Imagine this: You’ve dominated the world market for centuries. Leaders in your business enjoy secure incomes and workers earn admirable wages. You’ve created a tradition of dignity, respect and superiority.
Then, unexpected foreign competition swarms in like carrion fowl. Within 24 months they crater your market share, destroy your margins and drive the major players into bankruptcy. Morale plummets, panic ensues. Wholesale economic destruction is imminent.
What will you do now? The future dangles delicately in the balance.
This is a true story. It already happened. An unlikely contender stepped on the playing field. A “dark horse” staged a dramatic turnaround and led not only his company, but an entire nation, to higher ground.
Do you feel the maw of the beast breathing on your neck? Get the rest of the story and a fresh dose of inspiration here:
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Many entrepreneurs are struggling right now and desperately need leadership and new confidence.
My commitment to you is to deliver to you the increased confidence, marketing knowledge, and most important, the business savvy that you need to overcome whatever challenges you confront right now.
My #1 channels for doing this will be Renaissance Club, Mastermind Club, and a new offering (not yet available) called Mastermind Pro. In the coming weeks you are going to see a wholesale re-invention of my membership programs so keep your eyes open.
Meanwhile I want you to always keep this in mind:
The solution to whatever problem you face right now already does exist, either in whole or in component parts that can be assembled. All you need to do is ask the right questions and present those questions to the right people.
That’s it. It really is that simple. As long as you remember this you’ll be level headed, even in the tunnel of chaos.
Today I invite you to ask me your questions in the comments section below. I will be able to respond to some of these directly right here on the blog. In other cases I will respond to them in upcoming emails. Please be as specific as you possibly can.
Your business and your success are important to me and my team and I are committed to delivering the finest Pay-Per-Click and online marketing education available.
Thanks for spending time with me today, and remember – just like the Swiss – you can re-invent your business and your industry too.
Perry Marshall
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
48 Comments on “What to do when your entire industry suddenly crumbles”
Why do some of you guys so negative about what has been suggested ? No wonder some businesses arent doing so well. Open your eyes and look at everything with an open mind and just maybe you will be less negative.
Noble sentiments, but I’ve tried what this guy says, and been beat to a humiliated pulp. Nobody seems to get it anymore. It seems that we’ve (US and Canada) strayed too far from the time-tested, proven ways to feel good.
Total immersion in something that you’re passionate about. Research. Risk. Exhaustion. Persistence.
It’s not: Easy money. Stealing ideas. Welfare. Playing the system.
But that’s where we are. Deal with it.
Perry,
You are definitely a leader of some poor soles. However, your tactics are deceiving, like the rest of the world leaders. I always thought you were different..?
Maybe, OR maybe not… after listening this deceiving tactic, maybe next you will ask everyone to drop everything and follow you.. and drink ‘You’re’ PINK COOL AID!!!
Then everyone will follow, MR. PERRY MARSHALL.. A new revoltion of the seveties, or suicidal love less-ness..??
Perry, your a good man, keep it real and stop the see-through tactics on your immortal subjects!
Hello Perry, As we dig ourselves deeper in the hole it is amazing to me that our so called important people will not listen to you. You have such wisdom about everything I do appreciate you sharing it with us. Thanks, Andrew Gallop
Thanks, Perry, for the stimulating videos. Mr. Hayek strikes me as a truly wise businessman.
My question is how to market quality health-related information and products when, it seems, the majority of people are so give their money only to those who promise Quick-Easy-Effortless solutions that are not grounded in reality. I don’t want to peddle lies, but that is what most of the market wants.
Any ideas about how to better target my offerings to those who want scientific truth, real-world solutions?
Thanks!
I would target keywords that indicate the person has already passed thru the ‘stupid zone’ of high traffic lowest common denominator keywords. Look at your KW research lists and lump things into education level of buyer.
Thx for super video!
Norbert
Very informative thanks for the post I enjoyed the comments too
Being a native of Detroit, I see in what Hayek says the life or death of a city. There is a way to reverse this very dangerous trend in having all of our goods made elsewhere. I have gone through more than one major US retailer and could not find American made goods on the shelves – like 1 out of 100s. Not good. They have us by the ….
Thanks Perry for this gem of an interview.
I love it when Nicholas Hayek says “Everyone has the right to fail”.
I reckon that is the way he takes the pressure off himself when he is betting the family farm on a business venture.
The fact that he then goes on to say that he uses his own money in his deals shows how much self belief this gentleman has.
My greatest challenges have been trying to start a Marketing Consulting and Services business from absolute zero and trying to get enough paying customers to do it full time.
I need a faster ramp up time to regular paying customers. How do I get lots of customers fast with no reputation or long history doing this exclusively?
Peter
One of the best things you can have is a couple of reference customers, even if you did the work at a steep discount.
Best shortcut is a performance guarantee – something like the guarantees you see me make on this site. Sell results, not procedures.
I have been saying this exact thing — we need to bring manufacturing back home if our economy is to recover. I have friends who owned and sold their manufacturing companies. And I have seen the devastating effects in the Carolinas of manufacturing leaving the country. It is the height of arrogance to assume that we can be a “creative” economy. People around the world are as capable of creating as we are. And I love it that he figured out a way to manufacture Swatches cheaper than Japan could create watches… now it’s China, India and Mexico taking industry away. Perry, have you ever read the book, “Cheap?”
Never read “cheap.” Dan Sullivan commented that Google creates more value than the entire Chinese economy because Google creates and China only copies. Regardless of how you judge China’s cheap-ness, our imperative is to create and innovate.
Perry,
Are any of the other PPC players making any headway against Google? Is there enough traffic with the others to make it worthwhile to use them?
Thanks
Mike
One good solid testimonial of results will do wonders. If you can get your customer who gave you that testimonial to send out a referral letter to all his contacts – all he has to do is approve the letter and give you some of his letterhead – and you pay the postage and do the work to mail it out – you might be full time by September.
Truly inspiring videos. What I like is that he stresses the entrepreneurial spirit, the willingness to take risks and a countries ability to produce.
Dennis, I have to question your point of view. What does Swatch have to do with mom and pop businesses? If we’re talking 12,000 employees here, that’s the very devil you seem to be against. And the main reason why we are not in a Second Great Depression right now is because of the govt policy of propping the economy up with govt borrowing – started by George Bush and continued by Barak Obama. It may be imperfect but it’s the main weapon we’ve got from 15% of our population living off of soup kitchens.
But I am in complete agreement that small businesses are part of America’s greatness, and they haven’t yet gone away!
Hi Perry,
I do have a question – when you have a drop in sales, how do you go about locating the probable cause of this within your sales funnel. (ie. the same number of leads is coming in, but conversion has dropped, although the sales page has remained the same.)
Best Regards
Naomi
Normally in situations like this *something* has changed, somewhere. I would hunt for any possible explanation. Including traffic sources. Like quality scores. sometimes you think it’s stayed the same but some ‘trivial’ thing is different. I had one guy lose 20% of his sales from changing plain text to rich text email. (Could just as well have worked the opposite direction too btw).
Perry,
Mr. Hayek, makes excellent points for Industry Leaders.
Which leads into my question…
In the Network Marketer Industry many entrepreneurs are struggling and failing.
Which is the Network Marketer’s BIGGEST mistake and what is the solution?
AnthonySBrowne
Barbados
Biggest mistake is not having a USP. A USP is not duplicatable and that is the point. Duplication is contrary to the #1 principle of marketing which is uniqueness. Tons of MLM leaders will disagree with me; but I maintain that they’re successful because they are somehow unique, despite what they teach about duplication. Whether it’s personality, unique tools they use, or bonus schedules others are not privy to, there’s always something that sets them apart and it’s not just hard work. I would suggest looking for an advantage that other people in your biz are not taking advantage of.
I am a stay-at-home mom who recently put her last kid in school. I now have some time to focus on generating some income in addition to what my husband is making in order to be better able to both deal with unfortunate circumstances and take advantage of opportunities that come our way.
I have been a member of the Renaissance Club for a while now and have been reading everything I can find on marketing. I am even starting to see ads as marketing lessons.
I know that I need to get some experience under my belt. Most of your content is geared toward those who already have some experience in this arena. My question is: What do you wish you had known when you started your first Google campaign? In other words, how can I best use my time and money to get valuable experience.
I would really appreciate some advice to those of us just getting started, even if the advice is “We don’t give that kind of advice here but so-and-so does.”
I find this all so interesting. I love reading your newsletters and emails. I am just finishing “Scientific Advertising”. My goal is to become a master at marketing. I believe I could help a lot of people.
Thanks for all of your great writing.
I think you’ve got the perfect profile of a person who can become a master at marketing. It’s one thing to want to make some dough, it’s another thing to want to master an art and a science.
Let me rephrase your question…. the reason I was good at Google early on was because I already understood “Scientific advertising.” I knew that conversion was the real star of the show. I’d encourage you to get intimately familiar with the Tactical Triangle and understand that it all starts with the “E” not the “T.” At least in terms of where the value is created.
Learn as much as you can about copywriting especially hooks and the structure of a sales story. Applies equally to scripting videos or whatever.
Clients are a great way to expose your self to tons of situations. You see the difference between theory and reality.
It’s one thing to know marketing, but it’s even more important to know a market. If you intimately know a market you don’t have to know a great deal about marketing to be effective.
Be a marketing maniac. Collect everything you can and learn from it.
Great to hear from you and best of success.
Simply stating that business is either evil or good misses the point completely. It’s the integrity of the people involved in businesses which makes the difference.
I don’t believe America has lost its entrepneurial spirit at all (or lazy) but has replaced the importance of integrity and social responsibility with money and riches above all else.
Great video, great valuable content for entreprenuers… thank you. There´s a lot to learn from people like this. Not too are willing to share their experiences.
Thank you again..
Nicolás Laverde.
Hi Perry,
For 2 months I was running 3 FB ads with around a 1% ctr and 1% conversion. Then in ONE day, conversions fell to 0- while the CTR remained the same. Is it “normal” for FB traffic to suddenly stop converting?
Thanks,
Mike
I Don’t know that it is; I would look for something that might have changed between then and now – anything. Check your ad groups, maybe one that converts well got shut off somehow.
Great videos Perry.
What an indictment of our corporate and financial system, putting short term profits for the few over wealth creation and the welfare of the nation.
It is refreshing hearing somebody talking about wealth creation in such a healthy positive manner!
Since Congress, the corporate and financial elite are plowing this plane (nation) into the side of the mountain, it’s time to fire them:)
Perry I want to leave my job as soon as POSSIBLE by making money on the internet. I’m torn between whether I should go the information marketing (creating my own info products) route or CPA marketing. I have an e-book and a sales letter up. Ive sold a handful of ebooks but nothing earth shattering. Can you give some direction?
CPA can be brutally competitive. I won’t do anything where I don’t have a solid USP. I Think there’s a lot you could do to spice up your bartending sales letter. More appealing hooks, video, video testimonials, clearer “dual readership path”.
Great Interview,
I don’t believe that America has lost or is losing it’s entrepreneurial spirit though. Although the new industrial phase may be very different from the steel mills,and various manufacturing plants that created the middle class in the past for sure.
Hopefully new developments in bio fuels, clean power, medicine, biology and nanotechnology will create another phase that won’t flow out of the country, but unfortunately we know money flows to where it’s treated best.
Perry,
These videos were excellent. My Hayek makes a lot of excellent points. I love to get a different perspective regularly. He hit the nail in the head about the dangers of becoming strictly a service country.
Thanks for posting them.
Wow, get this video in front Obama, not that he would do any good.
The multi national corporations are ruining buisness.
Mom and pop made Anerica Great, not WalMart, not Wall Sreet. Mom and Pop farms and business.
Dennis
Denver Co
Very inspiring. So, it seems to me that we need to re-inspire old dogs and recruit young pups. With the key to lasting success being possession a true servant’s heart (like you have, Perry), is the key to raising up leaders in igniting their God-given passion and sense of purpose?
I think all of us have a job of inspiring people however we can….
Thanks so much for sharing this very valuable interview with us. Mr. Hayek really makes some very valid points. It is such a shame that we don’t have more leadership like this in America – both at the corporate and government level.
Perry,
Hayek talks about the dangers of reliance on others to provide product, & I know your feelings on affiliates vs. product ownership as well…
Q:
Given the above, do you see ANY room for affiliates as genuine business owners? Let’s take blu-ray.com as an example (Amazon affiliate). 2 million unique visitors per month, a thriving community, etc. with visitors expected to double by 2011. Is this (and other sites like it) a real business, and if so, what separates them from run-of-the-mill affiliates?
If not, why not?
You separate yourself from the pack by adding more value than everyone else does. That can happen in lots of ways. The question for this site is, how can you provide more value than Amazon? I could be wrong but it seems to me that Amazon has an inherent advantage over just about anybody, that they have more product reviews, more product information and buy at lower prices than anyone else. Also notice that their margins in general are paper thin and you’re getting an aff commission out of those thin margins. This site is way better than most affiliate sites and I can’t tell how profitable it is. But it’s naturally vulnerable. I prefer sites that add value that another site can’t easily add.
Perry,
Great stuff. I love to read what you put out, especially when it’s up lifting. Here is a question I have been wanting someone to answer. I’ll keep it simple so other can apply it to their business as well:
If you sell multiple products that appeal to both genders and differents ages, how can you:
1. find what your core group of customers are?
2. sell primarily to them with out losing the rest of you customers?
Thanks.
Edwin
Put an option on the opt-in like a radio button that identifies them for what they do or who they are, takes them down different sales paths. This is “building the maze” which I teach in the Invisible Streams product http://www.perrymarshall.com/invisible-streams/
Love these interviews. Nicely put and well done. Very rich in content. You can tell this guy loves his product, feels the love for his 12,000 employees by making a product that is competitive and profitable.
Hi Perry:
Great video.
Mr Hayek also has something in French. It’s another video that lasts about 30 minutes.
Here’s the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msq4lTZ4oTg
Hopefully other readers here speak and understand French and they’ll find this other video useful.
How refreshing! Business is not the devil, and a creating wealth with a product is good?!! I was beginning to think I was the only one who still thought that. How true that America has lost/is losing her entrepreneurial spirit and will to create wealth. We’ve gotten lazy. I can only work my butt off & pray things turn around before it’s too late.
Wow, how very kind you are!! I have a question about google image ads. I was just wondering- if there is a niche that is really hot, and you type that keyword into google, and then you investigate all the results that come up by looking at all the top webpages one by one. If you happen to notice that all the top webpages do indeed have google image ads on them, but none of those google image ads are related to that niche at all, does that mean that 1)you have struck a goldmine and that any google image ad that you put there that is relevant to that niche will get shown, or that 2)even if you do put a google image ad that is totally relevant, it still might not be shown because the google image ad that is not relevant is from some big hot shot company who pay big bucks to place their ad there (like a sports company say) Thanks heaps Mr Marshall, your’re the best!
(1) could be true. (2) could be true. You have very little to risk by bidding and seeing what happens.
What are the ways that you use to understand the conversation that is going on inside your prospects head?
Glenn Livingston has a great course on this at http://www.LivingstonReport.com.