Came a rather timely… question:
Hi ben,
If I start from scratch with my biz the strategy Traffic > Optin > Email > Sales Letter still does it works in 2023? Or It’s better to add a for ex. a Fb Group to have more “Intimacy” with your new audience?
Thanks for your answer 🙂
True story about this:
Back in 2008 at one the founding father of online marketing (Ken McCarthy’s) System Seminars, he did a joint session with Lloyd Irvin (who was doing something like $15 million per year in the martial arts school market, I think), for newbies and beginners.
One of the questions was similar to the one above:
“Do I need to be using social media, YouTube, etc?”
Ken’s answer:
(paraphrased)
“Go ahead and use all that if you want. But realize the vast majority of the money in direct response on the internet is still made — and always has been made — with an opt in page, sales page, and relentless email followup.”
That was 2008.
And if anything, this is even more the case in 2023.
Especially with everyone diddling around on social media.
The irony:
What works in direct marketing in 2023 (build list and mail it) is exactly what worked just after 1903 when John E Kennedy told Albert Lasker (the two founders of direct response marketers as we know it) what the definition of advertising is.
I doubt 1 in 10,000 online marketers even know who those guys were.
Much less what they said.
Nor will they bother to look it up.
But this has got to be one major reason why a lot of younger people who I see up in this business are frustrated & broke. Why so many desperately chase clout on social media via trying to troll their intellectual & professional superiors. And why a lot of the more bitter ones I’ve seen are about as persuasive & engaging in their limp-wristed social media-dependent businesses as a mouth breather sending dick pics to women on dating sites.
Just the end result of growing up with participation trophies probably.
A plight neither I or anyone I deal with regularly was ever burdened with.
But it does seem to be a thing amongst a lot of the yutes.
Anyway, no need for anyone in that situation to stay that way.
Awareness is half the battle.
So anyway, build list, and mail it.
To learn how to write emails to mail that list go here:
Ben Settle
