Magnetic Marketing cover

Magnetic Marketing

by Dan Kennedy

Business
BOOK INFOGRAPHIC Magnetic Marketing by Dan Kennedy TL;DR Most businesses fail at marketing because they broadcastgeneric messages to everyone instead of crafting. KEY THEMES MarketingEntrepreneurshipStrategyCommunication 8 min read 7 sections Small business... You missed the most important thing -- A STARVING CROWD.

The Book in One Sentence

The Five Big Ideas

Magnetic Marketing Summary

“All the frustrations and internal problems you’re experiencing with your business today are because you DON’T have a good Marketing System.”

“Without a sufficient and steady stream of people with whom you can exchange value for money, nothing else about your business matters.”

The financial reality is that in every profession, every category of business, every sales team, every population, these figures hold true:

Don’t jump into media because “everyone else is using it.” Big name brands have all sorts of reasons for the way they advertise and market that have ZERO to do with getting a customer or making sales.

The typical entrepreneur and business owner are essentially clueless when it comes to advertising and marketing. This makes them highly vulnerable to becoming what Kennedy calls “Advertising Victims”—easy prey for media salespeople and ad agencies and anyone else who doesn’t know how to actually close the deal and make a sale.

“You must make yourself the go-to person, place, or entity for some audience that can be interested in you and your deliverables. And the primary way to accomplish this is by crafting an answer to this question: ‘Why should I choose you versus any and every other provider of the same product or service that you provide?’”

There are three questions you can ask yourself to help kick-start the process of finding or creating your unique selling proposition (USP):

Take the time to create your own USP—it’s one of the greatest marketing weapons you can ever have for your product(s) or your business.

Marketing Mistakes

“The only way to avoid marketing to the wrong people is to nail down exactly the WHO to whom you are selling. Once you know that, it’s actually quite simple to choose which media channels to advertise in—you go where they go.”

“In most cases, most advertising is not directed at any one person. Instead, it’s directed at EVERYONE.”

“When you focus on a specific WHO, you’re able to hone in on exactly what makes that person tick. You’re able to adjust your offers and your messaging in a way that perfectly matches their desires and abilities to fulfill those desires. Knowing that WHO inside and out enables you to craft a compelling, emotional message that reaches deep into their hopes, dreams, fears, and pain.”

At a minimum, you want your Marketing System to focus on three key areas:

You can boil direct marketing down to two very basic ideas:

“There’s a story about legendary copywriter Gary Halbert, who once asked a room of aspiring writers, ‘Imagine you’re opening a hamburger stand on the beach—what do you need most to succeed?’ Answers included, ‘secret sauce,’ and ‘great location’ and ‘quality meat.’ Halbert replied, ‘You missed the most important thing—A STARVING CROWD.’ Your job is to find that ‘starving crowd’ who can’t live without what it is you have to offer.”

What you want to do in terms of targeting is to find good, prospective customers for your business that can bereached affordably,that are likely to buy,that are able to buy, and preferablywho already know of you, orare likely to trust you.

“There’s the old story of the guy walking into the hardware store looking for a 3/4” drill bit. The mistake that’s easily made is thinking the customer wants a 3/4” inch drill bit. Wrong. He wants a 3/4” inch hole.”

The Magnetic Marketing Triangle has three big building blocks, each of which you can imagine as one side of a triangle:

To determine the psychographics of your target market, ask yourself:

“What do you say to your marketplace, to your past, present and future prospects, clients and customers that is compelling, that is magnetic, that cannot be ignored, that must be responded to, that draws them to you like a bright porch light on a dark night draws moths?”

“A marketing message is a way of concisely and clearly saying to the right market, ‘Here’s what I’m all about and here’s why you should choose me.’”

If you own, say, a hotel, a common offer might be: “Get 10 percent off your hotel room rate.” A widget, however, ups the ante by tossing in extra elements to make it even more attractive, hard to resist, and impossible to compare against competitors. Widgets are packages of services and goods and premiums and experiences bundled together, given a clever name, and promoted as a special, one-of-a-kind buying opportunity.

“An irresistible offer (again, think ‘widget’ because that’s what you’ll be promoting) bundles together a variety of elements—price, bonuses, guarantee, speed, security, etc.—into something unique and compelling.”

“If the widget you create doesn’t cause you to pause and reflect to yourself ‘Am I giving away the farm here?’ for at least a moment, then the offer isn’t good enough.”

When creating your offer widgets, in the Magnetic Marketing System there are basically three types of offers.

The 10 Foundational Rules of Direct-Response Marketing

To add urgency, tie the offer to a hard and fast deadline restrict the offer to a limited number of customers remove the bonus or gift from the deal if they don’t act right away add an element of “bidding” to the deal.

Kennedy advises readers toinvest in direct-response marketing and gratefully accept brand-building as a bonus.He writes, “NEVER buy brand-building and hope for a response as a bonus, unless you simply want to spend Daddy’s fortune out of spite.”

There are hundreds of variations for follow up campaigns and strategies, blending offline with online. Here are just a few ways you can follow up:

Your Lead Generation Magnet has four main jobs:

“The way to be very successful in marketing is to do what you do so well that people can’t resist telling others about you.”—Walt Disney

Ask for referrals right after you’ve done something praiseworthy for your customer.

Everybody has a circle of influence in which you could do business if you were properly introduced, but you haven’t been.

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