Famous Indy Race Car Driver’s Surprising Success Secret
It’s been said that race car driver Bill Vukovich, the man who won the Indianapolis 500 race back in 1953 and 1954, had something surprising to say about his “secret to success“.
When he was asked the secret of his success in the Indianapolis 500, Vukovich shocked people with his answer.
He said, “There’s no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and steer left.”
What Bill was basically saying was this: Success comes down to how you implement the fundamentals.
Bill’s Advice Applies to Business Success Too
As I’ve said, I believe that the sweet spot in 2021 is the place where opportunity and the fundamentals meet.
The people and companies that succeed the most are the ones that keep their eye out for opportunities and then take advantage of them by harnessing the fundamentals.
That means that the secret of the companies that will succeed in 2021 and beyond will come down to this:
Understand the current opportunities
Successfully apply the fundamentals to take advantage of these opportunities
In other words, the secret of the companies that will succeed in 2021 will be very similar to Bill’s advice: “There’s no secret. After you see the opportunities, seize those opportunities by successfully pushing the accelerator on those fundamentals.”
Why I Stopped Posting for a Few Weeks
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been publishing a series of articles that reveal the 12 marketing fundamentals that will help you succeed in 2021.
But some of you might have noticed something. After posting the first six marketing fundamentals, I haven’t posted an article in a couple of weeks.
Why? Well, there are a few reasons:
I was really busy at work.
I went on vacation.
And we had friends come to visit.
Anyway, I’ll be continuing my series and will be posting the final marketing fundamentals you need to succeed this year. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, you’ll find a list of the first 6 marketing fundamentals below.
The First 6 Marketing Fundamentals You Need to Succeed in 2021– Infographic
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The First 6 Marketing Fundamentals You Need to Succeed in 2021– Text Version
The 1st marketing fundamental is attention. Without attention, there’s no marketing.
The 2nd marketing fundamental is attraction. Without attraction, all the work capturing attention is wasted.
The 3rd marketing fundamental is follow-up. Two of the biggest mistakes many companies make are tied to follow-up.
The 4th marketing fundamental is a USP. You need this if you’re going to get your prospects to choose you over your competition.
The 5th marketing fundamental is your “who.” Because if you don’t get this group right, all of your marketing efforts will produce little results.
The 6th marketing fundamental is your offer. If you don’t create a powerful offer, even the right “whos” won’t end up purchasing from you.
Catch Up on What You Missed in This Series
Stay tuned. Subscribe below to be automatically be notified when the next article goes live.
“Micro-influencers are social media users unlike typical celebrities, experts, or public figures. They’re individuals who work or specialize in a particular vertical and frequently share social media content about their interests. Unlike traditional ‘influencers,’ micro-influencers have a more modest number of followers — typically in the thousands or tens of thousands — but they boast hyper-engaged audiences.”
– Hubspot.com Definition of Micro-influencers
Now that you understand what micro-influencers are I want you to take a look this infographic about micro-influencers.
In it you will learn:
What micro-influencers are
6 benefits of working with micro-influencers
How to find micro-influencers
And tips on working with micro-influencers
The Ultimate Guide to Micro-Influencers (INFOGRAPHIC)
Check out this infographic from ShaneBarker.com and you’ll learn everything you need to know about working with micro-influencers.
One of my goals with this site, besides defining and systematizing what direct response content marketing is and how to harness its power, is to give you examples of how content marketing and direct response marketing have been used in subtle and creative ways in the past.
My purpose for this is to show content marketers how much they need direct response principles, methods, and techniques and also to show direct response marketers how much they need content marketing principles, methods, and techniques.
This post I have for you today has the purpose to do just that…
What is an Infographic?
Midori Nediger, over at Venngage, defines an infographic like this…
“An infographic is a collection of imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic.”
– Midori Nediger, information Designer at Venngage
What is the Purpose (or Benefit) of Infographics?
In my experience, creating an infographic can have a powerful impact on you and your business. How? Let me give you three reasons:
It allows you to present information in a way that it can be quickly consumed by busy people. (Even though I personally think it’s crazy, most people don’t/won’t read these days!)
It allows you to present information in a memorable, attractive, and visual way. (People remember things they can see and picture in their minds.)
Infographics are very shareable and can spread your ideas and get you exposure you would never get without them. (Everyone is looking for helpful information to share on their websites and with their social media followers. Infographics give information that can easily and quickly be shared by anyone!)
My Own Shocking Experience with Infographics
In 2012, I was thinking about how all the content that people love seems to have common themes, regardless of whether it is on TV, in movies, in books, or is even in a blog post.
After thinking about all these content themes, I decided to try to come up with a list of all of the types of content that people crave.
I looked at my final list and thought it was a really interesting list.
I believed it could really be helpful to people, so I decided to get an infographic of the list made. I contacted ContentMarketingInstitute.com (CMI), to see if they would be interested in using it as a guest blog post. They said they would.
I really thought that what I had come up with was an important list, but I still wasn’t sure how the CMI audience would respond.
The infographic, and the short blog post that I wrote to go with it, originally appeared on CMI back on June 5, 2012. It was called “21 Types of Content We All Crave.” Here is my infographic…
Note: In 2016, CMI asked me to do a follow-up post. In that post, I provided 10 other types of content we crave.
The Response
As soon as it appeared, people began commenting and sharing the post. And they KEPT commenting and sharing it and commenting and sharing it.
It ended up being tweeted well over 800 times and it received 102 comments before the comments were finally closed.
Not only that, but the founder of CMI, Joe Pulizzi, later gave me a testimonial that said that my post was one CMI’s most popular posts of the year. I couldn’t believe the response!
Quick Tangent: Here’s How to Hear More of My Crazy Story and Discover the Lessons You Can Learn From It
You can listen to more of my story and learn how I stumbled into marketing 20 years ago, by listening to an audio recording from the marketing class I teach for UC Berkeley Extension.
In that story, I reveal the crazy zig-zaggy path I took on my marketing journey.
You’ll discover:
How I ended up putting together a book with interviews with 38 top business, sales, and marketing experts
How I ended up being interviewed on the radio for the “resolution solution” knowledge that I had gained
How I unintentionally began using content marketing (before the term existed)
How I ended up doing marketing consulting and helping small business owners, business founders, and others
How I began speaking in front of authors, small business people, and B2B content marketers
And… how I ended up writing for top marketing websites, wrote a book that was nominated for an award, have been interviewed on podcasts for my content marketing knowledge and ideas, and how I became a marketing professor for UC Berkeley Extension
**Do you want to know the craziest part of my story? I have done all of this without a degree in marketing. (I am 100% self-taught.)
And in this audio, I reveal four, hard-earned marketing lessons that you can apply to your own career and/or to your business.
Click here to sign-up and listen to it for free, right now.
Ok, Now Back to Our “Regularly Scheduled Post”… 🙂
So, you can see why I believe in the importance of and the power of infographics.
But there was one completely incorrect thing that I believed about infographics (and I didn’t even realize my mistake).
I thought infographics were a new, modern idea. (I started noticing them around 2011.)
Turns out that I was wrong. But at least I was only 61 years off! Haha!
Did Advertising Legend David Ogilvy Create the First Infographic in 1950?
In the video, Ogilvy told stories about his early years.
In one story, he said that when his agency was starting out, he was the research director and had never really done any creative work when it came to advertising.
It was during this time that his agency received a job where they had to an ad for Guinness (beer) and oysters.
He kept trying to think of what kind of ad they could possibly do and that’s when it suddenly came to him.
On the train ride home from work he was struck with inspiration. He decided that his ad would be a guide to oysters.
He was so excited about the idea that when he got off the train, he immediately called the office right away and told them his idea.
When I saw the image of the ad appear on the screen during this interview, I was caught off guard.
I had to stop the video and “google” the ad to see it up-close for myself. And when I did, I realized how wrong I had been about infographics being a modern idea.
Take a look at this ad and see for yourself if it doesn’t have a really familiar look and format to it…
Isn’t it crazy how it looks exactly like an infographic!?! That’s because it is one. It’s an infographic in print.
I haven’t researched to see if there are any older examples, but this appears to be the first infographic (or at least one of the first).
The Most Surprising Part of the Story
The most surprising part of the story was what David Ogilvy said as he finished off this part of his story.
He said that this was his first advertisement.
If I understood him correctly, that means that David Ogilvy’s first ad was a print-based infographic. (And he said it appeared only in The New Yorker!)
He used content marketing (in the form of an infographic) as a way to provide helpful information for beer drinkers and build an affinity between beer drinkers and Guinness Beer.
That means that David Ogilvy, a man who strongly believed in direct response marketing, saw the importance of, and the benefit of, content marketing.
A Freak Accident or an Effective Strategy?
In case you’re thinking, “Yeah, so what? So he used what we would now call an “infographic”… once! That doesn’t mean he found value in infographics or content marketing!”
Oh really?
Ogilvy told the interviewer that after they did that first guide they went on to do a SERIES OF ADS of different Guinness Guides!
If the first guide didn’t produce results, then there’s no way that David Ogilvy would have produced other guides.
That means his use of infographics and content wasn’t just an accident. It was a strategy that he used repeatedly.
To Readers Who Are Direct Response Marketers or a Part of Companies Who Mainly Use Direct Response…
So, to my readers who are direct response marketers or to companies who mainly use direct response, I hope this helps you to realize that content marketing is something that can add to the marketing and advertising that you do.
I hope you stick around, come back for more insights that can enhance your marketing, and even consider becoming a free member.
To Readers Who Are Content Marketers or a Part of Companies Who Mainly Use Content Marketing…
And to my readers who are content marketers or to companies who mainly use content marketing, I hope that you see that the content marketing principles, methods, and techniques that we use today have deeper roots that go much farther backthan we’ve probably ever realized.
I hope you stick around, come back for more of these “forgotten insights” that can enhance your marketing, and open yourself up to the idea of learning how to add direct response to make your content marketing even more powerful. And I hope you also consider becoming a free member.
Some Helpful Links for You
Here is a list of links to many of the things that I mentioned in this post and also to some links to additional resources:
You can listen to my personal, crazy story of how I got into marketing and discover some important lessons that can help you to market yourself or your company, then you can sign-up to listen to it here.
P.S. Make sure to check out my infographic “7 Ways to Create Boring Content” before you leave. It will give you ways to guarantee that your content will be boring!
P.P.S. Make sure you check out the steps at the end of this post to learn how to create interesting content.
In a Reader’s Digest issue from April 1981, a man named Louis De V. Day, Jr., told an interesting story in an article called Pennomena.
The story was about the surprising and funny solution that a group of college students came up with in order to help them get through a boring professor’s lectures.
And I believe that this story presents an important reminder for all us content marketers.
Here’s the story in Day’s own words…
The Funny Way a Group of College Students Handled a Boring Professor
“Several years ago a professor at the University of Pennsylvania was know for giving boring, cliché-ridden lectures.
“At the beginning of one semester, an innovative class breathed new life into his course by assigning baseball plays to each hackneyed phrase.
“For example, ‘on the other hand’ was a base hit;‘by the same token’ was a strikeout; ‘and so on’ was a stolen base.
“Divided into two teams by the center aisle of the lecture hall, the students throughout the term played inning after inning of silent but vigorous baseball.
“On the last day of class, the impossible happened — the score was tied, the bases were loaded and the batter hit a home run!
“The winning team stood and cheered wildly.
“Though deeply appreciative, the professor was quoted later as having wondered why only one-half of the students had been enthusiastic about his lectures.”
The One Lesson a Boring Professor Can Teach You
It’s hard to learn from a boring professor, but there’s an important lesson they can teach us. And that lesson is this…
The power of your words is not just in WHAT you say, but it’s also in HOW you say them.
They’re the equivalent of a boring college professor who can’t get through to their students. That’s never going to work!
Your prospects and customers won’t make an effort to make your boring content exciting, like those students did. Instead they’ll just tune you out completely. Or unsubscribe!
So that leads us to these questions:
What can you do about this?
How can you make sure that you’re content is not boring?
In order to help you with this, I thought it’d be fun thing to tell you what NOT to do.
So below I am presenting to you what I am calling “Seven Ways to Create Boring Content.”
You’ll find it below in two helpful formats for you: 1) An infographic and 2) A text version of the list
7 Ways to Create Boring Content (Infographic)
7 Ways to Create Boring Content (Text Version)
If you follow these tips, you’re guaranteed to bore people every time!
1. Create content that has no personality
2. Create content that is exactly the same as any or all other content I can find on the subject
3. Don’t use any stories
4. Don’t give any examples
5. Don’t surprise me in any way with your content
6. Don’t take an interesting perspective on a subject
7. Don’t share a bold opinion
Time Drags When You’re Boring
I heard that the famous film director Billy Wilder, who was known for classic movies such as “Some Like It Hot,” was once asked how he liked a new film.
His answer was both funny and enlightening.
He said, “To give you an idea, the film started at eight o’clock. I looked at my watch at midnight –and it was only 8:15.”
Isn’t that true? When you’re bored, time drags… on… f-o-r-e-v-e-r!
When you follow my tips above, you’re sure to slow down time for people in the same way.
So how do you create exciting and engaging content?
How to Create Interesting Content
If you want to know how to create interesting and engaging content, it all comes to doing the opposite of everything in my list above.
That means you need to create content that:
Has personality
Is different than other content that can be found on the same subject
Tells stories
Gives powerful examples of what you’re talking about
Surprises people in some way
Gives an interesting perspective
And finally shares a bold point of view
This is the kind of content that will never bore people.
If you’d like more examples of how to create exciting and engaging content, then make sure to check out my “21 Types of Content People Crave”.
I am about to show you some content marketing stats that reveal some really important things you need to consider if you’re going to use content marketing in 2019.
But first, there’s an 8-sentence story you need to hear…
STORY: The Sculptor’s Plans vs. the Writer’s Plans
You’re about to read a story that reveals why content marketing produces results for some companies and why it doesn’t produce results for other companies.
Here’s the story…
British sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein was once visited in his studio by the eminent author, George Bernard Shaw.
The visitor noticed a huge block of stone standing in one corner and asked what it was for.
“I don’t know yet,” Epstein replied. “I’m still making plans.”
Shaw was astounded. “You mean you plan your work?” he asked. “Why, I change my mind several times a day!”
“That’s all very well with a four-ounce manuscript,” replied the sculptor, “but not with a four-ton block.”
Some people complain about content marketing these days and try to insinuate that it’s no longer effective (or has never been effective).
But that’s not true. What is true is that content marketing done ineffectively is ineffective and content marketing done effectively is effective.
You see, in order to build a solid, monumental content marketing plan you have to think more like a sculptor than a writer.
As you are about to see from the content marketing statistics below, there are individuals and companies who are still seeing results from their content marketing.
That means that the difference between those who complain about content marketing and those who praise content marketing comes down towhether they wing it or whether they take time to plan out their content marketing strategy.
Ineffective vs. Effective Content Marketing
But that’s not all. If you want to create effective content marketing in 2019, then here are three of the things you’re going to need:
You need a documented content marketing strategy (a plan).
You must create content that consumers find interesting and helpful.
You must not just create content filled only with dry information and facts. You must create content that uses stories and/or harnesses the elements or power of stories.
BONUS POINT: You’re going to also need how to tie in direct response principles with your content marketing to maximize its impact and results. (Stay tuned to this website to learn how to do that.)
3 Powerful Content Marketing Stats (Infographic)
The stats below will help you to see why the three things that I mentioned above are so important, if you want to succeed with content marketing in 2019…
Sources of Content Marketing Stats
If you would like to learn about the above statistics, then check out these sources below:
In 2018, only 39% of content marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. That number, however, jumps to 65% among top performing organizations. SOURCE: CMI & MarketingProfs
70% of consumers want to learn about products through content as opposed to traditional ad methods. SOURCE: Mdgadvertising.com
55% of business professionals say a great story captures their focus and keeps them engaged with content. SOURCE: Prezi.com
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