Over the past several months I’ve been hearing from customers bummed out.
Some have gone into long, detailed explanations about watching their engagement drop, their numbers going down, and a rise in marketplace ‘noise’ and competition amongst other things depending on what market they are in, or what market their client is in. Totally caught them off guard, and they don’t know what to do or where to turn.
If that is you I’ve heard your cries, and I will tell you exactly what to do.
You should get excited.
Why?
Because downturns like this have always been an app-solute opportunity for those smart enough to see the signs, and who have the ambition to begin tripling down on marketing/copywriting knowledge acquisition (it is why I’ve been publishing extra-sized and even double & triple-sized Email Players issues the last year and a half… my boys & ghouls will be prepared), list building, service level you provide, the works. People always wait to do these things until things get bad, and then just stand around with their John Thomas in their hands.
Well you can safely put your John Thomas away.
These things are not only cyclical but downright predictable at this point.
For example:
A lot of what happened during the dot com crash is happening now:
Billions thrown at internet startups, artificially inflated valuations, bank loan dependency, dumb money investors backing bright shiny objects like it’s a sport, people who are great at building followings but can’t market their way out of a paper bag pounding their chests about how great they are as they produce shyt products sold by “sock puppet-level” advertising.
But when it all crashed?
It happened fast.
And people legit didn’t see it coming.
Yes, even despite the big flashing warning signs that always precede such events.
A lot of gurus then ended up moving back home and parking cars for a living.
They all thought the party would never end.
Happened again later again with Google AdWords and SEO slaps, draconian Facebook ad rules, Internet Marketing Syndicate collusion, push-send affiliate offers, Salty Droid-inspired goo-roo counter culture rising up… all of which put a big spotlight on the glut of dumb marketers who thought they were smart just because the government made sure credit was easy to access and their customers had money to spend.
Ask yourself where half the gurus and forum chest pounders back then are today.
History is about to repeat again, or at least be a very loud echo.
This time it’s the glut of ‘startups’, e-commerce brands, cold email bros clogging up inboxes all over hell and gone, AI nerds flooding the internet with lies and hype, and dumb money corporate suits paying influencers to shill nonsense to TikTok brain-addled scrollers who have no intention of every actually buying anything. Even if Clown World wasn’t going to draft half these people to fight in the next younger and hotter war, it would all collapse.
It’s inevitable.
Social media has admittedly made the bubble bigger and last longer.
But it won’t end any different than the others.
Just more fireworks, probably.
And all that artificial noise diluting the legitimate voices (like yours) who are doing the equivalent of sock puppet marketing today with their idiotic TikTok videos and hiding behind cartoon avatars being doxed left and right, showing who they really are (i.e., not who they pretended to be)?
They will disappear like a fart in the wind.
It’s already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate.
All of which means:
Now is the time to position your business to profit from the chaos. Now is the time to double down on investing in your marketing education, your lead gen, your networking, copywriting skills, and list building. Now is the time to start building and growing an EMAIL list (not just your social media following). Now is the time to look for problems to solve for the people on that list, find or create offers to sell them that solve those problems, and start growing a real relationship with them.
Something else:
Later this year I will have a course for freelance copywriters wanting help with this. i.e., The reboot of my 10-Minute Workday program — which is a totally different offer, for totally different times like we’re in now, that also is probably about 80%+ different information than the original, as so much has changed since 2016 when I created that.
But in the meantime?
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Ben Settle
