The most useful sentence in marketing

If you want to build a wildly profitable online business that lets you do what you love every day while still taking time off, supporting a family, and living in your dream home environment and you’ve been trying for a while but you’re still not there yet, there’s nothing wrong with you.

That’s pretty much everyone these days.

I blame the guru’s that built their empires by saying, “it’s easy.”

It’s not easy.

But it is possible. And the information is out there to help you make it happen, but the main problem for most people is, there are two kinds of people you can learn from out there.

Honest ones and dishonest ones.

Now, the number of intentionally deceitful people who knowingly lie, fake results, or manipulate to extract money is actually very small. In most cases, a little bit of due diligence will keep you safe from their nefarious deeds.

But what you’ve really got to look out for are those misleading by default.

Mostly honest people that exaggerate, oversimplify, or repeat half-truths they heard from someone else because it sounds good to get attention. They’re not out to scam anyone, they’re just trapped in a system that rewards attention over accuracy.

Since they’re not busy working with real clients, they make noise instead. Posting, posturing, and parroting advice that sounds good but rarely works in practice.

And then on the other end of the spectrum you’ve got genuinely brilliant people. The Alex and Leila Hormozis of the world whose advice is great. But they’re playing a different game. Teaching from the mountain top. Their examples are outdated or built for brands at scale. Their audience are truly seasoned operators. And their methods have been copied so widely that following them today makes you sound the same as everyone else.

So where does that leave you? Somewhere between the noise of beginners and the theory of multi-millionaires?

The good news is, you don’t need to play either of those games. You don’t need to worry about chasing followers or imitating millionaires. Instead, as long as you have a real business (i.e. narrow problem, complete solution, clear price, simple packaging, and a way to get it in front of people), then you simply need to focus on the fundamentals of human persuasion.

What drives our decisions? What motivates our desires? What sparks our curiosities?

It isn’t algorithms, and it isn’t luck. It’s human nature. It’s the same rules of influence and belonging that have guided us for thousands of years.

And once you understand those rules, you will be able to move people away from their problems and toward your solutions without hype, without gimmicks, and without slipping into the “mostly honest but oversimplified” crowd that’s shouting for attention instead of earning it.

But that’s one of the hardest parts about marketing if you ask me.

Remembering all the rules you’ve learned from all the different places you’ve learned them, and remembering to put them to use when it comes time to craft your marketing message.

Thankfully, there’s a researcher who packaged them all up into a single sentence that makes most of what you need to know easy to refer to, if not remember, anytime you’re looking to make your marketing message more trustworthy, more desirable, and more compelling to your ideal audience.

If you’d like to read it, just reply back “USEFUL SENTENCE” and I’ll share it with you.

Talk soon,

Kevin Hood