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7 Ways to Find a Topical Market that Will Fuel Your Digital Commerce Business

Robert Bruce: This is Rainmaker FM, the broadcast that provides you with the knowledge you need to build your own digital marketing and sales platform that works. I am Robert Bruce here with Brian Clark.

Today we’re going to answer a couple of your questions before we get into the main topic, which is seven ways to inexpensively find a topic market that will fuel your digital commerce business. Brian, here’s our first question.

Jane Doe asks, “Is it really that big of a deal to build an online platform on properties you don’t own?” She says she sees lots of successful people doing it in places like Tumblr, Squarespace, Twitter, and Facebook but what’s the true danger here?

Understanding the True Danger of Digital Sharecropping

Brian Clark: We’re still getting this question.

Robert Bruce: How many years has it been?

Brian Clark: I don’t know. The evidence keeps mounting and we don’t have to do anything because you’ve got the big Silicon Valley platforms that are constantly screwing people over. And people still wonder, “But what’s the harm?”

I will say that she included Squarespace. Squarespace is a website suite of tools, so it’s your site, it’s just the way you build it, so I wouldn’t include Squarespace. We distinguish between Squarespace from Rainmaker in that Rainmaker is way, way, way more sophisticated and powerful. Most of the people we’re talking to especially on the topic of membership sites and digital commerce and all this, they’ve graduated beyond Squarespace. But otherwise, I don’t consider that sharecropping.

Robert Bruce: Well, we know the stories of Facebook. And you just brought something about Tumblr this morning to me that I hadn’t heard about yet.

Brian Clark: Facebook of course, did the biggest bait and switch on people ever. They basically let people build audiences there, and you had a lot of bad advice from short sighted social media consultants who said, “You don’t need a website, just build on Facebook.” Effectively, Facebook has changed the rules so many times since that time that it’s ridiculous.

The biggest thing of course is that the audience that you built, you now have to pay to reach. And you’re still missing out on all the value of owning your own media property, which has real value. You can sell a site. You’re not going to sell your Facebook page. No one is going to buy that. They may buy it in conjunction with your overall media business, but no, you’re not going to sell your Facebook page.

I’m still a little perplexed about how entrepreneurs or business people could think that way. There is a huge tide of people, like everything from Cory Doctorow’s new book to most people in the startup world. It’s like, “You’ve got to own your own platform.”

So Tumblr, you know when Yahoo bought Tumblr, they said, “We’re not going to screw you over Tumblr people.”

Robert Bruce: Well, they never do. These companies never do that.

Brian Clark: No, of course not. Well, what did they do last week? They basically decided that Tumblr is going to be a YouTube competitor, so they did a bunch of stuff including resizing the image field on everyone’s post since the beginning of time. It broke all the images, and the response is “too bad.”

That doesn’t happen to you if you own your own property. I think most people get it right now. The fact that some people have this question I think is because they somehow think it’s easier or that it’s a shortcut.

Number one, it’s no easier to build an audience on property you don’t own than one you do. And secondly as Sonia says, “Don’t take shortcuts. They take too long.” You end up getting screwed by the company that you thought was doing you a favor at the beginning because your interests and theirs are not aligned.

Robert Bruce: I think one of the things you brought up, is that people miss most often or don’t get or it takes them time to realize, is the idea of building the digital media asset itself. You can’t do that on a sharecropped external third party site, which is because of things like exporting your content and all of that.

There are work arounds for that, but the one thing is the building of value in that asset that you actually own. And for some reason, that just skates across the ice.

Brian Clark: It’s because people aren’t thinking like media entrepreneurs. No media entrepreneur doesn’t own their own intellectual property. That is the asset.

I haven’t had a chance to read Cory Doctorow’s new book, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free. It’s about how all these platforms are exploiting creators. To a certain degree I’m sympathetic, but it’s our own fault if we don’t control our own platform. That’s why the Rainmaker Platform is our passion. We’re giving you the tools to do things easier and more powerful and better, but it’s still yours.

How Does Content Curation Fit into the Rainmaker Media Content Strategy?

Robert Bruce: Alright, question number two. John Doe asks how content curation fits into the Rainmaker Media content strategy. Since it’s not your own media that you’re publishing, should you use it at all? Should you curate at all?

Brian Clark: You and I have been talking about curation forever.

Robert Bruce: Well, allow me to elaborate just for a moment here. I believe it was late 2010 or early 2011 (I’d have to look at the dates), but somewhere back then I started a little weekly publication called. The Lede. The Lede is now Copyblogger’s podcast.

It was a simple curation play. And I’ve got to say Brian, at the time I got a little flack from you for it. Now to be fair, you had been doing this from the very beginning like so many others. Once in a while, you would post links, but you did it in a much more casual kind of fun way. But what if you look at it as an actual strategy? What if you looked at it as a centerpiece around a whole media operation? What do you think of that?

Brian Clark: Well, back when you first started The Lede, I thought it was an interesting little addition to our original content, and as you know, our original content does so much better. A link post isn’t going to go viral.

Basically what happened since that time is content marketing went mainstream and we’ve got this exponential increase in the amount of content out there. There’s a lot of good stuff out there but who can find it?

I’m really starting to find curation as a primary strategy to be much more appealing. In fact, I’m working on a project that is something I’ve wanted to do for a while and it’s going to be straight up email curation. It’ll be using Rainmaker and the new curation tools that will be coming soon.

I’ve got to say that I’m coming around on it and there are certain things about it that are important. Number one, you’re driving. It’s got to be email, right? If you own the list, number one, does it matter what the content is as long as the audience wants it? Number two, you curate and you summarize. Dave Pell’s newsletter is great. It’s just the most interesting stuff that happened that day. What’s it called?

Robert Bruce: Next Draft.

Brian Clark: Right. But Dave writes his own narrative. It is original content with links. So you’re getting social sharing and you’re getting search value in there.

Robert Bruce: And you’re getting Dave.

Brian Clark: You’re getting a human being with a sense of humor and a perspective instead of an algorithm. That’s the big thing I’m seeing right now. Computers are choosing what you should see. I think there’s a real hunger out there for humans to say, “Hey, here’s what I found and it’s fascinating and here’s what I think.” That human connection works, but the key is email. Dave Pell has a huge audience that subscribes to email, which is the Holy Grail, but he is a curator.

It is doable and I’m going to make myself an example of how to do this. Some people are like, “Well, you’ve already got an existing audience, that’s not fair.” I don’t know. This is what I want to do and it has nothing to do really with Copyblogger. Our friend Chris Brogan tried to change directions and a lot of people resisted. I don’t think it’s a lock that you have an existing audience if you’re going into a brand new area, so we’ll see.

Robert Bruce: Well here’s the other thing about that. We both, you and I, and many of listeners to this show follow a few curated areas, either newsletters or folks doing stuff on third party services like Twitter. One part of that that keeps coming up between you and I, is that we have yet to see a really smart and powerful revenue model applied to it.

Brian Clark: You know what’s interesting to me when I look at that? And I do agree with you. It’s that I’ve got the revenue model.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: It would be membership based. I hate to say that’s the easy part, but it is. What’s interesting to me is whether or not I can find the great stuff. Can I create a voice that is appropriate and engaging for this audience? It’s those types of things you would think some people will say, “Oh, that’s the easy part.” But is it?

Robert Bruce: We’ll find out. Thank you for these two questions, folks. To get your own question featured on Rainmaker FM, just head over to Rainmaker.FM, drop it into the comments of one of the episode posts there.

Rainmaker FM is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, which in our opinion is the best and easiest way for content marketers and online entrepreneurs to build a powerful content driven digital commerce website.

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Understanding Digital Commerce: How to “Be the Market”

Robert Bruce: Now, into the main topic for today’s broadcast we go. One of the big questions that comes up again and again and again is around the topic of finding a profitable market. How do you do it? How do you know that it’s potentially profitable and where do you start?

Let’s talk about the headline you’ve come up with here, 7 Ways to Find a Topical Market that Will Fuel Your Digital Commerce Business. Way number one is, “Be the market.”

Brian Clark: First of all, let’s just refresh everyone’s memory when we use this term “digital commerce.” It’s a newer term that we’ve adopted. Essentially it means selling premium content.

As we talked about last week, it’s a little bit more than that. You’re really selling the benefits of knowledge and a complete experience of access to others. It’s also selling yourself and other subject matter experts and all that good stuff. In its simplest form though, what is an area where people will invest in online training or some other sort of member fueled paid content community?

As you mentioned the first one, “Be the market.” Somewhere around 2001 or 2002 I had somehow educated myself in the world of direct response and direct marketing historically and had been applying it to the internet. There was permission based email lists, and all that kind of stuff.

I started seeing opportunities everywhere. You get to that point where you pay attention and you’re like, “Oh, you could do this and that, and that’s how you’d make money.” Right? That’s what I mean when I say monetization is easy for me. What is not easy for me is passion and interest in those things.

There are a million ways to make money and most of them I do not want to do. Sometimes even things that interest me, I don’t want to do. You have to give me a pep talk and then we move on. Right? But you get what I’m saying when it’s like if you’re not interested, if you’re not passionate in something, it is very difficult to do the work, to carry on and to keep going.

Think about it this way, if you want to be the leader of a tribe, you’ve got to be a member of the tribe. How often is it successful for an outsider to come in and take over? Usually it doesn’t work and it rarely works in online communities. So you need to be interested and passionate and you need to be the person with the problem or desire.

Then you can take that leadership role into helping people who are similar to you. That’s very much why I started Copyblogger. People think, “Well, I’m not an expert yet.” But just merely going on your own journey and sharing what you know and bringing people along with you puts you in that role.

Look at Darren Rowse’s story. No one started out as an expert. They just knew a little bit more than the other people. Right? It goes back to the curation thing. Like if you can find this stuff that you are genuinely interested in in your own life, and this project that I’m talking about, it’s where I’m at right now. Just like in 2005, I was at a place that resulted in me starting Copyblogger, so this is a tried and true one for me. From a content standpoint, I’m not saying you can’t just go in ruthlessly and learn everything about a market and own it. You can. It’s just it would be hard for me to keep going.

Robert Bruce: I’d like to add to what you brought up a moment ago, in that I think there’s a road block that people have in their mind by saying, “Yeah, I can’t talk about this stuff. I’m not an expert. I’m not a PhD in XYZ topic.”

I don’t know if you remember, but growing up it seemed if anybody was on the radio or on TV or in a magazine being interviewed, it seemed like they were all experts. It was as if they were all people of great authority.

But like you said, when Darren Rowse started Digital Photography School, he was not nearly an expert photographer, but he very clearly famed his position as “I am a diehard to the end fan of photography. I want to learn more. Will you come along with me?” And that’s the way to position it when you’re in that position.

Brian Clark: Yes, be an enthusiast. I’ll be the first to tell you that when I started having to try to teach people copywriting and content marketing, my own level of sophistication exploded. That’s because I was forced to truly examine these issues at a level to where I could communicate it to others.

Teaching is one of the best authority builders in the world not only in the way people view you, but in enhancing your own expertise. So again, the new project I’m going to be starting, which I am by no means an expert in any of it, but I am passionate about applying these principles to my own life and therefore I’m taking people along with me.

Get Thee to the Newsstand

Robert Bruce: Alright. Number two, one of my favorite things, I’ve talked about this a bunch over the years after hearing you and Sonia bring it up, and that is get thee to the newsstand. Go to a magazine rack and look at the magazines on the rack. What do you mean by this?

Brian Clark: Even if you are in the market, you are an enthusiast, and you are a member of the tribe you want to lead, you still have to do research. You’re not starting from zero when you are similar to who you’re trying to reach.

In any scenario, research is crucial and I do this all the time. I did it again with my most current project. Go to Barnes and Noble, anywhere where there is a big selection of magazines and look around. Find out if you have an idea for a membership site or some sort of digital commerce premium content site. Is there a magazine on it? How many? How are they positioned? That’s because that’s what it comes down to.

You need to find a topical market that is big enough to bring you enough people. You’re not going to reach them all and that’s always the danger of going really niche. Hey, no one is talking about this yet. What did Sonia call it? Naked mole rats?

Robert Bruce: Naked mole rats. Yes.

Brian Clark: So looking at naked mole rat enthusiasts. There is no magazine for that. If there is a paper magazine for a topic, then it is a viable niche.

Robert Bruce: It means there’s advertising in it and people are paying not only to buy it, but people are paying to be seen in it.

Brian Clark: Exactly. And then you look not only at the content, but you look at who is advertising.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: That’s really informative to figuring out what’s happening. It really helps inform your own strategy because you’re getting more specific with every step you take in your research to understanding what the audience wants currently and what they could want in the future that is slightly unique.

Robert Bruce: One side note on this, if you’re building any kind of a hyperlocal website and making that kind of play, if you go to your local newsstand or grocery store or bookstores (and sadly so many of these great newsstands are gone now) but you’ll see that not only are the big magazines there that are always there, but you’ll see interest from your community.

For instance, I’m in Oregon’s wine country. There are all kinds of wine magazines at a local grocery store that we go to, but there’s also an entire rack of hunting and fishing magazines that are not going to show up in newsstands in Portland. That awareness might inform those of you who are working on local websites as well that there are all kinds of angles to approach it with.

Brian Clark: Absolutely. The free lifestyle magazines in any area are amazing at giving you a big head start. You know? My Boulder site, YourBoulder.com, there are several free and paid competing local Boulder publications and I’m killing them all online. That’s because they’re focused on print and that’s good for them, but they’re very bad at online. And that is an opportunity.

What You Need to Know About Niche Positioning

Robert Bruce: Number three is a big topic with niche positioning.

Brian Clark: I touched on this, but you’re going to want a huge and competitive topical area. I always talk about the big three, not counting technology, which is obviously a huge one and super saturated.

There’s health and wellness, money and investing (wealth if you will), and personal development. Those are eternal. There will always be room for more, especially if you are coming at it with a unique perspective. And how could you not since you are a unique human being?

That’s only the beginning though. Again, it comes down to being part of your market. That helps because your personality cannot be duplicated. But you also have to look to position yourself in a way that is perceived to be something completely new. A lot of people struggle with positioning but it is the most important thing. I could point out countless examples of blogs or newsletters or magazines that are essentially talking about the same exact thing and yet they are completely different in the eyes of the audience.

Robert Bruce: Right. And not only that, but their reprinting the same exact articles and headlines on maybe a 6-8 month to a year schedule.

Brian Clark: You’re thinking of the old Men’s Health thing, right?

Robert Bruce: Exactly.

Brian Clark: You might want to explain that if people don’t catch it. Basically Men’s Health does a different cover photo and the same exact headlines for stories once a year or something like that.

Robert Bruce: I don’t know what the cycle is, but it might be even longer. I’ll drop a link to a post Demian Farnworth did, with a look at this.

He found this great picture that you can probably easily find online, but it’s up of four different Men’s Health covers. The picture is different, but it’s almost word for word on the headlines for the same articles over a period of a couple years at least. It’s very interesting. And you know what? I don’t read Men’s Health, but I was never aware that was happening.

Brian Clark: Of course not because people tend to come in and out of those types of things depending on where they’re at in their life.

Robert Bruce: Right.

How to Tap into the Essential Elements of Content Marketing

Brian Clark: The topics are pretty much the same at any given time. You want to lose weight, you want to gain muscle, and improve your sex life. It’s the same thing. I would be very surprised to find that there are people who have been subscribed to Men’s Health for ten years unless they’re really just not paying attention.

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: The goal here is that you tap into existing desire with these things. You’re not creating desire. What you are creating is the impression of a unique approach to satisfying that desire. That’s essentially what marketing is with regard to content.

It’s voice. It’s editorial positioning. It is how am I coming at this topic that is not quite the same as everyone else? I know from being one of these people and doing copious amounts of research that this is something that’s right on the cusp of the way people are thinking about this topic.

Trend or Fad? Know the Difference for Your Niche

Robert Bruce: Number four, you have down trend watching.

Brian Clark: Exactly, that’s how you do it. That’s how you create an editorial positioning which is unique. It’s fresh and it’s innovative, even though you are talking about timeless topics. There are always new fitness research trends or fads. There are always new ways to make money or new ways to lose money. Mostly in the stock market, that never changes.

Trend watching is just as it sounds, except I want to make sure I distinguish between a trend and a fad. A trend is a long-term shift. It’s a movement in a direction within a broader topical area.

The green movement is a trend. It is not a fad. It is something that has been happening for a long time and is accelerating with certain people. It is being pushed back against by other people, but those people are not your audience. Maybe it’s like gluten free, but I don’t know this one yet. It almost appears like it is going to be a trend.

Robert Bruce: It’s interesting, yes.

Brian Clark: That’s even though I thought it was a fad, but that remains to be seen. That’s what you have to determine though. You could start a wellness site that has a broader positioning that includes gluten free, but you don’t have to call your site Gluten Free Community. That’s because at that point, you are betting everything on that one trend.

I did see a magazine, Gluten Free Magazine, which may be why I’m thinking it’s a larger trend. Or they’re very into cashing in for a brief period of time and then going to do something else which there is technically nothing wrong with that, but I like long-term things. I like things are going to keep going and you can evolve your content with it as opposed to “Oh, I’ve got to start over.”

Robert Bruce: I do too. There are a lot of people that make a lot of money on fads. To me, that always seemed like a really exhausting deal, which is my number one point. But number two, look at your comment about trends.

A trend is something that you’re working on, writing about, and that is more long-term. Again, we’re talking about building an audience here. Fad to fad to fad to fad is a tough area if not an impossible way to build any kind of meaningful audience.

Brian Clark: There are some people out there who think content marketing is a fad. I’ll tell you right now, it is not. It is a trend because no one is going to raise their hand and say, “Ehh enough with the useful information, just pitch me.” It’s not going in that direction.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: The empowered prospect is the engine of the trend towards content marketing. You’re looking at the results of broader trends and the internet empowered people to take things into their own hands as opposed to the companies and corporations being in charge of the sales process. That’s a huge trend. It’s not going away.

TrendWatching.com is a good site. There’s free and paid content there. If you’re really serious, you can buy research reports that take a really serious deep dive. I do think there are certain scenarios where it’s worth the investment.

A couple of trends I identified, I’m going to forget, it is LOHAS basically. It’s basically people who are kind of like hippie yuppies. They’re like those of us here in Boulder. They’re into organic, they’re into sustainability, they’re into conscious investment, spirituality, green live and all of this kind of stuff. It’s a very well defined market segment that is big and growing.

So understanding that market has informed my content strategy. It’s not about that, but that’s an aspect of it. Here’s another thing, which is healthy aging. Now you’re thinking, “Okay, that may apply to people like you in your forties and up.” But no, actually when you dig into the research, the millennials are very interested in healthy aging. Why do you think that is, Robert?

Robert Bruce: It’s because they think they’re going to make it to the singularity.

Brian Clark: Yes. They’re the first generation (well, hopefully not the first, I’m still going for Gen X), but the millennials have a decent shot at living a lot longer than any other human if science and technology keep breaking through in areas of longevity.

At a minimum, people will start living over a hundred years routinely. That has been increasing on a linear path throughout the last hundred years or so. With that, the better you take care of yourself when you’re young, the better shape you’re generally going to be in when you’re older. That was fascinating to me that healthy aging is not an old person topic.

If you’re already old, you’re probably kind of stuck with the decisions you made when you were younger (which I’m trying to get over).

Robert Bruce: Yeah. I’m not sure I can take this shit for a hundred years. We’ll find out.

Brian Clark: I know, it’s like living a long life and is it actually worth living?

Robert Bruce: Right. That’s the real question.

Brian Clark: Yes, that’s the real question.

Robert Bruce: See, when we get into philosophy and you and I get going. Okay, anything else on trend watching?

Brian Clark: Yes, TrendHunter.com and there is a site called Springwise that deals with trends specifically in the context of startups. Check those out.

Again, there is some combination of paid and free, but there’s a lot of great information that’s on their free stuff.

Why You Need to Be Aware of What’s Already Selling

Robert Bruce: Let’s move to number five in this list of 7 ways to find a topical market that will fuel your digital commerce business. This one is to find out what’s already selling.

Brian Clark: You can see how all of these interrelate. Again, don’t be afraid of competition. Don’t be afraid that someone else is selling something similar to what you have envisioned. That is actually a good sign. It shows that people are willing to pay for something. If they’re willing to pay for it and you connect with them better or provide more value or just take that unique angle that really resonates with people and yet effectively it is kind of the same thing, you still win. You’ve still got a viable business.

It is important to go into big markets. It is important to find out what is already selling and then use that information to make yourself unique or more valuable or as the case may be, make it something that is going to resonate with people in a way that your research has revealed.

This is where it gets squishy because people are always like, “Well, what’s the bright sign I’m looking for?” If I could tell you that, we wouldn’t be doing this podcast. It’s in there, that’s all I can say. It’s in there if you look.

And the Survey Says

Robert Bruce: Number six, you’ve listed something here that you have an interesting take on and that is doing surveys.

Brian Clark: Yeah, certainly. If you are very smart about surveying and you have an existing audience or you tap into someone else’s audience through some sort of native advertising or pay-per-click or something, you can get very valuable information from people.

The tough thing about surveying with multiple choice is it is almost always not going to be as valuable of information as you’d like because you’re restricting the response for your own convenience. You’re probably subtly suggesting or influencing the answers. People will tell you what you want to hear and never buy from you.

What people say they’ll buy and what they do buy are two different things. There’s only one marketing genius in the world and that’s the guy with the credit card who pulls it out and says, “Yes, I want that.” So surveying with open-ended questions is best.

There used to be this internet marketing thing called Ask. It was this really simple software, but that was the deal. It wasn’t multiple choice. They had to type in the answers.

Robert Bruce: Oh, none of it was. Yeah.

Brian Clark: Derek Halpern does Social Triggers. He does something when you sign up for his list. He asks what your number one problem is right now and he wants you to respond freeform. That’s because it’s not as neat or able to be put into a box. It is more authentic and it is more likely to provide you with insight.

Here’s a lesson with that is that Derek asks about problems or desires, right? He does not ask you what you want to buy. As Steve Jobs says, “That’s up to you to figure out what they want to buy.” Everyone thinks Jobs was such a genius and that he just created desire for something that didn’t exist. No.

Everything that Apple sells, with the exclusion of maybe the iPad, which was probably his biggest gamble, were just improvements on existing things. The iPod was not the first MP3 player; it was the first one that was beautiful and functional.

Robert Bruce: It was the first one with amazing marketing behind it, by the way.

Brian Clark: It had all of it. Right?

Robert Bruce: Apple is actually a great example of improving on what’s already out there and just owning it as opposed to trying to create something completely unique. The other thing about Jobs is he was great at identifying existing desire and satisfying it. That does not mean he created desire.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: It’s a firm belief that desire is out there. It’s up to the entrepreneur to recognize it and then to create something that satisfies it.

With surveys you don’t ask them what they want to buy, you identify problems and desires. That’s what we did on Copyblogger for nine years now. We just didn’t do it by surveys. We just watch.

Again, that’s one of those things that drives people insane. “What do you mean listen or watch?” It’s just that. It’s all out there in social media especially. Unscripted, unfiltered, and probably more than you’d like and it’s very real.

Your Minimum Viable Membership Site

Robert Bruce: And finally number seven, the minimum viable membership site. This sounds interesting.

Brian Clark: I do have to admit, we have never done this. That’s because by the time we launched Teaching Sells, and by the time we’d launched Third Tribe and then Authority later, we’re right there. We understand our people and that’s why we’ve never developed a product that failed. This comes from the whole lean startup world and the minimum viable product.

Here’s one thing I do when developing any sort of paid content play. I start mapping out headlines and copy before I create the thing because that tells me what I have to create. It goes back to why I write a headline first. It tells me what I’m promising and therefore what I have to deliver.

It’s the same thing with paid content. The copy has to effectively tease at the benefits of knowledge in a way that you then have to satisfy. Right?

This may be dicey to some people, but I could see how it would be an amazing market research thing. You basically create your outside of your membership site with copy and everything based on what you’d like to create. This is something that’s done all the time in the lean startup world.

You basically throw paid traffic at it and when people get to the sign-up part, you have to let them go far enough to where you have a firm indication that they actually want to buy that. If you haven’t created it yet, you either have to give them a notice that “we’re not taking members at this time” or whatever. You’ve got to be careful not lie.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: I think there are people that aren’t careful and they just flat out lie. I don’t believe in that. You have to do something that’s obviously going to disappoint someone who was going to buy from you.

But the fact that someone wanted to buy from you, what did I say? That is it. That’s the only way you’ll ever know. How do you know what someone wants to buy? They bought it.

Building the front end of your site and then seeing if your hypothesis that people want this type of training program or membership site is very important. Then you go into product development. When we first launched Teaching Sells, that’s all it was. It was a report and it was outside copy. We got people to join up and we delivered the content over the next year, so there’s always that method too. That is something we’ve obviously done.

You know what you want to create and can you go through your whole launch process. Once I put out the first Teaching Sells report, I knew that I had identified the right thing.

At that time, Copyblogger made no money. I had been going for a year and nine or ten months making money in other ways, while building the audience on Copyblogger. Then we launched something and we got paid to create it. So that’s the ballsier approach to the minimum viable membership site, which is to actually sell something that doesn’t exist yet but people are paying you. You have to deliver, but in a way, it is like a Kickstarter thing.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: I forgot the Kickstarter thing, which people are used to this now. Right? You promise something that doesn’t exist, they give you money, and then you have to deliver it. Right? We did that in 2007 on our own with our own audience.

Robert Bruce: The beauty of doing it this way as opposed to even the nice shiny new Kickstarter way is that not only are they paying to get this thing going for this thing that you have (the course in this case planned out, the membership site planned out), but I remember you telling me that once you got going, those first customers as they were working through Teaching Sells actually altered the course of Teaching Sells. This happened by the feedback they were giving you. And by the listening to those paying customers, it got better.

Brian Clark: It’s just like we talk about with content marketing strategy when you’re giving away free content. You’ve got iterate. You’ve got to see what works and what doesn’t and what people are saying. It’s a constant process.

I liked that we did Teaching Sells that way because I had the core concept correct, but not the implementation of that. I started realizing “Okay, people need more than I thought they did on the groundwork.” Right? We’ve released Rainmaker, we’ve released every single product we ever have this same way since Teaching Sells all the way to Rainmaker. “We’re giving you our best deal, you give us feedback, and we promise to listen.” It has always worked.

Robert Bruce: Thanks for listening everybody. If you stumbled onto this broadcast and you’d like to get it delivered to you, the best way to do that is to go to Rainmaker.FM and sign up via email. When you do that, you’ll also be given free access to two weeks of training that will likely change the way you think about online marketing.

You can also grab this show in iTunes . If you like what’s going on around here, please leave a comment or a rating for us while you’re there. Those are always much appreciated. Mr. Clark, I’ll see you next week.

Brian Clark: Thank you, Mr. Bruce.

The Crucial Starting Point for Building a Digital Commerce Business

Robert Bruce: We have two questions from audience members, one of which is a customer of Rainmaker. But here’s the problem, Brian, I didn’t get permission from these fine folks, so I’m not going to name them, but their questions are valid nonetheless. Is that alright with you?

Brian Clark: I think that’s a smart move.

Robert Bruce: Alright. So John Doe says he’s interested in building an audience with paid traffic, but it’s quite difficult to engage in content marketing and these ideas of content strategy without an audience. What do you think about building an audience, versus selling a product with paid traffic?

“What Do You Think About Building an Audience, Versus Selling a Product with Paid Traffic?”

Brian Clark: Well, that’s an easy answer. The hardest of core, grizzled pay-per-click veterans who make their money on return on investment between paid and selling stuff will tell you that you will sell more stuff if you get someone to opt-in to a content stream. This is instead of hitting them with the sales page from the click.

You can’t avoid content strategy because it pretty much works better in every context. All you’re really doing is talking about distribution of when you pay, instead of some other organic method that takes longer.

We did talk about this in the context of the New Rainmaker training course, which is paid media as your distribution catalyst. We have more options than ever with social advertising and getting that spark going by paying Twitter or Facebook to reach enough people, and then having it kick in organically at that point.

The key is if your content is crap, you’re still going to throw your money away. It still has to be dead on with the audience. I can tell you right now, compared to how I started Copyblogger as a complete unknown, I did not allow myself any budget whatsoever. It was just content and good ol’ begging. “Hi. Would you like to look at my content? I think it would be beneficial to your audience.”

Luckily some very nice people like Darren Rowse and Liz Strauss and some other people who weren’t so nice, but thought they were being big shots by disagreeing with me and not realizing their audience was quite interested in what I had to say. But it was still a lonely three months there at the beginning.

If I started a project now, let’s say it’s completely on a different topic so I would not presume that my current audience would necessarily be interested in it, I would get the word out with creating great content with a strategy aimed at the type of person I was trying to reach. Then I would just invest that cash. And not that I have the time to go begging for exposure anymore.

I think a lot of people would pay to build an audience if they knew they could get a return on it. The process of content development and strategy toward that audience is still the same. This is because ultimately, either you spend your time or you spend your money getting the word out, getting distribution, and getting that catalyst. It’s still the same process. By all means, use money to make it happen, but just realize that the process is the same as far as the content you develop and the strategy behind it.

Robert Bruce: For those of you who may not be totally clear on the big idea of what we’re talking about, it’s the idea of creating really good/useful/entertaining (whatever is relevant to your goals in your business) content and sending paid traffic of various forms to that content. It’s like looking for the opt-in as opposed to sending paid traffic to a product page or a landing page selling something specific.

Brian Clark: There are times where that can work, but that’s usually commodity battling it out on price. It’s a rough game, man. Google makes it worse because they’re always going to up the price per click. That’s the problem of depending on Google for anything.

Robert Bruce: And it’s short-term. Right?

Brian Clark: Yes.

Robert Bruce: You want to sell something.

Brian Clark: Anytime you advertise in the traditional sense (and that includes Google), you are buying access to an audience instead of building your own audience. When you build your own audience, you still get to keep them as long as you’re serving their interest. When you borrow constantly, you’re always going back and paying someone else. That’s a horrible thing to do.

“How Do You Determine What Should Be Used as Public Attraction Content Versus What Is Used for Member Content?”

Robert Bruce: Alright. Jane Doe asks, “How do you determine what should be used as public attraction content versus what is used for member content?” And this is in the context of building a paid membership site.

Brian Clark: That’s an eternal question, and there are so many methodologies. You and I have talked about this before Robert, once you put in the time and the research to understand the audience you’re going after, you just get a feel for it. I know that’s the squishiest answer ever.

But if you really know them, intuition I believe, is just informed subconscious knowledge. You know the answer is in there and then it bubbles up to you.

Okay, but that’s totally not a satisfying answer to anyone. The very best thing you can do for really great concrete answers is to go to Chris Garrett’s post on Copyblogger about this exact topic. It’s literally titled “What to give away and what to sell.” I would go through that. It’s very comprehensive. It was a homerun of a post for Chris because so many people do have that very question.

We could also look to Sonia Simone’s favorite analogy, which actually comes from Sean D’Souza, but it’s almost become attributed to Sonia because it’s so hilarious that a hippy feminist from Berkley loves this analogy. I always tell people it is Sonia’s favorite before someone yells at me for being sexist or something.

It’s actually Sean D’Souza’s concept that Sonia adopted called the bikini concept. Very simply, it is that you can show people 95% for free but they’re still going to pay for the last 5%. Yes, that’s somewhat crude, but you get the idea immediately. This is covered in Chris’ post much more extensively.

But you know, it’s about the why and the what for free as long as it is hitting on the problem or desire that’s already out there. Again, that’s just good old-fashioned research and understanding who you are trying to reach. That’s the stuff you give away for free. You can actually talk in general about the solution, and about the how. You can tell people quite a bit of what the solution is and they’re still going to want a little bit more, and go a little more in depth, and a little bit more step by step.

This is the whole bikini concept, and as cute as it is, it really goes back to one of our favorite guys Eugene Schwartz, who was a copywriter who also was an entrepreneur. I don’t know if he published his own books, I don’t remember, but I think he did. They were do it yourself self-help type books on various topics. His marketing would give away the best part of the book. He would give away the meat of the solution and yet he sold boatloads because people want the whole context. They want the whole solution. They want the whole package.

That’s why I think people sweat this question maybe more than they should, yet I totally understand where it comes from. Take a look at Chris’ post but keep in mind that sometimes you could give away everything in text and yet you will sell boatloads of a different format such as video. Some of the savviest internet marketing people have done that effectively. They pretty much give it all away during the launch and yet everyone still buys for the format or the context that they prefer.

Robert Bruce: Alright. So we’re going to keep going with these questions in upcoming episodes of this show, Rainmaker FM. If you have questions about media content strategy, what we want to ask you to do, with all respect and politeness, is to please drop them into the comments section of this episode’s post.

We’ll keep answering these in the weeks to come, as many as we can get to. We’re going to do about two an episode. Please go to Rainmaker.FM and you’ll see the stream of posts for this podcast there. At some point it won’t matter which one because we’ll keep going through those, but drop your question in the comment section.

Brian Clark: Yeah, whatever one is at the top, please drop it in there.

Brought to You by the Rainmaker Platform

Robert Bruce: Speaking of questions, this episode of Rainmaker FM is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. There are a lot of questions and a lot of frustration floating around out there that really boil down to one thing. That is “How do I quit screwing around with building my website and focus on building my business?”

A lot of people are sick of worrying about software updates, database crashes, whether certain plugins are compatible with certain versions of a CMS, and that’s not even to mention the massive cost and hassle of building and maintaining a custom membership site.

We’re going to talk more about all of that later in coming episodes. Then there’s the management of multiple services and software and trying to cobble them all together into something that looks and functions remotely like you want it to. If any of these frustrations sound familiar to you, I want you to try something right now.

Head over to RainmakerPlatform.com, and click around over there. Go ahead and sign up for the free 14 day trial of the Rainmaker Platform. Stop horsing around with your website and start building your business, RainmakerPlatform.com.

dCommerce: What It Is and Why It Matters

So let’s talk about dCommerce. I’ve heard of E-Commerce, but what is dCommerce, Brian?

Brian Clark: Well dCommerce makes sense in contrast to eCommerce. I’m not sure I’m totally sold on that. You like it a little bit better than I do.

Robert Bruce: I like that it breaks out. We all know what E-Commerce is or have an idea of what it is, but this kind of clarifies two different versions between eCommerce and dCommerce.

Brian Clark: Right. So it is short for Digital Commerce. And what we’re talking about here in the broadest sense compared to eCommerce (which is the online selling and fulfillment), is the purchase and fulfillment of physical goods using the internet. That’s eCommerce.

Digital Commerce, as it makes sense, would be the sale and fulfillment of digital products and services online. So to me, that would include the entire downloadable software industry, the entire WordPress theme industry, anything that can be delivered digitally online. There’s no mailing involved. It all happens at the point of sale followed with a download.

Now of course Rainmaker, one of its strengths, is that the platform is anything digital commerce. Right out of the box, you can sell anything that can be digitally delivered. Digital Commerce, as it is being used in the broader sense online seems to tend to exclude other forms of digital products and services and really just focus on content. Right?

We’re talking about the question from earlier. You know, “I want to sell content, I know I have to give away some to attract people; which is which?” Digital commerce is the content that you actually sell.

This goes way back with us from both a practice and a philosophical standpoint that you’re not really just selling content even when that’s the business you’re in. Digital commerce is really about creating access to a beneficial experience. That experience includes information that’s in digital format obviously, but it really comes down to why would someone pay you for your information as opposed to maybe doing hours and hours of Googling trying to piece it together themselves?

It really has to be something that is a well-defined beneficial experience and it has got to be being part of something and belonging to something. That’s really the crux of a membership site. It’s “I belong,” and other people don’t. It sounds kind of primitive, but psychologically it is very strong.

Robert Bruce: I get that the definition of dCommerce as selling digital content. I like that. Like we said, it clarifies it. But what is an example? What is the beneficial experience of say, the Authority membership site?

Brian Clark: That one is easy because a big aspect of that is the community and the forums and the interaction, not just with us.

Robert Bruce: It’s not just the downloads.

Brian Clark: Well, certainly not. There are tons and tons of information in there and I think that’s why people buy Authority. But once they’re in there, it has been quite clear to us that they stay for the community. They stay for the interaction with their peers and with us. And it’s funny how their peers become even more important than us over time.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. One more thing actually, you’ve brought this up before many times. In the context of our product, StudioPress and the WordPress themes and the Genesis framework they build over there and sell over there, the beneficial experience there that you’ve talked about many times, but the thing itself has to be good. In that case though, it is more about the support that you’re buying.

Brian Clark: Right. In the world of WordPress with GPL software, you are selling support. If you just want the thing, you can go find it or you could just use a free theme. Right?

Robert Bruce: Right, that’s what I’m getting at.

Brian Clark: That’s not really what people are buying. So even if they don’t use the support because we’ve done a good enough job with our instructions and with our product design so that it’s that easy, they still want to know it is there. Right? A lot of people don’t understand and there are some very sophisticated analytics people online who don’t understand how normal people think. Most people don’t use these Tor networks or whatever to download stuff. But you know, I’m like “Nah, I’d rather just pay for it. I don’t know what’s going on over there.”

Robert Bruce: Exactly.

Brian Clark: That’s in addition to wanting to support the creator which is huge.

The Amazing Difference Between Now and 2007

Robert Bruce: Alright, so you launched from Copyblogger, in 2007, a product where the whole thing is about what’s now known as digital commerce. What has changed in that since 2007?

Brian Clark: It is amazing. I’m not surprised by what’s changed, but it’s still amazing to reflect back. So when we launched our first premium content training program, the mentality at the time was that no one will ever pay for content again. It just shows you that you get these crazy thought leaders with these opinions.

They have authority, and people do follow them. It doesn’t matter that they’re completely wrong until someone else says, “Hey, maybe this person or these people don’t have perspective that predates them starting a Twitter account.” That’s dangerous, right?

So in 2007 with the original Teaching Sells report, I spent a great deal of time making the case that in fact people will pay for content and people do pay for content. It’s becoming more of a thing, not less. And Google and the internet are actually contributing to the fact that people will always pay for content.

Fast forward to 2009 and 2010, and it became quite apparent that the initial idea that people wouldn’t pay for content again was completely wrong. Now we’ve got the rise of ebooks, we’ve got the rise of the app stores, we’ve got training programs and membership sites across the spectrum, and the biggest of all was elearning. It’s a ridiculous billion dollar industry.

One would say that people are paying for more content than ever and as lifelong learning becomes the norm, I think you’ll see people won’t go to college at some point in the nearer future than a lot of people would like to think. That’s because you’re effectively spending four years learning outdated information and the world is passing you by. I know that sounds crazy, but there are a lot of people who see it that way.

I’ve got a daughter who is twelve and a boy who is nine, I think they’ll probably go to college if they want to, but only because I can afford it and that’s great. I want them to do what they want to do. But if it were otherwise, I don’t think I’d advise them to go to college.

Robert Bruce: Unless you’re going to be a brain surgeon or you want to build bridges or buildings

Brian Clark: Right. There are certain professions where you have to do it, right?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, the vast majority.

Brian Clark: But I’m going to try to make them into entrepreneurs.

Robert Bruce: Well the joke too has been, “The liberal arts education, what did it get me?” for decades and decades.

Brian Clark: My liberal arts education was the greatest thing ever. That includes my legal education, which technically I don’t use, but it changed the way I think. And the way you think is the thing. You could have taught me how to think critically and otherwise with a great e-learning program. In fact with gamification, it probably would have been more effective.

Why You Have to Own Your Own Platform

Robert Bruce: You mentioned the rise of e-learning platforms and programs. You look around at things like Udemy and Skillshare.

Brian Clark: Can you imagine? I had to make the case in 2007 that you could actually sell content and then now we’ve got things like Skillshare. It’s everywhere, Treehouse, Lynda.com, and all of these.

I look back at it as ridiculous, but you really have to understand that’s how people thought at the time. Now look at today. What are these things that certain pundits are telling you? What was it a few years ago, Robert? “You don’t need a website, use Facebook.” Right? How bad does that look right now? We were there saying, “Don’t do that, don’t do that. Digital sharecropping is bad, bad, bad.”

Now Cory Doctorow has a new book out called Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free. He is effectively arguing that the big platforms (Apple, Google, Amazon, whatever), they’ve effectively perverted copyright law to extend to the point where the platform is controlling your sense of choice in a way that we would never accept from someone else. I’m like, “yes.”

Again, this goes back to what we’ve been saying. Why is it called the Rainmaker Platform? It’s because you have to have your own platform, and these are the tools that allow you to build it. Robert, I know you almost lost your mind so much against people whose marketing strategy was “just put it in the app store.”

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: You used to rant and rave about that. I’m like, “Robert, you can’t fix the whole world.”

Robert Bruce: Listen, when people are praying to the wrong gods, like the gods of Apple, it gets me.

Brian Clark: Apple is great for buying stuff from, but I don’t want them to sell stuff for me.

Robert Bruce: In the same light, back to content, I think yesterday Gregory Ciotti tweeted that Fast Company’s Facebook page has 500,000 followers. They’ve got half a million followers.

Go look at that Facebook page. Go look at many of these Facebook pages and see the number of comments and the number of shares, versus the number of followers.

Brian Clark: Facebook just throttled the whole thing.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: They do that so you’ll pay them to reach the audience you built.

Robert Bruce: But here’s the problem, Brian. People, like Facebook, the Apple store (the app store) and these kinds of opportunities, I don’t think people would say a shortcut, but they seem to be saying, “Okay not only is this is where everybody is” is a common refrain, but “it’s so much easier than building a website out and building my own audience and building an email list.”

Brian Clark: It’s easier to be completely invisible is what it is.

Robert Bruce: That’s right.

How the Game Has Shifted in Your Favor

Brian Clark: We always look at the outliers, everything from the startup game. You look at Twitter and Instagram and don’t realize that not only were those one in a million flukes, but the people who started them were well connected and they were rich already. They had the mobile phone numbers of venture capitalists when they wanted.

They said, “Hey this seems to be working, I can’t believe it. Can you give us some money?”

“Yes.”

You think that’s a normal experience? And here’s the other thing that I’m seeing very different from 2007, there were a lot of people who wanted to build a digital commerce business as we now call it. I don’t think a lot of them were qualified to do it in any sense of entrepreneurial ambition though. A lot of people just won’t do it.

Sometimes it’s life that intervenes, sometimes it’s a confidence issue, or sometimes it’s a skillset issue. It goes on and on and on. But remember in 2007 content marketing was not even an accepted term much less a billion dollar industry. Right?

What I’m seeing in contrast now is there are lots of highly qualified people. They’ve been trained, they’ve been doing content marketing, and they’ve been doing content creation. A lot of these people have backgrounds in traditional advertising, copywriting, journalism, and there’s all of this talent pool.

I’ve been speaking the last couple of weeks more than I usually do and I’m meeting people. And they’re like, “I’m a content creator, I’m a content strategist, or I’m a copywriter.” And I’m thinking, “Oh, well we’re coming out with this reseller program for Rainmaker where you’re able to deliver this sophisticated solution without development. Of course, you’re making your money providing content services, etcetera.” They’re replying that, “Yes, I am definitely interested in that, but I also want to start my own online training and my own membership site.”

They have the same dreams that people like you and I had, and they’re qualified to do it. The interesting thing I think you’re seeing is these hybrid business models where someone is like, “Yeah I’m going to take clients because there is a ton of people who know they need content and they’re not qualified to do it themselves. They’re going to have to pay someone like me, so yes, sign me up.”

At the same time, they are building something that is either a way to attract better quality clients, which is one of our Teaching Sells business models effectively, and/or they want the membership training etcetera to stand on its own and become the business over time.

I think it’s amazing compared to 2007. It took us forever to get Rainmaker out, which is what people were asking for. “Please give us the tools that are easy to use.” It took a long time to get out and yet I keep seeing that the timing both from the content marketing industry and the digital commerce industry is perfect. There are finally enough people who can really do this. It’s not a pipedream for them. They have the skills, all they need is guidance, and of course, we are more than happy to provide that.

The Truth Behind the Famous Quote, “Information Wants to Be Free”

Robert Bruce: You have quoted, “The right information in the right place just changes your life.” Why does that quote matter so much?

Brian Clark: That is part of this infamous saying by a guy named Stewart Brand who said it in 1984, pre-internet. He was one of the founders of The WELL and other electronic communities before the web. He’s the guy who said, “Information wants to be free,” and that is what has been quoted out of context over and over and over again.

What he really said first was “Information wants to be expensive because the right information in the right place changes your life.” Then he said, “On the other hand, information wants to be free.” He’s talking about electronic distribution.

So how is it that Copyblogger Media was able to build everything that it has without venture capital and without advertising? It is content with social distribution. Right? In that context, free information makes a whole lot of sense because it brings people back to us and we’re able to sell what we actually sell. So that’s where the saying comes from.

But people are missing two-thirds of the quote when they say, “Information wants to be free.” Again, I referenced Cory Doctorow’s new book which says, “Information does not want to be free.” I think that shows you what was me making a niche in 2007, which is not only mainstream now but it is dire.

Creators need to make money from what they create. And this particular model, whether you want to call it online education, e-learning, training or more less intense membership sites, all of this is more viable than ever. If free information with social distribution is the greatest marketing thing ever if you focus on the audience, information wants to be expensive. I think you are the type, and I’m the type and a lot of people are the type, that do enjoy acquiring knowledge for its own sake. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But when it comes to paying for it, we usually want some benefit out of it, right? Whether it just be more cohesive, more convenient, and more efficient.

Robert Bruce: Or from a particular source.

Brian Clark: Right. The particular source is the big one, authority, which is to say “Who do we trust?”

Robert Bruce: Yep.

Brian Clark: It’s the benefits of knowledge as opposed to information, and that’s why people pay and will always pay.

Understanding the Intersection Between Direct Marketing and Instructional Design

Robert Bruce: I want you to elaborate on something you’ve said several times in that the Teaching Sells program represents the intersection of direct marketing and instruction design. What did you mean by that?

Brian Clark: So instructional design is basically when teaching adult learners (although it should apply to every learner and I think that’s the trend), you’re designing for engagement, retention, comprehension, and all of that stuff. The way you do that is by focusing on the benefits of knowledge.

This was once cutting edge instructional design thought. Learning psychology back in 2001 and 2002 when I really was just fascinated with this stuff with my background in general psychology and sociology. It was a natural topic to me. At that same time of course, I was teaching myself copywriting and direct marketing, direct response, and all of this stuff.

It’s like when you’re geeking out on two unrelated things and you realize they are completely congruent. I remember reading an e-learning textbook and it was basically advocating copywriting techniques for instructional design for e-learning. That’s because why does copywriting work in a commerce context? It’s engaging and it focuses on benefits.

It turns out if you want someone to learn something, you’ve got to do the same thing. So features versus benefits, Copywriting 101. People don’t want a drill, they want a hole. Right? Really, they want to hang a piece of art in their home. Or beyond that, they want their neighbors to perceive them in a certain way based on the art hanging on the wall that required a drill.

We can do this exercise to ultimate benefits all day long. But the simplest expression is “I don’t really want a drill. What I need is a hole in the wall.” It’s the same thing. It’s knowledge for its own sake, versus the benefits of knowledge.

Going back to what we were talking about, with a college university degree, we can say that I would send my kids to college for the experience. A lot of the college experience is not all that healthy if they follow in their old man’s footsteps, which we may not want.

The liberal arts education and the learning experience, is such that I was exposed to things that I might not have been exposed to otherwise. But is that really historically why we send our kids to college or why kids want to go to college? No.

They want that degree so that they can get a job or get into a certain profession, which is that the end benefit? No. They want money. They want prestige. They want a good life. They want a family. Those are the real benefits. It’s the same exact thing.

Starting point number one: realize that you aren’t selling information; you’re selling access to benefits and an outcome that matters. That’s a big part of what we tried to teach in Teaching Sells, which was those two things, marketing and the creation of content are not mutually exclusive. One is not a necessary evil. They are completely intertwined when you realize that they’re all about the expression and delivery of benefits.

Robert Bruce: Alright everybody, thank you for listening to another episode of Rainmaker FM. You can find more of these episodes at Rainmaker.FM and please do two things

Number one, please leave a question from the Q&A section of this podcast in the comments section of any one of those posts.

Number two, if you like what’s going on here, leave a comment or rating in iTunes. We appreciate it very much.

This episode, like all of the episodes of Rainmaker FM, are brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. Check that out at RainmakerPlatform.com. Mr. Clark, I’m going to see you next week. Right?

Brian Clark: Absolutely.

Robert Bruce: Thank you everybody.

Behind the Scenes: The Launch, Membership Sites, and What Punk Rock has to do with Content Marketing

Robert Bruce: This is New Rainmaker from newrainmaker.com. I am Robert Bruce. Today, Brian Clark and I are discussing a number of things including this very podcast, the launch of the Rainmaker Platform and a brief overview of the potential of the membership site as a business model. Brian, first of all, happy 27th birthday to you man. It’s amazing what you’ve accomplished in so little time.

Brian Clark: Exactly. Twenty-seven, Forty-seven, it all feels pretty much the same. Except, you don’t feel old until you do something like pull your chest muscle raking leaves. And you’re like, “wait a minute, that wouldn’t happen to a 27 year old.” So it’s only small differences.

Robert Bruce: I can’t believe you just admitted that on air.

Brian Clark: I know, I know. Well, I’m showing my vulnerable side. It’s a very strategic thing.

Robert Bruce: Let’s get into this first by talking about the first public launch of the Rainmaker Platform this week. How do you feel it’s going so far?

Brian Clark: Just so you know, we are recording this on October 1st (2014), my birthday was technically yesterday. The launch ends in two days but once you’re hearing this, it will be over. I can tell you I don’t know exactly what the last day will look like. They’re always huge.

We’ve never taken away anything with regards to Rainmaker so it could be pretty epic. I’d say it’s a smashing success so far from what we’ve seen. It’s been a really, really strong response and we’ve had a lot of positive feedback. That’s from the 2.0 version of the platform that was literally the result of all the wonderful feedback that we got during the pilot program. I can’t say enough about how invaluable that was.

There’s stuff that we improved that we weren’t thinking of originally. For example, the whole landing page builder. We weren’t even going to build that.

That was an inspiration that happened in part to feedback and in part by Bryan Eisenberg’s Ten Critical Elements of a Landing Page. Right? I asked, “Why don’t we just have a builder that builds those ten things?” And there you go, it was born. I’m probably going to have to pay Eisenberg some sort of royalty.

Robert Bruce: Don’t say that. Don’t say that.

Brian Clark: Things are going really well. We’ll know more Friday, but as you are listening to this, the pilot program is over. Hopefully you got in if you were inclined to do so.

Robert Bruce: If you didn’t, one of the things we talked about last week is how you wrote this great article, looking at the future of Rainmaker. Some of the features that are upcoming for the platform are included in that article. Let’s go through some of those really quick for those who are still taking a look at Rainmaker and thinking about dropping into the free trial. What’s coming in Rainmaker?

The Future of the Rainmaker Platform

Brian Clark: We already added an affiliate program, which is indispensable to some of the stuff we’ll be talking about on this podcast in the next six months. That will be while these other features are built.

All of these things were things we knew we wanted to build. That desire has been reinforced by the feedback and the enthusiasm we’re receiving about them. In general, there will be more themes, more landing page templates and the things that people would expect.

The improvements to the analytics with the customization and advanced power that you can get out of Google Analytics is really cool. I think some people feel like that they have to go to a third party analytics program, and that’s not necessarily the case. I think we’ll also be looking at future integration partners with some of the obvious players out there for small business people. What else do we have, Robert?

Robert Bruce: We have a lot of stuff on the social media posting and scheduling and incoming content front.

Brian Clark: I know that those are features driven by Mr. Robert Bruce as much as anyone else because you want them. You want the social media scheduling and posting from inside the CMS, which I think makes a lot of sense.

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: If you would, please talk a little bit about these curation tools that both you and I are going to geek out about.

Robert Bruce: The idea was to take some of these things that we really think are just features. It’s mostly three pieces right now that we’re looking at and talking to Chris Garrett and our Dev Team about, which is basic social media posting and scheduling.

So you’ve got something whether it be links or basic status updates. You want to be able to connect to your social networking accounts and schedule posts to go out at certain times of day. There’s going to be a lot of cool stuff in there.

Again, it will be integrated in the dashboard and connected to every other part of the Rainmaker Platform itself. One big piece of that is also then, how do you find great stuff to share and talk about things within your industry that you want to post? So we’re going to build the Rainmaker Reader. Google Reader died about two years ago, I think.

Brian Clark: I think it’s one year, but I’m not sure.

Robert Bruce: I can’t keep track of anything anymore. When that went down, that left a huge hole in that aspect of finding great content. And a lot of great readers have popped up.

But again, we’re going to do it right. We’re going to build the reader that we want integrated into the Rainmaker Platform itself. One of the things Garrett and I have been talking about and with you as well Brian, is this idea of these services are really cool, but you end up using 25% of it, or only 10% of the actual features.

These are the things that you actually want to use in a lot of these services, so that’s where we’re going to focus. We’re going to focus on the stuff that we need and want at first. And then of course, we’ll listen to all of your feedback about what might be better, what might work better, and what you want. We’re really focusing in on the very best of all of these types of services being integrated into the platform.

The last idea of what we’re working on and going to execute eventually is this curation to content tools. This group of tools will allow you to bring stuff in an RSS feed, post it and schedule it within the Rainmaker dashboard. For instance, if you are doing an industry newsletter, you want to easily be able to copy, paste, and grab all these links. Then you’ve got to go back and grab the headline so you can work with dumping it into a post.

This is going to most likely be a set of smaller tools that will allow you with basically a click, to send it to either a new post or a new article, which is your newsletter, or to add it to an existing newsletter article that you’re compiling over the week. This is going to do a couple of other things as well, but the Rainmaker Curator, as I’m calling it is going to help in collecting that information.

We’ve seen this boom the last few years again. What is this? The third or fourth coming of email, I think? Email marketing?

Brian Clark: Right.

Robert Bruce: But these newsletters are powerful. A lot of businesses are benefitting greatly from putting together a really solid newsletter, both for the audience and for feedback on what they’re doing. This will make it so much easier to compile that and put it together.

Brian Clark: There’s a smart way to curate so that you’re creating original content. You’re also creating a new webpage with it. You’re making it sharable.

These are the best practices if you’re going to do email curation, but there’s no tool out there. The only one I’ve seen is a custom tool that actually Andrew Norcross built. So we’re going to make that standard in Rainmaker.

There are a couple of other things. Of course marketing automation has gone from this very expensive big business thing, and now it’s just becoming the way things ought to work. It’s creating a better experience for your audience, for your prospects, and for yourself. We’re going to make that a part of Rainmaker in a very affordable fashion as opposed to some of the expense we see out there right now.

Finally, which is pertinent to what we’ll be talking about on the podcast, is evolving the internal course creation tools in Rainmaker into a true learning management system. Going back all the way to 2007 in Teaching Sells, we’re teaching people true instructional design for e-learning so you can create these high value paid courses. This is where you need an LMS or a learning management system to go with that. So that’s also coming. We’ll talk about all this stuff later., but it’s pretty exciting. It’s hard not to geek out about it.

What You Can Learn from the New Rainmaker Podcast

Robert Bruce: Alright, let’s move on by doing a little talk about this very podcast, New Rainmaker. You know, things that we’ve been doing or in some cases not doing. Let’s look at the approach we’ve taken with it so far and what we’re thinking about in the coming weeks and months. And more specifically and most importantly, what it might mean for listeners of the New Rainmaker broadcast.

Brian Clark: So we’ve done two shows before this one for the so-called Fall season. I think we’re just going to be powering through every week from here on forward. Right, Robert?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, I think death or dentist are the only thing that will keep us from our appointed episodes. Yes.

Brian Clark: I’ll do a podcast before going to the dentist any day.

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: So the first two episodes were our very short storytelling format, and we have a guest authority. I would basically interview them and we’d get a transcript. Then I would edit that down, write an intro and Robert would usually edit from there because he was the one narrating. They were really fun to do. For seven or eight minute episodes though, it takes a decent amount of time.

I don’t think we did enough of them to have a workflow where we could just crank those things out, but it was fun. I don’t know if people like them because it doesn’t really seem like we’re getting a lot of the response we got in the Spring with the initial Rainmaker podcast.

Robert Bruce: It was a little bit of a cricket situation, which is fine. That’s a part of the nature of exactly what we’re doing is to do it and then report back to you and see what works and what doesn’t.

It was interesting to me because you hear so much about, “Hey, it’s got to be short, it’s got to be this, or it’s got to be that.” There are heavy duty opinions about the way things need to be, but you never know until you try it.

Brian Clark: Especially looking at how popular This American Life and the NPR podcasts are.

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

We Want to Hear from You!

Brian Clark: But who knows? Okay, so here’s what we want from you guys who are listening right now: stop by in the comments and tell us what you thought about those. “I was busy. I didn’t listen to it. It was okay.”

We want to hear from you because when we have guests in the future, I might want to stick with that format. I think it’s more interesting to me (I could be wrong), only that you have that short story format as opposed to your typical interview.

We’re really interested in what you guys respond to and that’s why we don’t worry about experimenting and being inconsistent. That’s because we try things so you learn. That’s pretty much our goal here. We’re willing to look completely foolish if necessary if we can figure something out from it. So stop by, let us know what you thought about that.

We launched the podcast in January 2014, and then we had seven educational lessons. We had three behind the scenes episodes and then we did three webinars. We outlined in the course that was a strategy to create week to week content, and then turn it into something else. In this case, it was the first New Rainmaker training course which was really popular when we assembled it that way.

That’s still our long-term strategy. We want to create content in a serial form that is telling a bigger story. When we’re through with that part of the story, we can always package it up like we did that time. We could do some webinars and it could lead into a paid launch, and all sort of things.

The initial thing obviously was leading up to the pilot program and the public launch of Rainmaker. That has happened. So Robert, it feels like we’re at this bright line moment where we can go forward and do whatever we want.

Robert Bruce: Yes, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

Brian Clark: Nice.

Robert Bruce: Not necessarily.

Brian Clark: Never mind what I said about feedback, Robert.

Robert Bruce: Forget that. Comments off.

No, that’s exactly right. We talked about having the bigger picture in mind, but also back to more of this informal talking that you and I have done in the past that folks seem to enjoy. The other day you and I were talking about opening it up for good old fashioned Q&A, and answering questions directly mixed in with whatever form the interviews take in the future. That’s the big idea.

But yes, the idea of having a strategy for a period of time where we layout several episodes that then we can bundle up later is there.

What Henry Ford Can Teach You About Reimagining Content

Did you ever hear the story of Henry Ford and the crates that the motors came in for the Model T?

Brian Clark: I don’t think so.

Robert Bruce: He did a deal with whoever the engine company was to build the motors for the Model T. In that contract, he wanted them to build the crates that the motors would be shipped in. These crates had to be oak and they had to be cut in this certain way and they had to be assembled in a certain way to very specific specifications.

So the motors would come and they would be taken out of the crates. The crates would be disassembled in a very specific way. Eventually, all the parts of those crates would then go into and become the floorboards of the Model T.

Brian Clark: Nice.

Robert Bruce: The motor company didn’t care because they just wanted the contract for the motors and they think, “Oh, yeah, we’ll give him his crates.” That illustrates this perfectly. We’re looking for ways to package this up into something bigger down the road or useful that might be broken out in different ways.

Brian Clark: Nice, nice.

Robert Bruce: A big part of the future of the Rainmaker Platform is going to be this reseller program. You had a chance to talk publicly about it on a great Carrie Dils Genesis Office Hours show last week and we got a really nice response from that. Quickly, would you share what this reseller program is going to look like and who should care?

Brian Clark: It’s really interesting because Carrie invited me onto her show, Genesis Office Hours. Basically, we have this amazing community of designers who build on the Genesis framework, which is kind of the backbone of StudioPress. Then StudioPress is the backbone of the design aspect of what is now Rainmaker.

I was like, “Yeah sure, I’d be happy to come on.” Then it turned out we got the public launch going and then my brain immediately shifted to this reseller program. That’s because we are building out this amazing technology for resellers that allows you, as a consultant or a designer or as a small digital agency, to create these really sophisticated sites with all the features that you know about it in Rainmaker.

You can do this literally at the push of a button. There are going to be all sorts of ways to build out specific types of sites. It’s really cool stuff. We’re aiming for November 1st to release that technology, which is really the backbone of the reseller program.

We can’t launch the reseller program really without that. So we’re building that and we’re finishing it up as we speak. But in the broader concept, during the initial podcast run and the first course, that is still available if you guys haven’t checked that out. Robert what is the URL for that?

Robert Bruce: That is newrainmaker.com/training-home.

Or, if you go to newrainmaker.com, click the “More” tab up in the top nav and you’ll see “Training”.

Are You a Producer? Our Reseller Program Might be for You

Brian Clark: Effectively, what that course was about was a different way to think about content marketing. Right? Media instead of marketing.

I think we got our best response in all the years of trying to teach this stuff. It seemed that a lot of people had the light bulbs go off. They got the difference between keyword stuff “content,” as opposed to really trying to build an audience and tying that in with your business model.

And then thinking about what’s my “Love It or List It” for what I sell? What makes me authoritative while also giving people what they want? One of the models I touched on in that context is that yes, there are a lot of capable people who can do this stuff themselves. I think those are a lot of the people that are now rushing into Rainmaker because it’s the perfect tool for the person with that kind of skill set.

The broader market out there is people for whom WordPress is out of the question. And even Rainmaker would not be something they want to really get into because they don’t have the content creation skills and they’re just not going to.

We’re really seeing an entire industry that already exists. It’s the idea that you have professional content creators, and media producers effectively who are aiding the small to medium size business, and the real money is actually in the recurring content creation fees.

They may come to you for a website or design. That’s where Rainmaker comes in because that takes the Dev headache completely out of it. “Yes, I can build that sophisticated site for you with membership capabilities and all that stuff.”

So the designers, the writers, the other content creators in other mediums, and then the general entrepreneurs who see the need to serve these businesses, they’re what I call “producers.” Right? These are the people for whom this reseller program is for.

At the heart of it is this great technology, but you’re going to hear both on this podcast and in very specific training, that we’re going to put out that we’re going to teach people the business models, the skills, and how to make the connections with the team you need.

How the Media Producer Model Works

Let’s say you’re a designer and you’re the point of sale. You usually charge money to create a website or at least the design for the website. And that’s it except that they keep coming back to you for tweaks and free work and all. It’s terrible, you know?

Really what you are is the point of sale for what they really need, which is content creation. So you could be partnered up with writers and you could have a small formal digital agency. It could be a completely ad hoc thing. It’s like the Hollywood model where the writers, the designer, and the strategist come together for a project and then they disperse.

I really think that’s how it’s going to work. And we see Rainmaker and this reseller technology at the center of that to make everyone more money. Yes, we get to make money too, but that’s how it’s supposed to work. Right?

Robert Bruce: There’s a lot of talk floating around about membership sites in the last year or so in particular. There has been a spike in interest in this model. This is something that you’ve actually taught and practiced in business for what, seven years? What’s the big idea here with membership sites?

The Membership Site Business Model

Brian Clark: Yeah. So the membership site goes back to the 90s with our friends in the adult industry, who at one point were the pioneers of everything. But when you think about what a membership site is, it’s a way to keep people away from content until after they pay you. And then they’re allowed access in.

That’s a really big and important concept, which is the concept of access. So yes, back in 2007, the very first thing that was launched off of Copyblogger was Teaching Sells. That is a massive course that teaches every element of from designing meaningful courses, business models, marketing, the technology you need to effectively make it all happen.

Ever since that time, people have been saying, “Awesome thanks, give us the turnkey platform to do this with.” It took us a little while, but you can see how far back the roots of Rainmaker go. We really got serious about it in 2010 when we formed Copyblogger Media. So Rainmaker in one sense is the solution and the missing part.

We used to have to patch everything together ourselves. I remember Tony would explain, “Here’s how you take aMember and here’s how you work with Moodle and here’s how you do it with WordPress.” It was a mess.

I think a lot of people were more than able to do the content creation, and the technology just buried them. And that is unacceptable anymore. The premise back in 2007 was online advertising sucks, you’re not going to make any money with it, and you need to sell content.

A lot of people believed me and a lot of people didn’t. That was okay because at the time that was very unorthodox thinking. Where are we now seven years later, when The Guardian isn’t going to ditch ads because they need to make revenue any way they can. Their primary business model is going to be virtual events and membership programs.

Effectively, it’s patronage of your subscribers instead of everything is free, and we’ll make up for it with advertising. That’s what Teaching Sells, the original report, predicted in 2007.

Again, some people thought I was crazy but e-learning is a real thing. Everyone knows online is the future of all sorts of education. A lot will be free, but a lot of it won’t be and that’s still the best way to get into a business if you are not currently. Whether you’re working for someone else, or maybe you have a client model and you want to move on, this is what we’re going to be talking about a lot on this podcast and in other venues.

I read another great article that basically said, the modern journalism site which of course we’re talking about BuzzFeed and the like, they treat content as a service. That’s not the way newspapers have technically thought. In other words, they actually are taking into account who their audience is, which are the things we’ve been preaching since day one. And it’s just the reality of what things are.

The flipside of that is that you don’t have to be the guardian. In fact, they’ve got bigger problems than most people because of the legacy issues getting started. Now that the technology is taken out of the way of creating these membership sites and online training programs, it really just comes down to finding your niche, as it always has been.

The Evolution of the Membership Site Model

And there’s some really cool stuff about how the concept of what we think of as a “membership site” is really evolving. It’s any sort of barrier to access that facilitates doing business with people. It does this in a way that’s a higher value, or premium, and that kind of thing. The most interesting thing about this Guardian article, which is why I use it as an example, but they’re going to be doing these virtual events with a membership concept. That is something we covered in Teaching Sells years ago.

I can give you a great example of someone who built an amazing business out of this approach, which is Mike Stelzner, Social Media Examiner. He used to be a Copyblogger writer. I remember he came to me one day and he said, “I’m thinking about this site. It’s like Copyblogger, but it’s about social media, do you think it’s going to work?” And I’m like, “I’m sure it’s going to work.” That was an understatement.

His business model was putting on (he now puts on maybe the largest social media event but certainly a big one), a live event. He started with virtual events. Basically what Mike did was he built up his initial audience and then he went to everyone in the industry and was putting together a conference. This was like you would do with a live event, except it was virtual.

He took the webinar approach and it was a very logistical planned out executed thing. He got all these people to contribute and he had an affiliate program, so all his speakers promoted the event. It was a success. The next virtual event he did is where he really started to make money because he had a thing.

So what does a virtual live event become when you do the next one? Well, that becomes archived membership content. You can see that what Mike did before he got into live events, he built membership sites. But it was positioned so differently that you didn’t see it that way. I immediately recognized what he was up to and I think I had him share about it, specifically in Teaching Sells, to talk about it.

I want to talk a lot more about that event because we’re going to start doing those for very specific reasons. I think that will be tied to the training for the resellers on business models. It’s also of course, a demonstration of the Rainmaker Platform because we can do all of that from our affiliate program to everything with Rainmaker, which is cool.

I want to talk about that as a business model for people who are considering Rainmaker, but maybe haven’t pulled the trigger yet. That’s because people out there who’ve got organizational skills, they’ve got drive, and they’ve got ambition, but they’re like, “I’m not an authority about anything.” One of the business models, or many of the business models on Teaching Sells talk about, “You know what you’re good at? You’re good at building these type of sites. That’s what you’re good at.”

The “Impresario” Concept Explained

This is a concept that I refer to as the impresario approach, which I love that word. It’s an Italian word and basically it means organizer or producer. We’re right back to that producer concept, but in this context, historically that was a person who put on operas and plays.

Seth Godin loves to use the word now to mean a person who makes things happen. Right? And really, what is the internet except for connections bringing things together? It can be a really interesting model when you realize that every time you arrange one of these events, you are creating content that you are then able to build on going forward. This is just like Teaching Sells grew over time.

I think we’re going to focus on that topic quite a bit as we go forward with the podcast and try to give you some really useful ideas about, “Okay, how would I go about starting that type of business?” Right? So I’m pretty excited about that.

Robert Bruce: What about live events that say, take place in like Denver perhaps in May of 2015?

Brian Clark: Hypothetically speaking?

Robert Bruce: Hypothetically speaking.

Brian Clark: That is an excellent point. We did put on our first live event, so we graduated from virtual to live as well. And if you have those aspirations, then you can certainly do that with this impresario concept that we’re going to be talking about.

But we put on our first Authority event. Seth Godin opened it up, Darren Rowse another keynote, Bryan Eisenberg, Ann Handley, Lee Odden, it was everyone I wanted in the last eight years to one day be able to invite to speak. I don’t know Robert, what was your impression of how the crowd reacted?

Robert Bruce: Maybe the best thing to do is just take a look if you search the hashtag on Twitter #authority2014, you can see for yourself. I think people had a really good time. The single track idea was “particularly loved” I think.

Brian Clark: Yes.

Robert Bruce: It was where everybody is seeing everything all at once and to a certain degree, no matter where you are in the conference.

Brian Clark: Our man Kelton put together a nice little highlight reel from the last event, which was pretty small. We limited it to 400 people. Again it was a single track where we’re all together, we all learn together, we all experience together and we all go to the parties together. People really seemed to like that, I know I did.

I really don’t like how dispersed everything gets when you have these massive events and you have to pick and choose, “What do I want to learn more instead of just getting everything?” In an integrated format, which I think is also important too. There’s a logical beginning and end in the way that we build things.

So yes, we’re doing it again in May in Denver again. This time, we are going to a larger venue, which is the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. It is a magnificent and beautiful venue. That was the vibe we were going for. If we’re going for single track, we wanted to have this beautiful room that was made for large audiences to participate together in (speaking of impresario, right?). I didn’t even make the opera connection there.

Robert Bruce: You’re actually 147 years old, aren’t you?

Brian Clark: Yes, that’s exactly right. I guess this podcast will be the first time we mention this because we’re putting together the early bird pricing and all that good stuff as soon as we can. But I just today locked down our third of

Robert Bruce: Are you really going to say this?

Who’s Speaking at Authority Rainmaker 2015?

Brian Clark: Well, yes. Okay, let me say what I know for sure. Dan Pink, who is a wonderful man and author of too many amazing books to count, actually the first book I ever appeared in, Free Agent Nation. Dan and I met in Austin back in 2000 and I introduced him to MIGAS and he interviewed me for his book. That was when I had just figured out how to use content marketing to sell legal services so I wouldn’t starve. His last book, To Sell is Human, is obviously right on point for the theme of Authority Rainmaker, as it will be known this year. He is going to open up the show.

On the second day, the opening keynote will be Sally Hogshead, who not coincidentally you just heard from on the last podcast. She is an amazingly smart person. Her work on fascination and focusing on your differences as your ultimate strength, which was just barely touched on in the podcast, is something we’re going to expand quite a bit on that.

Then I’ve been working for three weeks trying to get a specific closing keynote. Today I got a “yes.” I do not have a contract, but I don’t think there’s going to be a problem. I’m going to try to get the contract done before this airs (if not, you will not be hearing this because Robert will edit it out), so our closing keynote is a personal hero of mine, and Robert’s as well. Henry Rollins, the former lead singer of Black Flag, spoken word artist, self-publisher, film, radio, and television star. He now has his own show on the History Channel titled Ten Things You Didn’t Know. Look at that. It’s a list format. I wonder why they chose that, Robert?

Robert Bruce: You know what? I’m so sick of lists. No, we were just laughing about this. It’s that the complainers that hate these list posts, they need to bring it up with Mr. Rollins.

Brian Clark: Well, they’re going to have a chance in Denver, May 13-15, 2015. So May 13th is a Wednesday. That will be similar to this year, where the opening reception was legendary in itself. We do like to throw some good parties, and this year will be no different.

The 14th will be the first day of content and that will be the one Dan Pink kicks off. The 15th will begin with Sally. And Henry will close and take us into the weekend, which I can’t even believe I get to introduce Henry Rollins. I’m done, this may be it.

I guess at this point, we’re going to sign off. Make sure you stop by the comments and give us any thoughts you might have as far as the podcast, or the platform. We’d love to hear about the direction we’re going in, questions about membership sites and online training courses that you’d like to see specifically addressed. I can almost guarantee you we’re going to cover everything pretty comprehensively given that again, Teaching Sells was the original thing, and it is just as relevant today as it ever has been.

Robert Bruce: Thank you for listening to New Rainmaker everybody out there. We appreciate it if you do like what’s going on here as always, let us know by dropping by iTunes. You can give us a rating there as well. As Brian said, please drop any notes you have about the discussion in this episode in the comments of this post.

And maybe even more importantly, if you want to go even further into the things we’ve talked about on New Rainmaker and will continue to talk about as we go forward, head over to newrainmaker.com. Sign up to get those two weeks of training that will likely change the way you think about online marketing. It’s absolutely free. It’s at NewRainmaker.com. In the Nav bar, hit “More” and then click “Training.” Brian, thanks man. We’ll talk to you next time.

Brian Clark: Thanks everyone.

Keep Them Fascinated: How to Discover Your Winning Difference as a Content Marketer

Robert Bruce: Back in 1976, the music industry was in a full-tilt disco craze.

All the smart money was chasing new disco acts based on the success of tunes like The Hustle, and Jive Talkin by the Bee Gees. Rock was dead, they all said, and this before Saturday Night Fever brought disco to middle America.

But then a band out of Boston (named for the city itself) turned that wisdom on its head.

Boston founder Tom Scholz struggled to get a record deal. And even after he signed with Epic, he got nothing but hassle from the label as he fought to release the band s eponymous debut.

Eventually, Scholz prevailed and Boston was released, and it was a massive success. It remains one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history, with over 17 million copies sold.

Of course, the bandwagon ensued. Boston spawned an entire industry genre (poetically known as Corporate Rock) as music marketing executives scrambled to produce loads of radio-friendly rock for the masses. The corporate rock trend continued throughout the 80s and into the 90s, reaching ridiculous extremes with packaged metal hair bands.

Then in 1991, 15 years after Boston, history repeated itself. A band from Seattle did something that wasn t supposed to work.

If you owned Nirvana s first album Bleach, and someone told you this act would become the biggest band in the word and dominate the radio waves with their next work, you d have laughed. A band like Nirvana was not supposed to be on the radio, much less become incredibly popular.

One irony as we talk about differences Boston s More Than a Feeling and Nirvana s Smells Like Teen Spirit are musically very similar songs. The difference Nirvana made, however, was in the contrast they posed to the hair bands of the day, as well as making punk rock accessible.

Another bandwagon ensued. Soon we had Clear Channel alternative rock stations (whatever that means). Rock music was fundamentally changed.

Until, of course, Britney Spears and the boy bands became the next different thing.

The point?

You can try chasing trends by being a me too marketer. The legendary players, however, come not from chasing what s happening, but by running in a different direction.

Author and entrepreneur Sally Hogshead has committed her career to helping people discover their winning difference. And a content-driven approach to communicating that difference is amazingly powerful because it makes you fascinating to follow — to the right crowd, that is.

Here s Sally …

Sally Hogshead: Anytime you communicate, you are creating content. That content is either adding value or it s taking up space. When we went inside companies and we began studying what the difference was in the communication patterns of the high performers, we found that there was a specific thing that they did differently.

The high performers within organizations and small businesses know exactly how they add value and they have a specialty. In other words, they re not trying to be all things to all people. They don t water down their communication. They re very clear that they specialize in one specific form of communication. They re not trying to be great at everything. They re trying to be extraordinary in one particular way.

Robert Bruce: And what s the benefit of this focus on adding unique value? Does it really make a difference to be different in a really useful way?

Sally Hogshead: People are more loyal to them. People refer them and they stay with them. They buzz about them in social media. As a result, they can charge up to 400% more for their products and services.

Robert Bruce: The common advice at this point is usually that you ve got to become stronger, faster and better than the competition, but could things work out better if you didn t focus on those macho notions at all?

Sally Hogshead: If you focus on your strengths and you re trying to outdo somebody else, then you re going to stay on the hamster wheel. There s a different way. Instead of focusing on your strengths, focus on your differences. If you focus on your differences, it becomes much easier for you to carve out a place in the market. It becomes much easier for you to stop trying to outdo other people and to be put in a competitive position.

Over the last decade as I ve been studying the science of fascination and what types of messages are most fascinating, what I found is that when your listener is in a state of fascination, they re more likely to buy from you. They re more likely to like you, trust you, believe you, and follow you. They re more likely to post about you in social media. They return to you for more because you re adding intense value through this focus.

Robert Bruce: Hogshead is the creator of The Fascination Advantage® Assessment: the world s first personality assessment that measures what makes a person most engaging to others. Unlike other personality gauges, this test is not about how you see the world but how the world sees you.

Sally Hogshead: There s a specific way that the world sees you at your best. When you can identify exactly how people see you at your best, in other words, what type of communication do you naturally use, then your communication becomes much more fascinating. You become much more likely to earn people s intense interest.

Anytime you re creating any type of content, whether it s email or even a conversation, if you understand how the world sees you at your best, you can focus on those areas where you are most likely and most efficiently going to add value.

Robert Bruce: When you take a media approach to online marketing, you uniquely position yourself to get somewhere. In many cases, the content you create is the very thing that sets you apart in your industry and sets you up to accelerate business in surprising ways.

New Rainmaker is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform the complete online marketing and sales website solution that gives you the ability to attract and fascinate the people you want to help. Take Rainmaker for a free test drive, and get more power and less hassle from your online marketing efforts.

Visit newrainmaker.com to get started today.

The New Rainmaker broadcast is written by Brian Clark and narrated by me, Robert Bruce.

A special thanks to Sally Hogshead for lending her expertise to this episode. You can find even more from her at sallyhogshead.com.

Until next time …

The Key Element of 21st Century Persuasion

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Robert Bruce: Back in the 1950s, a bedridden man faced certain death from inoperable, terminal cancer.

Tumors the size of oranges had invaded the man’s neck, groin, chest, and abdomen. The patient’s only hope was a new experimental cancer drug called Krebiozen (also known as “Substance X”).

Three days after the initial treatment, the man was out of bed and joking with his nurses. As treatment continued, his tumors shrunk by half.

Ten days later, he was discharged from the hospital the cancer was gone.

Strangely enough, none of the other cancer patients treated with Krebiozen showed any improvement.

Stranger still, a few years later it was conclusively determined that Krebiozen had no therapeutic value whatsoever.

Welcome to the power of the placebo effect. And more importantly, the power of belief.

According to Seth Godin, the placebo effect is a change in the human brain that’s caused by marketing. Consider the case of Riedel wine glasses, one of Godin’s favorite anecdotes demonstrating the power of belief in a commercial context.

Riedel produces a highly successful line of glass-blown wine receptacles designed to deliver the wine’s “message” via the carefully-crafted form of the glass. In other words, the shape of the glass makes the wine taste better.

Skeptical?

So was Thomas Matthews, executive editor of Wine Spectator. Premier wine critic Robert Parker, Jr. was also initially unconvinced.

And yet Matthews, Parker, hundreds of other wine experts, and thousands of customers now swear it’s true. Taste tests throughout Europe and the U.S. proved time and again that wine expensive, inexpensive, and middling tasted better in Riedel glasses.

Except it’s not true. At least not empirically.

When subjected to double-blind testing that doesn’t let the taster know the shape of the glass, people found no detectable difference in taste between glasses. Objectively, the shape of the glass just doesn’t matter.

But subjectively, when belief in the glass and the experience of the glass are added back in the mix, it matters. And the wine does taste better to these people, just like the placebo effect can make people well.

But when we say “belief,” in the context of commerce, what are we really talking about? We chatted with Tom Asacker, author of The Business of Belief, for his thoughts.

Tom Asacker: When we make any decision in life, we have come to the conclusion that whatever that choice is, is the appropriate choice for us given our place, time, circumstances. So that in essence is what a belief is. The word “belief” comes from an old word, root of the word “lief” which means “to wish.” So to believe something is to wish that it is right, is appropriate, is the best choice. So our beliefs are driven by our desires to have the right choice for us as individuals.

Robert Bruce: So how does belief relate to trust? And which comes first?

Tom Asacker: I’ve been asked that, for the distinction between belief and trust more than one time. And the way I think about it is that belief is something that comes before the actual experience. So I would say trust is one step beyond belief and that some type of experience has been validated for us.

Robert Bruce: And what does this have to do with persuasion? Well, we do what we believe in so if you’re looking to inspire action, you must first inspire belief.

Tom Asacker: what we desire is what we end up believing. And what we believe is what we end up doing. So it’s desire, belief, action. And then the action either reinforces the belief, supports it, encourages more of it, or it doesn’t.

If you can discover desire, you win.

Robert Bruce: So what’s the key to modern persuasion? How do we discover what people desire in the first place?

Tom Asacker: if you think about it: sell, persuade, even influence, they don’t seem to get at the essence of what’s required to move people. Especially when people are inundated with choice and then they’re very skeptical.

Then you have to really understand what’s going on inside of them so that you can align what you’re doing and complete that story in their head that’s already partially there.

Robert Bruce: It turns out that understanding your audience determines your ability to move them to action. And that takes good ol’ fashioned research but the payoff from what you discover is powerful.

But here’s the thing it’s much easier to discover and align your media content with the existing beliefs and world views of your prospective audience. In other words, discover desires and then fulfill them.

Tom Asacker: Let’s give them a “reason to believe,” and what they typically are saying, “let’s give them information to rationalize their decision.” Because their real reason to believe something is their desire for it.

If we go into an organization or if we’re marketers talking to a particular audience and we’re trying to get them to believe in something for which they have absolutely no desire to believe, it’s an impossible task because desire is what leads to belief.

Robert Bruce: Discover your prospect’s problems and desires, use search engines and social media to discover the actual language they use and the world views that come attached create engaging online media content that moves them toward your solution and their satisfaction.

That’s how modern persuasion works. You’re telling your audience the story they want to hear, and then providing the perfect ending.

You can get all of this done with the Rainmaker Platform. Start your free trial today, and get more power and less hassle from your online marketing and sales website, without breaking the bank.

Visit RainmakerPlatform.com and get started.

The New Rainmaker broadcast is written by Brian Clark and narrated by Robert Bruce.

A special thanks to today’s featured authority, Tom Asacker. For a deeper understanding of belief, pick up a copy of The Business of Belief anywhere books are sold.

And, if you find these New Rainmaker broadcasts useful, please let us know by leaving a rating and a comment in iTunes. Thanks.

Until next time …

The New Rainmaker as Magical Mentor on the Buyer s Journey

Robert Bruce: What do the actors Laurence Fishburne and Alec Guinness have in common?

Aside from being very good — and very successful — at what they do, they’ve both played a very particular kind of role in their careers. You might know them better as Morpheus and Obi Wan Kenobi, respectively.

These are roles that strike at the very heart of our desire for adventure and change.

They also happen to strike at the heart of what makes a business truly great and profitable.

This is New Rainmaker, from newrainmaker.com. I am Robert Bruce and today Brian Clark follows an ancient thread that began thousands of years ago, but has critical relevance to how you can build your audience — and your business — today.

Stay tuned

Brian Clark: Thomas has a problem.

His problem has come to define him. Night after night, he searches relentlessly online, looking to solve the dilemma that occupies his mind and robs him of sleep.

Despite the impressive search tools at his disposal, it s social that starts him down the correct path. A friend of a friend leads Thomas to a new social hub, where a mysterious woman named Trinity seems as if she knows him.

Trinity turns out to be the person that leads him to the man who would become his mentor, a man named Morpheus. Thomas knows this is what he needs.

Morpheus makes Thomas Anderson also known by his online handle Neo a proposition. Stay in his ordinary world, or discover the answers and solutions he s sought for so long and be utterly transformed.

Neo decides to make the commitment. Not just because he trusts Morpheus

But because he believes in Morpheus even more than he currently believes in himself. Thanks to the help he receives, Neo eventually comes to also believe in himself, and that is the true goal of his journey.

Yes, this is the how the film The Matrix begins and develops. It s one of the most beloved science fiction movies of all time, and it s a classic example of a story that follows the timeless Hero s Journey paradigm as outlined by mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Yeah, that s cool Brian so what? Well, hold that thought for a bit, as we take a quick look at how the classic sales funnel works in a media-first strategy.

The New Rainmaker Funnel

Brian Clark: The concept of the sales or purchase funnel dates back to 1898, when a guy named Elias St. Elmo Lewis mapped a theoretical buyer s journey from attention to the point of purchase. Surprisingly, no one seems to call it St. Elmo s Funnel, which seems to be a missed opportunity.

The funnel isn t a perfect metaphor for the sales process, as we ll discuss later. But most people are familiar with it, and frankly, it works just fine at illustrating the buyer s journey with a media-first approach as long as you update the elements.

Most sales funnel concepts start with the attention of the prospect, and that s the first mistake when applied to today s buying reality. The first element at the very top of the New Rainmaker funnel is actually Unaware.

Thanks to the research and networking capabilities of the Internet, the sales process often begins before the prospect is aware that you exist, and certainly before you re aware of them. More importantly, you have to understand the way the prospect views the world and relates to the problem or desire they have before you can consider how to attract and hold their attention.

Next comes Attraction, where traditional sales funnels typically begin. Online, this means your content comes up as a relevant result for a query in a search engine.

Or, it could mean that the prospect spots your social object content because it s shared within her social networks by your existing evangelists. It could even mean an extremely well targeted advertisement that offers desired information instead of a product or service pitch.

Following Attraction down the funnel is a P word, but it s not pitch it s Permission. We re building an audience here, because audience is a business asset that provides returns over and over again for the long term, as well as the short.

If that sounds squishy to you, just realize that the most grizzled of pay-per-click direct sales veterans have learned that you sell more by getting people to opt-in to a permission-based content stream than you do by selling immediately. This is the way of the new rainmaker.

Finally, we have Conversion, the point following Permission where your goal of acquiring a customer or client becomes reality. As I mentioned earlier, the sales funnel is designed to illustrate the journey taken by a typical buyer, and this is the destination.

Let s talk more about journeys. In addition to picking back up on The Matrix thread, we ll touch on Star Wars, too.

Content as Mentor: Facilitating the Buyer s Journey

Robert Bruce: Four and one half billion dollars. According to the best information I could find, that’s the current worldwide total box office gross of the Star Wars movie franchise.

Yes, that number was billion, with a “b.” And that doesn t count related merchandise and all the rest.

Where did the basic idea for this massive financial and cultural hit come from?

Here’s Brian …

Brian Clark: In the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell identifies a monomyth that has a fundamental structure shared among stories that have survived for thousands of years.

Campbell s identification of these enduring, identically-structured myths from disparate times and regions has inspired modern storytellers to consciously craft their work along the same lines, which is also known as the hero s journey.

Most notable among those inspired by the hero s journey is George Lucas, who acknowledged Campbell s work as the source of the plot for Star Wars.

This same structure has been used by companies as diverse as Apple and Subway to create amazingly effective advertising campaigns, because the monomyth mirrors the way we view our own journey through life.

As a digital media producer, you can also consciously incorporate the hero s journey into your content creation. In fact, it s the exact way that people view themselves moving down the proverbial sales funnel, and it s your content s job to facilitate the journey.

Getting back to The Matrix, what was Neo really searching for night after night?

He was driven to solve the riddle What is the Matrix? but he was specifically looking for Morpheus the mentor who would help him answer that ultimately complicated question.

Again, I sense your impatience with my pop culture analogies, young Skywalker. Hang with me.

Let s see how the classic elements of the Hero s Journey match up to the New Rainmaker funnel. I think you ll be amazed at the congruency.

The classic Hero s Journey follows these initial steps:

Our would-be hero starts off in the ordinary world of their lives. Suddenly, a call to adventure occurs that draws this person toward taking the heroic journey that is their destiny.

Initially, there is resistance to the call, due to skepticism or uncertainty. Then, just at the right moment, a mentor appears.

This guide often possesses some sort of supernatural abilities that make the journey possible. With the help of the magical mentor, our hero crosses the threshold from the ordinary world into the world of transformation.

So, put simply, the Ordinary World is the Unaware phase of the funnel. This is the life your prospect leads before deciding to seek some form of transformation, and this is the worldview you must seek to understand to best guide them on their journey. They may have the specific problem or desire at this point, but they ve not acted affirmatively to deal with it.

The Call to Adventure is the Attraction phase. Either through a self-directed search, or a call presented by sharing on a social network, or even the right advertisement at the right time, the idea that the problem can be solved or the desire satisfied has been presented. Resistance to the call is likely present and that informs you as to which type of content will combat the initial resistance and propel the journey forward.

Meeting the Mentor corresponds with Permission. At this point, the prospect knows, likes, and trusts you enough to look to your content as a guide. They opt-in or register to find out more, and they provide permission for you to contact them over time. This is the pivotal point that determines who and how many will choose your product or service as their solution.

Finally, your content helps the prospect Cross the Threshold into the world of transformation, which is Conversion. This is where they believe that your product or service is the solution, and proceed through the rest of the journey as a customer or client.

Let me repeat Conversion is not the end of the journey. It s simply an important inflection point of what will hopefully be a longer-term journey together. Too many people have a mentality that neglects the value of nurturing customer relationships, opting instead for the frustrating (and expensive) task of hunting for others.

Now all this talk about business storytelling makes more sense, especially when your content strategy aligns with the most powerful story structure of all time. But is a funnel that best way to help you tell that story?

For the answer to that, let s look again to The Matrix.

Once Neo find his mentor, Morpheus makes him an offer involving a choice between proceeding, or turning back, on his journey. If he takes the blue pill, he goes back to his ordinary world. Or, he can choose the red pill, and find the answer to the question that drives him and open himself up to transformation.

Isn t that the essence of making an offer to buy? And yet, in the film and in business, the journey continues.

The sale is a major conversion point, sure but hasn t the process of conversion from unaware to believer been happening gradually all along, not just at the moment you offer something for sale? And doesn t the process continue beyond the first sale, at least for smart companies?

It s time for a better model.

Beyond the Funnel: The Circles of Belief

Brian Clark: As I mentioned earlier, the sales funnel may not be the best way to think about the New Rainmaker conversion process. Not just because it s well-worn but rather because it doesn t truly reflect reality in two important ways.

One, the funnel is supposed to reflect the fact that there are a bunch of people at the top levels of the funnel, but a much smaller number actually convert to customers and clients. In physical reality, a funnel passes through everything that enters it — it just reduces to a smaller stream at the narrow end and slows things down. This is not how it works in business.

Two, as alluded to earlier, the funnel model implies a one-time conversion event which ends the process. In modern business, this is not how it works either.

I ve started thinking in terms of circles instead of a funnel. Concentric circles, to be precise.

Circles are concentric to one another when they share the same center point. And here s a fun fact the meaning of medium (the singular of media) in the original Latin is center.

For our purposes, the center point of these concentric circles is your business as media producer, and each circle represents a varying degree of belief. You create media content that draws people from the outer circles in closer to you at the center as their level of belief increases.

If that sounds out there, no worries. It s actually very simple.

Imagine seven concentric circles. The two outermost rings represent Attraction in the funnel, but they re more powerful in this context.

The outer ring is your followers on social platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Despite all the fuss about social media, this is your coldest circle, meaning those who trust you the least, assuming this is the only circle they currently occupy.

The next ring in from social is search. This is a higher value discovery channel because of the focused intent of the searcher, but also a higher belief channel, because after all — if Google believes your content is the best answer to the question, so likely does the searcher. Building up your Google+ following will have you appearing more prominently in relevant results for these people — an example that illustrates how social and search will continue to integrate more tightly as we move forward.

The ring inside of that shifts from Attraction to Permission, and represents your general email and RSS subscribers. In other words, if you publish regularly on the open web (and whether you call it blogging or not), or you have a podcast or video show, this is the group who has raised their hand to have this content delivered to them by you.

Next up is one or more email sub-lists designed specifically for focused lead generation and conversion. These people have opted in to be further educated, but also with a corresponding interest in how your product or service can solve their problem or satisfy their desire.

The remaining interior rings represent the various client or customer relationships you can create. One-time customers are great, but repeat and recurring customers mean you re running a smart business. And don t forget that often, acquiring a customer with a gateway product means you re simply breaking even on attracting them in order to sell your higher value solution next.

I ll illustrate all of this clearly for you in two upcoming webinars. Just remember that not everyone moves into the inner circles (not even close) but the better you are at inspiring belief with the value you deliver and the authority you demonstrate, the more people will gravitate closer to you and your solution will become central to them.

As long as you never forget rule number one, that is.

You re Not The One They Are

Brian Clark: In The Matrix, Morpheus helps Neo at all costs because he is The One essentially the “messiah” of the Matrix. It s no mystery why the film employs the hero s journey format, given that the stories of Christ, Moses, and Buddha (among others) follow the same structure.

The point here is not to delve into religion (although all this talk about belief, evangelism, and conversion may have you thinking otherwise). The point is rather that your prospect is the hero the main focus of the story.

Helping your prospects makes them into the saviors of your bank account. This is your primary role.

The mistake most often made in marketing is thinking of your business as the hero, which results in egocentric messages that no one else cares about.

The prospect is always the primary hero, because they are the one going on the journey — whether big or small — to solve a problem or satisfy a desire.

Instead of egocentric, think concentric, and help the hero on their journey by guiding them closer to you and your solution.

By making the prospect the primary hero, your brand also becomes an important hero in the prospect s story. By accepting the role of magical mentor with your content, your business accomplishes its goals while helping the prospect do the same, which is how business is supposed to work, right?

The hero s journey is so powerful because it resonates with us at a fundamental level. Or, as author Steven Pressfield puts it, we are born with the hero s journey tattooed on our psyches.

This, again, is a benefit of media over marketing.

With a media-first strategy, it s easier to focus on telling a story over time that focuses on them. With marketing, on the other hand, you re tempted to make it directly about you. Bad idea.

At the risk of mixing movie metaphors, remember this easy rule of thumb from the ultimate Hero s Journey film, Star Wars:

The prospect is Luke Skywalker. The solution provider is Obi-Wan.

What s that? Oh did I refer to you young Skywalker earlier on?

You noticed that, huh. Well The Force is strong in this one clearly.

Robert Bruce: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.

You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the red pill — you stay in Rainmaker-land and we show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Choose wisely, my friends.

Thanks for listening to New Rainmaker. If you like what you re hearing and you haven’t already … go sign up to get everything — including the two very important webinars we’re about to record, that will only be available to email subscribers — at newrainmaker.com.