I was talking to a guy the other day, and while I didn’t get all of the details of his business, I think I got enough that I can share it with you. This guy doesn’t have products of his own. He doesn’t have a website. Heck, he doesn’t even have a squeeze page.
Yet he’s building a massive email list using paid traffic in a self-liquidating manner. That is, he’s making as much or more money than he spends on traffic to build his list.
Have you heard of Click.org? It’s software for link tracking and I recommend you check it out. But it does a lot of other things, too, one of which is to place a pop-up on any affiliate page you choose.
So, let’s say you’re promoting the ABC product. You’ve got your affiliate page and you know the offer converts. You go to a site like Udimi.com and purchase solo ads. You send this traffic to your affiliate page to make sales to pay for your solo ads.
But on your affiliate page of ABC product, you place a Click.org pop-up that grabs the person’s email address. Essentially the affiliate page becomes your landing page. Sales of the product pay for your traffic. You don’t have to write copy, deal with customer service or any of that.
That’s what this guy is doing. He offers an awesome lead magnet directly related to the product he’s selling. His traffic grabs the lead magnet and may or may not grab the product.
But what if they don’t sign up to his list? Then he uses Click.org for retargeting. He brings visitors back to his affiliate page and back to his pop-up, and it only costs a few cents each. He gets more sign-ups to his email list and he makes more product sales.
And he does one more thing… he goes to similarweb.com, types in the URL of the sales page he’s promoting without the affiliate link. He scrolls down and finds the top referring sites to that offer. Then he goes to those same referring sites and buys the same traffic so that the offer goes through his affiliate link instead of directly to the product owner. Sneaky, right?
And again, he uses retargeting to bring prospects back to the sales page for pennies, and he makes even more sales. All you need to get started with this business model is an autoresponder to capture your new email subscribers and Click.org.
As long as the offer you’re promoting pays for your advertising, you can list build as long and hard as you like. Your profits will come from the other things you sell to your list. And of course you can do this with multiple offers in multiple niches simultaneously if you like.
To get lots of good reviews you’re first going to need a place where people can leave their reviews. For example, if you sell on Amazon then Amazon is the place to capture your reviews. If you have a review system on your website, then that’s where you’ll be sending people. Here’s how it works…
You send your product to your customer, whether that means shipping it to them or sending them to your download page.
In your product where it cannot be missed, you enclose a card or page that says something like:
How Would You Like a ___ 100% FREE with FREE Shipping?
Fill out the form, choose a product and we’ll ship it to you 100% FREE. – No Shipping Charges! – No Hidden Fees! – No Credit Card Required!
Naturally if you’re delivering products electronically, you will alter the language on this. You can either specify what product you will send or you can let them choose.
When they go to your site, there will be a simple form asking what they purchased from you, what they want to receive for free, their address and the invoice number (if applicable). Once they fill this out they are feeling HAPPY because they are about to receive a free product, and who doesn’t love FREE?
This exact moment is the PERFECT time to ask for feedback (a review) on the product they already have. Simply take them to the next page where they are asked for feedback on the product they purchased.
Naturally, many of your customers will want to reciprocate your goodwill and leave a review, and more likely a good review due in part to the positive experience this process is providing for them.
Imagine if just 2 tiny words could completely change how you look at things, how you feel about your day and even how happy you are in the moment.
These 2 tiny words can literally change your life if you employ them in everything you do throughout your day.
And here they are…
(Where’s the drumroll when you need it? Or maybe even a cowbell?)
“…get to…”
That’s it. The words are “get to” as in, “I get to do this next thing I’m about to do.”
Next time you’re thinking you have to do something…
• I have to finish writing this email • I need to create this product • I must pick up the kids from school
Change your language like this…
• I get to finish writing this email • I get to create this product • I get to pick up the kids from school
This tiny change in vocabulary can have a subtle and sometimes very dramatic effect on how you feel and thus the actions you take and what you are able to accomplish in your life and business. Just 2 little words can make all the difference.
I have a theory that the #1 thing holding online marketers back from major success is being afraid to make mistakes, look stupid or just plain screw up. That’s why I want to tell you the story of Pinnacle Airlines Flight #3701 – not because it’s something you should emulate, but to illustrate just how safe it is for you to totally and completely screw up in your online business.
October 14, 2004, two pilots are ferrying an otherwise empty CRJ-200 aircraft from Jefferson City, Missouri, to Minneapolis, Minnesota. This should have been a simple, routine flight. But because of multiple errors by the pilots, it was anything but routine.
Just a few of the mistakes made by the 2 pilots included performing several non-standard maneuvers including pitch-ups that induced stall warnings, exceeding the manufacturer’s recommended climb rate, using an excessive angle of attack and over-stressing the engines. They climbed to the highest altitude the plane was rated for (41,000 feet) where they cruised at a rate barely above stall speed.
During all of this the anti-stall devices repeatedly activated but the pilots overrode the automatic nose-down that would increase speed to prevent a stall. In fact, they did this no less than 4 times.
All this time while they were climbing to the outermost reaches of altitude and overriding safety features of the aircraft, they could be heard on the cockpit recorder laughing.
A lot.
So much so, that when they commented they had never been so high, a person might wonder if they were referring to altitude or something else.
After the fourth override, both engines flamed out and shut down. The plane then stalled, the pilots recovered from the stall and tried repeatedly to restart the engines.
Now on the cockpit recorder, instead of laughing you can hear a great deal of swearing as nothing the pilots try is working. Most notable is when the pilot repeatedly tells the copilot to put the plane into a nosedive to attain a speed of 300 knots to restart the engines, and yet the copilot never does it, nor does the captain take over control to make it happen.
It was later discovered that through their antics of climbing to 41,000 feet, the crew had already damaged the engines badly enough that they could not be restarted. It was all laughter and joking until these pilots lost both engines and couldn’t get them back.
The crew glided for several minutes, trying to restart the engines by any means possible. Finally (FINALLY!) they told Air Traffic Control (ATC) that they had a single engine flameout, and ATC offered them 4 possible diversion airports. At this point I’m picturing two scared children in the cockpit, afraid to tell mommy and daddy what they’d done.
For 14 minutes more, they glided while unsuccessfully restarting even one engine. When they still could not start the engines, they finally told Air Traffic Control that they had in fact lost both engines. The final words on the flight recorder are the captain and first officer talking about whether or not they would make it to the assigned diversion airport, with the final words being, “Ahh sh** we’re gonna hit houses, dude.”
Both pilots died. Thankfully no one on the ground was injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board would have been justified if they had said, “These pilots acted like complete idiots,” but of course they were not allowed to be that blunt. What they did say was the pilots’ ‘unprofessional behavior, deviation from standard operating procedures and poor airmanship’ caused the crash.
Now then, I’d like you to take a moment and picture the absolute WORST mistake you can make in your business. In fact, picture the top 5 worst mistakes all happening simultaneously.
Let’s say they are…
• You somehow lose your entire email list. • Someone steals your product from you and sells it as their own. • Your website is hacked, stolen or otherwise falls into a black hole and you have no backup. • You make no sales on your big launch or every sale you make is refunded. • You are blacklisted from every social media site on the internet – for life.
The odds of even one of these things happening is remote, while the odds of all them happening are infinitesimal.
But even on your very worst day, where you have made every stupid mistake you can possibly make, can it be even a thousandth as bad as the last flight of these two pilots?
These ‘professional’ pilots laughed through all of their mistakes and poor decisions right up until they lost both engines, at which time they probably would have traded places with almost anyone else on the planet. Even their own plane tried repeatedly to save them from crashing, and every time it did, they overrode it.
There is simply nothing you can do and no mistake you can make in your business that will result in you being 41,000 feet in the air with two locked engines.
Which is why I say full speed ahead in whatever it is that you’re doing. The worst that can happen is a tiny bump on the road and the best that can happen is a 6, 7 or maybe even 8 figure income.
Get out of your own way, get busy, welcome your mistakes and revel in your successes.
Remember: The greatest mistake you can ever make in your business is being afraid to make one.
I just clicked onto a webinar a few moments ago and I had to almost immediately leave to write you this quick note. As I watched the two people on screen I found myself physically moving away from my device. In fact I could not seem to get far enough away from these two people. Where I had been hunched over my laptop, my back was now pressed into the back of the chair, my head was turned away like I was about to flee, and I realized something was terribly wrong.
So the question is, why am I having this physical reaction to these two webinar presenters? What is it in my primitive brain that is causing me, without conscious thinking, to put more physical space between them and me?
And what does it mean for their odds of making the sale at the end of this webinar?
My best guess is my subconscious brain – which is always on the lookout for threats – thinks they are putting on an act or pretense in order to somehow take advantage of me.
Here’s a paraphrased excerpt of what they were saying: “THIS IS AMAZING! WE’RE GOING TO HAVE AN AMAZING TIME! YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE THIS AMAZING INFORMATION! IT’S GOING TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN AMAZING WAYS!”
Their hands are waving in the air, their faces bobbing up and down, they’re just so… I don’t know… ENTHUSIASTICALLY PHONY.
Don’t get me wrong… real enthusiasm for your niche, for what you teach and for your products is commendable and a trait you should cultivate. But come on, it’s got to be REAL and not contrived.
People who put on webinars are almost never professional actors and they shouldn’t try to be actors. They’ve got to be themselves. Real. Authentic. Someone the viewer can relate to.
Right now I’m about as inclined to stay on the webinar and buy their product (whatever it might be, I don’t have a clue) as I am to deliberately run my car into a brick wall.
Which begs the question… how do you display enthusiasm on a webinar without alienating people? The same way you sell to people. You start where they are and you walk with them to where you want them to go.
Picture yourself looking at a used car on a warm summer day when two salespeople approach you. The first salesperson says, “THIS IS THE GREATEST CAR EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE AND IT IS AN ABSOLUTE BARGAIN AND YOU WILL LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS AMAZING CAR!”
Gulp.
The second salesperson says, “This car is 3 years old, it’s got 45,000 miles on it and a small ding in the back bumper. It’s also rated as being one of the most reliable cars on the road, the interior looks almost brand new, it drives like a dream and the air conditioner blows the coldest air I’ve felt all summer.”
Which salesperson do you trust?
It’s a no brainer. The second salesperson started out where you are, looking at the reality of the situation. It’s a used car. It’s got some miles. It has a small ding you’ve already noticed. This person is standing right there beside you like a friend, telling you exactly how it is. You trust them because they are telling you what you already know.
That’s why when they start telling you all the good points of the car, you believe them. They are taking you along step-by-step from where you’re starting out (skeptical prospective buyer who doesn’t want to get ripped off) to where they want you to be (confident buyer who knows you’re getting a fair deal.)
The first salesperson is standing apart from you, shouting at you to come across this gulf between the two of you. This causes natural resistance on your part and a desire to flee the scene and never come back.
Now that I’ve written all of this, that webinar is 20 minutes in and I don’t plan on going back to it. I only want to work with authentic people who understand that I’m not going to fall for hyped up fake enthusiasm.
Just tell me like it is. Give me the truth. Point out all the good reasons why things can be much better if I’ll just follow along with you, and I guarantee I’ll stay right there and listen to your every word, and I’ll probably buy, too.
Your prospect opens your email… Reads the first few sentences… And then DELETES your email IN FRUSTRATION.
Why?
Because your first few sentences didn’t match the subject line and it confused and frustrated them.
The email felt like a waste of time…
Like maybe the subject line was clickbait.
It’s like opening the door to a chocolate shop and finding lawn mowers.
YOU WERE PROMISED CHOCOLATE!
“Where’s the chocolate??!”
“This can’t be the right place… let’s get out of here!”
I just opened an email that promised… “How to get budget approval for copywriting school.” Yes, this was written not just by a copywriter, but by someone who TEACHES COPYWRITING.
And yet the first 33 lines of that email don’t say a word about getting budget approval for copywriting school (I kid you not!)
Halfway through the email the writer finally (FINALLY!) states:
So what’s getting in the way of you joining 9 gazillion (my number) copywriters and marketers in my fantastic copywriting school?
Most likely:
Budget approval.
Chop off the entire first half of the email, start with these three lines and then go from there, and it could be an effective email.
But what did I do when I first received this email? After reading several lines that appeared unrelated to the subject line, I closed it.
Then I reopened it and scrolled down because I was thinking this could make a good lesson for all of us. As I was scrolling I found a totally unrelated large gif of a woman closing her eyes and shaking her head. Guess what? That only confused me more.
We shouldn’t have to rewrite emails written by someone who teaches copy. And yet, here we are.
Received within the same hour from an online marketer I KNOW is pulling down a minimum of 7 figures was this subject line and first two lines of this email:
Subject Line: System to add 30K to 100K per month
First line of email: Want to work together to add [30K to 100K+] per month to your monthly bottom line?
Second line: My system produces this type of revenue for winners who add in “big-fee” or “high-priced” programs to what they do… or to those who need a more compelling and irresistible offer.
Notice the first line expands on the subject line. No confusion here, and we get more clarification, too. The second line explains how this is possible, building credibility that he knows what he’s talking about.
I’m two lines into this email and instead of confusion I have a VERY good idea of what’s going on, how it works and why I would benefit by reading the rest of the email.
Notice it’s not even written all that well. Adding 30K per month to your monthly bottom line? No English teacher would let that go, and yet the reader knows exactly what he’s saying.
I’d lose the “for winners” and instead say something like, “for smart marketers”. But that’s just me nit-picking.
The fact is, you’ve only got seconds to make your subscriber GLAD she opened the email. Don’t confuse her. Don’t make her slog through 30 lines to get to the point. Respect her time and get to the heart of the matter FAST.
This doesn’t mean you can’t tell stories, either. After that second line above, you might launch into a story of how you helped poor miserable Marketing Mavis do this exact thing. The point is, your reader now knows what the devil you’re talking about and she’s now willing to go along on the journey with you because you TOLD HER exactly what this email is all about.
Whew.
Sorry, I know sometimes I go off on a rant when I see shoddy marketing like this, but I just get so frustrated at how people get in their own way.
Keep it simple. Make your first line expand on your subject line. Lay out the foundation immediately so that readers know they are in the RIGHT PLACE. Then and only then should you launch into your fancy stuff, stories, details and so forth.
Try it and see if your click-through rate doesn’t improve dramatically.
But is an interesting word, it’s defined as a reason someone gives for not doing or agreeing with something. It is probably the most overused word in the English language and also the one word that causes the most problems with regards to procrastination.
From “Oh, I was going to do it but…” to “But it…” stems all our excuses for indecision or inactivity.
What do we fear so much that we have to presuppose a failure and wrap that possibility up with a “but”? And here is the more interesting question… Are we committing to that failure by raising that as a possibility?
What if we never actually said the ‘but’? What if we didn’t allow into our consciousness the possibility of failures, could that prevent them from occurring?
Now I know that seems naïve, but when we were children, we didn’t see failures as something bad, it was simply just a lesson to learn along the way. We learned to walk by taking a few steps then falling, then we just picked ourselves up and tried again, and again, until after those few false starts and those initial faltering steps we were indeed able to walk, and then run.
As children, it never occurred to us to even think in terms of “I’m going to walk, but maybe I won’t.” We just kept on trying and trying until we succeeded, and that is the difference between the entrepreneurs and everyone else.
Where everyone else acknowledges the “but”, we don’t breathe as much life into that uncertainty. We don’t have time for buts… We are far too busy getting the job done to worry about whether our independent vision might not work.
A funny phrase I heard once: “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.” It’s a great throwaway statement that shows how often we use those two particular words.
Banish them from your life and your outlook. You have businesses to build and successes to achieve and there is no time for a ‘but’ in your exciting journey ahead!
First let me say that $3,000 is an ultra-conservative guess. I suspect this guy (we’ll call him Mike) is earning 3 to 5 times that much, but let’s be conservative and call it $3,000…
Mike has found a way to earn residual income that is right underneath all of our noses. In fact, it’s a method that’s been taught for a couple of decades or more, and yet very few marketers do this.
I’m almost positive you already know of this technique. But I’m also pretty confident that you are not USING this technique, at least not to the extent Mike is using it.
On the technical side, all you need to make this work is a squeeze page and an autoresponder.
Remember, residual income is what you earn for work you do ONCE and get paid for over and over again. If you write a hit song, you get royalties every time that song is played. If you sell software as a service or a membership site, you get paid every month until that person unsubscribes.
And if you’re Mike, you do what might be the simplest thing of all: You create specially made autoresponder sequences that last for YEARS, keep subscribers interested and continuously sell, sell and sell some more.
Mike’s ENTIRE business model is built around autoresponders. It’s not just a sideline for him, it’s what pays his bills, bought him a second home and put his kids through college.
Here’s what Mike does:
He chooses a niche. His favorites are weight loss/health, along with making money online. But he works in a couple of others as well.
He writes a follow up sequence that goes on for years. YEARS. Naturally he doesn’t do this all at once. Once he targets a niche, he writes follow up emails for the first couple of weeks prior to going active. Then he adds to the sequence on a regular basis until it’s about 3-5 years long (I’m not kidding!) He sends out about 1 email per day on average, although sometimes he sends out 2 emails if he’s promoting something hard.
If you’re freaking out about writing all these emails, remember two things: You just have to write enough emails to stay ahead of your earliest subscribers. And you can always outsource the work.
Mike’s emails are a mixture of information, content, observations, humor, jokes, quotes… pretty much whatever he feels like writing that he knows will interest his niche not just today but also in years to come. And every single email does something else, too. It sells.
Sometimes the entire email is selling. Other times the selling part comes in about halfway through the email. Once in a while he doesn’t sell until the P.S. But the point is this: He delivers content his readers WANT and he never stops selling, either.
He chooses evergreen products that are likely to still be available well into the future. ClickBank is his #1 source for these.
He sells one product per week. That is, he spends 7 days talking about just one product, what it can do for the reader, anecdotal stories of what it’s done for others, common questions answered and so forth.
And here’s a little trick he uses: Because each week focuses on just one product, he makes it look like a new product launch. Mind you, he never SAYS it’s a new product. Nor does he say that the product will no longer be available after the week is over. But he does give that impression in order to give the reader a sense of urgency.
To create even more urgency, he also offers a bonus that is good for that week only. His bonuses are usually built on PLR that he’s repurposed just for this.
And here’s where it gets even MORE interesting: 5-6 times a year he promotes a PACKAGE of products that are all his. These are the same products he’s been giving out as bonuses, all with big price tags attached so they look high value. He bundles about seven of these together and offers them for one ‘low’ price. And of course he gets to keep all the profits when he does this.
Offering these PLR products as bonuses and then packaging them together to sell is optional to the system, but it does bring in more sales and revenue and it doesn’t take all that much time to source good PLR products and rename them.
Now then, this all sounds great but you’re probably wondering how he gets people to join his lists so he can send them all these emails on autopilot. And the answer is awesome lead magnets.
In fact, this is where he spends his real time and energy, because the better the lead magnet is, the easier it is to get subscribers. Often, he’ll buy the rights to a product that’s sold well and offer that as his giveaway for joining his list. When you can say that a product sold 3,000 copies at $297 but the visitor can get it for free just for subscribing, your conversion rates can get pretty high. For his non-IM niches his conversion rate is over 70%, and for his online marketing niche it’s about 50%, which is still excellent.
By taking the time and expense to get the lead magnet right, he doesn’t just increase the conversion rates on his squeeze pages. He also builds a lot of goodwill and credibility with his new subscribers, which makes it easier to get his emails read and his links clicked.
This all sounds great, right? But what about traffic?
Good question. Mike pays for all of his traffic because he likes being able to turn on the traffic switch whenever he wants for as long as he wants. He already knows what each subscriber on each list is worth for the first six months they’re on the list. Any sales that come in after six months are just gravy.
His method is to spend as much as 50% of what he will earn in the first six months on advertising. So for example if the average subscriber earns him $3.00 in six months, he’ll spend as much as $1.50 to get that subscriber. But most of his subscribers stay with him for years, so in the end he actually earns a good deal more than just $3.00 apiece.
He buys his traffic from solo ads, Facebook ads and Google ads. He also uses several less well-known methods, two of which I was able to pry out of him. One of these is paying Facebook Group leaders to promote his free offer to their members. And another method he uses is to pay product sellers to offer his free product on their download page. Since everyone who hits the download page is a buyer, these tend to be especially good leads.
Naturally Mike uses a tracking service to find out where his squeeze page traffic is coming from so he knows what’s working.
Once a new subscriber joins one of his lists, that subscriber automatically receives emails for a long time from Mike. But the emails never look dated because they’re written in a style that makes it look current. Mike does have to check and make sure the products promoted in his sequences are still active. If one of them is no longer available, he simply finds a similar product and substitutes out the URLs and the product name.
And Mike does a lot of cross promoting, too. For example, if he has a list of people who use social media for online marketing, he’ll promote his free video marketing lead magnet to that list to see if he can get them on a second and even third list. Yes, this can mean a subscriber is in maybe three different autoresponder sequences simultaneously, but the profits far, far outweigh any unsubscribes.
As you can see the hard work in this business model is getting things set up. But once you do, it takes very little work to keep things running smoothly. And if you decide to take a month off, it shouldn’t affect your income, either.
Here’s maybe the most interesting thing about this entire case study: Mike had no previous marketing or writing experience prior to setting up his first squeeze page – autoresponder funnel. He was good at technical stuff but never did any kind of sales or marketing before.
And I wonder if this didn’t help him to succeed, because his writing is very basic and sounds like it comes from that slightly weird ‘guy next door’. He just writes about what interests him in each niche, because he figures that same stuff will interest his readers. His grammar isn’t great but he tells new subscribers up front that he’s no English professor; he’s just a guy like them who enjoys doing XYZ just like they do.
It works for him. And if you choose an evergreen niche that interests you, then I think you could easily build a hands-free funnel like Mike’s and start earning some of that residual income on autopilot. You set it up, send a continuous stream of new subscribers and get sales. It’s so simple, most people overlook this – but it works.
You’ve got a forum or a Facebook Group or some sort of social media platform that is keeping you super busy. So what do you do? You ask a couple of your most loyal members or followers to act as moderators for you.
Or maybe one of them even volunteers. “Hey there, I’m on this forum all the time and I know you’re busy… how about I act as a moderator to help you out?”
Wow, that’s awesome, right?
You get free help from one of your biggest fans – someone who knows your stuff and wants to help you tell the world about you and your products.
Except…
Except sometimes these helpful moderators are really wolves in sheep’s clothing, ready to take you down, get you banned and even put you into legal trouble.
Yes, I know I sound like a crazy, paranoid doomsayer, but this really happens. In fact, it costs companies millions or possibly even billions of dollars a year in lost revenue.
Take the case of Bob’s* Facebook Group account. Bob runs his own online marketing business, teaching people how to use social media to get new customers.
Bob is a social media marketing expert, and the last person you think would lose his business because of a social media marketing mistake. But that’s essentially what happened.
Bob sold his highly acclaimed $1,997 social media marketing course to someone we’ll can Suzie. Suzie turned out to be something of a pain, pestering Bob several times a day with questions and demanding far more attention than any of his other 300 students combined.
Rather than watch the course and implement what Bob taught, Suzie seemed to think she was entitled to one-on-one teaching 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Essentially, there was no pleasing her. Exasperated, Bob refunded her money and politely told her that the course was not for her.
Suzie was furious. She sent out numerous messages on social media telling anyone who would listen that Bob was a fraud, his course was a waste of money and so forth. But apparently this wasn’t enough for her.
Unbeknownst to Bob, she joined his Facebook Group with an entirely different identity than her own. Keep in mind that his Facebook Group was how Bob communicated with everyone who purchased the $1,997 course.
This identity seemed very friendly and helpful towards Bob and everyone else in the group, so much so that Bob eventually made this other identity a Group moderator. And once she had moderator status, she immediately began subtly undermining Bob and his social media course. She managed to personally contact everyone in the group and lure many of them to her own Group while gaining their confidence.
Long story short, she used her authority as Bob’s moderator as well as her authority within her own Facebook Group to cast doubt on Bob and his course. Refunds began skyrocketing and new sales plummeted. Her final act was to make several posts that were completely against Facebook’s terms of service, thereby getting Bob’s Facebook Group and Bob himself banned from Facebook.
Bob has asked Facebook to investigate and hopes to restore his ability to be on Facebook but restoring his good name and reputation will take a great deal more than that. By becoming one of his Facebook Group moderators, this woman managed to virtually destroy Bob’s business.
And this is not an isolated instance, either. I’ve heard horror tales of social media moderators doing things that created lawsuits, lost sales and put businesses in trouble with government agencies.
If and when you allow anyone else to have moderator control on any of your social media type accounts, you need to KNOW who they are and that you can trust them, because it only takes one moderator from hell to potentially ruin everything you’ve built.
*I changed Bob’s name because the poor guy’s been through enough already.
I’m surfing the internet in an early morning pre-coffee daze when I see an ad for an odd-looking watch that says, “Handmade in Switzerland: 24 hours and only 1 hand…” And I’m thinking, “Ohhhh-kaayyyyy… what fresh overpriced gimmick is this?”
And I click on the ad because, well, why not?
Now I’m on a website called slow-watches.com and it’s asking me,
“Are you ready to be slow?”
Wtf?
I need my coffee for this.
“We created a watch that allows you to experience time in an entirely new way.” “The slow watch reminds you to stop chasing the minutes and live for the moments.” “The unique 24 hour one-hand concept fundamentally changed our way to perceive time – yours too?”
Ha! I love how they don’t claim this watch will change your life or how you perceive time, but instead they pose those claims as questions.
• Will this product earn you a million dollars? • Will this diet make you 10 years younger? • Will the secrets revealed in these videos make you irresistible to beautiful women?
Maybe not, but these questions fly underneath your skeptic’s radar and get you thinking, don’t they?
“Sit back, relax and watch the video. We would like to tell you about our slow story.”
And I’ll be darned if I didn’t watch their video – twice.
The first half of the video shows you just how miserable your life is without this watch, while the second half of the video shows how wonderful your life will be with the watch.
And it turns a product fault into a positive. “Yes, our watch doesn’t tell you exactly what time it is, but who cares about exact time anyway? We don’t care about seconds or minutes because those are for losers.” (I’m totally paraphrasing here – watch the video.)
Put on this watch and for the first time in your life you will see, “How time naturally flows.”
“Remember, don’t count every second – make every second count.”
Cliches, anyone?
I thought it hilarious that while the silky-smooth talking announcer is telling you to make every second count while admitting their watch can’t count seconds, they’re showing you two good looking guys staring at an hourglass…
I mean just staring at…
And staring at it some more…
Like they are so bored they’re wishing their miserable lives would just end right then and there.
But wait a minute… (pun intended?)
…why are we talking about this crazy watch and how they’re marketing it?
Because there are some great lessons here.
First, making a 24 hour watch is such a simple idea, I’ve got to wonder why we haven’t seen these before. Or have we seen them but they didn’t catch on? The point is this: Simple ideas like this are everywhere if you are paying attention.
Personally, I would love to have a watch that reminds me every hour to get up from my chair and MOVE. I’d also like the watch the act as a Pomodoro timer throughout the day, with 25 minutes of work and a 10 minute break, or something like that.
Yes, I know my phone can do those things for me, but I leave my phone in other rooms and I’d prefer to have those features on my wrist. Is that a good product idea? I don’t know, but if you decide to create a watch like that, let me know and I’ll likely buy the first one.
Second, the watches cost $300. That’s why they tell you over and over they’re made in Switzerland, because we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that great watches can only be made in Switzerland, so it helps tremendously with price justification.
Third, the watches cost $300 which means it’s going to be all about the marketing and positioning. Most people are never going to impulse purchase a weird-looking unknown-brand watch for 300 bucks. Heck, most people have stopped buying watches altogether because they own smartphones. To sell a watch without a well-known brand for $300, you’re going to have to get slick with your marketing.
Fourth, that is exactly what they’ve done here. When I looked at their website and watched the video the first time, I confess that I WANTED ONE OF THESE WATCHES! Yes, I really did.
Watching the video the second time with my marketing cap on made me totally rethink that impulse. Because hey, I don’t really believe that buying the watch will cause me to move from the city to the country and have absolutely nothing to do but play frisbee and watch an hourglass, two things I don’t want to do anyway. (Watch the video to see what I mean.)
To answer their question: “Can a Watch Change Your Life?”
Potentially.
Regardless, if you can take a simple product like an odd looking watch and use your marketing to make people feel better about themselves, then maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
If you sell a product that teaches people how to make money, for example, then you can certainly paint a picture of their life before and after getting your product. And in fact, you can use this watch video as a template of what that might look like.
A mediocre product with great marketing can sell like gangbusters. That’s what I think they have here. If they get a few celebrities to wear their watches, it could become a viral sensation and they’ll make millions.
Then again, there have been plenty of products that were supposed to be “the next big thing” but failed terribly.
Back to you and your business… Take a look at your products and ask yourself, what simple change can you make to totally stand out from the crowd? In other words, what’s your version of going from 12 hours to 24 hours?
Next, look at your marketing like you’re seeing it for the first time. Does it sweep you up in the moment and make you think, “Wow! I want this!” If not, you might want to rethink how you’re presenting your product to the world.
Here’s a neat little trick you can try: Every time you see an ad or commercial, imagine it’s for your product. Look for the elements you can borrow to use in your own marketing campaigns to make them fresh and grab the viewers’ attention.
Can your product change people’s lives (unlike this watch)?
Then just imagine what you might achieve with a fresh marketing campaign that lets people feel what that change will be like when they have your product.
Can you devise a fresh marketing campaign that sells a million copies of your product? I think you can…
