Dan Kennedy

Proof that Donald Trump is actually smart

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Dan Kennedy once told a revealing story about Donald Trump:

Some years earlier, Dan was giving a talk at some kind of event. After his talk, he ran into Trump back stage.

​​”What are you reading these days?” asked The Donald.

Dan listed one book.

The Donald nodded.

Dan listed another.

The Donald nodded again.

Dan listed a third.

The Donald turned to his hanger-on and said, “Get me that, I haven’t read it yet.”

​​I don’t know about you, but to me this doesn’t sound like the dolt that the media likes to portray.

Anyways, in spite of the pulling power of Donald Trump, I actually want to talk about Dan Kennedy tonight. In case you haven’t heard, the man is either dead, or very close to dead.

Now, I’m not sentimental about death in the least. But a few things are undeniable:

1) Dan Kennedy was a big name in the direct marketing space, and a big influence on many.

2) He had tons of interesting and entertaining stories, like the one above.

3) He was smart, and he was successful.

So even though I’m not personally saddened by Dan Kennedy’s death, I do respect what the guy did and how he did it.

And so, today I’d like to point you to a Dan Kennedy talk that I go back to regularly, because it’s got so much marketing value.

This talk was the keynote speech to Brian Kurtz’s “Titans of Direct Response” event, which sold for $2k while it was still available.

Brian made this presentation of Dan’s available for free online for some reason.

And if you’re interested in learning more about direct marketing and copywriting, from a guy who clearly knew what he was doing, then I think this video is worth a look. Or two. Or ten.

(Plus, it’s where Dan actually tells the Trump story above.)

In case you’re interested, here’s the link:

https://vimeo.com/user41807591/review/132998983/eacabe46f6

The other way to persuade

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Let me ask you a personal question or three:

Are you very politically conservative?

Do you care passionately about the fate of the planet and about climate change?

Were you out in the streets last night, partying after the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship?

If you said “yes” to any of the above questions, then I believe you’ve got a leg up in the copywriting, marketing, and persuasion game.

Here’s why.

Dan Kennedy, possibly the most influential educator when it comes to direct marketing, once shared his four guiding principles for writing direct response copy. The one that’s relevant for us right now is:

“Great direct response copy makes people identify themselves as one or the other.”

In this way of looking at the world, there are two ways to persuade. One is based on self-interest — that’s 95% of “How to write copy” guides will tell you. But there’s another way. And it’s to appeal to somebody’s identity.

As Dan puts it, “they tell you the identification, and you tell them the behavior.”

This can be overt, such as, “If you’re politically conservative, then you should be outraged at the state of illegal immigration in this country.”

It can also be more subtle. Such as, “Choosy moms choose JIF.”

Now, I hope if you dig around in your brain right now, you will find at least one or two strong “self-identifications.”

Maybe that’s an alignment with an outside group, like a party or a cause or a team.

But it might also be the kind of person you strongly feel that you are (for example, a good mom).

Once you find this self-identification in yourself, start observing your own feelings, your own behaviors and attitudes when it comes to protecting and cherishing that identity.

Bottle all that up.

And use that insight and experience to become a superhuman marketer, persuader, or copywriter, by talking to other people’s self-identifications.

You will have a new and powerful arrow in your quiver — which the majority of your competition won’t even know about.

And you don’t even have to do much to attain it besides what you already love to do.

As for me, I’ve been working lately with some choosy owners of online businesses. They’re trying to build up a stockpile of copy assets that get their prospects to buy, and their customers to buy more.

I’ve also heard from other business owners who are in the same position, but who aren’t working with me yet. And you know what they did? They wrote me an email to talk to me and see if I could also help them grow their business.

How to sell in paid products without alienating customers

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Uh oh.

My post from yesterday gave a bunch of examples of infotainment I plan to put into my upcoming book on essential oils.

But the examples I used were often taken from sales materials, rather than info products themselves.

Is this a giant screw-up on my part?

Let’s see.

Copywriting all-star Gary Bencivenga once said that sales material should be valuable enough to read on its own.

On the other hand, prolific marketer Dan Kennedy embodies the idea that paid products should also sell. (They can sell other products, or at least you as an expert.)

In other words, paid and free content can and should be quite similar. Here are a few other points to think about:

Also, former Boardroom exec Brian Kurtz talked about the kinds of premiums (aka bonuses) that Boardroom would give away with their books. What they found is that when somebody buys something, the best thing is to sell or give them more of the same. So if they are buying a health book, offer them 3 more health books as a bonus.

Finally, supplement marketer Justin Goff does something similar in the world of supplements: simply offer the buyer more bottles of the same supplement as an upsell.

And here’s how this ties back to info products or sales pages (or sales emails) that promote those products:

If somebody is “buying” your free promotional products…

In other words, if they tune in regularly to hear your personality and stories and lame jokes and whatever else you use to spice up your free promotional content, whether that’s emails, or blog posts, or speeches behind a podium….

Then it makes no sense to turn off that tap when you charge them money for an info product.

Of course, the paid product should be valuable and should close some of those loops that the free content opens. But it should continue to be entertaining (and even to sell) in the same way as your free stuff — or you will have some sore and disappointed customers.

And that in a nutshell, is why infotainment examples from sales letters — as well as more direct sales techniques — can go straight behind the paywalled curtain as well.