The Most Violated Marketing Rule

I call it the “Pearls On A String” lesson. And it is the single most-violated marketing rule I see among the people who come to me for advice.

Let me use two real-life examples: I have a very bright client I’ll call Dr. R. He had a thriving multi-headed business when he found me... but when he started out all he had was a bitchin’ advertisement and one product that he’d slaved over and developed himself. He went to Jay

Abraham for advice on what to do next for the business. Jay said, “What do you mean ‘next’?

You don’t have a business. You have an ad.”

It was a major wake-up call. Dr. R realized instantly that he was only dreaming he was a real marketer. He was, rather, a guy who lucked out by finding a copywriter who wrote him a killer ad for his lonely, decent-enough product. While money was flowing in hot and heavy, he felt like the smartest businessman on the planet. But when the ad started to fatigue -- as they all do -- and orders dwindled to nothing, he realized he had no Plan B. He was at risk of becoming a one-hit wonder.

Example number two: A current smart-ass colleague I call “The Fortress”. He has never sweated more than a couple of hours over creating any one product -- instead, he spends all his time getting very savvy, very quickly, about marketing tactics. He always has several projects simmering on the stove at the same time... and he will instantly walk away from anything that doesn’t easily produce outrageous profits in a short time.

And never look back.

The Fortress is a lazy, brilliant marketer. Exactly the opposite of most entrepreneurs, who believe the product is the most important part of the mix. Well, it isn’t. It’s the marketing that counts.

The Fortress doesn’t consider himself an expert in any field except marketing. If he wanted to hit the chiropractic market, he knows how to create a great product and advertise it like a champ... regardless of the fact he knows nothing about chiropractors yet.

If he decides the tennis market is hot for plundering, he can go after that one, too. At the same time. Never held a tennis racquet in his life. Just knows how to market.

Think of your business as a string of pearls. If the first pearl doesn’t pan out, you simply slide it off the string and toss it... and slide the next one forward. This is not how most entrepreneurs work. They fall in love with their product, consider it their “baby”, and will empty their bank accounts struggling to make it become a home run winner... when, objectively, it doesn’t stand a prayer of even becoming a bunt single.

Don’t get overly-attached to your product. If you want to stay in one market, fine -- but sell a whole bunch of products designed to appeal to that market. Have an arsenal of front and back ends going. Don’t get hung up on just one “baby”. And if you’re really smart, you’ll be constantly testing other markets on the side.

Remember Dr. R? The guy with one product, and one ad? Well, he got hip a long time ago. And he now has dozens of different products that he successfully sells to many wildly differentmarkets. He has broken the code on using a certain type of “blitz” marketing tactic to slaughter all competition in literally hundreds of ripe markets. The ones he passes up are hotter than the main target markets of many entrepreneurs.

And even if that first market -- which he loved and wanted so badly to crack -- becomes a threelegged pack mule where profits are thin and the effort to get them too dire... he will dump it like a used Kleenex.

John Carlton, http://www.marketingrebelrant.com/

2,239 Tested Secrets For Direct Marketing Success : The Pros Tell You Their Time-Proven Secrets