I opened the box. A look of disgust must have washed over my face because my dad’s wife, who was in the room, started laughing at me.
“Not happy with what you bought?” she asked.
Months earlier, I’d gone on eBay and ordered a big box of Dan Kennedy stuff. I finally got to opening the box this past weekend. My face dropped when I saw the reality of what I’d ordered.
Dozen of old newsletters. 30-40 CDs and DVDs. Brochures, binders, and booklets, totaling hundreds of thousands of words of content.
What was I thinking when I bought this? How many years would it take me to give this even a cursory run-through?
I closed up the box and moved it aside. I tried to ignore it as it sat in the corner for a day. Then I put it in the closet, so I don’t have to look at it any more.
Yesterday, I promised to tell you about marketer Sean D’Souza’s fringe view of marketing.
The mainstream view says marketing is made up of two equally important parts:
1. Traffic
2. Conversion
Sean says that leaves out a third, equally important piece:
1. Traffic
2. Conversion
3. Consumption
Sean likes using restaurant analogies. He explains:
Your business tends to be like a buffet. So it doesn’t really matter if you’re selling products, or services, or are a trainer. You’re going to want to run a buffet.
You’re going to want to dump all your information; all your skills; all your blah-blah Powerpoint slides on your customer at one go.
And like a buffet the customer is going to eat hungrily. Then go from hunger to greed.
From greed to indigestion.
Forty five burps later, your customer is now sick of your ‘buffet’.
“That’s nonsense,” I hear you say. “I see people all the time buying stuff they never use. It doesn’t stop them from buying more stuff they will never use.”
Maybe so. Like Sean likes to say, I’m not trying to prove anything to you. If you find this consumption idea works for you, use it. If it doesn’t work for you, no problem.
Personally, the way I look at it is:
I can’t make sure people will profit from what I sell. I can’t even make sure they will consume it.
But I can make pretty sure they won’t consume it. And my personal philosophy is to avoid selling in a way that causes my customers to reflexively bring up their hand to their mouth, because their stomach starts churning each time they think of the last time I sold them something.
That’s why I only provide one serving of marketing and copywriting nutrition each day. Light, tasty fare. Zero buffet. If you’d like to sample it, here’s where to go.