Launch

How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition

Michael A. Stelzner

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781118027233
• eBook ISBN: 9781118102787
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

If you've been let down by the undelivered promises of marketing, this book is for you. Launch reveals a new way to grow your business that involves focusing on the needs of others, giving gifts, working with outsiders, and restraining your marketing messages. These principles are precisely the opposite of traditional marketing. Yet they work. And they are the future. If you follow the formula outlined in this book, you can attract countless customers and prospects, resulting in amazing business growth.

This book will show you how to:

• Create highly sharable content that meets people's needs
• Identify and work with outside experts, many of whom will gladly promote your content
• Attract and retain raving fans that will help your business grow
• Creatively market and sell to people who will gladly purchase your products and services

Launch isn't like other marketing books. Rather than making keen observations about others who've achieved success, the ideas and principles in this book were developed, refined, and practiced by the author to great success. Pick up a copy for yourself and one for a friend.

Chapter 1

Rockets Don't Fly Themselves

Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly.

—Wernher Von Braun, February 17, 1958

For businesses, change is guaranteed. Industries advance, ideas expand, products morph, and customers move on. Similar to space travel, everything's in orbit. Nothing remains still.

Whether you're just about to launch your rocket ship or you're already in flight, change is coming like a speedy comet. It won't bend to your will. You'll need to either embrace it or get out of its path.

Yes, it's scary. You and every other business owner, marketer, or budding entrepreneur have experienced the uncertainty of tomorrow. I've pondered these very thoughts: Will my business survive? Have I set the right trajectory? What's coming? Am I ready?

Despite the assurance of change, there's something that remains fixed—and most businesses overlook it. You've been watching for change and likely missed the one thing that has remained constant: people.

People don't really change. I'm talking about you, your customers, your partners, and your peers. They might leave you for a competitor, but at their core they haven't really changed at all. And people are what make or break your business.

People want valuable insight, access to great people, and recognition before they want products and services. If you can keep your eyes fixed on people and their desires, half your mission will be achieved before you begin.

My kids are girls. Have you ever tried brushing a moving child's hair? You either need to walk along with her or force her to stop. Too often, we treat our customers like children.

Stop trying to force customers to conform to your desires and instead walk beside them and see what happens.

People don't want to be pitched to, marketed to, or herded like cattle. People do want information, answers, access, and recognition—and they want it all for free.

Three Big Questions

1. How can you attract leads, prospects, and opportunity without actively selling? Imagine no cold-calling, no advertising, none of the kinds of activities that you either hate doing or you know costs a fortune.

2. How can you gain access to influential people in your industry? Is there an easy way to work with people who have the highest imaginable profile? If they were willing to help you, without hesitation, how would it impact your business?

3. Is there an easy way to connect with and gain the trust of prospects and customers? How can you cut through the noise and gain the attention of people? Is there a proven way to earn their trust and support?

The Problem with Marketing

I've been told marketing success means spending lots of money.

Here's how the American Marketing Association defines it: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”¹ Yeah, it's a mouthful.

Focus on two words here: “exchanging offerings.” Most of us have been taught that marketing is about making an offer that attracts people. We've been trained to focus on crafting the right arrangement of words and delivering them in the right place, at the right time, using the right medium.

We're treating people like fish. If we just create a better lure than our competitors, silently climb into a boat, and simply cast that bait right on top of our customers, they'll bite. Or so the theory goes.

And the word “exchange” implies a two-way process between the company and the customer. Your business makes an offer and the prospective customer is compelled to comply.

Frankly, if there weren't some level of truth to this, marketers would be out of business. I'll be the first to admit that I've successfully employed some of these very tactics.

But here's where marketing lets us down: It can't predict when people are ready to buy the type of widget you have to sell.

For example, I'm going to eventually need a new car. But right now I'm very happy with my existing car. There's no marketer out there who can predict with any degree of certainty when I'll be done with my car. Some might notice that I just incurred a huge repair bill. Others might make assumptions based on how long I've driven my car or how many miles I've accrued. But no one knows what will ultimately motivate me to ditch my car. Heck, I don't even know.

So marketers are forced to make educated guesses about me. Worse yet, they're forced to pay others to reach me.

To get in front of my eyes and ears, auto dealers and manufacturers must place ads in the magazines I read, sponsor commercials and placements during my favorite television shows, place ads on the Web sites I frequent, and get airtime while I'm in my car—just to mention a few.

At the time of this writing, the U.S. automotive industry was spending more than $400 to market each car sold, adding up to more than $4 billion annually!²

Do you have that kind of money? Is your product or service profitable enough to include that kind of expense? Is your volume big enough to afford dropping millions of dollars into a campaign with no guarantees?

Is there a better way?

The Internet as the Great Paralyzer

The Web has changed business forever. It's the kind of change that has really scared established companies. And rightly so! Could this great equalizer also be the demise of businesses?

The idea of selling direct to consumers anywhere in the world has been transformative. It didn't just put travel agents, department stores, and newspapers out of business. It also allowed average Joes like us to compete. All of a sudden a good idea could gain traction and grow.

Businesses like Amazon and eBay became billion-dollar enterprises. Any information on any topic could be found instantly. And rich knowledge was available from anywhere—home, office, car, or the beach. Crazy ideas, like putting people's faces up on a Web site and enabling friends to connect, have brought people together by the hundreds of millions.

But for every Internet success story, there are a million ideas that never come to fruition. The success of the Web also prevents many people from taking action.

For example, back in the mid-1990s, I owned a creative services agency. We helped high-tech businesses look good. Our business was booming—until the day the tech market crashed. We lost a lot of business. I was faced with the ugly and unfamiliar face of change.

I decided to focus my business in a new area. I settled in on writing white papers (persuasive documents that help people make decisions). To my shock and horror, I discovered I was not the first agency to specialize in white papers. There were others.

My first reaction was, “Oh man, this sucks.” And I pondered going back to the drawing board.

Maybe you know someone with a similar story?

Competing via the Web is a lot like graduating high school: You might have been the smart kid or the popular one at your school. But the second you headed off to college, you realized there were a lot more smart people. And maybe up against some of them, you were not so smart anymore.

The Internet takes local competition to a global stage. All of a sudden you're competing with hundreds or thousands of businesses. They're everywhere. Now you're up against smart folks from New Zealand, Germany, Russia, India, and Japan.

Stepping up to compete on a national or global stage can be very intimidating, and downright paralyzing. Maybe it's even been a hindrance to you?

How can you grow your business without massive financial investments? Is there an easy way to leverage the power of the Web without worrying about the competition?

Meet the Enemy: Channel Overload Syndrome

Is your attention fragmented? I know mine is!

Channel overload syndrome happens when information is transmitted faster than it can be received. It's like those intense rainstorms that cause raging rivers, taking out everything in their paths. Instead of pouring down rain, bucket-loads of information are dumping on the brains of your customers and prospects. And simple umbrellas don't cut it.

As a result, people are retreating, shutting down, and seeking refuge from the information onslaught. People are literally tuning out!

Think about it: Your e-mail inbox is crammed with a never-ending stream of messages, you have billions of possible Web sites to surf and videos to watch, your physical mailbox is full of junk mail, and everywhere you turn you see and hear commercials. Let's not overlook voicemails, text messages, instant messages, tweets, and Facebook updates. And what about those stacks of dusty magazines and unread newspapers?

All these choices present a huge problem for any business. If your customers aren't receiving your messages, they're likely not thinking about your business either.

So what can a business do? What are the obvi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Launch
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Rockets Don't Fly Themselves
• Chapter 2: Starting Your Mission Plan
• Chapter 3: Finding Inspiration by Looking Outward
• Chapter 4: Leveraging the Power of Other People
• Chapter 5: Actively Engaging Other People
• Chapter 6: Making Content the Fuel of Your Marketing
• Chapter 7: Creating and Using Primary Fuel
• Chapter 8: Creating and Using Nuclear Fuel
• Chapter 9: How to Employ Marketing
• Appendices: Primary Fuel Content Samples
• Glossary
• About the Author
• Discover More About the Elevation Principle
• Index