The lost art of world-building in marketing
Published: Thu, 10/22/20
Specifically, she said two things.
1. She’s NOT the biggest fan of my emails
2. But, she said she read some of my Zombie Cop novel (the first book in my Enoch Wars series), said it was good, and the book has a great sense of pacing and world building
She even graciously offered to connect me with an agent.
(That’s not what her company does — so nothing in it for her.)
Anyway, she got me thinking at the time about something hardly any other marketers think about. And that is, the idea of world-building. To me, it’s very natural after mindlessly spending my youth in cahoots with a couple other kids who also had no other friends or lives playing Dungeons & Dragons and other RPG’s. Building worlds, characters, adventures, narratives, story arcs, and all that jazz comes very natural due to that.
And, it was just as natural to bring that to my marketing.
And to my brand.
And, yes, to my business as a whole.
Like, for example, when I ran an insanely addictive — according to many of its members, at least — Facebook group called elBenbo’s Lair. I built a “world” full of surprises, rules, laws, languages, customs, characters, storylines, plot twists, and other such hijinx that made it so it wasn’t unusual to have someone call it “real life” with everything outside the group being ignored. Sometimes there were so many Thread-holes and discussions, debates, and arguments going on concurrently that people would post stuff on their main timeline they’d rather not the public see, thinking they were safely in my group, only to have their friends and family think they were nuts.
Such was the power of building my own world.
Very few people (if any) in marketing understand how to world-build like this.
And, even those who do, do it on accident.
More:
World-building is the “beating heart” of my publishing model — that not only can possibly create legions of fans & customers, potentially make your business all-but “cancel-proof”… but also help construct a business where making sales can become easy & automatic vs a constant struggle & chore endlessly trying to gameify, hack, and manipulate your way into peoples’ wallets. World-building can mean having a place people want to be and not a place you need to desperately try to keep people inside.
It’s a privilege to be in your World, not a right.
It’s an adventure from their boring lives.
And, yes, it’s a platform unto itself.
Do it right and in essence, you become your own Platform.
That is why I believe — even after your death, if you do World-building correctly — your business can never be truly cancelled, de-platformed, suppressed, manipulated, or controlled by Google or Facebook or any other big tech or government entity.
And, perhaps best of all:
World-building — when done right — means putting your business in a position where you are not being pushy or selling as much as you are giving customers the opportunity to buy. World-Building can give you the kind of super tight bond with your fans, customers, clients, and audience no other “marketer” diddling around on Facebook can ever hope to have. Especially as they reactively spank out their silly little offers desperately trying to stay relevant, and lucky to get even a fraction of the engagement, response, and sales you can get if you but build a world people want to inhabit, stay in, and buy within.
In a word, World-Building equals what I have heard Dan Kennedy describe as:
“Omnipresence.”
The best way to have Omnipresence is to simply be omnipresent. And the best way to be omnipresent is build your business in a way where people want to constantly be in your World as often as they can during their waking hours.
Enter my new “elBenbo Press” book.
I go deep into this subject.
And it is a big topic that even the book can't fully explain (which is why, eventually, I'll be holding a live workshop on the subject, more on that in 2021).
More:
World-Building is not something that can be copied or "swiped" from anyone else.
As I've had to tell a few people - especially Email Players subscribers who get email access to me - already, I can't even show examples of it outside of observing what you've been seeing me do over the last 10+ years. It's like saying, "look at Disney, that's world building!" without any context, because there are thousands of variables - unique just to Walt in many cases - involved.
Same with other great world-builders both dead & alive.
It ain't something you look at and extract lessons from piecemeal.
It's something you look at as a whole when you understand the main intricacies of how it works.
Still more:
This is not something you learn in a day, a month, or even a year. It requires days, weeks, and ultimately months & years of thinking about it, applying it, and growing it starting with one "cog" in the world and building from there. And as I recently told one of my Email Players subscribers who wanted advice on how to apply world-building to his particular business in the financial services market:
"I can't tell you how to apply it to your situation, nobody can. elBenbo Press will give you the tools, but you have to plan, design, & build it out."
In other words, there is no checklist or feedback required.
Building a world transcends feedback, and most feedback should be ignored anyway.
It's YOUR world, not theirs, after all.
I can't speak for any of these guys, but Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, even the few direct response marketers I've observed who have done it, like Dan Kennedy for example, very likely did not seek "feedback." They almost certainly just did it, intuitively, based on a whole host of factors and preferences and goals and motivations unique to them, and them alone, plus knowledge of their markets, industries, and lists.
Certainly that was the case in Disney and Jobs' cases.
Bottom line:
If it was "simple & easy!" or something that could be modeled, everyone would do it.
Which is exactly why everyone won't do it.
Especially those who struggle with original, strategic, creative, and/or long-term thinking. Or those who need a checklist. Or those who can't make a move without consulting their Facebook friends, their life coach, or their horoscope.
And it certainly won't be something anyone lacking patience can do.
All of which brings me to the punchline:
This is another reason why “elBenbo Press” is very much a “Ben Settle 400-level” training.
For better or worse, that means it is not at-all newbie-friendly. And while I’m not saying you have to have all my other books or be an Email Players subscriber to use it… I will say the longer you’ve been reading my emails, the more of my books you’ve read, and the more of “me” you are familiar with, the more suited you are for this information.
It’s also my most expensive book yet, too.
But, during the launch this week I am offering it at a thick $300.00 discount off the price listed on the sales page until tomorrow, Friday, October 23 at midnight EDT.
Here is the link:
https://www.EmailPlayers.com/press
Use code SIZZLE at the checkout.
And make sure you see the price change before entering any info.
Ben Settle
P.S. If you are interested in buying this book, read the sales letter very carefully before pulling the trigger. Don’t be a fool and purchase on blind impulse. This book is not only expensive, but the information inside requires substantial amounts of effort, ambition, patience, time, and discipline to learn, master, and profit from.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.