Always yearning to “see around the corner,” long-time Planet Perry member Ben Gorelick posted this in our private Mastermind Forum:
“Hey everyone,
– At my mountain guide training school, a year ago, about 45% of our traffic was from mobile. It’s more than 80% now.
– Facebook (especially) and apps/aggregators, Apple News are changing the way people find and view content.
– Huge shift to video-based consumption.
Right now, I suspect a lot of us make our business go with a funnel that looks something like:
1) Create good/useful content to drive traffic, build rapport, trust, and expertise and get opt-ins to email. (underpants)
2) Churn users through an email autoresponder sequence or three to continue to develop rapport/trust/expertise, and to keep hitting those nerves
3) Make sale and follow up. (Profit!)
I’m starting to feel like that isn’t enough anymore. Maybe that’s not correct. I’m starting to feel like my funnel will need to be different 2 years from now.
– As email use declines, especially among younger users, how will direct response marketing change?
– As people become more brand-agnostic for their content, how will we capture people’s attention with the good stuff that we churn out?
– How do you keep that attention for more than one article or blog post, especially if the publishing is now incorporated into FB or similar, instead of on your website?
It’s gotta be more than adding FB ads to an AdWords/PPC strategy, isn’t it?”
My reply: Yessir. You bettah believe it.
Plus there’s another thing:
Google AdWords just truncated (amputated / hacked off / smote / wiped off the face of the earth) the right hand side ads on the first page.
There are now FOUR premium spots at the top (nearly every link above the fold is paid now) and four *lousy* spots at the bottom.
A bunch of smaller advertisers have already drowned. Their limp corpses are floating down the river.
So what do you do? Flee to Facebook?
Well… about a year ago, the guy who wrote the world’s bestselling book on Facebook advertising got banned from Facebook.
(That would me.)
The reason I got banned was for making promises.
You know… like we do in direct marketing.
I posted an ad that promised to “double your sales without adding new customers.”
Too direct market-y, I guess.
(Even though Facebook has been doing exactly that for a number of years now – doubling their sales without adding new customers.)
Got slapped…thrown over the railing into the chilling cold waters of the North Atlantic…even though Facebook had become one of my best sources of hot fresh new leads.
What is the meaning of all this?
The meaning is:
A LOT of people, who once owned thriving internet firms and consultancies, who once enjoyed fine dining at the best eating establishments, are going to wake up one bright morning and discover they’re living in their car.
The times they are a-changin’, as Bob Dylan prophesied.
Watch this space closely. Updates to follow.
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.
10 Comments on “A Plan For Death of The Web – Besides Panic”
I think in the end, it always comes down to relationships, value is subjective. If they like you, they will find you and buy from you, if you just have a bunch of systems that work on the turkeys, don’t be surprised to find one day that the slaughter house either killed them off or got shut down…..
As I always tell people, NEVER build your house in someone else’s backyard, personally I can’t wait for the day when facebook and their spying ways are totally abandoned just like MySpace and Google is overrun by a better idea, one like the ones I am working on!
Think RELATIONSHIPS………..Perry does!
aloha:)
Fantastically relevant info Perry. Things are changing VERY quickly.Being ready with a plan B -AND C and……seems to be more important than ever. The old ways of marketing seem not only dead,but deeply buried.Its great to hear someone say it as it is.There are too many making promises that are none existent or cant be kept.Keep up the good work!
It’s been broadly observed that we should not put all our eggs in one basket. It has also been stated, I believe more wisely, that we should not put all of our eggs in someone else’s basket.
> Unless they bought them from us, in which case they’re no longer our eggs ~ OR ~
> Unless we’ve paid them to carry our eggs, in which case we can sue them for mishandling or for misrepresenting their capacity/willingness to properly handle
What I foresee is an unsustainable pattern.
As brand awareness becomes contingent on realtime engagement, either you will burn out trying to stay in front your customers or you’ll be so successful at being omnipresent that they’ll get bored of you and tune you out.
Staying creative and nimble is certainly important, but I think it’s premature to declare the “Death Of…” anything.
Every strategy has an fertile season and a fallow season. Just as farmers rotate their crops to replenish the nutrients in the soil, so must we rotate and innovate our approach. Even the Holy Grail can collect dust.
As long as you’re creating value and providing a variety of means for your ideal prospects to consume it, the bells and whistles are largely immaterial.
If mobile video is becoming big, great, do that. It will be stale in a fortnight. It’s only one of the roads that lead to Rome.
Knowing your prospects and customers is far more important. No matter who they are, meet them where they are. If you market in cutting-edge novelty, that’s where you must race to stay. If your folks are more sedate, the standard approaches have a longer shelf life.
Great title. Great delivery on the title. I’m looking forward to the rest.
Wise remarks. Thanks for posting.
Rob, you’ve hit the nail on the head here, especially for those of us that are still using nails and hammers.
My email list is still the greatest source of revenue in my business, and that list continues to grow daily via opt-ins on my blog for a free lead magnet – same as I’ve been doing for years. I have no social media presence to speak of (outside of Facebook lead gen ads that I literally run using Perry’s *original* Google Adwords strategies), and I still do SEO the exact same way I’ve been doing it for 15 years, with continued great results. I still hold at least one annual live “boot camp” and successfully sell from the stage, and each year at least half my boot camp seats are filled via direct mail.
For my particular target market, this stuff all still works, and continues to grow. Not everybody embraces SnapTwitBook or whatever, and some people (myself included) absolutely refuse to watch any video that isn’t a movie or TV show.
Oh, I have recently made one technology improvement: Last week, I bought a cell phone. One of those iPhone thingies. I hadn’t had a phone of any sort in nearly four years, so it’s taking some getting used to.
I’ll take my change nice and slow, in stops and starts, and I’ll very strategically choose the technologies I do or don’t use. Nothing is really dying — there will always be a market for certain media (notice that newspapers actually do still exist, and many even turn a profit).
Despite the fact that we’re sitting at the dawn of VR and driverless cars, we’re still quite a ways away from the next truly Earth-shattering, brand new communication media. The Internet was the last one, and everything from streaming video to social media are just extensions of that (don’t forget, social media sites are exactly that — they’re still just web sites). Maybe global telepathy is next, who knows.
But again, Rob nailed it: Meet your customers where THEY are, that’s what matters most.
I’m looking forward to the response too. I feel like things are changing so quickly, all of a sudden, in the marketing world. Google, Facebook, and brand-agnostic-ness are kinda just the tip. It’s a scary world out there. And I’m looking forward to every minute of it…
-Benjamin
Nice one perry. Evolve or die. Hoping to see what new systems you will create.
Good post.. I guess as long as we keep showing up where the users are hanging out, we’ll do fine. The challenge might be knowing where the users are showing up – in the specific context we’re interested in.. man it’s so diverse now..
Indeed Perry… Indeed…
Come gather ‘round people
Admit that the waters around you have grown
Accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving then you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone
Keep your eyes wide – the chance won’t come again
Don’t speak too soon – the wheel’s still in spin
There’s no telling who that it’s naming for the loser now will be later to win
Don’t stand in the doorway – don’t block up the hall
He that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside raging
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
Don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging
Get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For… The times they are a-changin’
Questions for changing times:
1) Do I really believe that someone will give me incredible value in exchange for my email address?
2) In the umpteen times I’ve given someone my email address under the promised exchange of incredible value, did I get it? Did I do anything with it?
3) Do I give people incredible value in exchange for their email address? Do they / can they they do anything with it?
4) Is my funnel really the best way for my clients to get from where they really are to where they really want to be?
5) Do I even know where my clients really want to be?
6) Do I ask them consistently? Do I dare ask them at all? Am I prepared to respond and deliver on their answer?
7) Is my product / service capable of solving their real problem?
8) When I write copy for my site or scripts for my videos… do I write them in a state of deep and profound empathy?
9) Am I chasing down new parlor tricks instead of executing on fundamentals?
10) If I had to shoot a video to promote my service, would I be embarrassed to show my face or my surroundings?
11) If someone asks me what I do, is my response focused on a base-level, results-based solution for an identified market?
12) If I walked into a room full of my best prospects, could I walk out of that room with a hand full of order forms or a fist full of cash?
Honorable, humane, powerful, responsible answers to these questions will instill enough personal, vision and positive feedback to adapt and thrive as the world shifts on its axis.
As always, thanks for the bravery, insight and example of boldness in the face of uncertainty Perry.
Nick Neilson
GREAT questions.