After a friend gave me his “No B.S. Direct Response Marketing Book,” it didn’t take me long to become a super fan of its author, Dan Kennedy.
I became a member of his coaching group, ordered his top courses and attended his events. His top lessons helped to influence my career and coaching.
To honor his legacy, here are the top seven lessons I learned from him that can change your business too.
1. There will always be a call-to-action
Prior to be introduced to the teachings of Dan, I was the awareness campaign queen. I ran a public relations agency and was really good at “getting the names out there” of my clients and our firm.
This kind of marketing is okay, but it requires hoping and wishing and does not put the business owner in control. And my wishing wasn’t working.
Dan introduced me the concept of always including what you want the person to do next, without guess work. From putting a call to action to opt-in to your webinar in a Facebook ad, to asking someone to sign up for notifications on your website at the end of your blog to asking for the sale at the end of a Facebook Live video.
There will always be a call to action. Because it works.
2. Marketing spend should be based on measured results.
In the traditional marketing world, there is a marketing budget rule of spend 15% of your budget on marketing.
Dan, however, introduced me to a way of marketing that is based on results. While you are getting results, spend more money. No results, don’t spend any money.
And the only way you can know how much you should spend is to track results. Not guess, track.
3. Whoever can spend the most to get a customer wins.
Instead of going after the cheapest possible leads, being able to spend the most for each of your campaigns will bring you to the finish line.
How do you do this? By looking beyond the initial sale, to the second, the third…and so on.
This testing has been behind our major growth month after month.
Want to build your own Social Media Cash Machine? Join us for this workshop.
4. One is the loneliest number.
Never rely on one source of traffic. Never ever, never.
Facebook can kick you off tomorrow, your website can get hacked, Instagram may shut down…
Always have more than one channel running at a time.
We use over 50 sources for traffic at any given time. That’s right, 50.
How many are in your mix?
5. You have to be the number one guard of your time or it will be sucked dry.
These next few aren’t marketing related, but they are business related.
Dan shared that he only allowed calls with clients when they are scheduled. He controls his schedule, never having an email account or using the internet. The only way to reach Dan was a scheduled phone call or fax.
After studying Dan’s books and his habits, I changed my way of communicating with clients, scheduling my days and distractions when working.
It made a huge difference in my productivity, profits and peace.
And was the starting stages of our “Made to Thrive Planner.”
6. You can’t “should all over” other people.
We have what we think our staff, members, clients, customers “should” do. And then we have what we tell them.
When your audience or support isn’t behaving or performing the way you’d like it’s the fault of the leader, not them.
7. You can write while you sleep
Fun fact, if you think about your writing assignment before going to bed, your sub conscious brain will work on it while you are sleeping and make it much quicker to get it done. Leverage your subconscious brain to get work done more efficiently.
His book “The New Psycho-Cybernetics: A Mind Technology for Living Your Life Without Limits” dives deeper into the power of the brain if you want to leverage it for you.
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Dan’s lessons go beyond these seven of course, but this is a start for you to get to know someone who changed my life, while admittedly I am still in shock and a bit raw.
For his legacy to continue, measure, track and multiply…
And if you want to learn more about Dan’s teachings, I put some of my favorite books of his here.
Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Dan was a great guy and influential to many, including myself. I’ve been in recent communications with Ken McCarthy over the 5th year anniversary of the passing of a mutual friend of ours, and he shared with me, and with his fans, a few days ago his tribute to Dan.
See: http://kenmccarthy.com/blog/dan-kennedy
Thanks for sharing, Bob.
I am in shock. Dan was one of the first people I started learning sales techniques from. Sad to be reminded of his great work after he left this world. His legacy will indeed live on.
Absolutely. We are all better people and better businesspeople because of Dan.
Dan Kennedy was my inspiration to learn how to sell online. His books and teachings ultimately led me to Dave Dee which ultimately led me to Kim and her team, and given us the resources and teachings we needed for us to successfully sell online! Dan’s out of the box thinking was a little shocking and and refreshing at the same time. Most importantly, it just plain worked. Dan Kennedy will be missed!
A million percent.