Is it possible to find a happy medium?
For those who have been following me for any amount of time, you know that I’m kind of like a hard-core like Dan Kennedy style, outbound marketer, right? We’re very aggressive with our emails and our banners and our direct mail and our -- everything that we’re doing.
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Hey everyone! This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to the Marketing In You Car podcast.
Today, I’m not in my Ferrari because it’s freezing! But we’re here and we’re having some fun.
Hey guy and gals! So I appreciate you guys all being here today on the podcast and listening in. We have a very fun and exciting day today happening. It starts off, actually, yesterday. Well, maybe like even a month ago.
A month ago, for those of you who know me, I’m not like a very big video game guy. But I love like the old-school video games, and so I found this Nintendo controller, like one of the original ones, but it’s a USB based one.
So I bought it, and I really didn’t know what to do with it, and then last night with my kids I went and I found how to download an emulator, and I downloaded all of the original games that we used to play.
So I had “Mario 1, 2, 3.” We had “Double-Dribble,” “Contra,” “Milon’s Secret Castle,” “Legacy Of The Wizard,” anyway all the fun games, and we started playing it last night, and I was up till forever playing it.
And it’s Daylight Savings, and so I was actually up even… I was up to like 2:00 or 3:00, technically. I think it was like 1:00 or 2:00 I went to bed, but it was like 2:00 or 3:00 in my brain because of Daylight Savings.
So anyway, that was fun and I’m excited to get back tonight. I have to get home from the office and keep playing. I got to beat some of my old games again. Oh, “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out,” I have that one too.
Anyway, so it’s been a lot of fun. But I want to talk to you guys about what I’ve been thinking about this whole weekend. Because I’m kind of having a big shift, and it goes against everything that I thought I believed about marketing, and I think that I just sold myself on it.
For those who have been following me for any amount of time, you know that I’m kind of like a hard-core like Dan Kennedy style, outbound marketer, right? We’re very aggressive with our emails and our banners and our direct mail and our -- everything that we’re doing.
And it works! Okay, like we’ve been very successful with it, but I keep watching like all these newer type companies that are coming out, and watching their huge growth they’re having. And what’s interesting, as I watch what they’re doing, and it’s very… kind of the opposite of what I’m doing.
In fact, they all kind of call like, what I do and what we focus on, the “outbound marketing,” what they do “inbound marketing.” And I’ve seen infographic about like how outbound marketing, you’re like “spammers” and “the email marketers,” and, you know, all these guys.
And the inbound marketers, the ones who “create good content” and “people come and listen to them,” and bla, bla, bla, and while I don’t completely agree with them, there are some valid, really, really, really good things that I have been getting from them that I enjoy.
I think there’s a blend of the two that you can really find a happy medium, and I think that using, you know, they would call outbound marketing techniques --- promote your inbound marketing -- is really where the magic is if you can find that sweet spot.
And so, I’ve been looking for the last month or so, for those of you guys who know, we’ve been publishing the DotComSecrets Labs print newsletter for, man, for a long time!
I think it’s been seven years we’ve been publishing a print newsletter. In the last five or six months, it’s been the DotComSecrets Labs Newsletter, and people will have loved the Labs newsletter.
They’ve been going crazy for it. Anyone who gets their hands on it, it’s just like “this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” And the problem is, though, it’s really a hard product to sell. It’s kind of like insurance, right? Like everybody needs insurance, but nobody really wants insurance.
Now if they get it, they’re grateful for it. It’s kind of like this: like we just really have a hard time getting mass appeal, and then about a month ago the girl that’s been doing our newsletter, she’s had her second baby and she just said, “Hey, I don’t have time now to keep dedicating to this.”
And so, I’m kind of at this crossroad, and what do we do? Do we find a new publisher? Do we just cancel it altogether, or what do we do? I kind of have this weekend, what I’m leaning towards, and I may not do it, so don’t hold me accountable to this if I don’t.
But I was like what if -- like anyone who gets the newsletter in their hands and sees the split tests and the results and all this stuff, I get -- it instantly makes them raving fans.
Mark Call said, “By far, it was the best Internet marketing product he’s ever purchased in his history online.” You know, everybody else that sees it, loves it. Like our Facebook reviews are just raving, from David Frey, from just everybody, right?
And so, I was like, “What if we just stopped selling that and just started giving it away? Like what if I made like a real blog, like people do in the blogging world, and I just every day blogged split test results? It showed cool thing, after cool thing, after cool, after cool thing?”
I’m always just like have a kind of fear. I’m like, “Well, why should I actually give all this stuff away? Like people will pay for it.” But I’m like, what if I did, though? If I give that away, it would create these raving fans who then come back and purchase everything else we have.
That’s been kind of my thought process over the weekend. I’ve got to talk to my guys and see what they think about it. They may think I’m crazy.
But I really think that, you know, one of the big shifts in my business over the last month or so is, bringing in all the social media and bringing in all these things that we haven’t been doing.
And I think that the reason why it’s so powerful is because, first off, it makes you relevant. Second off, it’s really rebuilding our platform.
You know, like I said, we’ve been building our platform for the last 10 years, but the platform shifted. And I’ve got to be honest: I’ve been slower to change over than I probably should have been.
So these are all the things that we’re trying to do to really rebuild our platform from the social media standpoint, and just doing cool stuff to get everybody raving fans where they just spend more time with us, and, in return, hopefully, spend some more money with us.
So that’s the kind of the game plot. I don’t know. We’re excited, and anyway I appreciate you guys listening. I just got to the office. I’ve got a fun-filled day of stuff I’m going to be doing. I’m fired up, excited. I found this company that does infographics.
You know, I’ve got tons of processes that we teach in our company, and I was like whiteboarding out. But I was like wouldn’t that be cool if we have an infographic for each one of them? So like the DotComSecrets X process, we take someone through it. You make an infographic of that.
Our DotComSecrets Local, our Micro-Continuity, our Underachiever, like making infographics of each of these different topics. The people can print them out. You know, put them on the wall, whatever. Pass them around.
Anyway, I’m excited about that too. I’m going to be having them do a DotComSecrets X infographic today, so I’m fired up! I’m excited for today. It’s going to be good.
I hope you guys are excited as well. If you’re liking this podcast, please go to iTunes and let me know. I love reading the reviews. It gets me excited, and other than that, you guys, I will talk to you all again very, very soon.
Thanks, you guys, and this is Russell signing off.
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