Dan Kennedy's Marketing Blog

Set Goden's Marketing Blog

• Shocking Tiger Woods video (exclusive)

  You should be careful about headlines. It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to forgive your spam, and perhaps even to open your note (CyberMonday! 85% off...). It's pretty easy to write a headline that will...You should be careful about headlines.It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to forgive your spam, and perhaps even to open your note (CyberMonday! 85% off...). It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to click through on their RSS reader. It's even easy to write a tweet that will get a click through.But is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?The mindset of the brazen copywriter is, "Well, even if only 1% of the people I trick are actually interested in the content, that's worthwhile. After all, there are a lot of people out there, and offending 99 to get one subscriber or one sale is good math." The word I use for people like this is 'spammer'.The mindset of the modern marketer is, "I can build a reputation in everything I do. If I teach people to trust me, then over time, I'll conserve their attention and build permission. That's priceless, particularly in a world that's getting more skeptical by the minute."Of course, the best thing of all is to have content that deserves a great headline. If you can't do that, though, I think you should forgo the headline.Fore!

• Watch the money

  "How much life insurance do you have?" Zig Ziglar liked to say that with that one question, you could tell if someone was a successful life insurance agent. If they're not willing to buy it with their own money, how..."How much life insurance do you have?"Zig Ziglar liked to say that with that one question, you could tell if someone was a successful life insurance agent. If they're not willing to buy it with their own money, how can they honestly persuade someone else to do so?If you're in the music business but you never buy tickets or downloads, can you really empathize with the people you're selling to?My favorite: if you work for a non-profit and you don't give money to charity, what exactly are you doing in this job? I've met some incredibly generous people in the charitable world, but I can also report that a huge number of people—even on the fundraising side—would happily cross the street and risk a beating in order to avoid giving $100 to a cause that's not their own. And the shame of it is that this inaction on their part keeps them from experiencing the very emotion that they try so hard to sell.Money is more than a transfer of value. It's a statement of belief. An ad agency that won't buy ads, a consultant who won't buy consulting, and a waiter who doesn't tip big—it's a sign, and not a good one.

• Getting meta

  Wikipedia contains facts about facts. It's a collection of facts from other places. Facebook doesn't have your friends. It has facts about your friends. Google is at its best when it gives you links to links, not the information itself....Wikipedia contains facts about facts. It's a collection of facts from other places.Facebook doesn't have your friends. It has facts about your friends.Google is at its best when it gives you links to links, not the information itself.Over and over, the Internet is allowing new levels of abstraction. Information about information might be worth more than the information itself. Which posts should I read? Which elements of the project are at risk? Who is making the biggest difference to the organization?Right now, there's way too much stuff and far too little information about that stuff. Sounds like an opportunity.