I mean, I know that if I hear about something there that someone is thinking about, like they're stuck about in their life for decision making process instead of having a really long description about what across asia is, for example, I can link to the personal mba dot com that concept, and they can click on it and read about it, and they may get interested and even by your book because you've offered that free really valuable piece of information, whereas sometimes if someone gives me a a lower quality free product, I feel like they've stolen from me. They've stolen my time because I've read something and it's like I've I've spent an hour and a half reading this and I should have quit ten minutes in because it because maybe I got one one anything from it or if if that yeah on dh that's that's an important way that free can actually backfire if the thing that you're giving away for free is just a veiled advertisement there's no value you know and the only thing is at the end you should contact me t get a sales pitch it could actually really backfire so you want to make sure that when you're giving away something for free I mean a great example of this is if you go into a grocery store and you know there's there's a nice little lady that has a plate of free stuff like standing out there um you get to sample it which is great you're getting some value that's a really good thing but you're also experiencing the product and if you like it you're way more likely pick up whatever it is that's their mean that's the type of situation that you really want to create somebody experiences something really great with no risk on and no financial outlay and if they like it you make it really really easy for them to take the next step now one of the best things that you did you can do and it's really important if you are in the process if you give away free value is to ask for what's called permission and permission is just asking your prospects to allow you to follow up over time and so using personal mba is an example. Everything on the site is freely publicly available, but one of the things that I definitely make sure to do is if you like this stuff and this goes for all of the folks around the internets around the world. If you like this stuff and you want more of it, there's a little box to fill in your email address, and once you confirm your email address every time I do something new and cool, I will let you know about it, and that could be a free blood post could be a new course could be a new book, whatever, but I asked people for permission to follow up when new cool stuff is available, right? And there are lots of different ways of doing this. You can ask for me an email address, you can ask for a phone number, you can create an appointment to follow up. Just asking for the permission to follow up to provide more value later is really tremendously valuable. And so the list of people that you have permission from to follow up is a very real, very valuable asset that grows in value over time. So the more folks you have permission to follow up with, the higher the likelihood that a certain percentage of those people are actually going to become purchasing customers, right? So all of the things that you are doing for marketing the very best outcome you can have aside from an immediate sale of whatever it is that you're offering is getting permission to follow up with addition information go now ah hook talked about this a little bit earlier is a single phrase or sentence that describes and offers primary benefit so the apple ipod thousand songs in your pocket example that's a classic hook it's a single very short phrase that encapsulates the benefit a lot of times you see this as either a product name or a tagline so as anybody ah seen an advertisement recently that had a really good example of a hook something that really grabbed your attention master the art of business um actually won one book that's that's a really good classic example of this also fell a creative life presenter timothy fares his hook was his book dot title for hour work week and who doesn't want that right three words encapsulates a lot of promised relevant benefit to a certain audience right works really well a good example of marketing is the book rich dad poor dad the tag line is what the rich no about money or something that the middle middle and lower class do not right that's like and there's a promise there right there are secrets to this thing that you want to know about that are public knowledge you can get it by by getting the same marketing respect is genius conformation ing ah books makes me think about someone who endorsed your book david allen getting things die on yeah look amazing very, very clear promised benefit in that right, dave so when you're creating a hook and it's, when you have something an author, its offer it is worth taking some time to think about how can I make a promise? Uh, that is going to be relevant to my ideal customer, and how can I make that as short and concise and memorable as I possibly can? So people will remember it, right? So my new book is coming out called the first twenty hours, and we spent a lot of time thinking about the subtitle because the subtitle has a really big impact on how people perceive the book, and what we came up to is how to learn anything fast, it's a very clear, short, memorable benefit of something that pretty much everybody wants, right? If you wanna learn things and we all want to learn things, this is a way for you to do that quickly, right? So it's really in your benefit to create a hook little sentence, try to keep it less than four, five words if you can't shorter is better because people remember better, so the better your hook, the more attention they get you did your hope mostly on the subtitle, not so much on the inside. Yeah, so part of that is the we were talking about earlier the expectation effect. I want to make it very clear about what exactly we're talking about, um, in a way that is accurate and not over promising. So I want people to be just excited enough that they actually pick up the book and they read it. But I don't want to, for example, would be really easy to promise or set the expectation. Learn to speak a new language fluently in twenty hours, right? I do. I want to avoid that type of type of over promising, right? So we actually we we looked at the title in the subtitle in concert and how they worked together to set high enough expectation that people get really excited because it's awesome content that's very useful, but not over promise in a way that disappoints people have been a title. Sell your condo fast, sell your condo smart. Is that and over promising tag land. Maybe let's, let's talk about that because a lot of it depends on what exactly you are promising in terms of results in the content so yes, potentially okay, that's a hook right now, colt action. Any time you were doing some sort of marketing, what you're trying to do is get get the people who are paying attention to this particular piece of marketing to do something next right could be buying your product it's called direct direct us sales marketing right? See this thing if you like it, you should order now sometimes it is, uh, getting permission to follow up sometimes it is calling a one, eight hundred number or sending an email or or something very specific that you want a qualified prospect to do next. That action that you want people to take is a call to action it's a very clear, explicitly clear if you like this thing here's, what you do next, enter your email, call this number, sign up for a test drive buy this product needs to be very, very clear and very, very specific if you think you are being too clear or two specific, you're probably doing it right should only be one thing only one thing, I guess so whenever you're doing marketing, you really need to pay attention to what are you asking people to do? Um and is are you asking people to do one thing that's going to lead them down the next step that ultimately results in the purchase, right? If you're not asking for a sale, you're usually asking for permission in some way shape or form and the key is make it clear make it specific and make sure you always I have one right? So a major misconception about marketing eyes people tend to try to emulate the really large marketing companies right procter and gamble coca cola large consumer goods companies that will spend millions of dollars on a super bowl advertisement that has no discernible called action right it's just like a story interest kind of peace right that works because those companies are spending so much money and they're showing those advertisements so widely that they have research that says when a person is at a store which is where seventy to eighty percent of purchase decisions are made in the store standing at a shelf if a product is more memorable than another one it's going to influence a purchase decision and that makes it possible for the company to spend tens of millions of dollars advertising a product because of that tiny percentage blip in decision making at the shelf but the key is almost all of us are not procter and gamble coca cola large consumer goods manufacturers that are doing this massive brand awareness advertising right? So because we're not in that same situation it doesn't make sense to follow the same tactics right there playing a different game than we are and so it is almost always and I'll call it ninety nine percent of the time if you don't have a very clear specific call to action for your marketing it's a missed opportunity you should change it. Would you say just a blogger? I used my bloggers marketing and show current sessions current weddings, current things I'm doing should I have a call? Action of the bottom I blogged post serious that what would you like? Me? So? So you're your ideal customer finds a block post, reads the whole thing and enjoys it what you want them to do next? Book me. Yeah. How did they book you by e mailing me? Yeah. If you like this post, send me an email at what? And I would be happy to discuss, discuss booking an engagement with you. I'd be happy to show you what I could do, that type of thing. So yeah, every single thing, uh, should have some form of called action. What should the person do next if you're getting married soon? Email me with what you liked about this blood post make sense. Okay now narrative narrative is the idea that a good story is a great way to improve an offer. So storytelling is a part of the human experience it's been around for thousands upon thousands of years, and the most compelling stories tend to follow a similar format, right there's an opportunity you get invited uh, to have this call to adventure, you take the call, you get this massive benefit and you go back and share it with all of your friends and family or tribe or whatever. There's, a really wonderful book by a guy named joseph campbell called the hero with a thousand faces that calls this the the hero's journey. It's it's a motif that happened over and over and over and over again. Right, um, what's. Interesting is if you look at the most effective advertisements or marketing that exists out there, you see a lot of stories, case studies, testimonials, uh, people telling about their experience with some product service. Whatever. So, for example, a testimonial page with stories of past clients who have had a fabulous experience with photography or a fabulous experience with the home inspection that saved them a lot of time or money, or a ah fabulous experience at a pop up dinner that they just happened to go to. That was really amazing, and they're totally going to go to everyone that exists from now on. Those stories are very, very, very compelling, and the more vivid they are, the more detailed they are, the more effective they are in increasing interest and desire. And whatever it is that you offer, does that make sense now? The best stories in this context, the stories that air their most helpful in provoking desire are the ones that tell the story of someone who is walking the path uh, that your prospects are in right now. Okay, so it's it's not you see lots of testimonials that air just like these glowing oh my gosh, this is the best thing that has ever existed and lots of superlatives, lots of excitement. Those stories as testimonials are case studies aren't as compelling as something that goes like this. I came across this a while ago it was interested, but I was skeptical. I looked into it, I really like these things and so I made the decision to buy, and I am so glad that I did because I got all of these really wonderful benefits. I am deliriously happy with my experience, and I would recommend to anybody looking for a wedding photographer or home inspection or a public dinner or or whatever to go with these people because they're awesome, right? Because the person who's reading the testimonials like this's for this sounds interesting, but I want some information right there skeptical, right? So hearing the story from somebody who is in their shoes facing the exact same situation who decided to go ahead and was really pretty pleased is the most powerful form of social proof that you could ever ask for right, so when you're telling customers stories don't be afraid to include the skepticism part, don't be afraid to tio talk about how there were lots of other options out there, but they chose you and because they chose you there in a way better position than they would have been if they had right. Those narratives are very, very powerful tools for both marketing and sales, josh one thing that just kind of came to my attention, and it just I didn't realize it was the story format, but it follows just what you're saying. Um, ah, good friend of mine was finishing up, of course, uh, that she instructs and works through with a certain group of professionals uh, afterwards they didn't receive during their training. They didn't receive a lot of instruction as various business. What do we do next? Now that we have this skill? Now that we have this information, what are we going to do out there when we put this into practice in the real world? One thing she asked me before the last part of the certification was, do you mind if I just give your card to these people, we can sit down with them and maybe talk about hey, how if you're going into a company, how does it look in this leadership roller, how we're going to start a business, how we're going to do this for ourselves? And I said, sure, you know what? Just give it to him for free, no problem we'll sit down, we'll just not come all out in a coffee shop someday just kind of is a good bye gift to them as a favor to her because she's done a lot for me, and what turned out was she said a story recently, I helped her launch a business she's gone from doing three jobs, she hates doing one that she loves making four times as much, and everybody came up to her and something she was going to give away for free there like, what does it cost get, you know? And it was just very interesting because it was that same thing. It wasn't it wasn't something I was looking to make money on or do with her, but just from the power of the narrative, I did this, this is what happened and I would like to give and then people just oh, I want that what does it cost? Was it pay? Yeah, let's get started so it was just very interesting the power than aired totally and, you know, the power of the narrative is a really good reason that you should keep in touch with customers that you have served, and I served really well because if you follow them long enough to see the results that they've been getting or to hear the stories that they have to tell that are related to this thing that you have helped them do in some valuable way, their stories contend go back into your marketing process and could be very valuable tools for prospecting and ultimately selling more customers. One thing I've had really good success with is with wedding sharpie specifically, I have like a questionnaire that I send out my clients on the end, and I asked them kind of just gauging what their favorite and things and what they've changed and whatever working with me and at the bottom, I say, would you please give me a testimonial sorts as if you were telling your best girlfriend why you'd hire me and by phrasing it that way did some testing and I've gotten a lot more qualified like instead of just like, yes, she's great, she takes pretty pictures, I like her like they go a lot more like she's really fun to be around, she was really calling like all of that type of stuff that that gave me more to work with to be able to put on my testimony on page one suggestion that you may want to test follow up with all of the folks that you have uh have shot a week or a year after you've delivered their pictures is a checking in happy anniversary uh just wanted tio see if everything is going going really well and if you have any funds stories to share about the pictures I would love to hear them it's a great simple is that and you you will have more stories than you know what to do with you and that maid reactivate them on the newport pictures to mean you're later that might be or working for referrals were first yeah, I have a friend who's getting married I should totally hook you clear all of that works really well now two more ideas controversy means publicly taking a position that not everyone will agree with, approve of or support and use constructively inviting controversy is a very effective way to generate earned attention. So for example um I've been using controversy to a certain extent since the personal mba existed, which is basically taking the position is you can learn everything you need to know about business, you don't have to go to business school, you don't have to spend a lot of money, you don't have to go into debt you can learn this stuff by yourself and there's really no reason to go to a graduate business school program um that very understandably is not a popular position with a lot of folks who happened to run or attend business schools and that's ok? Because those folks are not the probable purchasers, they're not the ideal audience for the personal mba. The ideal audience is looks like you might want to start a business one improve my career, have creative skill or technical skills and want to get better at the business stuff that's who I'm talking to and so by taking on publicly that controversial point, you can learn all of this stuff without going to school. There has been a lot of attention generated from that public position uh, and the folks who don't like it are not the folks I'm talking to anyway, but the attention helps people who are in the situation of essentially finding it useful find it in the first place, and when they find it, they get the free value they give permission to follow up there's a lot of value generated there that's helpful to the folks that I'm interested in talking about, right? So you and the standard caveat applies you don't want to turn yourself into a soap opera in the service of marketing remember you're trying to get attract very specific types of attention, but embracing a controversial element of whatever it is that you do can be very, very valuable as a means of attracting attention. Any any examples you can think of of business is that I have decided to not gloss over a potentially controversial element of what they do. Chick fil a? Yes, they close on sunday. They how certain values that they, uh, they lived by? I guess it created a lot of controversy, recently created a lot of controversy, created a lot of attention and what's what's interesting. Is there a private company? And they can make whatever decisions that they happen to, like, um, whether or not that helps from a revenue profitability standpoint, and we don't know their numbers, so maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. Um, yeah, it's an example of taking on a controversial position. And that controversial position brought a lot of attention. Mac and pc commercials from a couple of years ago. I think that's what was that? The geeky guy coming out of the box next to the cool techy guy. And he obviously wanted to be the cool techy guy which apple was representing. Where the are get that backwards. No, I got that right, yeah, you know, um, but how the the apple guy comes out of the box perfect and the geekier kind of old school guy you're like well, I could get that or I could be part of that or I could do all of these things and it's not quite basically saying yes you're paying more but you're paying it for everything as it is because it's already awesome as it isthe right? Yeah so so the controversial technology has always always had the and voice on either side of a particular technology and those advertisements really tapped into that kind of back and forth animosity that already existed it was tremendously effective carmen is really beautiful in that standpoint because I'm sure you guys have seen new ad where the guys in line tio bythe cell phone samsung galaxy yeah that's what it is something he's waiting in line for his parents yeah, right yeah, yeah. Oh, question actually some uh just feedback from the internet they says he self says the go daddy ads yeah, good example a good example troversy of intentionally creating controversy and this this is always you know, if if it's a private business the decision of what to talk about is a private one and as long as you you you are ok with with owning a particular position you can take on pretty much any position that you want just know when you take on a controversial position there is going to be some segment of the population who is going to decide not to do business with you because of the decision that you've taken on so for example, there are a lot of people who will not do business with go daddy because of the controversial positions that they've taken there a lot of people who won't do business with clay because of the controversial positions that they've taken if you're okay with that, then fantastic controversy can actually be a positive tool just know they're there are two sides to the story you may be really appealing to one group of customers, but you're also going to be turning off another subject trade off that um I haven't dealt with this particularly, but I have friends who are wedding photographers who are more religiously based and they have a larger amount of um church weddings and religious based clients and some they've photographs same sex couples and their clients some of their clientele flipped out because they're like that doesn't agree with our where we stand and what we thought your company was about where they're like well, we photograph people in love how they decide to do their love is their decision and it was really interesting to watch because they were like I'm sorry that you don't agree but we're going to keep doing it we're going to keep doing it and allow they alienated some some small portion of who might have been their clientele, they gained a large portion of who would now be their clientele because they knew they're open to same sex unions. Now interesting. So it's it's a tool that that is tremendously effective that also requires an incredible amount of judgment about when to use it and how to use it. But, uh, it is it is something that used wisely and used well can earn you a lot of attention to the folks to your ideal customers, to your probable purchasers make sense. Okay, now, last idea and marketing is reputation and reputation is what other people think about your company or about your offer, and building a strong reputation is really valuable, because if you have a good reputation as a company or if your product is really good and people think very highly of it, you can earn a lot of attention, and you can earn a lot of sales through the strength of that reputation. So everything that you do in public in some way, shape or form affects the reputation that people ascribe to your company or to your business. And that reputation is an asset now what's critical to to understand is that you do not control your reputation. You can affect what you do in public, that influences how people perceive you. And the decisions they make about doing business with you or not but you can't mind control the entire population to make them like you more right? All you could affect is what you do and people will interpret your actions in ways that either improve your reputation or diminish it. The other nice thing about the word reputation is that there's there's a tremendous amount of literature and knowledge and marketing around the concept of branding brand management improve your brand enhancer brand you hear the word all the time um I'm not a really big front dan of that particular word mostly because all of the advice you get about brand management if you just replace the word brand with a reputation you can pretty much anticipate what they're going to tell you about how to manage your brand in an effective way right if you do things that make people think more highly ofyou or trust ume or or respect you more or have an opinion that you are offers of our high quality your brain will be doing ok ok, so building a reputation is something you don't control it you control your actions that either improve it overtime or diminish over time and it takes time to build a reputation but once you have it becomes a tremendously valuable asset because people take your reputation when you come out with something new they're much more likely if you have a good one to trust it to think it's a high quality to think it's worth purchasing and to trust you with their time and energy and money and actually buy this thing that you've created so make sense your decisions during the controversy can also often really influence that absolutely I mean, I think that the you generally gained additional reputation points from the way that you respond to criticism of the book of of the concept of you don't have to go to business school in order to learn business just because you deal with people respectfully and you can agree where you can choose to disagree without being offensive when oftentimes it seems like the other, the other guy's being defensive or has has something at stake it's you're thinking you know what? Just now? I don't think so just providing information information this is my conclusion, you know, take it, take it for for whatever you like uh, but yeah, a lot of marketing long term marketing decisions make a lot more sense and are easier to make decisions when you think about reputation. So for example, one of the things we're about when when I was at p and g it was actually a pretty major crisis on the swiffer brand there was a problem with the swiffer wet jet, the motorized mob thing uh there was an electrical issue and there was one um consumers house the motor burned up and there was a house fire er and one of the things that I really respect about the company is in a directly just you know, the bottom line is the only thing that matters type of companies like well let's let's let's see if anybody else's house burns down and then we'll see how big of a problem this really is and, you know, manage it that way um one of the things that I really respect about the management at at that time was they immediately went into we're going to do right by our customers and make sure that our reputation after this is stronger then it was at the beginning and as a result they did they did a lot of things that they didn't have to do in an interest in making sure the consumer was ok and making sure that the long term reputation off the product was intact and it worked. So if you think about how is this decision going to affect my long term reputation in this market, a lot of decisions becoming way, way easier terms of what you do or what you don't do ok? All right that's those are all of the ideas and marketing any questions we've gone through the first two parts of every business value creation and marketing um any questions, thoughts, ideas from the internet as well I was asking wait quite a few questions come in in the last couple sections here so I'm just gonna dive in and start the first game that we might go back a little bit regarding narratives kind of just wanted to respond revisit that again iran raj was asking earlier bread bowl using them as an example makes their own stories and advertises around various sponsored events. How is that? Is that telling a story for red bull it's an example of usually that's actually it's it's a really interesting, interesting strategy for red bull because red billows red bull is not telling a story about red bull red bull is finding super fascinating stories that already exist in the marketplace and making sure that when people are paying attention to those stories that already exist, red bull is right next to them right? So it's an association type of strategy the same we were talking about omega doing james bond ish type advertisements with watch there's they're trying to build an association there um so for example when when crazy guide jumps parachutes from the edge of space red bull is right there is the primary sponsor of this crazy awesome story that's happening live that everybody's already paying attention to uh really effective strategy for them I have another question going back to a little earlier today regarding marketing and you talk about being remarkable and the importance of being remarkable in this german wants to know run a startup during early marketing is going viral which everyone want to do going viral is that the same is being remarkable not really so so being remarkable makes it way easier to go viral and we'd have to be pretty specific about about what that means if you're if you're interested in creating a story that lots of people find fascinating and remarkable enough to share then yeah build something into your product or tell a story that grabs people's attention and keeps it for a certain period of time and if people are impressed enough by that that they want to share it all over the place then yes that is free marketing for you you win um so engineering uh going viral uh there there is there's a wonderful book how to shoot video that doesn't suck too great but I'm reading I'm learning learning how tio to shoot video right now it's a fantastic book one quote from there that that jumps out at me is if you want to guarantee that's something goes viral on the internet there's a two word formula it's the only way that you can guarantee that something will go viral those two words are naked celebrity if you include that it will go viral otherwise all better off so the uh the best thing that you can do is make sure for your offer uh, make sure that there's something compelling, remarkable either that's a story or a feature like the vibrant five fingers, something that's, a little weird, a little unexpected. Uh, those were the things that are going to get you attention. Don't worry so much about going viral. Worry about building something worth talking about into your offer, and you get the same mileage.

Class Materials

bonus material

The Personal MBA Workbook
The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List
Personal MBA Guide to Small Business Infrastructure
Financial Statement Templates

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Each of our 20 students (leadership and business) in Benin Africa read the Personal MBA last week. It was simply amazing to see them discuss this book in class. Josh thanks for helping us build great business leaders in Africa. We (the entire class) will listen live on the 14 and 15 here in Africa. It's worth staying up late for this.

a Creativelive Student
 

I have watched almost every business course here on Creative Live and the Josh Kaufman's The personal MBA course is probably one of the best. I watched the live broadcast and then the rebroadcast a few weeks later. I decided to purchase the bundle, course 1 and 2. I still go back and watch them, because even though I'm now very familiar with his content- it still inspires me every time. He is a terrific teacher and he will help you to understand the foundations of business very quickly.

a Creativelive Student
 

I had the great opportunity to attend one of Josh's MBA courses and it was one of the best investments I've ever made. Josh has the great ability to explain concepts so that anyone can understand. He teaches all the principles needed to understand and analyze a business. I can't wait for this LIVE event to get a refresher on all the things I've learned. Everyone who enrolls is in for a treat.

Student Work

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