Fair warning... this is a MAJOR rant coming. If you don't want to read a bucket full of frustration with Internet marketers, you probably want to skip this one. But if you actually want to learn something that can help you with your marketing, provided you stop taking your stubborn pills, I think this is one article you will DEFINITELY want to read.
You would think I'd be used to this by now, but I'm not. Don't know why. It just bugs me STILL.
I'm at the Warrior Forum. Member asks which type of sales presentation, focusing mainly on videos, is best and he gives us four types of videos. My response is simple. It depends on your target market because each market is different. I then said he had to split test a couple and then narrow it down.
Anyway, I go back to the thread and he responds to me and a few other people (I guess) saying, "Yeah, yeah, I know I have to split test but I don't have the time for that. Assuming all the videos are done well, which is best?"
Was I speaking Greek to this person? I never once said anything about how GOOD the videos themselves were or weren't. I said that every target market responds DIFFERENTLY to videos in general. A golfer, trying to improve his swing is going to respond to a different kind of video presentation than somebody who is suffering from acne. And the latter may not respond to video at all.
You can't lump prospects from different niches together to determine if X technique is better than Y technique because the techniques themselves have different effects on different people. And I keep telling people this over and over. But do they listen? No.
Want another great example? Here's one you're going to love. Person asks which autoresponder service is better, Aweber or GetResponse. This is a question that gets asked a LOT. In fact, it gets asked so much that today at the Warrior Forum, one of the mods put up a special thread where all autoresponder questions could be answered and all opinions given.
Well, person asks which is the best. I respond that I've only used Aweber and can only speak from my experience with it. I don't know if GetResponse is any good. I've never used it. In the past, I'd say, it depends on what you're using it for and who your subscribers are. Know what people would then say? "Yeah, but which one is better?"
Sometimes I have to check to make sure that the keys on my keyboard are actually typing in English because some days, I'm just not sure.
Here's another one you're going to love. What's the best software for (sorry, can't even say what it is here) and I tell them, they all stink. Know what I get asked back? Yeah, but which one is the best?
Now try to comprehend this. Imagine somebody asked me what the best tasting castor oil was and I said to them they all taste HORRIBLE and then they came back and said, "Yeah, but what's the best?" At this point in time, given that they're all HORRIBLE, does it really matter?
The software in question, and in general, really is a useless piece of junk. And yet, when you tell other Internet marketers this, they almost always come back and ask you what the best is, even though you just told them they're all bad.
There is a bigger point to this article and here it is.
Internet marketers, and people in general, want to hear what they want to hear. They don't want to hear that something isn't good or doesn't work. They ask the question to have you validate what they already want to hear. If you don't validate it, they'll just go to somebody else and ask the question again until they get the answer that they want to hear.
Know how many of those people succeed with their Internet marketing?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say NONE.
One of the first things I learned as an Internet marketer was to listen to those who have been in this business long before I ever even thought of it and take what they say to heart. My biggest breakthrough came when I was an affiliate marketer and one friend of mine said "Steve, you're never REALLY going to make a lot of money selling other people's products. If you want to make big money, you have to sell your OWN products."
It was shortly after that my income almost tripled in just ONE year.
Imagine if I had said to him, "Yeah, but how do I make a lot of money as an affiliate marketer?"
He would have wondered if he himself was speaking Greek.
Internet marketers don't want to listen to those who know better. I don't know what causes this. Maybe it's pride. Maybe it's the thought of, "Oh God, I spent all this time doing XYZ and it was all for nothing? NO, I can't accept that so I won't."
It's the ONLY thing that makes ANY sense to me.
Either that or I'm speaking Greek.
So what is it I'd like you to get out of this article? It's this, and it's very simple. I want you to listen to others who have been there and done that. I want you to learn from their experience. I want you to understand that sometimes you're going to come up with ideas that just aren't good. I want you to understand that sometimes the answer to your question isn't the one that you want to hear.
I want you to make me feel like I'm not talking Greek. If you can do ALL that and try to be objective about your marketing tactics and whatever else you do, you just might have a chance to be really successful in this business.
Otherwise, I really am just speaking Greek.
To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim
