Good Marketing: Principles First, Tactics Second

One of the best pieces of advice I can give you if you want to get good at marketing, is to study the principles first, and tactics second. Study what makes an ad actually work Vs. studying newest social media platform to place ads on.

If I had a marketing apprentice working for me, and I had a vested interest in their future earnings (say, 10% of their gross sales for the next 10 years), the very first thing I’d do is get them to study the classic direct response marketing books.

I’d keep them away Instagram, Facebook, and from subscribing to the email lists of this weeks newest Internet Marketer, and I’d make them read those books cover-to-cover.

Books like:

You might notice the years those books were published. They were mostly published pre – 1980 and go right bask to 1923 with Claude Hopkins. Long before the internet was around and that’s precisely the point.

Advertising was far harder and inaccessible before the internet came along. So the best direct-response marketers had to be far superior in their ability to make a lot of money.

For you and me today, we can test an ad on Facebook within 2 minutes from now, all from our phone, with a $50 budget.

For the ‘old school’ direct response marketers, testing ads through direct tailor print advertising could take many weeks (if not months) to organise and execute. The upfront costs to do these to were much higher, so there was a lot more planning and strategy involved. They had to really hone their craft to get great results.

In addition, since there was very few ‘marketing gurus’ around, most of what they learned was from actual paid advertising (ie. putting real money on the line, and eating what you killed). You can also find some great videos on Youtube of some of these marketing legends.

Here’s one from David Ogilvy, talking to us – direct response marketers:

If you haven’t read any of those books I mentioned above, go order some. If you’re not much of a reader, then get the Audible app on your phone. Also if your really short on time, there are some great summaries of the teachings of these marketers online.

However if you’re really serious about doing well in business, you’ll become a student of these teachers and actually read the books.