Info-Preneuring:
How to be
an Information Multi-Millionaire
by
Robert G. Allen
Welcome to the business of selling
information. I call it info-preneuring. (An info-preneur is
an entrepreneur who sells information.) It is the most exciting
business in the world. If you do this business right, within
a few months, total strangers will be sending you money for
your ideas…. even if you think your ideas are worthless!
First of all, who am I and why
do I think I can teach you all of these things? My name is
Robert G. Allen. In the 80’s I wrote 3 best-selling books….two
of which made it to the number one spot on the New York Times
best sellers list. My first book, Nothing Down: How to
buy real estate with little or no money down, became the
largest selling, longest running financial hard cover book
in history. It has been revised twice with the current edition
entitled, Nothing Down for the 90’s. Nothing Down still
sells well nearly 20 years after I wrote it. My second book,
Creating Wealth, was also a number one NY Times bestseller
with over a million sold. I am currently writing a new book,
Multiple Streams of Income, scheduled for release in 2000.
It, too, will be a major best seller.
In conjunction with my best-selling
books, I also taught seminars nationwide on the subject of
real estate and creating wealth. Over one million people have
been to my free preview lectures nationwide. Of these, 103,000
people paid me up to $500 to attend my weekend Nothing Down
Seminar and 20,000 people paid me up to $6,950 to attend my
5 day in-depth WealthTraining. This is in addition to the
millions in tape, video and newsletter sales.
I think I can safely say, that
no one in the world knows more than I do about creating an
information empire from scratch.
I have hoarded these secrets
for years, never revealing how I accomplished so much in so
little time. I didn’t do it all alone of course. Nobody makes
it to the top without mentors and a powerful Master Mind team.
What I learned from my mentors and from the School of Hard
Knocks cost me millions but it was worth every penny. It has
only been recently that I have decided to share this powerful
body of knowledge with a few highly motivated individuals.
What you are now reading is the preliminary draft of some
of the ideas which have made me and my partners literally
tens of millions of dollars.
It’s a tough business if you
don’t know what you’re doing. But it can be extremely lucrative
and very rewarding when you’ve learned the ropes.
Good luck, my friend. May you
sell a million!
Get in the fast lane on the Information
Super Highway.
In case you haven’t noticed,
the world is experiencing an information explosion. Before
the turn of the century, the majority of the households in
North American will have access to hundreds of channels of
interactive television giving every customer instant unlimited
access to information, communications and entertainment.
In addition, there are tens of
millions of computer screens hooked up to the net
.yours included.
The Internet is exploding. People are communicating and sharing
information like never before.
Staking your claim in the great
info-rush of the new millennium.
Who is going to provide all of
the programming for the 500 channels, the on-line data bases,
the hungry airwaves? You are! You are the source of the ideas,
information, data and entertainment to fill the voracious
appetite of millions of info-maniacs.
Profits in the shift from the
information age to the communication age.
The serious money in the future,
however, is not just in providing information or raw data.
We are already drowning in information. We are on information
overload. We are data drunk. The problem is not a lack of
information or ideas but a lack of information that is packaged
properly. Your job in the future is to convert the mountains
of raw data into specialized knowledge presented in a way
the consumer can assimilate and use quickly:
Specialized knowledge packaged
properly
organized
simplified
beautified
systematized,
personalized
interactive
multi-media
delivered to your house
ready to use
on demand
instantly.
Time is the currency of the new
millennium. Time is our most valuable asset. Since all of
us are already on information overload, with too much information
to absorb and too little time to absorb it, we all will be
looking for information that is "time friendly."
We won’t want to waste time ready, studying, reorganizing
general data to fit our unique circumstances and problems.
We’ll want information we can USE NOW, FAST AND EASY.
The best way to distinguish your
information from the hundreds of competitors is to emphasize
the most important competitive advantage: YOUR INFORMATION
MUST BE SIMPLE, EASY TO USE AND PROVIDE FAST RESULTS.
Your advertising should emphasize
this.
Being well-informed in the age
of information "haves and have nots."
The future is being fired at
us at point blank range and we will need to react in lightning
quick time. Those who react slowly will find themselves amongst
the "information have-nots."
In order to be prepared to understand
how to deliver your information in the fastest, easiest way,
you must be technologically up to speed or you will be left
in the dust. The information business is moving at Mach 2.
You must be computer literate and you must teach your children
and employees to be computer literate. Your customers will
demand it and your competitors will force it. You can’t hide
your head in the sand and hope the storm blows over. It ain’t
gonna blow over. It’s only gonna blow harder.
How to turn you expertise/passion/hobby
into lifetime streams of cash flow.
Now, with all of this talk of
the billions being spent on the super information highway,
you might be a bit intimidated. You might wonder how "little
old you" can compete with the big boys. How can you sell
your ideas, you life’s expertise in the face of the media
moguls? Fact is, anyone with a good idea, persistence and
some savvy can make a million dollars selling information.
You don’t need a huge advertising budget and a staff to spend
it. All you really need is
An interesting
story
or
An expertise
that people want
and
A powerful
marketing plan
The Book Within: Everyone has
at least one good book in them
It is my firm belief that everyone…including
you….has a least one good book in them. When you’ve finished
reading this special report, you’ll realize that you have
enough information and experience in your head right now
to turn into a lifetime stream of income. You have a book
in you that is just waiting to be unleashed.
With some proper positioning,
your book can become the cornerstone of an information empire.
An information empire? Yes. And I’m going to prove it to you.
The next time you wonder whether
"there’s gold in them thar hills," remember the
example of 75 year old Walter Swann from Arizona. A few years
ago he wrote a book about growing up in Arizona with his brother,
Henry. He called his book "Me and Henry." Sounds
like a money making title, doesn’t it? But no publisher would
publish it. So he published it himself. But no book store
would buy it. So opened his own book store. But his book store
is unique. It only carries one title…..that’s right, "Me
and Henry." He calls it the One Book, Book Store. The
only book you can buy in his book store is "Me and Henry."
Dumb idea, right? Wrong. He sells thousands of books world
wide. And makes thousands of dollars a month from this one
simple idea. In fact, business has been so good that he has
written another book. This one is called, "Me and Mama."
It’s also for sale in a special room in the One Book Book
Store. It’s called the Other Book Book Store.
What I want you to realize is
that you, your life story or your life’s expertise have market
value. It may have enough market value to support you for
life.
Turn your life story into money….even
if you’ve been a miserable failure.
Almost all success books start
off with a miserable failure. The author tells how he or she
used to be fat, poor, ugly, unhappy, lonely, addicted and
through some miracle, will power or new found knowledge was
able to overcome failure and rise to the heights of success.
Let me give you some pretty impressive examples,
Author Title Subject
Tony Robbins Unlimited Power
Success
Susan Powter Stop the Insanity
Diet
John Bradshaw Homeward Bound
Self Esteem
And the list goes on and on.
Each of these info-preneurs used the story of their rise from
the ashes of failure to create an information empire. Each
of them now produces books, seminars, newsletters, tape programs,
video courses, speeches, consulting relationships and infomercials.
They turned their failure to success story into millions of
dollars.
Everything that has happened
to you, good or bad, has cash value.
Do you ever wonder how those
famous stars on those diet commercials are able to take the
weight off and keep it off? How do they do it? Where do they
get the will power to lose all that weight and keep it off?
Think! If someone offered your a half a million dollars to
do a diet commercial, wouldn’t you be able to find the motivation
somehow?
Now take this to the next logical
conclusion. What if someone offered you ten million dollars
to turn your life around right now. How much would it take
for you to be motivated to perfect your relationships, to
get in shape, to get your financial act together, to be a
top salesperson, etc. What if you decided that YOU ARE THE
BEFORE AND AFTER STORY? Fix yourself then you, too, can market
your new-found "know how."
You don’t even need a unique,
new system. It can be old knowledge, repackaged and remarketed
in new ways. Look at all the diets out there. There are only
3 variables in the diet game: food, exercise and mental attitude.
Susan Powter, in her hugely successful diet infomercial and
book, "Stop the Insanity!" doesn’t teach
anything new. She teaches old stuff in a unique way. And MAKES
TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS DOING IT!
The formula is pretty simple:
Identify a Core Human Desire/Need
Find new technology for solving
this Core Desire/Need
and/or
Find a new way to market to this
Core Desire/Need
Let’s look at Tony Robbins. Why
is he so successful? He has identified a core desire/need
(The need to achieve success. ) He applied a new technology
(Neuro-Linguistic Programming). He used himself as the BEFORE
and AFTER story. He used a new way to market (Infomercials).
And the rest is history.
You don’t have to do it on such
a grand scale. You can be like Walter Swann and his tiny One
Book Book Store. The point I’m trying to make is that one
mediocre idea with some good marketing power can generate
a lifetime stream of cash flow. And with some luck can turn
into millions of dollars. Everything in your life has value.
The failures. The successes. It’s all part of the equation.
And if you want to get paid millions
of dollars….start trying out how to turn your life around
now and then tell the rest of us how you did it.
My story: How one simple idea
grew into a billion dollar business.
The above formula is exactly
the same one I used to take in over a hundred million dollars
over the past 20 years. I wanted to become successful…to
be wealthy. So I applied myself to real estate in the late
seventies after I got out of college with only a few hundred
dollars in my pocket and no job. In a few short years I had
make a lot of money in real estate. I started sharing some
of my ideas with friends and they were very interested. They
started using my ideas and began making a lot of money. I
wondered if anyone else might be interested and ran a small
classified ad in my local newspaper. It offered to teach them
How to Buy Real Estate with Little
or No Money Down.
The phone rang off the hook.
I taught small classes at first, then graduated to large weekend
seminars, then, wrote a book, which helped to promote the
seminars….then, on to newsletters, tapes, videos, newsletters,
etc.
The concept of real estate investing
was as old as the hills. What I added to the equation was
to take old techniques and to repackage them under the banner
of a single, sexy concept, Nothing Down. Here is the result,
2.5 million books at $20 = $50,000,000
100,000 seminars at $500= $50,000,000
20,000 trainings at $5,000= $100,000,000
Other misc. stuff= $20,000,000
$220,000,000
That’s over two hundred million
and counting, just through my businesses alone.
Then, with all of the knock-offs
of Nothing Down from Dave Del Dotto, Tommy Vu, Carlton Sheets
and dozens of other copy cats, the tally goes into the hundreds
and hundreds of millions of dollars. During my lifetime over
a billion dollars is going to be dug out of the mine shaft
called Nothing Down real estate. It was A BILLION DOLLAR
IDEA!
Billion dollar ideas are floating
around in the air right now. You have one or two every day.
The key is to learn how to crack the code, to discover the
combination to the vault. Using new technology or a new marketing
angle, you can tap into your own billion dollar idea.
How to make at least
$1,000 a day selling "how-to" information to eager
info-maniacs.
Once you "crack the code"
and find that your idea or product has uncovered a hungry
market, the next step is to roll out your marketing to different
marketing media. I first started in the classifieds. Then,
I graduate (fearfully) into display ads in the newspapers.
My first ad was $300. I thought I was betting the farm! This
brought even more business. Then, I graduated to full page
ads in the newspaper. (Which really scared the heck out of
me. Imagine dropping $10,000 on a single, one time only full
page ad. If it works, you make good money. If it doesn’t work,
you just burned up ten grand or more. An associate of mine
dropped $60,000 in media for a large seminar on the day before
of a major Los Angeles earthquake. $60,000 down the drain!
Ouch!)
From full page ads, my highly
skilled marketing team moved into television advertising.
The infomercial for the Nothing Seminar in the early 80’s
was the very first successful infomercial ever produced. It
was created by Roger Larsen who is the pioneer of seminar
marketing and one of the geniuses of the business. I was so
lucky to have found him and to have been able to work with
him for so many years. I have since created and starred in
9 different infomercials. Some with great success and others
total failures. Ironically, the cheapest ones seemed to make
the most money.
With a winning idea, and many
different media to market it, we then branched into the many
related support products….bringing in millions of more dollars.
Once you uncover a mother lode of ore, you can spend the rest
of your lifetime digging it out….as I have done.
With a few minor adjustments,
this is going to be your same trajectory of success. But before
you launch this new business, I just want to educate you to
the fabulous benefits of being in the information business
as compared to any other business that you might be tempted
to get into.
"The Best Business in the
World: Benefits of selling Information
Unlimited world wide market
Easy to research
Easy to create
Easy and cheap to test
Easy and cheap to produce, inventory
and correct.
Low cost start-up
High perceived value
High mark up
Mobility: Operate from any mailbox
in the world.
Copyright protection from competitors
Prestigious, impressive career.
"I’m an author."
Satisfying: A permanent record
for future generations.
I can’t think of a more satisfying
career than producing information products. They are easy
and cheap to create and produce, fun to sell, and do so much
good for the consumer. I get success letters from hundreds
of happy, satisfied customers each year who share their great
gratitude for what using my ideas has done to improve their
lives. I keep pinching myself.
"You mean, I can get paid
for this?!"
There are 3 Essential Skills
that you need as an info-preneur.
Skill #1. Research and
creation expertise : How
to research, discover, acquire, organize your ideas.
It all starts with a core expertise.
What do you know that we don’t? Or who do you know that knows
something that the rest of us need or want to know? You don’t
have to spend years learning a core expertise. You can find
some expert who is under-marketed and take his or her idea
to the marketplace. Just remember to organize this information
in the communication age style….easy to learn, simple to
use, fast results.
Skill #2. Packaging expertise:
How to express,
display, package, communicate yourself
Sometimes the line between success
and failure is razor thin. I know of an info-preneur who spent
years and tens of thousands of dollars creating a product
called Compact Classics. He had taken and condensed all of
the great classic books in fiction and non-fiction into a
two page format. Instead of taking weeks to read the original,
you get the meat of the book in only two pages. Only one problem.
No one would buy it. And thousands of dollars went down the
drain. Until it got repackaged and retitled. The new title?
The Great American Bathroom Book.
The idea caught on and a millions
dollars later, the idea is still pumping out cash. By the
way, you can buy the same book with either title. If you are
the high brow type, you order the Compact Classics title.
If you are the Larry Lunch Bucket type, it’s the Bathroom
book. But neither market would have enjoyed the book if some
savvy packager hadn’t "cracked the code."
Here are some core packaging
skills you will need to develop, rent or acquire:
Find the best prices for materials
Designing useful, interesting
packaging.
Creating low cost ways to organize
your materials
Skill #3. Marketing expertise:
How to sell, distribute, disseminate, promote yourself
and your product.
Marketing is the essential skill.
You can market junk with right marketing campaign. Quality
work is doomed to remain stuck in your computer data banks
unless you learn how to market it. Here are some core marketing
skills which you will have to buy, rent or acquire:
Writing compelling copy
Understanding psychology and
human nature
Learning the secrets of direct
mail advertising
Buying the best and cheapest
advertising.
Tracking your results.
Managing a database.
Tapping into the Internet
How to find the millions in profits
overlooked by most info-preneurs.
You don’t need to be an expert
in the above skills, but you do need to align yourself with
the leading experts. For instance, suppose you go to a local
church meeting on parenting because you are having trouble
with your teenagers. You find the room is filled to overflowing.
You realize that you are not alone…there are hundreds of
other parents in your same predicament. A light bulb comes
on in your head. AHA! Here is a hungry market place. You listen
to the speaker and see that his material is perfectly organized
for the communication age….it appears to be fun, fast, simple.
It promises swift results and is easy to learn. You go home
and try a few of the techniques on your own teenagers and
Voila!, you have them eating out of your hand in no time.
Hmmmm! There might be something here. You call the parenting
seminar leader and find he is just a mom and pop operator.
He doesn’t have a clue about marketing, packaging or promoting.
You ask him if he would be willing to let you market him…on
a non-exclusive basis. It could mean a few extra thousand
in his pocket. He agrees and you draw up an agreement. Then,
you assemble your copywriting experts to create an preliminary
ad campaign…. first testing in direct mail and limited classified
ads. The ads start to pull. You branch out onto the Internet
and your web page is deluged with "hits." You realize
that you’ve got a tiger by the tail. You create your product…..tapes,
books, seminars….and roll out your marketing blitz. You
make money, your expert makes money and your information empire
is launched.
What made all of this possible?
You recognized a great idea. You got the rights to market
it. You brought in your team to help you capitalize on it
and all of you took wheelbarrows full of money to the bank.
Most experts out there have no idea how to create, package
and market their expertise. There are literally thousands
them out there waiting to be "discovered." You might
be one of them.
5 Rings of Riches: The
vast opportunities that await all info-preneurs.
One of the least understood concepts,
even by successful info-preneurs, is how vast are the opportunities
for making money from just one good idea. I’ll explain this
to you by teaching you what I call the 5 rings of information
riches.
Think of your info-business as
a series of 5 concentric circles. At the center is the bulls-eye….or
the first ring.
Ring one. Succeeding
in your core expertise.
You must have a core expertise
that is either a revolutionary new technology or is an old
expertise that has a new marketing strategy. My core expertise
was real estate investing. I became very good at it. Therefore,
I could teach it to others. As I said earlier, you don’t have
to be the expert yourself. But you do need to borrow, license,
acquire the expertise from someone. You are looking for an
expertise that has a market that meets the following characteristics:
Finding a hungry marketplace
A large and growing body of interested
people
Who can be easily identified
Who have an immediate need/want/problem
That they are highly motivated
to solve
Who have the money to spend
And are willing to spend it
In an economic climate that encourages
spending.
Think of your market as a school
of fish. Does your market contain enough fish? Is it a growing
or declining school of fish? Is it easy to find where they
are and what their feeding pattern is? Are they really hungry?
Is the weather cooperating for the ideal fishing conditions?
Is there a certain bait that makes them "bite like crazy?"
Are they willing to come out of the safe, dark depths of the
bottom to fight for this new bait?
Cracking the Code!
Once you have identified your
market and your expertise then, the process of "cracking
the code" begins. What I mean by cracking the code, is
to find a way to offer your expertise in such a way that the
fish "rise to bite."
Real estate investing was not
new. But offering to show people how to buy it with little
or no money down was just the right bait at the right time.
There was a large and growing school of baby boomers who were
moving into their prime home buying age in the late seventies.
Inflation forced house prices upward and created increased
incentive to buy now. The climate was right, the school of
fish was hungry and they needed to buy. My information was
perfect. Now, later in the eighties, the climate changed,
inflation died, government tax laws discouraged investment
and the baby boomers moved on to other interests. This doesn’t
mean there aren’t still millions to be made in real estate
or in real estate information. But the "feeding frenzy"
is over, at least for now. You are looking for a situation
where feeding frenzy is about to begin.
Basically, there are no real
new or totally unique human needs or wants. They have been
the same for millennia. Sex, money, self esteem, health, relationships,
beauty, greed. Your information should tap into one of these
universal wants/needs and whip up a large and growing school
of fish into a feeding frenzy.
The title you select, the words
you use to market your information, the benefits your information
offers, the way it is packaged will cause this to happen.
Once you have discovered the right combination of message
and media, you have cracked the code. Then, you are ready
to move to the next ring.
Ring Two: Teaching others
specific know-how to succeed in your core expertise.
First, I made money by investing
in real estate (Ring One) Then, I taught others how to succeed
in real estate just like me(Ring Two). There are about twenty
ways to sell this Ring Two information. In other words, there
are twenty separate $100,000 Plus a year businesses that result
from having cracked the code. Here is an incomplete list:
Ring Two businesses growing
from your core expertise.
1. Author: Selling
information to other publishers.
2. Desktop publisher:
Self publishing for yourself or others.
3. Seminar promoter:
Selling information in seminars.
4. Public speaker:
Selling information from platform.
5. Telecommunicator:
Selling info via 900 #s, teleconferences.
6. Newsletter editor:
Selling info in monthly format.
7. Computer programmer:
Selling info via discs and CD’s.
8. TV producer:
selling info via TV infomercials/shows.
9. Personal consulting:
Selling personalized, one/one info.
10. Professor/teacher/trainer:
Education, corporate, public.
11. Freelance writer:
Selling info in magazine articles.
12. Syndicated columnist:
Selling info in newspaper.
13. Media expert:
Informing those who inform others.
14. Talk Show/Info host–
radio or TV.
15. Magazine publisher:
Packaging info in magazine form.
16. Game designer:
Selling info packaged as a game.
17. Calendar creator:
Selling info packaged as a calendar.
18. Product designer:
Selling info on T-Shirts, mugs, posters.
19. Licenser: Licensing
expertise/name/ideas to promoters.
20. On line expert:
Producing on line services and products.
21. Audio Cassette Marketer:
Creating audio programs
22. Internet expert:
Show people how to market on the net
Most successful info-preneurs
have only tapped into half a dozen of the above businesses.
They are leaving millions of dollars on the table. Once they
see the big picture, they are more able to capitalize on the
opportunities around them. Then, they are ready to expand
into the third concentric circle or what I call, the Third
Ring.
Ring Three. Using your
specific experience to teach general success skills to your
market place.
For example, one of the greatest
salesmen in the world, Zig Ziglar, honed his sales skills
selling pots and pans. But there wasn’t a large and growing
market of hungry pots and pans salespeople to which to market
his expertise. Therefore, he became a general expert in the
broad field of sales training. He went from specific expertise
to general expertise and made millions of dollars. Mary Lou
Retton won gold medals in the 1984 Olympics for gymnastics.
There wasn’t a big market for her information to other gymnasts.
She now delivers general success and motivation speeches to
corporate audiences worldwide – on the subject of how to be
a gold medal performer. She makes huge speaking fees and enjoys
a nice info-preneuring income from her Third Ring. Other Third
Ring opportunities are listed below:
Success trainer on the subjects
of:
Success and Motivation
Leadership
Goal Setting
Time Management
Sales Training
Management
Team building
Stress
Business consultant on the
subjects of:
How to run a successful business
Entrepreneur ship
Advertising
Marketing
Strategy
Financial Analysis
Computer services
Marketing your services on the
internet
There are literally thousands
of successful Third Ring info-preneurs nationwide. Harvey
MacKay with his best-selling book How to Swim with the
Sharks and a host of other books is one example. He made
his fortune in the envelope business in Minnesota. What do
envelopes have to do with you? Nothing. But he claims that
his great success in the envelope business has given him the
right to teach us all kinds of general success principles
in the areas of sales, management and positive attitude. And
he makes millions turning his specific know how into general
how to information.
Ring Four: Marketing other
products to your database.
Once you have attracted a growing
satisfied customer data base, you may approach your data base
with other products and services. For example, my original
data base is comprised of people who have attended my real
estate seminars. But in reality these people are entrepreneurs
who like to explore other money making opportunities. I can
mine more money from my data base by pursuing 4 separate routes:
1. Mailing list rental agency.
I could rent my list out to other
similar, but non-competing businesses to try to sell their
products. Some lists generate hundreds of thousands of dollars
in list rental fees to the primary info-preneur. There’s a
gold mine in those names! That’s why it’s so important to
gather and take care of every name you do business with.
2. Lead generator for other
businesses:
I could identify all non
competitive ancillary businesses that serve my database
and use my influence to convince my clients to buy other
products. For example, someone comes to me with a seminar
on Discounted Mortgages. They tell me that they will pay
me $1 per name for every name on my database for the privilege
to use my data base for marketing their products. This
is without my endorsement. My customers do not know that
I am involved. They just receive a mailing piece for the
product and choose to buy or not buy.
This could be even more lucrative
if I choose to write an endorsement letter encouraging
my customer to use the product. This is called an "endorsed
mailing." Of course, the seller of the product is
much more acceptable to my database if I give a hearty
endorsement so the fee for this privilege is higher.
3. Joint venture partner:
In some instances, you may even
choose to split profits on the sale of a product to your data
base. In one seminar arrangement, I split profits 50/50 with
a seminar promoter who sold a seminar to my database. I appeared
at the seminar and gave a hearty endorsement for all of my
graduates to come. In this case, the profit generated was
much higher.
4. Direct marketer
If you have built up a great
relationship with your data base you may even influence them
to buy other products that the ones you are known for…..even
totally unrelated products. I have sold cruises, other seminars
and various financial products. If they trust you, they will
buy.
Ring Five:
Support Services to Info-preneurs in other 4 rings
At the outer edge of the 5 concentric
circles is Ring Five. Some info-preneurs don’t service the
general market. They focus on other info-preneurs. Once you
get good at marketing information, building data bases, taking
care of your customers, etc. you may also wish to share your
new expertise with other info-preneurs. If you were an especially
gifted copy writer, you may want to hire out your copywriting
services to other info-preneurs. You see, whatever your experience
in life, there is always a market for it. So keep all of your
ads, your tracking procedures, keep everything that relates
to creating your successful business. Eventually, you may
want to use it again in teaching others how to do what you
did. The following is a listing of at least 20 support businesses
for info-preneurs:
Printer
Copywriter: selling specific
advertising concepts
Audio producer
Editorial services
Mailing list broker
Graphics artist
Ghost writer
Speech coach
Literary Agent
Venture capitalist
Infomercial producer
Infomarketing coach
Video reproduction
Cassette duplication
Advertising agency
Public relations
Book reviewer
Researcher
Information broker
Computer strategist
Internet webmaster
Web consultant
Examine these ideas often when
you’re doing about strategic thinking about the direction
of your new company. For instance, as you look down the list
of Ring Two opportunities, which one strikes you as your lead
businesses and which ones will you follow with? You may be
interested in teaching seminars and using that as a base to
establish a consulting business and from there into a newsletter
business. Or will you write and market your own book, and
then follow with seminars and newsletters. Or will you write
a newspaper column which gives you leads to sell a home study
course? You choose the info path that fits your personality…but
eventually you will expand out to all layers of depth in each
of the 5 rings.
The Info-funnel: Attracting lifelong
customers into your inner circle
Now that brings us to probably
the most important concept in all of information marketing.
I sure I didn’t originate this concept but I have certainly
developed it to meet my own understanding of the business.
Let me explain by describing
how we found customers for our real estate seminars. First,
we would place a newspaper ad to invite people to come to
a free 90 minute seminar or lecture. Out of all of the universe
of people who might be interested in real estate investing,
let’s assume that 200 people showed up. These people became
part of my funnel. Those that didn’t show up were outside
my funnel. By come to the free seminar, the 200 people demonstrated
that they were "warmer." They were willing to expend
effort to learn more. In sales terms these were "prospects
or leads." They were warm leads but had not yet spent
money. We knew that a certain percentage of the audience would
always buy a seminar right there on the spot. For a $500-1,000
seminar it could be as high as 20%. Generally, it was 10-15%.
Just looking out at the audience we knew that at least 10%
had come there that night ready to do something. Those who
bought and came to the weekend seminar became highly qualified
leads…… they had tasted more of the product, had liked
it and now were likely to buy other products or seminars.
Visualize the free people at
the wide, open part of the funnel and those who attend the
two day seminar further into your funnel and finally the few
who get everything you have to offer…..passing through the
narrow part of the funnel …..into your inner circle. These
are your lifetime customers….your groupies. They like what
you do and they’ll be lifelong fans. These are your most valuable
customers.
Determining the LTV of a customer
in your funnel.
Just what is the value of a customer
who enters your funnel and stays in there for a long time?
Tom Peters says that every time a Federal Express courier
comes into his office, the driver should see $180,000 stamped
on the head of the secretary. His small firm of 30 people
has a $1,500 a month courier bill. That’s $18,000 a year times
ten years for a total Long Term Value (LTV) of $180,000. And
if the secretary convinces just one other customer to start
using the service, the value doubles. But most mail couriers
think that the value of the customer is just the $13.95 they
spend today. Each of your customers is worth thousands of
dollars if you’ll take care of them….much more than the
initial $20 book or $500 seminar. The ultimate goal is to
keep that customer loyal to you and your products for ten
years or more so that, by offering great service and value,
that customer can be enticed to remain forever. The longer
they stay, the deeper they go, the more money you make.
Sometimes you can afford to lose
money on the front end in a free seminar or a free report
in order to entice a customer into your funnel where you can
offer more profitable services. So, the funnel starts out
with your least expensive items at the open end of the funnel
and ends with your most expensive item at the other end. Frankly,
this is one of the reasons that you are reading this free
report. I realize that many who read these very words will
file this report in some forgotten folder and forget about
it. But a few, sharp readers will want to know more. Ive
designed a power way to work with a few of you
to help you
get started on your road to information fortunes. Just by
requesting this free report, you will receive more information
on how you and I can work together to launch your information
empire.
How to Find Customers and Keep
them.
Remember what my friend, Mark
Victor Hansen, taught me:
"The sole purpose
for your business is to Find Customers and Keep them."
The key to keeping customers
in your funnel is to develop a long term relationship with
them. A customer on your database is not just a name on a
computer. It’s a real person with changing and evolving needs
and wants. They don’t exist in a static world where nothing
changes. They are being constantly bombarded with a hundred
other options. You need to do whatever it takes to keep them
loyal to you….and keep them out of your competitors funnel
because the long term payout is so great.
Any marketer will tell you that
the hardest and most expensive sale is to a new, cold customer
who has never heard of you before and has never tried your
product. The cheapest, easiest sale is from a satisfied customer.
If you want to have a real tough time in business…..if you
want each sale to be hard and expensive…then play the old
game of "find the new customer." You cannot survive
in the competitive in the new millennium by constantly being
forced to find new customers. You must make it easy by taking
care of the ones you find….and making it easy for them to
tell their friends.
Building a million dollar database
relationship with your valued clients.
Here is a specific example on
how building a long term relationships with your most valued
customers can pay off big. It comes from a great book on marketing,
The Great Marketing Turnaround: The Age of the Individual
and How to Profit From it. By Stan Rapp and Tom Collins
published by Prentice-Hall. I quote from page 62.
"The mid-sized Ukrop’s (supermarket)
chain, with 18 stores and a 25% market share in the Richmond
area, was facing increasingly tough competition. The area
had experienced a 25% increase in the total number of grocery
stores and supermarkets in just 5 years. Looking for a competitive
advantage, brothers James and Robert Ukrops……set up a
test program. A mailing was sent to households near the test
store, inviting them to become a Ukrop’s "Valued Customer"
and enjoy "Automatic Savings Without Clipping Coupons."
Members would receive a bar-coded plastic card to be presented
and scanned each time they made purchases. And they would
get a monthly statement listing the "electronic coupons"
and rebates automatically credited to their account based
on their purchases of brands offering special deals at the
time –and telling them which product purchases would qualify
them for additional credits. Every three months, members would
then receive a voucher for credits earned, and it could be
used like cash at Ukrop’s. They sent out 5,000 test mailings
and signed up 7,500 customers- a 150% response and direct
marketer would envy! Within three months, overall sales volume
in the test store had risen 10%, and two-thirds of the sales
were coming from Valued Customers. Within two years Ukrop’s
had expanded the systems to all of its(now 20) stores, and
was mailing out to 196,000 members each month its newsletter,
Ukrop’s Valued Customer News."
Did you notice what made the
new program so successful? They made shopping easier, simpler
and more profitable. Automatic savings without clipping coupons
saved their customers time and money. Brilliant! No wonder
they had a 150% response.
It has been said, "Sell
the sizzle and not the steak." I say, Sell the sizzle
BUT DELIVER THE STEAK! AND the salad AND the
hors d’oeuvres AND the dessert AND the after dinner drink,
AND the limo ride to and from the restaurant.
TAKE CARE OF YOUR CUSTOMERS.
THERE’S A HUGE BOUNTY ON THEIR HEAD!
Whether your selling widgets
or information, you must create a relationship with your clients
whereby they feel that you are their ultimate source for everything
they want in life.
If you are in the information
business, proclaim yourself as their information source…as
their data detective. You can follow them for life and refine
and adapt your database to their changing lifestyle needs.
In the early eighties the baby boomers on my data base wanted
nothing down real estate. But as they moved through the decade
they became consumers for dozens of other information products
such as:
How to invest/make money
How to find bargains
Retirement planning
Estate planning
Mid life crisis counseling
How to make 200% per year in
the stock market
Making a fortune on the Internet
By tracking their needs, as their
information detective, I am able to supply to them what they
need at all the various stages of their life. Once they are
in my funnel, I try to keep them there forever.
Just how quickly can you turn
an idea into cash?
Well, having established this
foundation, let’s explore a 12 step Getting Started Action
Plan so you can get some cash flowing into your life. Do you
remember the definition of a straight line from you days in
math class? It is the shortest distance between two points.
So what is the definition of a money line? It is the shortest
distance between an idea in your head and a check in your
mailbox. Suppose you wanted to see how fast you could turn
an idea in your head into cash. What would the actions steps
be? There are at least 12 of them:
12 Step Surefire
Getting Started Action Plan
Step One. Identify/create a database
that matches your P/E ratio.
If you want to prosper in the
information business for a long time, you should be marketing
information that matches your passion and your expertise.
I call this the P/E ratio. It is possible to market information
that you are not passionate about. But at the very least you
should be an expert in that subject. Conversely, it is possible
to market information that you are not an expert in….but
at the very least you should be passionate about it. Better,
of course, to be a passionate expert.
Let’s suppose your subject is
making money fast….. a subject that you are passionate about
and have some expertise in. You would like to share this information
with the world and make millions doing it. The first step
would be to find a data base of people who have shown an interest
in money. By exploring the Standard Rate and Data Survey publication
at your local library you can see lists and lists of publications,
newsletters, magazines, etc. that cater to people who are
interested in making, saving and investing money.
By consulting with one of the
many list brokers advertised in Direct Marketing magazine
or from a referral source, you try to identify a current mailing
list of potential customers for your information. The characteristics
of this mailing list should match what we discussed earlier:
your audience should be a large and growing school of fish
that is hungry and ready to be whipped into a feeding frenzy.
If you have an existing data
base of your previous customers, you should probably test
your new idea on them first. But if you are starting from
scratch, then you’ll have to build a new database from the
names of your closest friends, family members, the groups
or associations you belong to, your co-workers and anyone
else you meet for the rest of your life. ( Other than finding
and keeping customers, the most important function you must
perform as an info-preneur is to constantly build your database.)
Using your current customer data
base or a cold list, as selected by your list broker, you
need to determine the profile of your ideal customer. Who
is your target audience? How old are they? Where do they live?
What are their interests? What magazines do they read?
Of course, the Internet is the
hottest place to build your own database rather than rent
one. Notice how we acquired your name. You must have visited
my site and requested to receive my netletter along with 3
special reports. I hope youre enjoying the free information.
Ive tried to give great value for you click. Every time people
request the free information, I acquire their e-mail address.
And periodically, I send out a special netletter packed with
more money making ideas. This builds a loyal customer base
that has specifically requested information about my subject
.how
to make money.
Ill never forget when the power
of an internet database was demonstrated to me for the first
time. A colleague came to my house to show me how to make
money from the Internet. I was expecting it to take days
.but
I was astounded with what happened. He typed in a short message
to his growing e-mail subscriber list offering to sell them
one of my tape packages
.normally priced at $60
.for only
$30
half price. I agreed to the low price as a test
.realizing
that at this price my costs would be covered and I could still
earn a modest profit. He sent the e-mail to a small list of
his Internet newsletter subscribers and within seconds, the
orders started pouring in
people giving their credit card
numbers in their e-mails wanting the special offer. I was
amazed
.it was so easy.
The power of building an internet
data base is that most people will NOT be interested in your
offer at any given time
.but that a tiny percentage will be
VERY interested. Suppose you have a list of only 1,000 people.
What kind of response would you need to make $1000 a day.
Only one person in a thousand to buy your $1,000 hands-on
training, two people for your $500 home study course. 4 people
for you $250 special package deal, 10 people for your $100
kit. You only need a 1% response rate!!!!!! And the larger
your list, the more money you make
or the lower response
you need in order to make at least $1,000 a day!
The key is the list. Now, you
are on my list. Eventually, Ill offer something that is so
enticing, so valuable, so interesting to you, so rare that
you, too, will want to be one of the few who take advantage
of that weeks special offer. And well both win.
So, how do you create such a
list?
Step Two. Discover what information
is vital to your chosen database.
This is called market research.
Just what do your customers want? Have you ever asked them….called
them up on the phone? Are you trying to sell them what they
want or what you think they need? Ask. Ask.
Ask. Find out what information is vital to them and how they
want that information.
There are many levels of information.
At which level do your customers want to be informed?
Do they want raw data? (i.e.
the number of foreclosures in Los Angeles County or the number
of cars on the freeway at rush hour.)
Do they want preliminary
information? (i.e.
A special report on the main causes of cancer in females over
50 and how to prevent it.)
Do they want in-depth know-how?
(A complete home study
system on how to raise happy and healthy children.)
Do they want skills training?
(A hands-on experiential 5 day training on how to be a successful
public speaker.)
Do they want personal consulting?
(Toll free or face
to face coaching on how to invest your personal money in stocks.)
The deeper the level of information,
the more expensive the product. How much information do the
want? How much are they willing to pay? These are all important
questions and you would do well to ask these questions to
a hundred people before you ever put your fingers to the typewriter
keyboard.
Step Three. Discover
who is already providing information to your database.
Ask your target database where
they are currently obtaining their information. Your objective
is to discover who are the top information providers in your
subject. Who are the best? They must be doing something right.
Make a list of the top 5 information providers.
Step Four. Discover how the 5
best communicate/sell to your target database.
Call up each of your top 5 information
competitors. Pretend to be a customer ask each of them to
send you their sales literature. Ask where they are advertising.
Find out, if possible, how they get their leads. Solicit their
mailing pieces. Visit with their top salespeople. Let their
telemarketers try to sell you. What benefits do they emphasize?
What features do they brag about? Gather information. Let
your subconscious simmer about it.
Step Five. Discover what info/service/feature
is missing from above.
Let their salespeople sell you.
Become a customer. Get their product. Rip it apart. What makes
it so special? Is it a matter of design? Is it a matter of
marketing? Find out their strengths. Probe for weaknesses.
Notice how other upstart competitors are making inroads into
the market share of the top 5 companies. How are these smaller
companies surviving? What do they say to draw away customers
from the big boys. What niche are they exploiting?
Ask your target database what
they don’t like about your competitor’s product. Ask them
what they would add to your competitor’s product to make it
perfect. Ask them what they would delete from your competitor’s
product that is not necessary. Ask them to design it exactly
the way they want it.
And remember, at the top of the
list of competitive advantages is ease of use and quick results.
Step Six. Create a competitive
advantage. Position your product better.
Remember, people are lazy. If
they have a choice between easy and hard they’ll take easy
EVERY SINGLE TIME! If they have a choice between fast and
slow, they’ll take fast EVERY SINGLE TIME. If they have a
choice between simple and complicated, they’ll take simple
EVERY SINGLE TIME. If you can provide these things at a price
that is a bit lower than your competitor, odds are that you’ll
steal a bunch of business.
Now, a word about competition.
Sometimes a beginner starts with what he or she feels is a
unique idea and naively rushes off to start a business. Soon
they discover that someone else is already marketing this
idea…sometimes with a very similar title…and they get
discouraged.
First, understand that there
is an enormous number of people in the world. If you can just
entice 1/1000 of 1% of the population in North America (that’s
2,500 clients!) into your funnel and take care of them…..you’ll
probably be set for life. (Remember the LTV of a customer.
If each of your customers spends just a $1,000 with you over
the next ten years, that’s TWENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS!)
Second, remember that big companies
can get knocked off by smart competitors who start from scratch
with long, long odds of success. MCI is doing extremely well
against ATT. Federal Express is doing extremely well against
the US Postal Service. Compaq computer company is doing extremely
well against IBM. The Discover Card is doing extremely well
against MasterCard and Visa. Even Robert Allen did extremely
well against all the other real estate books and seminar operators
that I leap frogged over in the 70’s and early 80’s. New technology
and super charged marketing can deal a mortal wound to your
competitor. Just because they’ve been around for 100 years
doesn’t mean you should go back to your day job.
You should read the book "Positioning:
The battle for your mind." by Trout and Ries. Great book.
It will teach you how to position your "David" product
against a "Goliath" competitor.
When you are done positioning,
your product must be better. Emphasize your competitive advantage
in such a way that makes your competitor’s product appear
obsolete. MasterCard did this with American Express. "It’s
everywhere you want to be." Their ads showed how American
Express is not accepted everywhere.
"When you absolutely, positively
have to have it overnight." Just saying that emphasized
the fact that the US Mail was a dinosaur and that Federal
Express was the new pony express. People were willing to pay
50 TIMES the price of a first class stamp just to get their
information 3 times faster.
To gain a competitive advantage,
your information must be,
faster
cheaper
smaller
simpler
easier
more efficient
prettier
more secure (guaranteed)
more features
better value (combining features)
better design
better service
more advertising
better advertising
more available
Step Seven. Create your ad.
As I said before, marketing is
the key. Having determined your competitive advantage, you
have to create advertising that causes people to ACT! I go
into great detail on this subject in my advanced course on
Info-Preneuring (Call 1-801-852-8700 for information.) We
cover the following information:
Advanced Impact Marketing:
One Powerful ad can make you a fortune.
How to get your message across
in the overcrowded airwaves.
How to get your customers to
beg to do business with you.
Ethical strategies for persuading
anyone to buy from you-NOW!
Breakthrough results: 10 ways
to double your ads response rate.
You ad should emphasize the Ultimate
benefit your product promises. What is the amazing miracle
cure your information can provide? Dr. Jeffrey Lant, one of
the leading experts in selling Information Products says that
some of the major Ultimate Benefits are:
Financial Stability
Health
Love
Security
Salvation
Self-regard
Community and peer recognition
Independence
Sexual fulfillment
Beauty/desirability/ personal
attractiveness
The headline of your ad should
promise an Ultimate Benefit as well as your competitive advantage.
The copy of your ad should describe as many other benefits
as you have space to describe. Of secondary importance in
your ad are the features of your product.
What is the difference between
benefits and features?
Features describe your product.
Benefits are what your customer gets when they use your product.
When you talk about your product, you are doing "feature"
selling. When you talk about results, you are "benefits"
selling.
For example, when airlines want
to sell you airline tickets to Hawaii, how do they do it?
Do they describe the kind of aircraft you’ll be flying in?
Do they brag about the airline meals? Do they describe the
leg room? Or do they show you pictures of palm trees, sand
and sun? Palm trees are benefits. Leg room is a feature. You’ll
get more people to Hawaii with palm trees.
Features are for the head. Benefits
are for the heart. Features are about logic. Benefits are
about emotion. Emotion will outsell logic ten to one. Logic
may be an important part of the sale….but only after you
have engaged their emotion.
There is a lot more about marketing
than I can cover here. It is, in fact, a lifelong study. There
are shortcuts, however. Tricks that we pros have learned.
Words that can double sales. Phrases that can cause your phone
to ring off the hook. Strategies that can cause people to
beg to do business with you…..as impossible as that might
sound to you now.
When you see me speak to an audience,
you will see people literally leap out of their seats to do
business with me. After speaking for many years, I have discovered
and perfected a scientific set of principles that cause people
to take action immediately. These principles work EVERY TIME!
I hope I can have a chance to share this information with
you personally.
Step Eight. Rent your target
data base for a limited test.
When your ad is done, you are
ready for the test. Start cheap. Try regular newspaper classifieds
or on-line data base classifieds. Cross your fingers. Let’s
hope your phone never stops ringing.
Step Nine. Test until you find
a message that pulls at least a 1% response.
What makes the Internet so perfect
for information marketing is the free classifieds. There are
thousands of places where you can place your free classified
and test the response your ads at ZERO cost. Its incredible.
But even classifieds in normal daily papers are relatively
inexpensive. And once you discover an ad that pulls, you can
run it in one of 7,000 different newspapers.
Step Ten. Test many different
media to see which is most productive
Try newspapers, try magazines,
try periodicals, try newsletters, try the Internet. Some will
produce gushers of cash flow. Others will be dry holes. It
may take months of testing to discover which is which.
Step Eleven. Roll out your marketing
campaign in a major way.
Step Twelve. Test other Ring
2 versions of your winning info-product (ie. CD-ROM, newsletter,
seminar, etc.
Once you have a winning ad for
a winning product and you have rolled out your marketing campaign,
it is time to start strategizing the next versions of your
information. If you’ll look back to the 5 Rings of Riches,
you will see that there are 22 ways to sell your information
in Ring 2. Ironically, each different version of your product
will have a different price range and will reach totally different
audiences. Just like hard cover book buyers are totally different
from paperback book buyers, so are CD-ROM buyers different
from audio cassette buyers. And happily, some of your regular
customers may want to have your information in several different
formats….one for the car, one for their CD player, one for
their computer, one for their night stand, one for library,
one for their telephone, etc. If they love you and your information,
they’re going to want all of you they can.
Well, that about covers the broad
subject of Info-Preneuring. I’ve tried to touch all of the
bases and give you the big picture. There’s much more to learn
but this should give you enough information to convince you
that you should jump into this with both feet.
One last word of advice. On my
office wall I have a sign. It says,
I make money by writing words.
The more I write, the more I make. Therefore,
Write 1000 words today!
I have calculated that whenever
I write a word on a page….like this one….and get it out
to a customer….like you……. I eventually make $20 per
word. If I want to eventually bring in a hundred dollars,
I write five words. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. There, that
was $100. If I want to make $1,000, I just write 50 words.
500 words equals $10,000 and so on.
Why do I make so much money for
every word I write? Because every time I write a best-selling
book, it is placed into tens of thousands of bookstores. Every
time a book sells, I not only make the 15% royalty of the
cover price of the book (usually about $3 per book) but I
have secret ways of capturing the name of the book buyer…..who
now becomes part of my Info-Funnel….who now is offered more
of the products I have lovingly created for him or her….who
then tells three or four friends about me….who then go out
and buy my book….who then get enticed into my info-funnel…..who
then, go tell their friends….and so on, and so forth. So
that every word I write eventually results in somebody
sending me money…..at least $20 for every, single word.
So, you see, I don’t get writers
block. Ever! Whenever I have to make a decision about whether
to watch some worthless T.V. show or to sit down at my computer
and write my 1000 words today……my computer always wins
the battle.
If you knew that you could make
$20 a word, wouldn’t you be more motivated to write your 1,000
words right now.
Why are you still reading?
Get writing.
(P.S. My computer just did a
word count in this special report. There are 10,189 words.
This is good. Very good.)
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