Don't Just Learn The Tricks Of The Trade - Learn The Trade!
We've all been conditioned to learn tricks and techniques...primarily because that's been the only thing taught for decades. And many people mistakenly say, "Teach me the tricks of the trade." But the reality is - you need to LEARN THE TRADE, the principles of successful advertising - instead of just learning tricks. Once you learn the grounding principles, then you can move on to learning the techniques.
To illustrate why it's important to not just learn techniques, here's an example. My friend has a son named Sam, and sometimes they go to the McDonald's drive-thru together and get french fries. Sam is a little guy, like 2 or 3, and sometimes the fries come out too hot for him to eat, so he asks his dad to cool them down. Well, how do you cool down a hot french fry when you're in the car? You hold it up to the air conditioner vent and crank it up for a few seconds until it cools off. One time his dad looked over and saw little Sam holding a french fry up to the a/c vent, but there were two problems: 1) The french fry wasn't hot, and 2) The air conditioner wasn't turned on. Sam was executing the technique to perfection, but the situation was totally wrong. Sam didn't understand what conditions had to exist before the technique would work. Or in other words, he didn't understand the principles, just the technique.
And that's exactly how it is with sales, marketing and advertising techniques. For example, let's look at what happened with direct mail back in the 70's. Everyone was teaching techniques for tricking people into reading their junk mail. They taught you to send your sales letter in a plain white regular-sized envelope with no return address, a first-class stamp, and a hand written address? People would get it and go, "Wow! A letter from someone who forgot to write their return address! I wonder who it is!" Then they'd open and read it. But what do you do Now when you get a white hand-written envelope with no return address on it? That's right - you pitch it without even opening it! You know its junk and a waste of your time. But people are still using that technique - just like a 2 year old holding up a cold french fry to an a/c vent that's not even turned on!
More tomorrow.
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Don't Just Learn The Tricks Of The Trade - Learn The Trade! - Adult B2B Marketing Tip
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