Doesn´t marketing just drive you crazy sometimes?

It seems that every single week a new marketing program goes on sale promising us that, once bought and utilised, we´ll be able to attract more clients and earn more money than we ever dreamed possible and that this time, this one time, we´ll hit the jackpot and succeed where we´ve failed so many times before.

They all tell us that they have THE ANSWER and yet each and every marketing program has a different answer than the last.

Some tell us that ‘the money´s in the list´ and urge us to put all of our time, money and effort into building the greatest list possible if we´re serious about becoming truly successful.

Others tell us that marketing is all about sales and closing techniques and that we need to become expert ‘closers´ in order to become successful, whilst others still tell us that our ability to reap a bumper crop relies upon our copywriting skills, our free reports and downloads, our ‘viral infections´, permission marketing or search engine optimisation.

Now, whilst each of these approaches can and do provide successful marketing approaches (in the short term at least), they´re not really a viable way to create long term business success. In fact, each of these techniques in and of themselves is pretty useless when used indiscriminately as most people tend to do.

I´m sure you´re aware of people who´ve spent ages (along with a small fortune) on Search Engine Optimisation either to find that their web traffic didn´t increase or, even if it did, it didn´t convert into new business income?

Likewise, you probably know people who´ve created free download after free download and grown fairly decent sized lists only to find that whenever they tried to sell to them that half of them unsubscribed and the other half sent ‘hate mail´ to the effect of “I didn´t sign up to be sold to. Do it again and I´ll unsubscribe’ or simply not bothering to take action at all, right?

The net result is the same.

No new sales, no increased revenue and no return on investment for all the time, money and effort it took to put these promotions together.

Yep, I´ve been there too and, although it´s rather embarrassing to admit, I still go there on occasion when a product or service I´m promoting flops.

It´s frustrating isn´t it?

After all, you bought the ebooks, listened to the audios and took all of the actions that the experts told you to take and yet… well… nothing!

No great marketing success, no return on investment and certainly not that ever elusive passive income we´re always promised on the marketing guru´s sales pages.

What gives?

Are we being sold a crock or is marketing success truly attainable for all of us or just the lucky few?

These are questions I used to ask myself a lot in the early days when most of my marketing attempts seemed to fail or, at least, not create the success I´d been hoping for.

In my search for an answer I read literally thousands of articles and books from some of the world´s most successful business and marketing experts and found that whilst they each had their own unique slant on what it took to create marketing success and whilst they each operated different proprietary systems, they all had at their core identical principles that drove them.

In effect, they all said that in order to attract people into doing business with you or your company they have to KNOW, LIKE AND TRUST you.

That´s all!

Sounds pretty simple right?

Yet when I analysed all of the marketing campaigns that I´d done that had been a flop, I noticed that despite having great copy, tons of bonuses and, seemingly, all of the right techniques in place, I had somehow violated the KNOW-Like-Trust ‘rule´ and, in doing so, condemned my product launch to failure. Conversely, every single success I´ve had has had KNOW-Like-Trust at its core.

Now, for all that KNOW-Like-Trust sounds pretty obvious, it´s clearly not. If it were then we´d all be using it and our marketing would be super-successful and, clearly, that´s not the case.

So, let´s look at KNOW-Like-Trust and try to learn how to use marketing´s ‘secret weapon´ in your own marketing shall we?

We´ll start with KNOW.

It stands to reason that in order to do business with you and, ultimately, buy your products and services, that your prospects have to KNOW that you exist. Yet, despite this glaringly obvious fact, few fitness professionals dedicate any time at all to getting known, opting instead for the ‘If I build it they will come´ method of marketing favoured by the unsuccessful masses.

So they build their websites, they write their free reports and they create their opt-in newsletters and… well… no-one comes or, if they do, in such small numbers that it barely matters.

This approach is 180 degrees out of phase with the methods of the super-successful marketers who put their efforts into first finding out who will come and then build their products and services to match the demand that´s already there. A big difference right?

But how do they do find out?

Simple. They Get KNOWN!

They create articles in their area of expertise and post them to e-zine directories and blogs as well as on their own websites.

They find subject-specific forums and newsgroups and become active members who provide great information to red-hot prospects WITHOUT TRYING TO SELL ANYTHING.

They send out regular press releases to both the paper and e-press, positioning themselves as someone with something worth writing about.
They do public talks and seminars for members of the public interested in their field and load them with so much great information that people remember, use and share it with others to great effect.

They offer to write or interview for other professionals in the same field (or interview other pro´s themselves) in order to spread their name as far and wide as possible.

The long and the short of it is that the ‘Get KNOWN´ phase is NOT about selling in any way, shape or form. Rather, as the title suggests, it´s about putting yourself on the map and, crucially, in front of an audience who will tell YOU what they want to buy rather than the other way around.

Now, before you dismiss the KNOW phase because of its simplicity, ask yourself how much of this you´re currently doing. You may be surprised with just how little you´re actually doing to Get KNOWN!

Ok, we´ll assume that you´re now well on the road to getting KNOWN, but don´t think that you´re home and dry yet. You´re not.

There´s a massive difference between being KNOWN and being liked.

Ever heard of a guy called Adolf Hitler?

KNOW many people who LIKE him?

Point taken?

So then,the next stage is to convert those who KNOW you into those who actually LIKE you in such a way that they think of you whenever they think about the subject you represent with your expertise.

But how?

How do you make people LIKE you?

The short answer is, you can´t!

That is, you can´t make people LIKE you but you can make it easier for people to do so of their own accord.

How?

The answer is simple. Tell them what they want to hear.

Now, I don´t mean in some artificial, false, B.S kind of way that´s designed to trick or con people. That´s both unethical AND counterproductive as you´ll soon be KNOWN as someone who can´t be trusted (we´ll come to that in a minute). Rather, learn to speak to people in the language that they speak in, about the problems they face and the solutions they desire rather than pushing your own agenda irrespective of the needs of your prospects.

Let me give you an example.

In my own company I operate a holistic model called The POWER Principles™ that integrates life coaching, metabolic typing, functional exercise and stress management techniques that, when combined, provide an extremely powerful health solution that, as a side effect reduces body fat, blood pressure, cholesterol and kinetic chain dysfunction.

Like many fitness professionals, I fell in love with my own creation and expected others to do the same when they heard about and was bitterly disappointed when very few people seemed to enquire about my leading edge services.

Luckily for me, I realised early on that whilst people loved The POWER Principles™ and the results they got from using them, absolutely no-one was searching for them on the internet and, in all honesty, were unlikely to do so for quite some time until they become far better KNOWN than they were.

They were, however, searching for fat loss and weight reduction and ways in which to get smaller and, in their language ‘more toned´ than they were and so my Look Great Naked ™ and Drop-A-Dress-Size™ programs were born, both with The POWER Principles at their core but speaking to the public in such a way that they immediately understood and, importantly, liked what I was saying.

Did I sell myself out?

The thought did occur to me, after all, The POWER Principles we´re, quite literally, my life´s work and it felt strange to take it ‘mainstream´ and sell it through fat loss programs but then, rather than sharing them with a handful of people who searched specifically for the holistic approach, I managed to share the system with literally thousands of people who would never have tried it otherwise.

Now, everyone from A-List actors to Athletes and Pop Stars to Polar explorers KNOW, LIKE and TRUST The POWER Principles and do much of my marketing for me through the incredible results they gained.

So back to you.

Are you truly giving people the opportunity to LIKE you?

Are you talking their talk?

Are you solving their problems (or the ones they believe they´ve got)?

It simply comes down to this; people LIKE people who are like them. Be as much like them as you can without selling yourself out and they´ll LIKE you and liking you is a long way toward…

...Trust!

It doesn´t matter how many people KNOW you or even LIKE you, if they don´t TRUST you they´ll never take that all-important final step and buy from you and, if they don´t do that, then all your efforts have been in vain.

Similar to liking, you can´t make someone TRUST you. Trust can only be earned.

Luckily, the process of earning TRUST is a pretty straight-forward one, though that doesn´t imply that it´s easy, just that there´s nothing too complex about it.

First, you got to tell the truth. In all things.

Believe it or not, it´s harder than it sounds, especially when it comes to making your sales letters and ads sound more appealing.

The tendency is to hype, exaggerate, fib and, well, lie.

And as soon as you do, even a little, you´ve just made a withdrawal in that TRUST ‘bank account´ that you´ve been building up with your prospect. Make enough withdrawals and they´ll be all out of TRUST and the sale will never take place.

On the flip side, tell the truth, even when it´s tough to do so, even when you screw up (and you will) and even when to do so costs you more than you want to pay and you top-up the TRUST account in your prospects and they´ll forgive you and buy from you again in the future.

Second, you MUST keep all of your promises.

This means that you must be outstandingly good at what you do and capable of delivering the results you promise when you promise with consistent reproducibility. In other words, you need to demonstrate excellence, not just average service.

If you have a guarantee or risk reversal in place and you fail to deliver, don´t try to wheedle out on some fine-print clause.

If you promise to deliver a program, an article or a product then do it in the stated time or else, at the very least, hold your hands up and take responsibility for failing to do so. Don´t make excuses, cast blame or pass the buck.

Trust is the glue that binds a client to you, your products and your services. As long as the TRUST bank account is high, there is little perceived risk in doing business with you. Let it dip though or, heaven forbid, go into the red and even the best product in the world will sit gathering dust on the shelves.

In Summary

The principle of KNOW-Like-Trust sounds like one of those ‘stupidly obvious´ concepts that almost don´t need to be spoken about and yet, the number of people actually using this obvious principle is far lower than you might imagine with the only evidence of their practical usage being amongst those who´re already experiencing great marketing success.

That being the case, I challenge you to apply the KNOW-Like-Trust rule to your own marketing efforts over the next thirty days focusing on getting yourself KNOWN by the largest possible audience who have problems within your area of expertise, getting them to LIKE you by talking their language and telling them what they want to hear and then filling up that TRUST bank account by telling the truth and keeping your promises.

Forget about trying to sell, forget about trying to close and work on KNOW-Like-Trust for just 30 days and I guarantee that when you finally apply your sales and closing techniques, you´ll sell more of your products and services than you´d ever believe possible.

Trust me! : )