This morning, I woke up to find a bunch of different emails in my inbox from a bunch of different marketers, all on the same topic.
All these people are promoting a run of webinars, which will happen tomorrow, staggered two hours apart, to be given by Rich Schefren.
You might know Rich as “the guru to the gurus” — the guy who coached big-name Internet marketers like Russell Brunson, Ryan Deiss, and Todd Brown.
So now Rich is promoting something, and he has enlisted a bunch of other people to promote him. Which is proof of something written by the “godfather of modern advertising,” Claude Hopkins, some 100 years ago:
“The most effective thing I have ever found in advertising is the trend of the crowd. That is a factor not to be overlooked. People follow styles and preferences. We rarely decide for ourselves, because we don’t know the facts. But when we see the crowds taking any certain direction, we are much inclined to go with them.”
So that’s the harmonious part one. Here’s the clashing part two.
I don’t know what the content of Rich’s webinars tomorrow will be. But I have an idea.
Because speaking a few years back about what really made his messaging and marketing powerful — what made his 40-page reports like the Internet Business Manifesto go viral and bring in millions of dollars of new business — Rich had this to say:
“I really experimented with a lot of different approaches over the years. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best core concept is a paradigm shift on their problem and your solution to their problem.”
Now let’s put our two pieces of music side by side:
Part one is Hopkins saying, 100 years ago, that the “the trend of the crowd” is the most effective thing he has found.
Part two is Rich saying, today, that a “paradigm shift” is the most effective thing he has found.
Those two claims might sound contradictory, and rightly so. After all, if your prospect forms his beliefs based on what others think and do… and if you are giving your prospect a paradigm shift… then you are by definition going against the trend of the crowd.
So maybe it really is a contradiction. Or maybe not.
Maybe, paradigm shifts — insight techniques as I call them — are not here to abolish the old laws of advertising, but to fulfill them. After all, that’s what Rich’s own marketing seems to show.
The fact is, like promises, like social proof, like urgency, creating a “paradigm shift” in your prospect’s mind has been around as long as prospects have been around, or maybe as long as minds have been around.
Giving people a new perspective has always been a powerful way to influence people and move them to action.
It’s just that until now, it hasn’t been mandatory. But that’s changing, thanks in part to smart marketers like Rich, who are consciously creating paradigm shifts and aiming to create feeling of insight in their prospects’ minds.
Now here’s a promise for you:
Insight techniques is something I have been thinking and even writing about for a long time. If you’d like to know how you too can consciously create paradigm shifts in your prospect’s mind, then as a first step, join a lot of other smart marketers and entrepreneurs, and sign up to my email newsletter.