If you need to learn about marketing fast so you can attract more customers, make more money, and grow your business, then stick with me. Because in this episode, I’m gonna be giving you a marketing crash course and sharing ten of the most important things you need to know to go from beginner to advanced marketing expert. Let’s get to it. Hey there.
So if you’re interested in learning the latest and greatest marketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks, and tactics, well, you may want to consider subscribing and hitting that notification bell so you never miss a future episode. I remember when I first learned about marketing, I had no clue what it was. I thought it was maybe something to do with sales or advertising, but that was as far as my knowledge went. But over the years, I became addicted to the art and science of influence and persuasion and started to read, watch and listen to pretty much anything and everything I could get my hands on. Well, nearly a decade later, with thousands of campaigns run, hundreds of thousands invested in training and mentors, and millions and millions of dollars generated for my clients and students as well as the odd failed campaign here and there.
Too. I’ve distilled down into an easily digestible, nice, short video ten of what I believe are the most important marketing lessons you need to know to get up to speed and go from beginner to advanced marketing expert. So if you’re brand new to marketing and looking for a crash course to get you started quickly, or a seasoned marketing veteran who’s just looking for a refresher and trying to get that edge, this episode can help. So with all that said, let’s dive in, starting with number one emotion, then logic. One of the biggest problems novice marketers have when they first get into the field is sort of a misinterpretation or a misunderstanding or belief that people make buying decisions logically rather than emotionally.
And nothing could be further from the truth. We as humans are very emotional and often incredibly irrational people who make purchasing decisions emotionally first and then we justify those decisions with logic and sort of rationalize them after the fact. This is often why marketers and economists have very different views because economists assume that people make perfect buying decisions with perfect information in a perfect environment to maximize their utility. Well, if this was the case, we wouldn’t even need marketing at all because people would already know what they needed and they’d just go out and get that. And it would also pretty much discredit the entire luxury goods market, which wouldn’t even exist.
So we do need to appreciate that people make buying decisions based on emotional factors first because this is going to influence the kind and the type and the style of the marketing that you’re going to use. It’s also one of the biggest reasons campaigns fail when they just come out and hit people across the face with facts and numbers and statistics and math and all of the logical kind of rational stuff. Yeah, of course, that stuff’s important and there’s going to be different people who are going to need it a little more than other people, but it is secondary and it needs to come after we’ve made that emotional appeal to helping someone get to whatever end state they’re after. The key to remember, and one of the most important things, is that when you’re creating your marketing, make sure that it appeals to your target market emotionally first, and then you can always justify and back up and rationalize their purchasing decision for them with those statistics and figures and math and numbers. All right, the second lesson that you need to learn is the direct response hierarchy.
You see when it comes to putting together marketing, and specifically direct response marketing in this case, which is marketing that goes out there and is expecting some kind of immediate response, whether it’s generating a lead or making a sale. Well, when you’re running this kind of direct response marketing, where you’re expecting some kind of result back, there is a hierarchy that takes place and sort of gives weight or preference to different areas of the marketing in general. And let me break that down for you here. 40% of the success of your marketing is going to come down to the list or the target market, essentially the people that you’re targeting. After all, if you’re targeting the completely wrong people, none of your marketing is going to work.
Another 40% of the success of your marketing is going to come down to the offer that you’re making. After all, the best marketing in the world can’t sell a terrible offer that nobody wants. This is why it makes sense. Regardless of whether you’re doing a basic marketing campaign or an online advertising campaign or whatever, you want to make sure that you’re dialing in that offer and making sure that it’s irresistible to the target market. All right, and the last 20% of the direct response hierarchy, well, that last 20% of success, is going to come down to your copy and your creative.
Your copy is all the words, your headline, your body copy, everything that you’re writing out, everything that’s describing what you’re offering, and then the creative is the image or the video or the design aesthetic of it. It’s a bit of a shocker to someone who’s brand new to marketing when they hear this hierarchy understanding that 40% is to the list, 40% to the offer, and only 20% to the copy and creative. Which, again? Explains that we need to be strategic through all of our marketing, really identifying that ideal target market that makes up our list, coming up with a compelling and irresistible offer which makes up your offer and then focusing on the best kind of copy and creativity to get them to take action. This leads me perfectly to my next point, which is that you should always prioritize strategy over tactics.
Basically, like I just covered before laying out your advertising and your marketing and making sure that you’ve got your offer dialed in and you’re targeting the right people. Well, all of that has to do with the strategy, but then kind of changing maybe the font on the headline or switching around the words a little bit, or changing the button color from orange to red or yellow or whatever. Those are all tactics. They can be important, but they’re way, way less important than the overall strategy. That way, way less important.
Like unbelievably less important. You wouldn’t even believe how many times people ask me about button colors when they’ve got the offer and the targeting and everything else wrong. Again, focus on the strategy first. You see when you dive deep into the strategy of your marketing and figure out that overall plan, well, you’ll become a pro or at least have a really good idea very quickly and where you can specialize and where your knowledge is going to have the greatest impact on the success of the campaign. Also, the mechanics of marketing, are relatively easy to learn and figure out and outsource or delegate.
These are things like when to post or post length or different styles, or all the mechanics of putting together social media content or an ad or anything like that. The underlying strategy behind all that, however, that’s the tricky part. So you want to spend your time and energy there. All right, next up is that you need to 80 20 everything. Now, if you’re not familiar with the 80-20 principle or pros principle, it essentially states that 80% of your results are going to come from just 20% of your efforts.
And this is true in marketing as well, with 80% of your marketing results probably coming from just 20% of your marketing efforts. This is why at every single stage of your marketing game, you want to be constantly hunting for that 20% of efforts that are delivering 80% returns and doubling down there. There’s a myth that’s been around the marketing community for as long as I can remember, and that’s the advice to be everywhere and do everything. And this is terrible, terrible advice. You don’t need to do everything.
You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be in a few key places doing a few key things that are likely to deliver the greatest results. The only time it’s even slightly excusable to be doing everything and being everywhere is if you’re trying to find the 80-20 of where you really should be spending your time and money and energy. All right, the next point that I want to make here is that competition is a very, very good thing. After all, having competitors in the space proves that there’s market demand.
I love having competitors because it shows me there’s demand. I’m terrified of brand-new spaces or startups where there’s no demand, there are no competitors, and you don’t know if your product or your service is even going to sell. Way better to go into a market where there’s already an existing customer demand, where people are already buying whatever product or service you’re trying to sell and then just trying to do it better. After all, even the best marketing in the world can’t sell an offer then nobody wants. All right, the next point that you need to be aware of is that different is better than better, which is a great quote by Sally Hogshead, who is pretty much hitting the differentiation nail on the head by saying that you do need to be different to stand out in an incredibly crowded marketplace.
Also, as a quick word of warning, if your business’s unique selling proposition or point of differentiation on how you’re different than your competitors is that you provide better service or higher quality or faster delivery times, well, I’ve got bad news. These aren’t good differentiators because all of your competitors are saying the same thing. And do you know what happens when you sound the same and businesses can’t tell the difference between your business and the competitor down the street, let me tell you. But it ain’t pretty. Customers are forced to make buying decisions based on price alone because this is going to be the only real differentiation.
And when that happens, you get in a lose-lose race to the bottom with whoever gets their first loss. Although I guess you lose if you’re in second too. Yeah, being the second cheapest is the worst value proposition ever. Anyway, the solution here, the alternative is to not compete on price, but rather to compete on some other form or variable that matters to your customers. Find a way to be different, double down on your strengths, and don’t try to compete head-to-head with a competitor on something that you don’t want to win with.
Anyway. The next point is to understand that marketing is all about the customer. The best and most effective and most profitable marketing campaigns are pretty much always customer-centric. They speak their language, they understand their emotions and their needs and their wants and everything they’re trying to get away from, including their problems and their pains and their miseries. And they speak to this perfectly with highly crafted, highly curated, and highly targeted messaging.
