The Silent Underground Force, Part 1

The Silent Underground Force

There is an underestimated power that speaks but makes no sound; is only found underground but is around you all the time; is invisible and inflammable, yet stores tremendous energy.

It has the capacity to endear customers to you, build pent-up demand; to reward, to punish, to liberate.

It can reveal secret channels of communication others are not privy to. It can disclose secrets, provoke fierce loyalty; it can delight and surprise; assure complete satisfaction.

So...

What is this Silent Underground Force?

It is the lowly autoresponder.

If only I had a dollar for every "Internet thingy" that's been overhyped far out of proportion to its real substance.... if only you had a dollar... you know how the saying goes.

Heaven only knows how many people have tried to pound blood out of stone, getting all those stupid fads and tricks to work.

But autoresponders, pre-timed sequences of email, are UNDER-hyped. And woefully under-used. Oh, and deployed with such little skill.

Sure, everybody talks about how you should have one.

And I'm sure one out of every three online marketers is signed up for some autoresponder service... with maybe two or three paltry messages loaded in someplace, or maybe just a placeholder.

Hey, for a mere seventeen bucks a month, it's a resource you can afford to ignore.

... or is it?

I can count on one hand the number of people I know, who fully and thoroughly squeeze this technology for all it's worth.

And those guys... trust me, they are successful. I'll get to that soon.

First let me take you back.

It's the summer of 2003 and AdWords has gone from rumor to tidal force. It's heating up like bricks in a kiln and the topic is swarming with competition. Chris Carpenter introduces Google Cash and the whole market goes wild.

There is now a new AdWords e-book, authored by somebody, somewhere, every three days. People are PILING into this market. Almost every day there's a new Google ad for the keyword "Google AdWords".

Into that ring, I throw my hat.

I have no idea how long this frenzy is going to last.

What I do know is: The man with the highest visitor value, wins.

The book or course that generates the most revenue per visitor - its author will be king.

I readied myself for battle. Gentlemen, we've gotta throw every trick in the book at this thing. Sizzling sales copy critiqued by the world's best writers, killer testimonials (I'm collecting them like a banshee), split testing, multiple price points, taguchi experiments, affiliates, Search Engine Optimization, killer PRODUCT (If people aren't delighted it will eventually fail, regardless of the marketing), follow-on education, up-sells, cross-sells... the list is long indeed.

And while everyone else is seling with a straight sales page, I don't go for the Quick Kill.

Nah... let's do a slow dance.

Let's take some time and get to know each other.

Hey, why don't you sign up for my 5-Day email course that will teach you the Google basics, and it won't even cost you anything.

There was this guy from Tennessee, David Seldon, who used some advice from that little free course to shave real money off his click cost, and he was impressed.

Dave bought my AdWords book... then came to my Chicago seminar... then came to a 4-man intensive, not once but twice, second time he brought his daughter... has been a member of Roundtable, my highest level coaching group ($14,700/year) for 2 years... Dave has invested upwards of $30,000 with me since subscribing to that little autoresponder course.

What was that, maybe three years ago?

Pleased to meet you, Mr. Seldon. Dave is an outstanding student and generous contributor to the group, I might add.

There's a whole bunch of other guys who had Dave come to visit their website three years ago. He came to their site, he looked around, he left.

They didn't get the business.

I didn't either.

Not that day.

But I did get the business, later.

And I continue to. Every day.

The power of a slow dance.

Which is really the power of a real relationship built on respect and trust, as opposed to a one-night stand.

See, in the swelter of chaos, that little autoresponder buys you time. Time to get your message right. Time to get your sales letter right. Time to go to people like John Carlton and Dan Kennedy and get your writing mercilessly scrutinized.

That's what I did.

It bought me time to do split testing and Taguchi tests. Time to collect more and more testimonials, time to add bonuses to the product, time to create multiple versions of my product at multiple price points. Time to recruit affiliates.

Time for people who weren't convinced they needed help just now, thank you very much to get their head served to them on a platter by Google's billing department.... time for them to discover they didn't know "jack" about buying clicks (dang, it just looked so easy at the time) and it might be a good idea to get some marketing education before letting the Big G whack their credit cards.

It's that slow dance. Where the guy who holds out the longest, wins in the end.

In the end, I won.

And the most crucial piece was that lowly, underestimated autoresponder.

One of my favorite cult phrases is this one:

dark horse n. A little known, unexpectedly successful entrant.

Yeah... a "nobody" who surprises others by winning the race from behind. Don't you love it when you hear a would-be champion say, "Hey wait a minute, who was THAT???"

Better to be an underestimated nobody than an overestimated disappointment, in my humble opinion.

Use a dark horse strategy. Be the dark horse in the race.

Because it's not about how things begin, it's all about how they turn out in the end.

And you know what? It's not over. Because people who subscribed to that 5-day course years ago are still tuned in, still buying, still happily living on Planet Perry.

Go here for Part 2....

Perry Marshall

Attend my landmark Autoresponder Workshop September 27-28 in Chicago - top performing copywriters will sit down with you and write 10 autoresponder messages, ready-to-rock, uploaded before you go home. The most instantly profitable seminar you've ever attended or your money back. Details here.