He just knows, OK? It's magic. Duh.

Recently, Teller (of ‘Penn & Teller’) wrote a cool article for Smithsonian Magazine about the mental manipulation tactics that magicians have mastered for 1000s of years.. Yet psychology and science are only just now catching on.

Tonight, at 7PM EST on http://colintheriot.com/tmnlive – I’m going to take those tactics and show you how to apply them directly into your marketing messaging. Not only can you “trick” people into buying your stuff, they will be DELIGHTED to be worked over by your wizardry again and again. No wand required. (Ew.)

So if you want to make more money *poof* just like magic, tune in tonight. See you at seven!

Thanks,

~ Colin

We will definitely NOT be talking about these...

Hey there!

Tonight @ 7PM Eastern on my weekly chat show “Passion, Persuasion, and Profit”: I’ll be talking about roleplaying.  Not the kinky kind, not the nerdy kind, and not even the theatrical kind.

What I want to talk about are the various “roles” I’ve identified in my work that people use to gather and interact with their various audiences.

You can watch and participate here: http://colintheriot.com/tmnlive

And remember, I’m NOT talking about acting.  I’m talking about a role you adopt the same way you adopt the role of Spouse, Parent, Employee, Boss, Child, Sibling, etc.

And this is IMPORTANT – because the WAY you talk to your audience can subconsciously dictate HOW they will perceive you.

We’ll cover: Guru, Educator, Entertainer, Explorer, Exile, Reporter, Reviewer, Jackass, and Bellwether…

Those are NOT ALL of the roles you may find, but they ARE the ones I see used effectively most often.  We’ll talk about who is using each one successfully, why they work, and give examples of how you can use them yourself, either solo or in combination.

It should be awesome.  But it will be EVEN BETTER if you show up!  :)

So I hope to see you there tonight!  Thursday, January 19th, 2012 – 7PM Eastern @ http://colintheriot.com/tmnlive

I know the Holidays are a busy time and people tend to unplug from the world and focus on family. So it’s possible you may not have heard about the typhoon and massive flooding that occurred in the Phillipines recently.

As you may know, lots of people in the Phillipines provide low-cost outsourcing work for small-scale IM businesses and this disaster is going to impact our entire industry – whether you use outsourcing or not!

My friends and colleagues Joe Finn and Justin Wheeler have gotten lots of well-known marketers (including yours truly) to donate over $1000 of products into a pool, and you can get them all for only $17 (and an email address for some of the downloads)…

Here’s a quick shortcut link: http://colintheriot.com/typhooncharity

I won’t ramble on and on about it because the page has full details if you’re interested. Basically, you get a HUGE amount of valuable info and training from reliable, reputable people… AND you get to help out some people who truly need it.
Sure, $17 is a tiny amount, but the boys have collected over $8000 so far, and every little bit helps. 100% of the proceeds are going right to aid efforts over there.

That’s it for now – have a great Holiday, and talk soon!

~Colin

P.S. Part 2 of the “4 Unanswered Questions” is coming soon – I lost my draft of it on Tuesday and am currently rewriting it. If you’ve been waiting for it, sorry for the delay!

P.P.S. Don’t forget you can join me LIVE tonight at 7PM Eastern on Talk Marketing Now and we will (surprise) talk marketing! Hope to see you there!

Sorry for the silly pun there.

But if you’ve listened to me speak before, you may have heard me use the “cartoon breakfast cereal mascot” as a metaphor for the kind of marketing persona that information sellers and wanna-be gurus should create for themselves.

Then I found this report of a scientific study earlier in the week and found it very gratifying, considering my love of that metaphor:

http://consumerist.com/2011/03/study-kids-think-cereal-with-cartoon-mascot-tastes-better.html

Turns out kids strongly prefer cereal with a cartoon mascot on the box.  Duh, right?

But what’s interesting is that they preferred the cartoon character EVEN IF they were told the cereal was HEALTHY vs. a plain cereal they were told was sugary.

Now, there are obviously a lot of interesting implications there for the savvy marketer, regardless of how obvious you might find the results of that particular study.

If you want to join me live tonight for my chat show, we’ll be talking about exactly that – what we can learn about marketing from the way kids are sold brands of breakfast serial…  I mean cereal.

That’s live tonight (Thursday) on http://talkmarketingnow.com at 7PM Eastern.

Hope to see you there!

~Colin

What a busy week!  Hope yours has gone as well as mine, completing projects and taking on new ones.

But I’m writing today to remind you that you can join me LIVE and for free on http://talkmarketingnow.com tonight at 7PM Eastern.

I’ll be talking about copywriting again, and this time I’m going to go into detail on how to create a rapport with your audience so you can be granted the kind of emotional access it takes to create a subtle and persuasive influence that will grow over time.

So if you fancy yourself a guide, guru, or advisor to your niche and your list, you’ll want to tune in to see how to create a lasting and profitable relationship that they will not only value, but will benefit from, too!

See you there, on http://talkmarketingnow.com at 7PM Eastern.  Oh, and if you want to show up early, or stick around late, there’s lots of other great hosts on tonight, too.  Check the site for details.

Talk again soon,

~Colin

Okay, only kinda sorta. I can’t cover “how to write copy” in an hour… But I WILL talk about how to start with the product. I will reveal how I take a list of features and end up with deep subliminal psychological hooks that will make prospect WANT to buy your product before they even know it exists!

To check it out and even participate, join me LIVE tonight at 7PM Eastern on http://talkmarketingnow.com.

Hey there.  Scott Murdaugh apparently can’t make his hour on http://www.talkmarketingnow.com tonight, so I will be filling his hour as well as my own usual hour of “Passion, Persuasion, and Profit” tonight.  So starting at 6pm Eastern, I’ll be talking about stories and how we can use them to brand us and help us sell more.  Then at 7pm Eastern, I’ll start with my planned topic: How to create high-value information products in a very short amount of time.   I hope you can join me!

New LIVE episode of “Passion, Persuasion, and Profits” tonight at 7pm Eastern athttp://talkmarketingnow.com/ – I’ll be talking about the persuasion points where people normally get stuck (or even backslide) in their pursuit of success, and what the right kinds of information are to get them to choose YOU as their guide, so they willingly (and gladly) follow you ever deeper into your chosen niche.

And of course, there are excellent shows on before mine and after – you can see the whole roster on the site!

My friend George Sepich runs a well known Friday night marketing chat group, and has recently started a brand new “Talk Marketing Network” and I’m happy  to be a part of it!  My show is on Thursdays from 7-8PM Eastern, but here’s the whole schedule as it is now.  Check out any of the other shows you want to – it’s totally free to attend, of course.

You can jump in on any of these sessions by going to http://TalkMarketingNow.com

• Vanessa Reece, Wednesday 12 pm  E
• Charles Terrence Harper, Wednesday 1 pm E
• Caliban Darklock, Wednesday 2pm E
• Michael Blaes, Wednesday 3 pm E
• Sam England, Wednesday 4 pm E
• Wah Bhatt, (Starting 01-19) Wednesday 5 pm E
• Glenys Eldred, (Starting 01-26) Wednesday 6 pm E
• Jill Carpenter, Wednesday 7 pm E
• Lisa Gergets, Wednesday 8 pm E
• Kezz Bracey, Wednesday  11 pm E
• Tina Golden, Thursday 2 pm E
• Christine Best, Thursday 3 pm E
• Zabrina, Thursday 4pm E
• Colin Theriot, Thursday 7 pm E
• Mike Carraway, Thursday 8 pm E
• John Schwartz, Thursday 9 pm E
• Brian McLeod, Thursday 10pm E
• Steve Odette, Thursday 11 pm E

George asked me to make sure to add that the Schedule & Hosts are Subject To Change and of course, many more will be announced as he fills in the weekly schedule.  If you’re interested, you can get in touch with him through the site.  I hope you’ll join me on Thursday, and check out the rest of the lineup, too!

I know I need to update this blog more, but I’m a shameless ham for an audience, so when I write stuff I tend to post it where I know people will read and comment.  So I put this on the WarriorForum a couple weeks back.  But then I realized that I need to put it here, so I can turn THIS blog into a place where people will read and comment.  (Duh!)  Enjoy!

So I spent 2010 doing copy for 7 major launches in the IM market. Here are a few short lessons I learned that I think will be of benefit for anyone that thinks they want to have a big launch and make a lot of money just like Mr. Super Guru who charges $2K per product and makes millions each time they release something new.

1. You can’t have a launch without a PILOT: If you think making those kinds of products and those kinds of numbers ONLY has to do with the quality of the product, you’re deluding yourself. IM is a cult of personality, and at least 70% of the active customer base across the market are basically fans and collectors, not business people in any position to fully use any IM product. 

To that end, you can’t have a launch go huge when no one knows the “pilot” – there needs to be a face, a name, and a reputation of some kind. It doesn’t matter if that rep comes entirely from the affiliate email that sends the traffic there. But there MUST be a person behind the product if you want it to truly resonate.

Plus, as a bonus, if the product flops, people will still remember the personality involved, and as long as you don’t rip people off, no one knows what sold and what didn’t. Your rep will carry over from launch to launch… but ONLY if you focus on yourself as well as the product.

2. You can’t have a launch without a LAUNCHPAD: Every single launch I’ve ever done has had technical issues. Some catastrophic, some just speed bumps. But your tech needs to be in place, redundant, tested, and tested again. Then, when you launch, watch it like a hawk, because tests only tell you it’s not broken YET. 

Don’t skimp on tech tech you need either. Find out what the best guys are using and use that. If they’re using it, it’s because it hasn’t broken yet. And if it can take what the guru guys can throw at a launch, it can take almost anything below that.

You need a site for the product, you need a place for the prelaunch to happen. You need a place where people can watch and comment and follow and share. PLUS, it doesn’t hurt to have a non-launch related site that will allow people to dig even deeper and deeper if they DON’T know the pilot.

3. You can’t have a launch without a ROCKET:The rocket is the product itself and if it isn’t so awesome that it can FLY, it’s not going to generate much interest. It’s got to be sexy, it’s got to be deluxe, it’s got to WORK. It has to actually take people from where they are to where they want to be, and it has to be safe and sleek enough for them to want to spend the dough for a ticket to ride.

Launches are for rockets, so if you’ve got a rowboat, don’t bother. The primary function of a “launch” vs. a regular product release is because you’re trying to STEAL attention from other things – you want to make a splash. The reason you want your product to be the best ever is because even for the people who don’t buy it… they’ll be MAD they didn’t. The halo lingers and every badass product your name is connected to builds your rep. See above re: Pilot. 

PLUS: You MUST remember that you want your rocket to be round-trip. You’re not launching garbage into the sun. You’re transporting PEOPLE, and you need to bring them where they wanted to go AND be able to bring them back because… you want to launch them again and again. Your best customers will buy everything you make as long as you give them the best ride they can get.

4. You can’t have a launch without MISSION CONTROL: You have to get help that knows what they’re doing. And it takes a LOT of people and a LOT of stuff to put one of these things together. It’s not the people you see on the camera, and not the faces you see on the box. 

It’s the programmer that can FIX or BYPASS your broken cart process on launch day. It’s the writer who can generate creative ways to capture and recycle all the user-based feedback into a deadly targeted salesletter as the launch unfolds. It’s the affiliate manager who is on the phone and cracking the whip to get people to promote because damn it all, we have a ROCKET here! 

Everyone shows up to the launchpad to ride the rocket or at least watch it fly – but behind the scenes, in the bunkers are the nerds and engineers and masterminds who are making it all happen. Your team is vital, so don’t skimp there either.

5. You can’t have a launch without FUEL: You might have thought I would have referred to the traffic generated in a launch as “passengers” but the fact is the people you attract that DON’T end up buying can be even MORE valuable than those that do. Because that DESIRE is a fuel that burns like a nuclear reactor. 

You need to give them a place to stand and talk and plead and rant and rave. We normally do this by having a sexy free prelaunch and letting people comment and driving them to share stuff. Of course, we GIVE them all kinds of things designed to set them aflame…

But if you don’t harness them and put them to work, they burn out and you get nothing. Put them on display, put the kindling out and IGNITE their passions, then stoke them. Let everyone see, and then the people who CAN buy will get infected with that enthusiasm, and unlike the majority, they CAN get satisfaction… by buying.

Anyways, there’s my rant. That’s what you need to have a launch WORTH doing. That’s a career-making launch. That’s a guru-making launch. That’s what it takes if you want to be an astronaut – The elite – the right guys with the right stuff… 

Lots of people WANT to be an astronaut and they DREAM of having a launch, but they see those other ones and don’t realize what goes into it. It’s not ACTUALLY rocket science… but you DO need to have all the stuff before you can pull it off.

If you want to do a launch in 2011, I hope this helps. If you WATCH any launches in 2011, look for these things, because everyone that pulls it off will have had every bit of this in place. Maybe you never noticed, but that’s how it is when all this stuff works right. It fades in the background, and everyone just watches the launch in awe, and they’re in envy of the people who get to take the ride. 

Maybe next time, little guy. Maybe next time. 

P.S. I chopped off the end of my finger while cooking a New Years dinner side dish. I’m taking some very good painkillers for that. Typos or offense can be attributed to that, or the fact that my primary hand is bandaged like a mummy.