Let’s rap about the Bible.<\/p>\n
I diggeth the stories, lessons and history inside.<\/p>\n
And, I loooove on Jesus’ iconoclastic style.<\/p>\n
(Cue up the lone mindless whiner on my list living in his mom’s\u00a0basement, keyboard keys orange from eating Cheetos all day, now\u00a0idiotically thinking I’m pushing religion down his throat…)<\/p>\n
But also, from an email point of view, I like the language.<\/p>\n
Like the figures of speech.<\/p>\n
The authoritative phrasing.<\/p>\n
And, the endlessly swipeable analogies.<\/p>\n
Like the term:<\/p>\n
“uncovering your father’s nakedness” — which means having sex with\u00a0your father’s wife (i.e. your mom, step mom, etc).<\/p>\n
This happens all the time online.<\/p>\n
No, obviously not in a sleeping with fathers’ wives kinda way.<\/p>\n
Talking about the incestuous aspect of online marketing.<\/p>\n
Dan Kennedy describes it like this:<\/p>\n
You go to conventions, meetings, and conferences organized by, put\u00a0on for, put on by, and attended by people in your same business. If\u00a0you go to a strange town, you look in the yellow pages in your\u00a0section to see whatever body else in your business is doing. You\u00a0read books by people in your business. We have a technical term for\u00a0this. It\u2019s called ‘marketing incest’, because it works just like\u00a0real incest in a short of time everybody seems to get dumber and\u00a0dumber and dumber until the whole thing just grinds to a creaking\u00a0halt.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I remember this in the self defense niche.<\/p>\n
I once wrote a ton of ads for the then leader in the market.<\/p>\n
And, at the time, there were certain companies that *seemed* to be\u00a0doing extremely well on the surface.<\/p>\n
(But, in reality, they weren’t.)<\/p>\n
As a result, all our competition was copying them.<\/p>\n
Swiping their ads.<\/p>\n
Using their USP’s and appeals and language and vernacular.<\/p>\n
Even stealing copy from each other.<\/p>\n
What did we do?<\/p>\n
We didn’t care what they were doing.<\/p>\n
Didn’t care what their ads said.<\/p>\n
Didn’t even care to be on their lists.<\/p>\n
What we did was do an intense study not just of the market… but\u00a0of my client’s buyers list — the people actually buying his\u00a0products. Turns out they were nothing like the guys buying from\u00a0Blackbelt Magazine ads, etc.<\/p>\n
Our market was almost the opposite.<\/p>\n
With different desires.<\/p>\n
Different fears.<\/p>\n
And, different motivations.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the point?<\/p>\n
Beware copying what your competition is doing.<\/p>\n
Or what your favorite goo-roo is doing.<\/p>\n
Or, really, what anyone is doing.<\/p>\n
Go ahead and learn what you can from them.<\/p>\n
But, don’t go blindly and mindlessly copying them.<\/p>\n
Don’t uncover their nakedness, babycakes<\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Or, like Ham who uncovered his father Noah’s nakedness… you’ll\u00a0just end up with a nasty curse.<\/p>\n
(On your marketing).<\/p>\n
Awright, on to bid’niz:<\/p>\n
The July “Email Players” issue goes to print in 2 weeks.<\/p>\n
If you want in in time go ye here:<\/p>\n