By Clayton Makepeace

I’m so old, I’ll betcha my tie has gone in and out of style at least five times.

Not that I pay much attention to such things, mind you.

My professional life revolves around marketing trends. And there again, my advanced age means I’ve seen many promotional styles over the years.

But through it all, the principles of creating effective sales copy pretty much stayed the same. And for one simple reason:

Our prospective customers weren’t changing much.

In 1975, for example, my average 65-year-old prospect had been born in 1910. In ‘85, I was writing primarily to folks who’d been born in 1920. In ‘95, my average prospect had been born in 1930.

All of these prospects had common values. They all had memories of the Great Depression… World War II… and of gathering around a flickering black-and-white television for Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best.

Their Weltanschauung was formed at a time when a man’s word was his bond and good character meant everything.

They were raised by their parents to revere the government… trust the family doctor… respect their employers… believe what the media told them. And also to assume that most of the advertising they saw and heard was true.

It was for these generations that the great advertising masters created their legendary ads. And it was from these generations that the masters learned what worked best before passing it on to us in their classic books.

Now, these generations are being gradually replaced. Oh, what a difference a single generation can make!

Today’s 65-year-old prospect was born in 1942. Way too young to remember World War II, let alone the Great Depression.

More important, he turned 18 in 1960. And he acquired his skills as a consumer smack-dab in the middle of the “Question Authority” era of the 60s and early 70s. Vietnam and Watergate produced the most cynical generation America had ever seen.

What’s more, that generation did an excellent job of passing its skepticism on to its children. Those hyper-cynical “Generation Xers” are now your 26- to 47-year-old prospects.

Meanwhile, two additional sea changes have been giving our prospects even greater reasons to distrust anything they see, hear, or read. Including our ads.

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By John Wood

It was 1898.

James Webb Young dropped out of school and started working for a book publisher. He was 12 years old.

By the time he turned 22, he was advertising manager. In 1912, he joined the prestigious advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. And he quickly became known as an “idea man.”

In 1917, Young became vice president of the agency. In 1919, he wrote one of his most famous ads. It was for the deodorant Odorono, and ran in the Ladies’ Home Journal.

At the time, women found any mention of underarm odor to be in bad taste. Cleverly avoiding the word “armpit,” his headline grabbed attention with “Within the Curve of a Woman’s Arm.” But then readers were hit with this: “Persons troubled with perspiration odor seldom can detect it themselves.”

Outraged, more than 200 women canceled their subscriptions to the magazine. Despite the controversy, sales of Odorono went up 112 percent.

Young believed the secret to coming up with great ideas was to use a method similar to the one Henry Ford used to produce cars. And in 1940 — at the height of his career as an advertising legend — he laid out his five-step method in a small book titled A Technique for Producing Ideas.

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I must have got your attention with this one. After all, as bloggers, we celebrate originality.

We despise bloggers who are just plain copycats of other successful bloggers, and we admire the top bloggers for their freshness and originality.

So we say, “copying is a recipe for failure.”

Not true.

You’ve already read the article about Mozart, the great music composer, being a copycat. (If you have not, read it here.)

The fact is, all masters of every field were once newbies, and the way most of them learned their craft was by the unpopular technique of…

Copying.

E.g. Tiger Woods copied his father, and then imitated his coaches who were former pros of his time.

Michael Jackson copied from other great dancers like Bob Fosse during his early days.

Even great copywriters like John Carlton learned their skills by copying other great copywriters (maybe that’s why it’s called copy-writing, lol…)

Michael Masterson recently talked about this in his newsletter. I’ll quote what he wrote:

Aristotle, perhaps the greatest of all thinkers, called this process mimesis.

Here is what he said about it in Poetics:

“Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation.”

Then Michael went on to describe how his friend imitated a great writer called H.L. Mencken, and how his early attempts to copy him were obvious and awkward. But the more he did it, the better he got.

Eventually within three years, he developed his own version of the craft and became a bestselling, prize-winning author.

And here’s the key. You are not going to copy forever. You copy so that you can arrive at a level where you can be original.

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By Michael Masterson

I have learned many valuable lessons from my 15-year partnership with Agora’s legendary CEO, marketing genius Bill Bonner. None is more important than the Big Idea.

In my father’s time, this concept was best understood by David Ogilvy, one of the most successful commercial advertising men who ever lived.

In our time, that position is held by Bill. He’s widely recognized as the man who brought the big idea into consumer direct marketing and sold more than a billion dollars’ worth of publications by doing so. I know. I saw him do it.

I want to share Bill’s secret with you today.

I won’t be able to show you everything about it and exactly how to execute it. But I will tell you why and how his concept of the big idea is unique, powerful, and profitable.

It may be the best direct-marketing technique of them all.

When I started consulting with Agora in the early 1990s, I came equipped with half a dozen theories about direct marketing that I had used to start a bunch of successful businesses (including one that hit $135 million).

We applied some of these to the Agora product line, and did very well. But when I worked directly with Bill, I discovered an entirely new way to create blockbuster promotions.

I had never heard of the big idea. But when Bill told me about it, I went directly to Ogilvy’s book, Ogilvy on Advertising, and studied it from cover to cover. I remember being particularly struck by the following:

“You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.

“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.”

Ogilvy also explains how to recognize the big ideas of others.

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I always knew that Big Ideas were powerful. But I realized yesterday, I have much to learn about its TRUE power.

You see, I was having lunch with two entrepreneur friends. We were talking about how gurus always have their own famous concepts or Big Ideas.

Like how T Harv Eker has his Big Ideas about the Financial Blueprint and his famous “Give me 5 minutes and I can predict your financial future for the rest of your life.” And how Robert Kiyosaki has his Cashflow Quandrant (the E,S,B,I diagram).

Then one of my friends asked, “Do you know who Noah St. John is?”

“Nope.” I said nonchalantly.

“This guy is THE up and coming guru in personal development. He has a lot of concepts that are pretty common. But he has one that is really good. It’s about Afformations.”

My mind lit up. “Oh, Afformations! I’ve heard about it before! So that’s the guy you are talking about.”

Then it hit me.

I remembered his Big Idea BETTER than the person himself!

The experience I had was so amazing to me, when I reached home, I opened my Gmail and searched for “Afformations.” I vaguely remembered I had read about afformations in an email.

One result came out. I opened that email.

Turns out that Noah St. John had guest posted on the March 14, 2009 issue of Early to Rise (my favorite email newsletter by Michael Masterson.) And he had only guest posted once.

Amazing.

He had only ONE contact with me.

Yet his Big Idea stayed in my mind ever since.

And it stuck in my mind even BETTER than the person!

As I reflected on what happened, I realized that it’s really similar to my experience with how I got to know of prominent bloggers and internet marketers. Often…

I remembered his Big Idea BEFORE I remembered the person.

I didn’t realize it then, since there was never a time where I forgot about someone before a friend asked me about that someone and me replying that I remembered his Big Idea but not him.

Let’s look at a list of whom I remembered their Big Ideas before their names.

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Recently my 16 year old sister asked me about how to earn money blogging. Having read about the successes of some young internet entrepreneurs on the news, she was eager to start something herself.

I told her she needs to write something that people want to read, so that they learn something valuable from her blog and will visit her blog again. That means she needs to be an expert or strive to become an expert in some topic.

“But I don’t know what to write. I don’t know anything.”

That’s a good question, one that many newbies struggle with. I too grappled with this problem when I started my first blog 3 years ago.

No one can give a straightforward solution to this one, because there is none. There is no exact step by step blueprint that works every time, at least to my knowledge. Because if there is, I will be of the first to learn of it and share it with my sister.

That’s why even the big time bloggers can only share how their blog got to where it is today, but can’t really show the exact steps about how they chose their topic.

What newbies should learn is a proper perspective. The correct mindset. Because without developing a proper mindset of blogging, no amount of information will help them.

What’s the proper perspective a newbie needs?

There are Learning Curves.

Like all kinds of work, there is a learning curve to becoming an expert blogger. But what most don’t realize is that there are TWO learning curves.

1. Learning Curve for Blogging and Marketing

The first is probably what’s already talked about very often – blogging and marketing skills like writing, driving traffic (twitter, comments, etc), monetizing, etc.

This, you probably already know. But what most bloggers forget is that there is also another learning curve to becoming an expert in your topic.

The second part is less talked about, and the part where most newbies struggle with – the TOPIC, i.e. WHAT to write about.

2. Learning Curve for the TOPIC

Your topic also requires learning.

This stops a lot of newbies from taking action. It’s also the reason why many people stop blogging after a while, because after writing for a while, they realize that nobody is reading from their blog and they give up.

What these new bloggers may not know is that they have to be or strive to become an EXPERT in a topic to be in a position to add value to their readers, so that they will visit their blog again.

Nobody starts off as an expert in something. We all have to learn things. Different individuals learn about topics to differing amounts of degree.

The key here is to learn a topic to a greater depth and extent than others, so that you can actually teach people. That’s where you become an expert and you are in a position to add value to others.

Then people will start coming to your blog, because they are learning from you. The more value you add, the more regular readers you get.

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Here’s another email from my Big Idea newsletter. Enjoy!

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I got to be careful with what I say here.

Because you might get the wrong idea that the following statement is totally wrong.

MYTH  – BE A FRIEND TO YOUR READERS

This statement is NOT wrong.

But like what I quoted before, “Balance is the Key to Life”. You got to be able to see the other side of the coin.

First, let’s see what’s true about being friends with your readers.

The whole part of this comes from the concept “Relationship Marketing”. It’s true that connecting with the people in your market is going to draw people to your blog.

The trust and perceived relationships your readers have with you is going to instrumental in converting them to customers.

However that’s where the problem lies – converting readers to customers. For many bloggers, their readers don’t buy anything from them.

It’s ok if you are just blogging as a hobby, but if you intend to money from your blog, it’s going to be really frustrating.

Why is it so hard sometimes to make sales even though you have built a group of regular readers?

Because more than just a friend, you need to be an EXPERT. And not just another expert, but THE expert.

You see, people buy information products because they perceive that it’s going to help them…

1. Solve their pain or problems, or

2. Gain pleasure by accomplishing something or meeting an irrational desire.

This means that you need to be THE expert in a certain topic. You need to be skilled in solving a problem for them.

The “relationships” in relationship marketing only helps in building TRUST with your readers in the context of the general mistrust people have of internet marketers.

But it does NOT help you one bit when your readers only see you as a FRIEND.

Let Me Give You an Example…

Your water pipe has burst. Who would you call to repair it?

a) Your Neighbor (FRIEND), or

b) Your Plumber (EXPERT)?

???

You would call the PLUMBER because he is the EXPERT.

You won’t call in your neighbor, even if you trust him as a friend.

Because your friend can’t solve this problem for you. The plumber can.

You may TRUST your friend to refer a plumber to you, but it’s not the same TRUST as the TRUST you have with a plumbing expert.

The trust in the plumber comes from delivering genuinely good service at a good price, that he won’t do a shoddy job or trick you into paying for new parts that are unnecessary.

The same applies to becoming a successful problogger.

People only buy from you when they trust you as the EXPERT, not as their mere friend.

They trust you that you know how to solve their problems or help them accomplish something.

You need to show that when it comes to certain problems, people can come to you for professional advice to solve them.

Therefore I’d advise you to think of it this way…

TRUTH – BE THE EXPERT

Right from the beginning, you must maintain the mindset that you are going to be THE go-to expert in your chosen blog topic.

You are not out just to make friends with follow bloggers in your niche, but to become their paid advisor or coach.

You need to think less of being a mere “blogging-friend”, but think more like a MARKETER.

In Relationship Marketing, this means – yes you need to think “relationships”, but think even more of “marketing”.

Here are some steps to get you started…

1. Find out the problems that people in your niche are facing

Join the conversation that’s going on. Visit other blogs and forums. Engage the people there.

2. Find out what’s not being solved properly

As you talk with them for a while, you will spot a few recurring problems that (to you) is not being solved in a satisfactory manner.

3. Step out and let your market know of your ability to solve them

Introduce your solutions to the market, show why your solutions are better, and spread your ideas through marketing.

4. Find out how to go from being an expert to becoming THE expert in your niche, so that people buy from you instead of your competition

There are probably already many experts on your topic. To stand out from the rest, you need to narrow down to a specific sub-niche or sub-market where you can dominate and become THE expert.

It’s easier to be the BIG fish in a small pond, then expand the pond to a bigger pond, rather than get lost at sea.

Meaning it’s easier to establish a position as the expert in a sub-niche, then expand your reach, rather than get drowned within a multitude of experts in the mass market.

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“This is the most discouraging and demoralizing post I have ever read anywhere. It falls into the category of not being able to get a job because you have no experience and not being able to get experience because you can’t get a job.”

I was reading the comments from a recent post at Yaro’s blog. The subject was about making money blogging, and the above comment was made by a guy named Jo.

I can sympathize with Jo’s lack of motivation when he’s not earning any money out of his blogging efforts, but part of the reason why he’s discouraged is because of his wrong thinking in the first place.

He said that blogging is a job. This means he is expecting to get paid for what he does right from the beginning.

But he is not having the right mindset. It’s the mindset of an employee.

And because blogging is an entrepreneurial activity, this mindset is going to hold him back.

Now I’m NOT saying you shouldn’t expect to get paid. I’m saying you shouldn’t expect to get paid in the beginning.

In Robert Kiyosaki’s book, “Before You Quit Your Job”, Robert shared something that forever changed the way I viewed jobs and work.

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