There has been a tremendous response to the first article on what to sell during a recession and it has sparked a number of interesting conversations. One of these conversations revolved around the topic of how people who have filled their lives with luxuries like expensive cars, clothes, club memberships, etc. satisfy their urge for luxury when they lose the means to support the habit.
More on What To Sell During A Recession: Part 2 - Little Luxuries

Do you want to know what a marketing cult looks like? Search out your closest Apple Store and go take a look.

The latest version of the iPhone was plagued by severe problems that would cause customers of other products to abandon ship and look to another company with a better product. But, even the most dissatisfied customers are keeping their phones because they are the ‘best designed’ phones available and ‘Apple makes the best products.’

They forgive a massively defective product because they love the company and they love being part of the hip and cool crowd that pays a premium to own the ‘best designed’ products on the market.

That is a marketing cult operating in high gear.

What Is a Marketing Cult?

Cult style marketing is about selling the experience of owning the the products and the aura of being a member of a ’select group’ once you own them. It’s not about price, or features, or value - it’s about belonging.

Now, I don’t use the word cult to imply that these marketers are evil or don’t deliver valuable products, but rather to demonstrate the intense passion the customers have about being a customer in the first place. (And, of course I’m using a ‘loaded’ word to sound controversial and pique curiosity to get people to read this article.) In the case of and honest to goodness cult, you’d be asked to sell all your worldly possessions, leave your family, move to some compound in the middle of nowhere and chant songs about the benevolent leader all day

Cult style marketing is effective because it uses some of the underlying psychology that gets manipulated by the people who start cults. This style of marketing focuses on the leader of the group, the lifestyle of those on the inside, and an attitude that people on the outside ‘just don’t get it!’ They have their own language that is only understood by those on the ‘inside.’ When you market to a cult you don’t sell a product, you sell a ‘lifestyle choice.’

I Am a Cult Member

Turns out that I’m a member of 2 ‘marketing cults’ - who knew?

Fortunately, I have been paying attention to how this happened and studying the tactics and techniques that lead me to join in the first place.

I didn’t set out to become an expert in cult style marketing, I just wanted to learn how to build an online business and I started seeking out people who were succeeding and then studying what they did.

Recently I joined Frank Kern’s Mass Control program to learn how this ‘evil’ marketing genius can get people to fall all over themselves trying to give him money. Guess what, Frank knows the psychology behind building a cult and uses it to build a devoted group of people who want to buy things from him (like me - happy member of the club.)

The cool thing is that you don’t have to be a marketing genius like Steve Jobs or Frank Kern to build a profitable group of passionate followers. The first marketing cult I joined is run by a very nice guy from New Jersey and grew very organically from an ebook he wrote called “5 Bucks a Day.”

How A Nice Guy From New Jersey Built A Passionate Group Of Followers

Dennis Becker is an incredibly nice and generous guy. He wrote “5 Bucks a Day” to help other marketers develop a more focused approach to applying all the knowledge they were aquiring about Internet marketing. The book helped many people just like me start to break down their big dreams into small goals that would add up to a real business over time. Dennis shared his personal story and some ‘common wisdom’ that we just don’t think about enough.

Now, Frank Kern says that one of the first things you should do to build a ‘cult’ of your own is to tell them something they already know, but present it as though it is a gospel revelation.

“5 Bucks a Day” taught people to stop hopping from one trend to another and focus on one small project that could make you $5 per day until it was up and running. So the revelation was, “you are not succeeding because you don’t focus on one thing long enough to make any progress.”

Dennis shared his story because this shift in thinking really did change his business and make it much more profitable. But, it also had all of us who read it nodding our heads in agreement. We knew this, he validated what we knew deep down, and he showed us that this was a path to real success.

The seeds were planted.

Bonding The Group And Inventing A Language

Dennis was a bit surprised at how well the “5 Bucks a Day” ebook was received. He had a nice list of email addresses from customers and one day he announced that he was starting a free membership forum for owners of the ebook. Now the group had a place to hang out and we could talk to Dennis on a regular basis.

Very quickly we started to develop a list of special abbreviations like 5BAD as we spent hours discussing how we were applying our newfound focus on our Internet marketing efforts. We were creating our own language.

Dennis participated every day in the discussions and gave us tons of free resources to help us improve our success. He encouraged members to ‘get out there’ and start doing things instead of just talking about them. He personally welcomed every new member and celebrated every success on the forum. He also pulled up short whenever someone asked him for details about exactly how he was making his major income - and we asked!

Secret Knowledge Is Revealed To The Elite Members

Then, one day, things got even more exclusive. Dennis started a new paid monthly membership forum called “Earn $1k a Day” where he ’spilled his guts’ and gave us a step-by-step blueprint for making money using his (until now) secret process. He invited a small group of his most active members to join first and lay the groundwork for the rest who would follow.

Now, all us freshly minted E1KAD members began to follow our leader and the community grew. Dennis had built himself a passionate community of people who looked to him for inspiration and who now paid him a monthly fee to be part of the group.

The “Earn $1k a Day” membership site is a great place and I’ve learned - and earned a good bit of money - since I joined up. The other members have supported my projects and I’ve benefited from the reports and software that are regularly posted for the members.

Dennis Becker ended up creating his own private ‘cult’ around the notion of focusing small for big results and by nurturing a community of others who see the world in a similar way. And now, it’s turned into a valuable business for him and spawned the successful careers of several other marketers.

It is safe to say that Dennis Becker did not set out to create his own E1KAD and 5BAD ‘cults’. They grew organically from his success publishing the ebook and from the community he nurtured around that core idea. He gave a lot of time, energy, and content to his members and it grew into something pretty amazing.

The Greatest Cult-Building Evil Genius In Internet Marketing

Frank Kern sets out on his cult building efforts very intentionally.

The psychology behind the process is the same for both of these marketers, but Frank uses a much more focussed and accelerated plan to get a cult going overnight and to fire up his followers and get them to fight for a chance to throw large sums of money at him.

I didn’t know anything about Frank Kern 12 months ago and ended up giving him 10 times more money in one day than I have given to Dennis over nearly 2 years (and Dennis has actually spent a lot of personal time and energy helping me build my business.)

Fortunately, I have yet to give one dime to Steve Jobs. I listen to my Sansa Fuze MP3 player and talk on my Nokia phone while typing on my Windows computer! Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got to start running before the Apple fanatics start flaming me.

Who Is Following You?

If you want real success for your Internet marketing business, you need to start thinking about building your own cult. You don’t have to swing for the fences to have real success that will fatten up your bank account. A few hundred devoted followers will go a long way.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, please visit us at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet marketing insights and to sign up for our free e-course, “The Secret Weapons of Persuasion.”

Establishing Value For Your Products is a critical objective in the product launch process. When your product sales page goes live, you don’t want your potential customers still wondering about whether the product is worth the price. At launch time you want them clamoring to get a copy before you sell out or raise the price. If your customers need to mortgage their home or sell a kidney to buy your product, they need to know in advance so they can free-up the cash and not miss out on your limited offer!

The process for establishing the value of your product is not very complicated. It relies on something psychologists call ‘perceptual contrast’. That’s a great big fancy label, but it basically means that if I show you something expensive first, and then show you a lower priced item second, the second item will seem like a bargain. As long as both items are similar, your mind will compare them when deciding the value of the second item. Your mind uses the first thing it sees as the benchmark for evaluating what comes after it. (There is a really cool experiment you can run on your friends that demonstrates how perceptual contrast works - check the bottom of this article for more details.)

To put this into practice during a launch, you start by establishing a very high value for the ‘benefits’ of the product you are selling. If a customer saved $10,000 dollars using your training, you can establish that the ‘real’ value of the training is $10,000 (at least for that customer.) If there are other people teaching something similar at a higher price, talk about how much they charge, and explain that this person’s customers are getting a good deal because the training is worth much more. This has the double benefit of showing that you are a nice likable person because you said generous things about a competitor.

Any time you have a chance to use a third party voice to state a value for the type of product your are selling, work it into the sales copy - you want to continually re-enforce the value of the product. When you solicit testimonials, always ask for details and numbers.

A common tactic is to wait until after you’ve hooked your prospective customers into wanting your product and then, as your launch date approaches, you can reveal that the product is ‘only’ going to cost $97 while still delivering the same quality as the far more expensive options. Your $97 price tag will seem like the most amazing bargain in the marketplace. A secondary benefit is that keeping people guessing about the price will encourage them to do just that. They will visit forums and blogs and speculate about how much you will actually charge - this provides more buzz in the marketplace and helps 3rd party voices re-enforce the value of your product.

That’s the process. Demonstrate the value of the results. Discuss the value and price of similar products in the marketplace, and then mention your price and compare it to reinforce the value.

Now, here is the cool experiment you can run on your friends. Fill three buckets with water. The water in the middle bucket should be room temperature. Fill the second bucket with very cold water and the third with very warm water. Have your friends place one hand in the cold bucket and the other in the warm bucket and leave them there for a few seconds to get acclimated. Then, have your friend place both hands in the middle bucket and describe the temperature of the water.

Your friend’s mind will interpret the information from each hand relative to the temperature of the bucket it was in before. The signal from the hand from the cold bucket says the water is warmer than room temperature and the other side says it’s colder - but your friend also ‘knows’ that both hands are feeling the same temperature water.

Catch their reaction on tape. It should be good for a few laughs (specially if your friend has had a few beers!) If you get it on tape, put it on YouTube and post a link in the comments here!

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, visit us online at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more internet marketing insights.

I wanted to share a brilliant use of the psychological principle of ‘commitment and consistency’ in action. I recently saw this influential technique employed in a very novel way by a non-profit group looking to build a new base of donors for their cause.

The core concept behind the ‘commitment and consistency’ trigger is that people are pre-disposed to continue doing something once they made a commitment to start. Years ago, companies like Columbia House would give you 10 CD’s or cassettes (this is pre-iPod) for a penny - if you agreed to join their music club for 6 months or a year. They knew that a significant percentage of the people who got the initial deal would continue on as customers and earn them back all of the costs of the initial offer plus a profit.

The non-profit group’s plan to engage new donors involved taking funds provided by existing large donors and using them to underwrite the issuing of credits that could be given out to non-donors who had some interest in the organization’s work. The recipients of these donation credits would then be able to use those credits to make a donation to any of the specific projects currently underway through the company. In essence, the major donor supplies the cash and the new potential donor gets to choose where to spend it.

The beauty of this approach is that, even though they don’t have to give their own cash, the new potential donors are actually making a commitment to become donors when they decide to participate in this arrangement. They are becoming invested in the support of a specific non-profit project and they are more likely to continue to support it in the future with their own resources. The donation credit lowers the barrier of resistance to becoming involved and makes it easier to persuade them to take the first steps as a new donor. It is the closest thing to giving out a ‘free sample’ that can be done in a non-profit environment.

If implemented well, I can’t see how this would fail to bring in a significant base of new donors. They will, in turn, provide the social proof required to convince others to join in as well. As the new donors study the various opportunities for giving they will learn more about the work of the non-profit and as they get feedback on the results of the project they chose to support, they will grow to like and trust the group even more. This will continue to reinforce the relationship and create a new base of financial support.

This is a great example of how implementing the basic tools of influence can amplify the results of a promotional project. It takes the initial focus of the new donor relationship off of the money and redirects it to the various projects underway. This same thing happens in the for profit world when a business gives away a gift certificate. The recipient immediately shifts from a mindset of ‘do I want to buy anything from this company’ to a mindset of ‘what should I buy with my gift certificate?’ Once the commitment to buy something is made, it is much easier to add extras to the sale and start moving the new customer into being a repeat customer.

Do you know of any examples that show the psychology of influence at work in a well integrated fashion? Leave a comment below and let us know more.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we encourage you to visit the website at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com.

The value of a good reputation is worth at least $524.50 USD today! That is how much money I spent buying Mike Filsaime’s “7 Figure Code” on the recommendation of John Reese.
More on Mike Filsaime’s 7 Figure Code And The Value Of A Good Reputation

Fellow email marketers, does this ever happen to you when trying to build a mailing list?

Recently I purchased a copy of John Reeses’ ‘Traffic Secrets 1′ course to try and improve the success of my online marketing efforts. More on Email Marketing: Building A Trust Relationship

If you have spent more than 5 minutes exploring the world of Internet marketing someone has told you how important your ‘list’ is. This ‘list,’ of course, is your list of email addresses for people who have opted-in and given permission for you to send them emails.

You may also have heard that the majority of sales come from the 6th or 7th email you send to someone. It can be difficult, expensive, and nearly impossible to get someone to visit your site 7 times but, if you have their email, it is easy to send follow-up emails.

This article is not about email marketing strategies. (I have several e-books on the subject that you can download for free by signing up for my newsletter mailing list.) This article is about my recent experience trying to get people to sign-up for my list.

I Can’t Even Give Away Free E-Books!

I spend a lot of time and energy hunting down useful resources on the web. I have built up a collection of e-books that I think have valuable information in them and also give me resale/giveaway rights. All of the ‘Build Your List’ gurus tell you to create a squeeze page (a webpage whose sole purpose is to get visitors to give you their email address and sign-up for your mailing list.) They encourage giving away a free gift (like an e-book) as a thank-you for signing up. It is essentially a legal bribe! I decided to put my collection to work.
My squeeze page promised more than just one e-book, I opened the vault and gave access to everything I had. (See my sign-up page.) I promoted it through a Pay-Per-Click campaign and also through some traffic exchanges and other sources. The results, 1 sign-up - not very encouraging.

I tweaked the page, updating the copy and polishing up the graphics. I took advice from a couple of the advertising and copywriting e-books in my library and revised the body copy before trying another promotional run. Results - 3 sign-ups.

20 New Sign-ups In Less Than 7 Days

After a couple attempts, I let this whole idea slide for a while. And then I came across a promotion for the Viral Marketing Giveaway 2. The concept is simple, you sign-up as a Joint Venture partner and offer a free giveaway item to the effort. All of the partners then promote the giveaway and, as new members join and download the freebies, you get to gather new people for your mailing list. They land on your squeeze page and then sign-up. I joined the fun and sent people to exact same old squeeze page to get my freebies. There are over 35 pages of offers in the giveaway and mine landed near the end.

Within days I had added 20 new names to my list. Same squeeze page, but now they were signing up (and they had probably signed up for dozens of other offers before getting to mine.)

These giveaways seem to be popular right now. I have received invitations for 3 more in the past week:

• End of Summer Giveaway
• Toolbox4Success Giveaway
• The Halloween JV Giveaway

I signed up for all of them and connected to the same squeeze page. The first went public last week (the other two are still gathering JV Partners as I write this.) My list has added more than 30 new subscribers.

Why All The New Mailing List Subscribers?

My offer, and the content of the squeeze page, has not changed. Why are people signing up now? I have a couple of guesses why this is happening.

Trusted Referrers - The giveaways are promoted by all of the JV partners sending messages to their lists. A known person is making the recommendation and essentially endorsing the whole thing. This kind of social proof that the operation is legitimate puts visitors in a trusting frame of mind before they get to my page. The copy on my site does not have to convince them to trust me, only that I have content they want.

Momentum - Once visitors start getting some free stuff they get into a feeding frenzy. They start siging up and downloading everything - my stuff is just in the pile with all of the others and the giveaway has created the momentum.

The X-Factor - Maybe there is some other factor that is motivating folks to sign up. If you have other ideas why people are more willing to sign up when my squeeze page is promoted through one of these giveaway sites, leave a comment with your ideas.

What Is The Quality Of The List?

So far the emails and names I have gathered seem okay. Very few people are giving obviously junkmail addresses and bogus names (there have been a few - ‘Pho Nee.’) I’ll have to make a few mailings to the list before I can determine how responsive it is, but my list is growing.

This list is made up of folks looking for online business and marketing opportunities. My current plans are to use it to recruit affiliates for some of the info products I am developing.

Andrew Seltz
The GoTo Guy!