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King Of The Squirrels Case Study - A Rookie Goes Dumb
So . . . read this and tell me what you think. Did he get his million dollars, or did he opt to become King of 
All Squirrels? Stay tuned because I’ll give you my post-mortem which will help you prevent this from happening — ever.
I knew this fellow copywriter. We need a name, don’t we? Let’s call him “Harlan” (not his real name).
Now “Harlan” got a few good copywriting gigs under his belt, hit the fabled six figures mark (allegedly, because later events called this claim into question) and before you know it, he was putting on a copywriting seminar for . . . you guessed it — beginning copywriters.
See yesterday’s post for why this was settling for the booby prize.
What’s funny about this was a Harlan was not an established copywriter, yet here he was throwing
a seminar to teach beginners how to be “6 figure copywriters” when he was barely one himself (if he achieved this mark at all).
Now that just made you do a cartoon double-take, didn’t it? Good, it should have.
And let’s face it, a year in a profession is not a track record by any stretch of the imagination.
He’d taken a copywriting course and did a decent job marketing himself, and because he thought there was a good market for pitching products to beginning copywriters (because after all he had bought many), he thought he would . .. he thought he could compete in a market with big heavyweights like Bob Bly and Clayton Makepeace and AWAI.
If you haven’t already guessed how this tale turned out, here it is: after several months of touting his course to very small e-mail list, and piggybacking on a senior copywriter’s list (who was all too happy to promote the wet-behind-the-ears pup for 50% commission) his big Vegas copywriting/marketing seminar extravaganza failed horribly.
Failed expensively.
According to my sources most of the profits he gained in the previous year of the lost with the Vegas seminar debacle. And in late in the game, as he finally started reading the handwriting on the wall . . . well, if he could’ve canceled the seminar without losing the Cloverfield-sized deposit for the ballroom, he would have.
My Post Mortem Analysis
So what happened? Smartly, very few beginning copywriters were willing to spend nearly $1000 to invest in his products, especially when that same thousand dollars could buy products with a proven track record from experts who had the results to back up their claims.
When he first started sending out e-mails promoting his seminar, I wasn’t the only one of his colleagues who gently tried to warn him away from this path. But stubbornly he continued forward. He was a “6 figure copywriter” after all, and he wanted to show the way to the writer’s Promised Land.
Look, I take no relish in his “learning experience.” I merely included here as a virtual “learning experience” that you can vicariously go through and extract the lessons from it — without having to expend the pain, time and expense of making the same mistakes.
Those are the best lessons to learn from, don’t you agree? So if you’re beginning marketer . . . copywriter . . . entrepreneur, then heed this painful lesson and take a quicker road to producing the results you want.
I’m looking out for you and I’d rather see you “settle” for the million dollars. Anything else is just a waste.
Technorati tags: Walter Terry, ROIcopywriting, information marketing, information publishing, info-products
By Walter |
Topics: Marketing Mishaps, Pet Peeves, Pro Analysis |