In a someone recent interview (I forgot which one) the legendary Russell Brunson gave his advice on how to be a great marketer.

The advise was simple and profound.

Rebuild the great marketing around you that you would be proud to make. Marketing from the people that you admire.

Taking a sales funnel and printing each word and image off. Collecting every touch point they send you and writing it out.

Then doing the work of asking: why?

Why this design? Why this type? Why this image? Why send this? Why not send this? Who’s it for? Whats the change?

It should be our goal to create books and books of the great marketing works that have become before us (and the not so great work) so that we all can do better marketing.

When someone tells you that they are going to a car show, an amateur persuader for example would try to connect to that person through cars.

“Oh, a car show! What kind of cars do you like?” – this is fine at times but when you only deal with things, you tend to not connect with the human behind them.

More profound is connecting through the identity: the fundamental set of beliefs, desires, fears, status, experiences and social ques that brought them to the car show in the first place.

Are they going to the car show to be different or to fit in? Are they trying to connect with people or win at the car show?

The “thing” as nothing to do with it, once you uncover the vibrancy of the emotions and motives under it.

When ever you have a story in your head or in other words a series of thoughts that keep cycling around.

If you don’t like them at any point, remember that you have the power to change the story you tell yourself.

Change your story and you change what you experience.

Once you figure out how to do this with yourself, (and feel the shift) it’s much easier to do this to other people.

Marketers change things, one of those things we have the skills to change are peoples stories.

For marketers to do their job and add physiological innovation to the products and services customers experience – we must have the use of placebos.

The only reason more expensive wine tastes better is because we believe it should.

So as marketers we put on shows and create games for customers to play.

It could be the game of buying an expensive wine or buying an expensive car.

It could be the thrill of finding a deal at a discount store or the joy of connecting with people who have the same clothes.

Either way the customer goes on a journey and in a lot of ways that is a game. 

There are rules. There are loop holes. There are certain things that customers can do to play that will create the by product of the placebo effect.

To have any impact in marketing you got to be clear about what you are even talking about.

The problem is: marketing is confusing. People throw around a lot of terms and use certain words, that actually technically mean something else.

They will say they are running an advertisement, when really they are marketing. They will assume that promotion means giving a discount.

They assume that marketing has nothing to do with inside the organization.

If you can’t be clear about these fundamental terms – then how could you ever make a huge impact in marketing?