The Marketing on Autopilot Luxury… oops, I meant Necessity

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I was a desperately struggling sales rep in 1997 and I drove to Peoria Illinois for a big “Success” event with speakers like Norman Schwarzkopf and Zig Ziglar. I first encountered Dan Kennedy there. Dan was the last speaker of the day and he talked about replacing cold-calling grunt work with cost-effective advertising and marketing.

Since I was spending most of every day pounding the phone, this news was oxygen to a drowning man. I was mesmerized. I found a credit card that still had some room on it and bought his Magnetic Marketing System.

It changed my life.

Fast forward one year: I’ve found a new job where they’ll actually let me use some of Dan’s ideas (the previous boss thought I’d bought swampland in Florida, and told me to get back to work) and the new marketing techniques were working. I was getting sales leads for my industrial hardware and software products from our website every day.

What I learned about Google from Dan Kennedy

PerryMarketing Blog

Today I’m known all over the world as “The Google AdWords Guy” but I was hanging out in Planet Dan before Google even existed. Let me tell you something I learned from Dan early on, that helped me when Google ads suddenly came on the scene.

Dan started doing infomercials when they were brand-spanking new. A law had changed which suddenly allowed TV stations to sell big chunks of airtime to advertisers. Prior to that, TV stations just went dark at night.

Suddenly for a few hundred bucks, a TV stations was willing to leave the lights on and stick a videotape in the tape machine.

I remember this one time – I’m guessing it was 1984 or something – I was watching TV late one night and…

Fist Fight at the Board of Directors Meeting – Part 4

PerryMarketing Blog83 Comments

In Part 1 I told you the story of getting in everyone’s face at a ‘friendly’ company dinner party, and how if they didn’t do their friggin’ research they’d fall flat on their happy faces.

In Part 2 I told you about getting in El Presidente’s face about the fact that they weren’t even running an actual business because after 2 1/2 years they still had not demonstrated that they knew how to MAKE ONE DOLLAR.

Then in Part 3, El Presidente struck back, accusing me of being a small-time player whose only expertise is creating income, not building real companies. He offers to buy my stock back for $100,000 at the end of the year, which would be a nice ROI.

I write the board members:

From Bus Driver to AdWords Marketing Maniac, at $175K/year

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Dear Perry,

It was about 3 -4 years ago when I first entered my name and email address on your website and you sent me out a package of information about marketing and business.

I can tell you right now that this simple package you sent me changed the way I did business forever!

At the time of receiving it I was working as a full time city bus driver in a small town where I worked about 30 -40 hours a week.

I had a part time vending business that I was building I had a website that did nothing for me and all that I wanted was some direction on what to do next.

Discernment and Simplification

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I have never seen a time when people were more desperate and confused about marketing.

One of the best-loved articles on my site is “Old-Fashioned Discernment in the Age of the Internet.” It’s about how the availability of information does not make people informed, and knowledge does not equal wisdom.

This has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that there are more ways to communicate with a customer than ever before.

Bad economy+20 years in biz+New Inspiration = 309% over last year

PerryMarketing Blog

“We have been in business for 20 years and on the web for over 10 years so this is not a new start-up where huge percentage increases are commonplace. Since Adwords Bootcamp, we have had more orders than ever before.

“Our website sales for July were up 309% over this month last year. I can only attribute that to the changes in our adwords account and from what I learned in the Adwords Bootcamp.

TV: The Opium of the People

PerryMarketing Blog87 Comments

Ten years ago I took a trip to Brazil and a guy took me on a tour of the slums, the “favellas” of Sao Paulo.

The favellas were miles upon miles of shanty towns and lowly concrete homes built on the sides of hills. Infested with gangs, drugs, prostitution and violence.

Every single person we met in the favellas had a color TV. Even the people who made $60 per month and had no job. Even the poorest of the poor watch TV.

Which is interesting because TV obviously shows people things they want. But what is not so obvious is that it teaches them nothing-

– absolutely nothing –

about how to get it. Which leads me to my observation:

Fist Fight at the Board of Directors Meeting – Part 3

PerryMarketing Blog84 Comments

I told you the story of getting in everyone’s face at a ‘friendly’ company dinner party, and how if they didn’t do their friggin’ research they’d fall flat on their happy faces. Then I told you about getting in El Presidente’s face about the fact that they weren’t even running an actual business because after 2 1/2 years they still … Read More

"Finding your voice"

PerryMarketing Blog28 Comments

I just got off the phone with the CEO of a $10 million software company. He said, “We’re trying really hard to put our personalities ‘out there’ more, write more, blog more. It’s kind of a struggle, we’re not really used to being big-ego front men…

Owning Your Authority

PerryMarketing Blog11 Comments

Got something for you to chew on, this fine Friday afternoon.

3 year olds don’t have much authority and we can all be thankful for that.

13 year olds think they should have a lot more authority than we give them and we can mostly be thankful that we keep ’em on a short leash.

But what about when we’re 27 or 39 or 63?

Most of us adults have plenty of authority, and….