The GREATEST marketing secret ever?

The GREATEST marketing secret ever?

I'm going to share what I consider the greatest marketing secret ever.

First here's the definition of "Golden Rules": It's a concept or tactic that you can apply to almost any website and get a pay raise (bump in conversions).

What I want to reveal is what I call "The Golden Rule of Golden Rules".

It's the "Golden Rule" that never dies (and always changes)...

Here it is: The most effective form of advertising is marketing material that does NOT look like marketing and APPEARS to be valuable.

And the next level of that idea is:

The most effective form of advertising is marketing material that does NOT look like marketing and IS VERY valuable whether they buy or not. In other words, your marketing IS valuable. They're learning something from it just by watching it or reading it.

Why is this so? It's because NOBODY wants to feel like they're being sold to. There's a natural resistance to it.

Now here's a critical integration: -- once that "new style of advertising" is seen repeatedly it loses it's effectiveness because now everybody knows that IT IS marketing.

Here's some examples of this in action:

Over 100 years ago, Claude Hopkins created a beer advertising campaign that was very successful. What was his secret?

He described in detail the process of making beer. There was NOTHING secret or different about the process itself. What was different was the amount of detail he went into. It made the advertising valuable to the consumer and it did NOT look like marketing.

This process has been repeated dozens of times over the years and decades.

Advertorials were very successful for a long time. People would run magazine ads and newspaper ads that looked and felt like reports. The strategy was to make the the "ad" look like another article. This strategy STILL works today when properly executed.

Then came the evolution of informercials. Kevin Trudeau made his informercials look and feel like talk shows. People tuned in and watched it because they thought it was an informative show. And a lot of was valuable information peppered with good salesmenship.

Now let's talk about internet marketing...

8 years ago -- the world was NOT used to seeing long form sales letters on the web. Those pages did NOT look like the slick "branding sites" that most companies used. So they did NOT look and feel like advertising. Of course, those became less and less effective over time because people now know that those pages are sales letters.

Now -- DESIGN has evolved the long form sales letters to new heights. Successful publishing companies like Mindvalley have reported that they are finding bigger conversion boosts from better designs than better copy.

Here's an even more recent example: video sales letters. When video sales letters came out, they doubled conversions. The consumers were NOT used to seeing these. Once everybody copied those, they became less effective.

Of course, the video sales letters have already evolved: the doodle (live drawings) and more highly produced videos are creating higher conversion rates.

The video sales letters are here to stay. However, you will need to keep creating more and more interesting, valuable, beautiful presentations to keep their effectiveness alive.

A final point is that eventually "what's old is new". In other words, once people FORGET an "overused style of advertising"... you can bring it back and it will feel new and fresh.

So maybe in a few years the "ugly sales letters" will work again?

The main takeaway is: keep trying new things, new ideas and keep evolving your marketing. You may be the one who discovers the next big "golden rule" that changes the advertising landscape