Home Products The Modern Marketing System (Part 4/4) Modern Marketing Manifesto (M³)

(Part 4/4) Modern Marketing Manifesto (M³)

This four-part Modern Marketing Manifesto (M³) series was sent to our email list. Below is a complete archive. We hope you find the series valuable.

If this resonates with you, our Modern Marketing System (MMS) is our flagship training that teaches what this Manifesto lays out. And if you're not already on our email list, you can add yourself here.

Hey, it's André and Shawn…

Today we're going to tell you how we do what we do.

Before we do that, let's recap how we got here.

In episode one, we made three promises to you.

The first promise was the truths that no one else is talking about, so you know the written and unwritten rules of the modern marketing game.

Not partial truths that are just enough to get you in trouble (and then think it's your fault for doing something wrong when something goes sideways).

The whole truth.

Our second promise was the skills needed to be an effective modern marketer.

Everyone building a happy customer-producing business needs to master four non-negotiable skills. We unpacked each one and explained how they work together to (dramatically!) improve your results.

Our third promise was perhaps our favorite: we'll reveal the ‘secret sauce' that makes our marketing so engaging and effective.

Now, before we fulfill our third promise…

… let's start by telling you what we don't do.

First, we're not copywriters.

Hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't promise us bags of cash to share our ‘copywriting secrets.'

We'll tell you right now (for free) — we don't know any copywriting secrets.

We don't have anything against copywriting. Many of our friends are extraordinary copywriters, and we know how effective copywriting can be in the right circumstances.

But, from our perspective, copywriting is primarily about selling, and that's only a small part of what we do.

And, the way we approach marketing allows the selling to take care of itself.

“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous…” — Peter Drucker

That may be why Tien C. emailed us yesterday to say:

Shawn and Andre, you've been trying my patience with the last three emails….

JUST TAKE MY MONEY!!!

And Peter V. sent us this message last night:

Man, take my money already. 🙂

Second, we don't know much about persuasion, pre-suasion, NLP, hypnosis, or all of the other ways to hack our audience's psychology.

We prefer influence instead.

Influence is earned through demonstrations of value over a long time horizon. And once trust is earned, attention has a long, durable half-life.

Admittedly, we are fans of behavioral psychology (we both loved Michael Lewis's book The Undoing Project about Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky).

But, full disclosure, our interest in behavioral psychology is mainly because we're endlessly fascinated by how predictably and spectacularly dumb we both can be.

That never gets old.

Third, we don't teach anything different from what we actually do.

We'll never divulge any names, but we've seen far too many examples where the way something is sold is entirely different than the methods being sold.

Sell one thing, and doing something else just isn't our style.

Now that you know what we don't do, let's focus on what we do.

The simplest explanation is that we build interesting, entertaining, and informative worlds people want to explore and inhabit long-term.

Read that sentence again a few times.

Write it down.

Get that tattoo gun out again.

Just sit with it for a moment and let it percolate.

.

.

We know it seems simple, but it's profound when you begin to understand what it means (for you and your audience).

To really feel — deep down — what we mean, think about the last amazing book you read, movie you watched or TV series that completely captured your attention.

What was that experience like?

Did you need a ‘call to action' to turn the page in that book?

An ‘ethical bribe' to finish the movie?

Did you need a ‘bold promise' to binge-watch an entire television series?

We doubt it.

You were pulled forward, compelled toward an invisible objective that you sensed but couldn't see.

You WANTED — sometimes desperately — to know what was next

Your desire drove the action.

No persuasion necessary. The forces you felt were influence.

Creating that feeling is at the core of our approach to marketing. It's the thread that connects everything we do and teach.

More importantly, it's a set of skills that can be learned, implemented, and improved over time to create and sustain awareness, engagement, and conversion in ways that feel completely natural to our audience.

And none of them exist in isolation.

Each is part of a larger, interconnected system where everything pulls an audience's attention forward, step by step, in ways that are meaningful to them.

But…and this is very important…those skills, on their own, are not enough.

They require a deep understanding of marketing principles, strategies, and ‘how to' in the trenches tactical execution.

The Modern Marketing Systems brings all those skills together into a single training system that meets you wherever you are right now, and grows with you as your business improves and expands.

The System combines our best thinking from more than four decades of doing this work (for ourselves and hundreds of clients).

Doors are open for enrollment…

We hope you’re half as excited as we are!

—Shawn & André
P.S.

In episode one, we set up ‘get-rich-quick' (aka GRQ) for a fall.

Our original, playful intent was to throw stones day by day to convince you that getting rich quick is a fantasy unscrupulous marketers use to prey on our hopes and dreams.

But, after reading many thoughtful, heartfelt replies, we owe you something better.

The fundamental problem with ‘get rich quick' promises is that they follow a predictable, two steps forward, three steps back pattern based on false promises and half-truths.

We buy the offer, get excited (“this time will be different!”), do the work…and nothing happens…

Then we blame ourselves, lick our wounds, and wait until the next offer comes along…(“this time it'll really be different!”)

Lather, rinse, repeat.

We can follow that pattern once, ten times, or even a thousand times, and we won't have any progress or momentum to show for it.

Until we have the courage to step off that train to nowhere, we won't get any closer to what we've all agreed we want:

  • Enough money to have control over our lives.
  • Opportunities to help others we care about.
  • Enjoying the work we do.

In a strange bit of irony, get-rich-quick is the slowest way to wealth.

The alternative is to implement methods that progress, step by step, towards something meaningful (for you, your audience, and the people you care about).

One step forward. No steps back.

Where each step builds on previous steps. Each new addition improves the whole system.

Yes, this can feel slow at first, but progress creates momentum, and momentum eventually becomes unstoppable.

We believe the Modern Marketing System is the ultimate momentum-building marketing solution.

Which, if we're right about what you want and what we deliver, brings us to the uncomfortable realization that we've been in the ‘get rich quick' business all along.

Go figure…

Email from Len C