How to think & write like a marketing genius
Published: Thu, 02/18/21
Here are some fascinating facts about Ken:
* He’s the literal “founding father” of online advertising as we know it — with even Time Magazine admitting his early discoveries (on click metrics) became the foundation for what built today’s biggest online advertising companies, like Google & other tech giants.
* He’s also the founding father of email marketing too — not only writing the first published article on the subject back in the early 90’s (in the prestigious DM News)… not only being the lone wolf in Silicon Valley aggressively insisting everyone start collecting emails to market to them (he was the first to teach even guys like AOL founder Steve Case about the idea)… but, as far as anyone knows, Ken was also the first to create (an admittedly crude, that never went anywhere) autoresponder before anyone else did.
* He is also the founding father of online video marketing — in 1994 he hired a highly respected reporter in silicon valley (Hank Duderstadt) to research the subject… to which Hank said, “You want me to write about THAT? Why? No one can do it.” Ken’s answer: “But someday people will be able to and when they can it will be the most powerful thing on the Internet. Let’s be ready.” It’s almost like Ken was on to something...
* Tim Ferris was once asked what book had the biggest impact on his life… and he said it was Dan Kennedy's “How to Make Millions with Your Ideas.” The author of the chapter on online marketing in that book: Ken McCarthy.
* He’s the “godfather” of nearly all the early heavy hitter marketing gurus you’ve heard of, and he gets the credit (or blame, in some cases) for personally leading, positioning, and first giving a teaching platform to them — including guys like Perry Marshall, for example.
* He's the ONLY guy Dan Kennedy allowed to teach online marketing to his herd — no exaggeration, Dan didn't let anybody else talk about the internet at all to his customers except Ken.
* On a personal note, he’s one of the 4 people on my “Mount Rushmore” (hat tip to Brian Kurtz for that nifty analogy) of copywriters I learned the most about copywriting from as well as creating the copywriting course that gave me the “seeds” for creating a more or less “cult-like” following in my infamous elBenbo’s Lair Facebook group a few years back.
* He created the “template” for merging direct response copywriting with info publishing to build not just online businesses but online empires — which is what this 4-part interview focuses on.
This interview is long, detailed, and packed with for real value.
Especially the value “between the lines.”
It’s the kind of info you simply won’t see in any copywriting book or course.
One more thing before you begin:
This was more of a private telephone conversation than a formal “interview.”
And that means you are going to hear some crazy shyt (we both are considered “fringe” in all the fluffpreneur business circles) we talk about that is frowned upon in polite company. It also means it ain’t structured like a “do this, and this, and this” checklist talk about copywriting & online empire-building.
i.e., thinking is required...
All right, enough build up.
Here goes:
elBENBO: …. you were able to do & teach & build all these businesses for yourself and others via the strength of copywriting.
THE GREAT KEN McCARTHY: My marketing method was pretty simple, I coined this thing called the pre-system seminar. And I said, "Look, we're going to give a seminar away before the seminar, and everybody can come." I realized not everyone can afford to come to the system, but we want to make sure everybody at least has the basic standard. And this will also prepare attendees so everybody can come for free. So I basically gave away a free seminar, and there'd be anywhere from 8 to 15 live audio things. And every single one of those things was promoted using copy. I don't know, what did I write? 30, 40, 50, 60 separate emails, plus the sales letter for each seminar that I did? Those things didn't fill themselves. And it all floated on a sea of copy.
elBENBO: And combine that with what you're the expert at and positioning.
THE GREAT KEN McCARTHY: Right, right. Right.
And that's so important. It's so important.
I mean, another term of that could be framing. And I'm thinking a lot about that lately these days. This is a bit of a sidebar, but it's just kind of an interesting thing. It's like, I can show you a picture of a person in an IV, in a intensive care unit with IVs. And what has all these guys done? Whenever you see a picture like that, they just stamp on it, COVID, right? It could be your 94 year old grandma that's just at the end of the line. It could be a guy with AIDS, diabetes, stage four cancer, dementia, and he's just had a heart attack.
elBENBO: It reminds me of pictures of the polar bear standing on the piece of ice.
THE GREAT KEN McCARTHY: Oh, my God. It's perfect.
elBENBO: “Look! A polar bear on ice - the planet's turning into Mordor! sCiEnCE!!!”
THE GREAT KEN McCARTHY: I know. You know what? I'm going to write that down. That is the perfect analogy for what's going on.
And so, yeah, these guys are good. These guys are good.
elBENBO: Using all the best copywriting principles, just unethically.
THE GREAT KEN McCARTHY: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That's why I feel I was able to see through this thing from virtually day one. To me it's just a big long sales letter with a lot of auto responders.
elBENBO: They're essentially using the same stuff that we all use today, in real time right now.
THE GREAT KEN McCARTHY: Yep. They position a front man as the genius savior. And boy, did they work hard to do that. I mean, wow.
elBENBO: Celebrity-created. Which happens in internet marketing world.
THE GREAT KEN McCARTHY: Yep. I mean, I've always been aware, and I don't know where I first got the notion that being a celebrity was a great thing. And then somebody put it in my ear that really anybody can be a celebrity.
It’s a manufactured thing.
And I'm like, wow, that's interesting.
And then the next piece was, celebrity is relative. So you don't have to be world famous to make a ton of money, you just have to be famous within a finite group of money spending people, and you can have all the money you can handle.
And when those three items congealed in my brain, I was like:
“Whoa, I'm going to be a celebrity.”
So my positioning was, I wanted to be the honest broker of information on internet marketing. And I also wanted to be the guy that you could trust on innovation issues. That if he said something was worth looking at, it was worth looking at. Not worth mortgaging the farm for, but worth taking a look, worth carving a little time out of your week and making sure that you were conversant with it. And then I also wanted to be seen as a guy that stuck to the fundamentals, and valued the fundamentals, and drilled the fundamentals. Because the fundamentals really are, at the end of the day, what's going to get you through everything.
So there were a bunch of things that I wanted to be seen as.
And it's funny how, there are some people that thought all that I was, was a host of seminars. That I wasn't even anybody. I was just a guy that organized seminars and asked all these really famous people to come speak.
Which, I don't care as long as I got the money from the guy, you know?
elBENBO: Well it's interesting to think about, because you talk about this idea of building personal empires and using copywriting. And it seems to me, this is the way you do it. It's not the copywriting tricks and tips, so much as it is positioning and celebrity persona creation, and community building, and all that stuff comes together and makes the copy 1,000 times stronger than it would be otherwise.
Let’s talk more about using sales copy to build this kind of empire online.
# # #
So ends part 1 of my recent interview with the great Ken McCarthy.
On another note:
Ken’s offering his prestigious “Advanced Copywriting For Serious Info Marketers” course at a gigantic discount for my Horde only, until Sunday, 2/21 at midnight EST. Plus, if you use my affiliate link below you get two extremely valuable (unadvertised — not listed on the sales page) bonuses you can’t get anywhere else:
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Ben Settle