Seriously though, there are a few things I think marketers casually banty about as if they were psychological fact which really bother me… And there are others which tell only HALF the story.

So let’s start there with…

UNUSUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL MARKETING FACT #1: “Impulse Isn’t Everything”

Impulse isn’t everything.

Yes, it’s true you’ve gotta appeal to the Lizard Brain with greed, lust, envy, jealousy, etc in order to induce action on your offer. (Which is one of the reasons I’m fond of saying “try to appeal to the lizard brain without seeming like a lizard”)

But the other half of the story is,  this only produces TRIAL BUT NOT NECESSARILY REPEAT…

Satisfying the lizard brain is only PART of what we need in this world…

As sappy as it sounds, the other half is help mastering our environments, our relationships, our place in society, and life as a whole.

Don’t get me wrong, you won’t get ANYWHERE trying to sell people self-actualization, self-improvement, or simple self-mastery solutions unless you can link them to the lizard brain…

It’s just that lizard brain satisfaction is a necessary but not sufficient condition for REPEAT purchase and customer loyalty.

So it’s not enough to sell luster and shine if you’re selling shampoo…

Or even to sell the emotional end benefit (I feel attractive)…

To really take the market you need to sell the aspirational character… how your product is going to MAKE YOUR PROSPECT INTO THE PERSON THEY WANT TO BE…

Think L’Oreal “Because You’re Worth It”: when a woman buys L’Oreal, she’s not just trying to look sexy, she’s supporting a character trait which translates to self-care across a wide variety of life areas… she’ll also more likely invest in vitamins, a gym membership, life insurance, a spa, etc

Or think Gillette “The Best a Man Can Get”:  a guy’s not just buying Gillette razors to get the cleanest shave possible, or to attract a desired mate… he’s partaking of the best the world has to offer alpha males, and this informs WHO he wants to be across market categories

Or Intel “Intel Inside”:  when you buy Intel, you’re not just getting a high speed processor, you’re committing (whether you know it or not) to recognizing, developing, and leveraging the value of intelligence across many areas of your life…

Or Kodak “Share the Moments, Share the Life”:  when you buy Kodak, you’re not just getting sharp pictures, or even crystallizing memories… you’re committing to family and community as a value you want to demonstrate as a person… it enhances your sense of participation in life with others, and re-affirms your desire to build more of these relationships as part of WHO YOU ARE AS A PERSON…

See what I mean?

These brands engender MASSIVE REPEAT PURCHASE and loyalty because they’ve managed to integrate themselves with the user’s aspirational self image!

What you should be asking yourself now is, WHAT KIND OF PERSON DOES YOUR PROSPECT BECOME when they purchase your product or service?   Is your advertising set up to support this message?

Onward and Upward in 2012,

Dr. G

PS – When you join Hyper Responsive Marketing Secrets you affirm yourself as a person who gets enormous leverage for their  time  and consistently “organizes and executes around priorities” because you know HALF your profits are driven by only ONE in 2,000 visitors.   This radical paradigm shift not only transforms your business, but syncs with your commitment to apply the 80/20 rule throughout your life to achieve maximum results with minimum time.   Join now

PPS – Keep your eyes glued to your inbox for “weird psychological marketing fact #2″, coming soon.

Anyway,  I’m walking through the supermarket looking for some organic greens (yes, I know, I’m a total nerd), but I couldn’t quite find the right section.

One of the employees walked right up to me and said “can I help you find something sir?”

I had NO idea how he knew to ask, because I thought I was walking in a very determined manner towards the side of the market where I thought I’d most likely find the greens.

“How did you know to ask?” I said.

“Well”… he said…

“My boss always reminds me ‘we don’t sell anything on the ceiling’”

I smiled, took his directions, and walked out with my greens.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the interaction.

There was a LOT of marketing insight in “We don’t sell anything on the ceiling”:

• This was a business that was proactively looking for customers with unmet needs who could be sold more…
• This was a business which had identified the VERY PARTICULAR SIGNS these customers unconsciously emanated…
• And a business which had trained it’s employees to recognize and act on these signs..

I was very impressed, and walked out a satisfied customer.

Which got me thinking…

How do WE identify customers ready to buy, if only we could direct them to what they’re looking for?

How can we train all of our employees, customer service people, etc. to be alert for these people,  to know how to attend to them, and be motivated to do so?

I’m not quite sure of the answer on this one, so I thought I’d ask YOU.

What do you think?

Anyone got any experience?

Enjoy!

PS – Cheat sheet here

This is a continuation of last Thursday’s Guest Post on Kaizen in Internet Business – which is well worth reading.  The author (Ryan) is one of my more successful students who used the original HDYB process to develop a $250K business, and, now after direct coaching from me since January is about to launch his second business, which I firmly believe will be much larger.  (Disclaimer: please see the Full Testimonial and Results Disclosure on GlennCoach.com for typical results) Ryan is the ONLY person I’ve ever let guest post to this date, which tells you something about his abilities, character, and work ethic

—————–

LESSON 1 (Part II): The “Kaizen Mind Trick”

In the previous post, I talked about using a relentless, methodical Kaizen approach of incremental improvement to achieve big gains in your business.

It’s an approach that enabled me to grow my first internet business from $0 to $25,000 per month in 18 months.

And I strongly recommend anyone who isn’t making the progress they’d like to be making in their business to consider adopting a similar mentality.

Now, what I covered in the previous post is sort of like Kaizen on a MACRO level.

But there’s a WHOLE other side to Kaizen — And it’s something that almost NOBODY talks about within the internet marketing world.

And it has to do with Kaizen on a MICRO level: How Kaizen affects your brain.

As a marketer who also has a background in neuroscience, this is a question I’ve explored with great interest. And in doing so, a few years back I happened to stumble upon a deceptively simple, but extremely powerful “Kaizen Mind Trick” which I now use whenever I find myself reaching a “sticking point” in my business.

And in a moment, I’m going to share that exact technique with you, because I think YOU might be able to benefit from it yourself the next time you get stuck in your own business

But first, I want you to think about the following question:

WHY does Kaizen work, exactly?

I mean, on one level, it works… because it works, right?

It’s common-sense. A self-evident truth. Something we marketers take for granted — like the effectiveness of split-testing, for example.

But think about it for a minute:

WHY is it that when you start thinking small, you’re able to achieve big results?

To answer that question, it actually helps to take a quick look inside your brain:

To your brain, any changes you make in your life – even the positive ones – are scary, because they deviate from your safe, comfortable routine.

And, when you attempt to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means, those attempts often fail because big changes heighten anxiety — which in turn activates the primitive “fight or flight” fear response controlled by a structure in your midbrain known as the amygdala.

(In fact, this fear response should be more accurately described as the “FREEZE or fight or flight” response. Because it’s why we tend to procrastinate — or suffer from “analysis paralysis” — when we feel stressed, anxious or overwhelmed about taking that next big step toward our goals…)

Now here’s the thing:

When you activate your primitive fear response, you ALSO restrict access to your cortex — the “thinking” part of your brain — which is responsible higher cognitive functions like creative problem solving and rational thought.

BUT…

When you start thinking in terms of making positive change through tiny, incremental, steps (or in other words, the Kaizen way) you’re actually able to bypass your brain’s fear response, engage your cortex, and therefore stimulate your creative problem solving ability.

The result?

You start making rapid progress toward your goals.

Now with all that mind, here is the deceptively simple, but powerful “Kaizen Mind Trick” you can use to take advantage of all this on a practical level:

Whenever you find yourself procrastinating, having trouble getting started, or simply feeling “stuck” on something in your business, just ask yourself the following question:

“What’s the next immediate step I can take that’s so small it would be impossible to fail?”

*The KEY is that it is HAS to be something that’s SO small, and SO basic that you literally CANNOT fail. (This is absolutely CRITICAL.)

For example:

Say you’re feeling overwhelmed about writing your next sales letter — and you find yourself having trouble getting started.

Simply ask yourself the question:

“What’s the next immediate step I can take that’s so small it would be impossible to fail?”

Your next immediate “impossible to fail” step might be something like typing one character in your word processor. Or opening up Microsoft Word. Or even just turning on your computer.

When you’ve reached the step that makes you feel silly and think, “Well, duh! Of COURSE I can do THAT..” then you’re on your way.

It has to be something THAT basic.

Because here’s the thing:

Once you’ve convinced yourself to type that one character, and realize “hey that wasn’t so bad” you can convince yourself to take that next “impossible to fail” step — which might be typing a single word. And when you convince yourself to do that, you can convince yourself to string together a single sentence.

And before you know it, you’ll discover that not only have you overcome your writer’s block, but you’ve got two pages worth of stuff down on paper without even realizing it.

Now, if you try the technique and STILL find yourself struggling to get moving on something, dreading the activity, or making excuses for not doing it, the solution is this:

Just cut back the size of the step.

It’s really as simple as that.

I cannot emphasize enough how critical this strategy has been to the progress I’ve been able to make in my business so far.

Coming from a regular guy, I’ll tell you that the Hyper-Responsive process WORKS.

It really does.

But where I think most people struggle is EXECUTING the entire process from start to finish because of all the different component parts.

The secret to success? Break things down into one “impossible to fail” step at a time.

Really, that’s it.

And if you STILL have trouble to get yourself moving — here’s a little something I remind myself of to help get my own butt in gear:

You can ALWAYS correct a poor decision, but if you do NOTHING, you can NEVER get the time back

Until next time — to your continued success!

Ryan

===========

GLENN SAYS:    Ryan will post PART III of this series in the next few days.  We’d love to have your questions and comments below.

Ryan will also shortly be working with me to provide Hyper-Responsive Process Coaching at a little more than HALF my personal rates, and we should be ready to take clients before the end of the week.   I’m happy to say the NEW coaching format will also include a level with PHONE time as many people have been requesting this.  If you’re interested, please get on the priority notification list at the bottom of my coaching letter… we’ll email that list 24 hours before the main list when the slots open.   (Space will unfortunately be very limited, please do get on the list if you’re considering it)

* ANONYMOUS IMPLEMENTATION SURVEY:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/296821/Implementation-Survey

I’m developing a series of FREE teleseminars to help with the actual IMPLEMENTATION of the marketing principles and strategies that I teach.

If you have any specific questions or issues on which you’d like to receive additional coaching, guidance, or clarification from me — then I’d love to hear what topics would be most helpful to you.

Would you kindly take 2 minutes to help me out with this quick survey?

Much appreciated, thanks!

G:-)

* ANONYMOUS IMPLEMENTATION SURVEY:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/296821/Implementation-Survey

You all know I’m really just a big hairy teddy bear, but my work is pretty intense. I suggest looking at your marketing landscape very carefully, putting numbers on it, and burying yourself in all the valuable free information you can get before you start throwing money at your marketing problem.

Know why I do it?

Because it’s a jungle out there, and it’s only getting worse.

1 Billion+ people online and growing, but only 21 slots on the search engine results page (11 paid, 10 organic) for any given market. And we all know you gotta be on page #1 or you’re building billboard in the woods.

Brutal!

Someday, as competition heats up and more and more advertisers get online, you won’t be able to make a dime without doing what I suggest, I’m sure. And all the bright shiny objects will vanish in the wind.

But for now, I’ll reserve my work for the few and the proud.

Care to join us? (price goes up on Friday)

The result is (hopefully) an upwards evolving click through rate associated with a continued creeping in of new and/or better benefits, or better language the primary benefits offered by the Adwords ads, at least until you reach a point of diminishing returns and it becomes difficult to raise your CTR any higher (usually because you’ve hit on an ad which convinces most of the qualified people you COULD get to click to do so).

With me so far?  It’s all good.

Now, here’s what hardly anyone does, … and by hardly anyone I mean, like, almost no one.

• In the 20% of adgroups responsible for 80% of your traffic, you should NEVER let your split tests grow your Click Through Rate without making a corresponding change to your landing pages. (This implies, of course, that each of these top 20% adgroups will need their own landing page!)

Let’s think about this in plain English first.  Suppose you’ve got an ad like:

Natural Migraine Relief
A Fast and Effective Migraine
Treatment You Can Take Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

And this ad links to a landing page with a headline that says “Finally, a Fast and Effective, Natural Migraine Treatment You Can Take for Relief Tonight”. Furthermore, because the headline on the landing page is CONGRUOUS with ALL the benefits promised in the ads, conversion is likelydecent.

If the above were an opt in play, I’d venture to guess we’d see about 3% click through (keyword = “migraine relief”) and a 20% conversion.

So far so good right?  (I haven’t said anything you don’t already know).

But here’s what happens in most people’s accounts when they start split testing…

They improve the CTR of the ad BY CHANGING THE BENEFITS AND LANGUAGE, but they then make NO corresponding changes in the landing page.   So they run a split test in Adwords and find something like this (same keyword):

Natural Migraine Relief
A Fast and Effective Migraine
Treatment You Can Take Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

CTR = 3% (original ad)

Herbal Migraine Relief
Safely Kill Your Migraine with
All Natural Herbs Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

CTR = 4.7% (test ad)

Now this would be a VERY positive test except for one thing… they neglect to change the landing page.  And so the user clicks on the winning ad with the expectation of finding out how to “Kill” their migraine with “All Natural Herbs”, but finds something only about 70% congruous with this (same as before “”Finally, a Fast and Effective, Natural Migraine Treatment You Can Take for Relief Tonight”)

They think “wait a minute, where’s all that stuff about ‘killing’ and ‘herbs’?

And as a result, conversion goes DOWN.  Oh sure, they still get SOME conversion because the landing page still talks about an effective, natural treatment for migraines, and ultimately that’s what the user was looking for… but we’ve eliminated all of the intelligence we’ve gotten from the split test result by refusing to use the LANGUAGE AND BENEFITS we’ve learned take priority for this audience.

Something like this most often happens:

BEFORE =  3% CTR x 20% CONVERSION

AFTER  = 4.7% CTR x 15% CONVERSION

You wind up erasing at least part of the gains you make in CTR with a corresponding decrease in CONVERSION by letting the split test erode CONGRUITY.  (And sometimes it does more than partially erode the gain, it down right decimates it, or puts you in a worse position than you were to begin with)

This is the answer to the seemingly impossible “AdWords Catch 22″  where it seems like every gain in CTR is offset by a corresponding loss in conversion.

Moreover, when you DO obsessively address congruity between ad and landing page (at least in the 20% of adgroups responsible for 80% of your traffic) you’ll find it’s much easier to make the SALE, not just get the opt in.

That’s because keeping congruous landing pages is the exception, not the rule in Adwords.  Don’t believe me?  Go check out a dozen Adwords landing pages in your market and compare them carefully to the exact promise of the ads that took you there.

Do you see the opportunity?

Short story?

• Link your top adgroups to their own landing pages
• As you make split testing gains, try changing the landing pages to match the evolving promise in the adwords winning ads

Get rewarded with all those blessings conferred on advertisers able to garner high CTR and CONVERSIONS… an evolving dominance of your particular corner of the internet.

Hope it helps,

Dr G

COURTESY NOTICE: Lock in your rates today, the price is going up on January 1st: hyper-responsive club. Watch over my shoulder as I develop a real business.   Learn how to conquer a market with focus and determination, not the tricks and bullshit “lifestyle business” mirage painted by the majority of internet gurus today.    I’ve been around a long time, run a marketing agency, consulted for dozens of Fortune 500 clients, and entered 17 markets profitably.  And I’m still delivering approximately 6 hours of step by step education for less than most marketers charge for 2.   Make 2010 a banner year with the hyper-responsive club (lock in your rates forever before the price raise on January 1st)

PPS:  I rarely speak at seminars anymore, but  I’ll be SPEAKING in Maui, Hawaii at Perry Marshall’s Advanced Adwords Retreat.  Won’t you meet me there?

Rob Sieracki, the Director of the Pay Per Click department at Rocket Clicks, has innovated a VERY interesting and immediately useful paradigm for finding NEGATIVE KEYWORDS in your market.

You haven’t heard this before, and I’ll be shocked if anyone spending more than $100/mo in AdWords doesn’t save money within a week after watching this FREE NEGATIVE KEYWORD WEBINAR.

Enjoy!

PS – We finally nailed the webinar reply audio-visual issue … this one is very easy to watch.  Click here to watch the FREE NEGATIVE KEYWORD WEBINAR.

PPS – The Free Quality Score Webinar is also still available.

This is a FREE PDF CHEAT SHEET meant as a follow up to the Content Network Curse MP3

Also, if you haven’t yet listened to “Maximum Adwords Results in Minimum Time“,  I’d strongly recomment you visit that post and grab the MP3.

Do me a favor … spread this one around?  (Forums, emails, etc)

Last – we’ve got our waiting list down to only 2 weeks now if you want to free up your time and make more money by letting us manage your PPC accounts.