I wrote this arti­cle way back in 1998. It seems to have made a resur­gence, espe­cially with today’s econ­omy. So I said to myself, “Why not repub­lish it?” So here it is. Enjoy!

If there is some­thing about which I’m pretty adamant, it’s the idea of attract­ing qual­i­fied prospects who are will­ing to do busi­ness with you. And this involves many dif­fer­ent things.

Posi­tion­ing is one of them. In fact, it has been one of my favorite mar­ket­ing con­cepts for this very reason.

How­ever, this fun­da­men­tal mag­net­ism is not only based on pure mar­ket­ing prac­tices or strate­gies. It also involves some­thing at a much deeper level that is far more effec­tive than any other mar­ket­ing tool or process in existence.

This “thing” to which I am refer­ring is, I believe, the most impor­tant mar­ket­ing secret I can ever teach you — and it’s far from being a secret at all. It is con­sid­ered as one sim­ply because it is often neglected or ignored by many mar­keters and businesspeople.

What is this “secret” that’s so elusive?

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Seems I’m rant­ing a lot these days, and a lit­tle more opin­ion­ated than the norm. Per­haps it’s my bro­ken back, which is killing me, that’s mak­ing me more sen­si­tive or irri­ta­ble. I don’t know.

But some­thing some­one recently said in my copy­writ­ers forum irri­tated me. And it’s not what this per­son said specif­i­cally, but the mind­set behind it that’s both­er­ing me.

In a thread about an Inter­net mar­keter who was recently arrested (yes, it had some­thing to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity, but it had more to do with refus­ing refunds and avoid­ing cus­tomers than it had to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity itself), one mem­ber said:

“There is NO such thing as an hon­est busi­ness man. (…) Ask any accountant.”

Now, I have no clue as to why this per­son said this. And my opin­ion here is not about this per­son specif­i­cally. Again, it’s about the think­ing process that some peo­ple have when they make such assertions.

Per­son­ally, I believe this view of busi­ness peo­ple is skewed, off, and wrong. It’s destruc­tive, too.

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Com­pe­ti­tion is a “killer” for a lot of com­mod­ity busi­nesses. Doesn’t really mat­ter whether you mar­ket online or offline. If you sell a com­mod­ity prod­uct then chances are you com­pete for cus­tomers with hun­dreds of other businesses.

In the next few min­utes, I’m going to share with you a proven strat­egy to…

Out-Market, Out-Sell And Out-Profit...

… Just about any­one in your indus­try or busi­ness category.

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The most impor­tant part of your copy is not your head­line, not your offer and cer­tainly not your ben­e­fits. The most impor­tant part is your customer.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been cri­tiquing some pretty good copy. Very well-​​written and com­pelling. But if the con­ver­sion rate is low (hence, the rea­son why I was hired to con­duct a cri­tique con­sul­ta­tion), it’s because these saleslet­ters do not tar­get the right audi­ence for the offer, or the author and the copy fail to con­nect with their readers.

Research­ing your cus­tomer in depth is vital to the suc­cess of your copy. It’s not only an impor­tant com­po­nent of tar­get­ing and qual­i­fy­ing the best prospect for your offer, but also an effec­tive way to dis­cover new ideas, dif­fer­ent angles, cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­lines, unsought ben­e­fits, and appro­pri­ate length and lan­guage of your copy that will con­vert more.

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