As many of you know, I’ve taken the reigns of our Business Development group to help build it up like my marketing team. Not long ago, I attended what could be described as the largest information marketing conference, known as Info Summit. One of the best sessions was with Dan Kennedy, of course. I’ll recount some key concepts he discussed and my final thoughts about the conference.
Information marketing isn’t far from typical small businesses that offer products to fulfill a need. The concepts shared at Info Summit are actually quite relevant to businesses who are growing and need to gain exposure, trust and loyalty from customers. Dan Kennedy, famous for the ‘No-BS’ marketing books, was the featured speaker of the conference and here are the points I captured that help entrepreneurs market their products and services better:
- People want the unusual.
- People are looking for the secret concept. This basically means it’s your job to help uncover “7 secrets to…”, “Discover the secret to…”, and present it in a clean, digestible format.
- People buy stories, not things! The best leaders in any company, the best salesmen have something alike — they are able to capture people’s attention through story-telling. Share stories from your experience, past or present and help people connect to you.
- For most entrepreneurs, money is not the most compelling motivation. It’s usually a combination of…
- Self-respect
- Security
- Independence
- Power
- Certainty
- Revenge
- Wealth is in the lists, not in the ‘stuff’. Often entrepreneurs struggle when they are trying to make more products, more services and re-creating the wheel. Building a loyal audience of customers and prospects ought to be a primary objective.
- It’s expected to peak and decline; therefore, you must create sustainable assets. More so a great piece of advice for any small business owner who is starting up a new business. Create sustainable assets in your business to draw from … and diversify the revenue across the entire business.
- Change in methods is a constant imperative. People become fatigued of repeated marketing. Always be creative — changing and adapting to your audience is a must to continue building your ‘list.’
This advice is applicable to virtually every entrepreneur who grows their business. As a formidable marketing-minded exec, I can’t help but iterate the importance of marketing in any business, regardless of the audience, product or market (or economic) conditions. Through constant testing, tweaking, monitoring and tweaking, I’m confident that at Infusionsoft at least, we exhaust every marketing method and technique resulted in continued success and increased exposure. That is, we “thrived” in a time when many businesses are unsure if they can even “survive.” Bleak, but realistic.
It was great to support our partners who helped make Info Summit possible and gain a deeper understanding of what’s working in their industries. Many of you already know how exciting it is for me to meet customers who have already been using our marketing software for years and were thrilled! I just wanted to let everyone know that I (and the team) had a wonderful time at Info Summit and extend our gratitude for such great partnerships that we’ve strengthened there.
–Dave
[Photo credit: highgrovepangolin on Flickr]
[...] the Glazer-Kennedy Info-Summit a few weeks ago in Atlanta (see my earlier post here), one of our talented sales representatives, Jordan Hatch, made me aware of something from one of [...]