This is the final installment of a three-part series on how to translate advice from marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment.
One of the smartest things any online marketer can do is to study the “old school” guys who wrote direct mail, magazine ads, and other artifacts of advertising history.
Why? Because it took a tremendous understanding of the psychology of persuasion to make those tactics work.
This is part two of a three-part series on how to profitably translate advice from old-school marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment.
Last week we looked at the first 5 steps in Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Marketing Plan, and how you can translate those old-school ideas into an online marketing strategy.
This week we’ve got five more for you.
This is part one of a three-part series on how to profitably translate advice from old-school marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment.
Dan Kennedy is the Sovereign of Sales Letters. (Or maybe that’s the Duke of Direct Response.) He knows exactly how to deliver a marketing message with maximum clarity and zero confusion. As he’ll readily tell you, he’s one of the world’s highest-paid copywriters. His classic book The Ultimate Marketing Plan promises low-cost ideas and high-profit results.
This book delivers on both counts, and it’s well worth the read. But it was written in 1991, and at first seems like it’s more relevant to a restaurant or dry cleaner than it is to an online marketer.
The McGuffin has been a powerful storytelling device for a long time. It was Alfred Hitchcock who popularized both its use and the name that sounds like it should be on a dollar menu.
The McGuffin has a cool job: to keep the plot, character, or situation rolling along. It draws us into the story and drives the action. The McGuffin is often an object of high value, which everyone covets. It can be ambiguous, entirely undefined, generic, or left open to interpretation.
Remember the suitcase in “Pulp Fiction?” Classic McGuffin. Though it showed up a few times throughout the film, and was important enough to get a handful of people peppered with bullets, we never actually saw what was in the suitcase.
In the eight Christmases since life changed my name to Dad, Santa’s list has never been more important.
In our house, the tradition is that each child requests a single gift from the big guy. The problem is, this year both kids asked for something a little beyond Santa’s typical reach.
Fortunately, my wife and I have learned enough about persuasion and selling to turn our trip to the store into an opportunity to keep the magic alive a little longer.
Earlier this week we saw a stark lesson in the power of a label when it comes to promoting your business.
Using the right vocabulary is everything when it comes to writing powerful copy. And though I adore words even more than donuts, it was only recently that I realized I had been using some of them all wrong.
