3 Things I Learned At The 2012 Glazer-Kennedy Superconference

Hi gang.  Just got back from the 2012 Glazer-Kennedy Superconference in Dallas, Texas.  Don’t care much for their football team (Redskins fan here) but it is a very nice city.

Oh, and I got to meet the Man himself:

Kevin Hill meets Dan Kennedy

 

I also got to meet Larry Winget, the “Pitbull of Personal Development”. Definitely one of my favorite authors/speakers.

Kevin Hill and Larry Winget - The "Pitbull of Personal Development"

If you’ve never been to a seminar like this, you definitely need to go.  You get to meet a lot of like-minded people and discover a LOT of cool stuff.

OK, enough name-dropping.  Let’s get down to brass tacks.

Here are the top 3 things I learned at the Superconference.  I paid a lot of moolah to attend this event, so I’m really hooking you up here.

1) Get People Offline As Soon As Possible

Yes, email is cheap. But when’s the last time you got ticked off about all the emails landing in your Inbox?  And how many of you have a separate email address just for the “marketing” emails?

The prevailing theme throughout the Superconference is to take people offline as soon as possible. That means collecting their name, addresses, and phone numbers (if possible) and sending them direct mail instead of relying on email.

Dan Kennedy gave several case studies on how some of his clients were able to get up to a 100:1 return on investment with direct mail.

This is mostly due to the tangible aspect of direct mail–as it’s a physical “thing” that comes in the mailbox.  Versus an email that easily gets buried as the day goes on.

Question: How many of your email Inboxes look like this?

Kevin's Gmail Box - Crazy!

That’s right, this is my actual Gmail account.   I get a lot of marketing emails and, as you can tell, I don’t read all of them.

Whereas I’ll only get 1-2 marketing pieces a day in the mail.  And most of these are “one-off” mailings from local companies that are horribly written.

I know I’m going to be implementing direct mail in my own business when following up with clients.   This was probably my biggest takeaway from the entire conference.

Oh, and as an aside, Dan Kennedy consults with some of the largest Internet marketers on the planet.  And you know what? They secretly rely on direct mail to build their business.

Of course, you won’t hear any of these guys advertise this–since they’ll lose the moniker “internet marketer” if word got out.

2) Don’t Be Afraid To Overspend On Leads

Dan Kennedy mentioned that one of the biggest fights he has with clients is they want to naturally find ways to get leads for their business as cheaply as possible.

They want to find out how they can get leads through the search engines because it’s “free”. And they’ll fight over whether or not to put the glossy cover on their 25-page lead generator report–or if a plain black and white cover will suffice.

He said that the more you spend on leads, the more profit you’ll extract from them.  Generally speaking, of course.

For example, you can get prospects to enter their name and email address to download a free report they’ll save to their hard drive–and never read again.

Or you can get prospects to enter their name, email address, and phone number to receive a free physical report in the mail.  Sure you had to pay more money to print out and ship the report.  But now you’ll have the prospect’s mailing address–and a physical “thing” in their possession that serves as a constant reminder of you.

I know one marketer who spent a lot of time and money to get ranked high for a keyword in his niche.  He was able to crack the first page of Google before long and was able to get tons of traffic like crazy.

However, he found that most of these people finding him under that specific keyword were just “looky-loos” searching for free information.

Sure, he built a HUGE email list, but they were mostly freebie seekers who weren’t responding to his offers.

3) Follow Up Both Online AND Offline

You’ve probably heard the marketing axiom that your prospect has to be exposed to your marketing message 7 times before they’ll buy.  And all you have to do is load up 7 emails in your autoresponder and call it a day.

I already covered how email can be easily ignored earlier in this blog post.  Sure it’s easy and cheap, but you’re probably getting bombarded by emails as we speak.    And I’m sure you’ve sent an email to a friend or client–only to find out it got thrown into their SPAM folder.

That’s why hitting your prospects and clients online AND offline is critical.  This could be through a simple monthly newsletter, postcard, or 2-page mailing.  Any Glazer-Kennedy customer can testify to the fact that they do an awesome job of following up through email AND direct mail.

I hope this was helpful to you.  I’m definitely going to be implementing these tips into my business–and you should too.

Take care,

Kevin Hill
“The Professor of High Response”

 

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