Here’s the second part of my recent interview with Ace copywriter and marketer Pete Godfrey talking about his “Business Profits Triangle”.
In this section, we move on to discussing the second side of the triangle and that’s marketing.
More specifically, direct response marketing.
Also, discover what “Evil” really is…
…plus some practical tips on mindset.
Back to the interview…
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Kevin Francis:
Alright, that’s good stuff there Pete. I’ve got you a little bit off-track there but the mindset that’s an entire call in itself, we might talk about that a little later.
The next thing in terms of your own personal journey, it was really marketing next before copywriting, if I understand you correctly?
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah, I was a marketer because I started a mail order business so I had to learn the mechanics, I had to learn the strategies behind direct response marketing, and then I soon realized I didn’t have the money to hire a copywriter. And it was a lot harder to find a good copywriter back then as well compared to these days…
Kevin Francis:
When was this? This was back in the 1990s right, late 90s?
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah, back late 1999 and 2000.
So you know this is, so I got all that down pat and I realized, well I soon realized that copy is king; and you can have the best frigging marketing strategy going but its going to nosedive if you haven’t got that copy that matches that market to a ‘t’. So I spent a lot of time honing my chops on copywriting, and I still do to this day. You know, I’m still plugged in to some high level groups, you know I never think I know it all, you know that Kev. I’m always reinventing myself and I’m always learning more and I’m always trying, I’m not scared to try new things.
Kevin Francis:
Yes, despite your “knock about” image Pete, I know you’re fanatical about continually learning and staying up-to-date on the latest developments. There are few people that I’ve come across who have such an encyclopedic knowledge of marketing and what’s going on.
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah it’s bordering on obsession but I try to be humble about it.
Kevin Francis:
Alright, so for copywriters you’d recommend, and business owners in particular, you’d recommend finding out about marketing before copywriting?
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah, look, learning direct response, learning what it means to make an offer. Now direct response is what we do as opposed to image ads. Like with image ads you get your name on TV or something and it’s all about your company and that’s it.
We’re not about that, we’re about asking for a response. So that response could be anything, it could be go to this website, it could be ring this 1800 number, it could be fill out this coupon, whatever. But learn the basics of direct response marketing first, and then start putting your business on a diet of direct response and start chipping away at all the image crap that you’ve got no sense of is it working or not working. With direct response, as you know Kev, we track the numbers, we know to the last dime, the last cent, whether or ads worked or not.
And that’s the beauty of direct response. And I’ve got some clients that I like to work for because they’re obsessive with tracking everything. And they’re obsessive with building micro lists inside their main lists. So each micro list, depending on what they’ve ordered before, get different offers than the main list.
And that’s where the money is because as we always say Kev, you’ve got to match your message to your market precisely. And the guys and girls making the big money in direct response are the ones that track everything obsessively.
And they have got these little micro lists. You know they might have a 20,000, 30,000 list, but they may have one email, or one postcard going out, or one sales letter, going out to just 500 of them. However, it’s a very, very targeted offer.
And you know, these days its getting harder people are scared. I’ve had to put out a lot of fires the last couple of weeks with clients that aren’t making as much as they were last year, and they’ve just got to work a bit harder. We’ve got to match our messages a bit tighter to get the same results.
Because one thing I’ve noticed over the last few years, and this is good for any copywriter, or any marketer on the call, is that people are looking for things that are adjusted to them. And the more that we can massage our message so it’s just for them the higher our response will be.
So we’re always micro managing the list, you know. That’s where the money is too. It’s all about the list as you know mate, it’s all about who gets your letter, who goes to your website. Its not about having you know 100,000 people on the email list that you just broadcast the same shit to. It’s about who is on that list and your relationship with them. And that’s what we’re all about in direct response, is building relationships with customers, not just a transaction.
Kevin Francis:
Well as you say, I mean what you’ll find in most businesses is the old 80/20 rule. But there’s going to be a particular group of your customers who are going to be where you make most of your money.
Pete Godfrey:
Exactly.
Kevin Francis:
And so few people actually recognize those important customers and treat them well…
Pete Godfrey:
And they treat all customers as equal and they’re not.
And it’s the same with copywriting, for the copywriters on this call, all clients aren’t equal, you know.
Some get more attention from me than others.
And that’s simply an economic reality. I don’t treat them all the same.
Kevin Francis:
Yeah, that’s right. Well here’s a little example, this week from Pete practicing what he preaches with that. I was delighted to get your special report this week Pete for your subscribers, Frank Kern’s “3 Reasons Why People Fail”.
A little extra in the mail, completely unexpected but a good 8 pages of solid content. An example of Pete going the extra mile with the subscribers there.
Pete Godfrey:
And there’s a lot going on in that tool kit, and there’s a lot going on in that too that we can talk about another day. But yeah its great content but yeah the strategy behind it as well is important too.
Kevin Francis:
Alright well look we’ve talked about…let’s recap for a moment, I think people have got the overall message but Pete just recap why the “Business Profits Triangle” and grasping it is so important for business owners.
Pete Godfrey:
Well it keeps you on track. You know there are 3 important things that you’ve got to be working on…great copy backed up with great marketing, backed up with the right mindset. And when I talk about mindset I’m not talking about you know let’s go happy clapping around a bonfire at midnight type of thing. I’m talking about being real…I believe in the law of attraction to a certain extent but I believe it’s a process not a law in itself. So I think it’s a process that we do. But I’m also very, very pragmatic as well Kev as you know, the numbers don’t lie.
And an important thing to remember too you know I’ve been doing a fair few critiques the last couple of weeks and people are so emotionally involved with their product. I mean you know, get your emotions out of it.
You know, and they don’t want to hear any criticism, but my job is to be the pragmatic one and say, this is the facts as I see it, you know this is the facts. And then I’ll start to give opinions. But the facts don’t lie. Now you know I’ve got a client in Europe, he’s got hundreds of products mate, and if an ad doesn’t work he just gets rid of it and moves on.
And he taught me a lot about getting the emotions out the way. And you can’t let yourself be emotionally involved…if something doesn’t work you know, change the angle.
Kevin Francis:
Well it comes back to the mindset doesn’t it. I mean it’s something you always talk about Pete when you say you know your definition of “evil”. Share with the listeners your definition of evil.
Pete Godfrey:
Well the definition of evil is anything that blocks money coming your way!
But also another definition of evil is one…is one way.
Now I see a lot you know people are only getting customers through one way. I see people using one media. I go on to Facebook occasionally and I see a lot of so-called marketers there but they’re only using one media…Facebook.
And here is what I found extraordinary, was this one lady made a post, now she’s been to some of my training and she knows my thoughts on this but she made a post and she said because Facebook is incorporating a members’ side and all this rah, rah, rah, and all this new applications they’re sorting out that she doesn’t need her website now, she can put it all on Facebook.
Kevin Francis:
Okay, good luck with that one.
Pete Godfrey:
OK? But who owns that frigging list?
It ain’t her. You know…Facebook can change the rules any time they want.
So one strategy for Facebook and it’s blatantly obvious to anyone that’s done a bit of marketing, is that your so-called friends on Facebook you need to get them over to your email list.
OK. That’s your objective, to build a relationship with people, help them out where you can but get them on to your email list because you own your email list.
So that’s my definition…one is an evil number.
And also anything that blocks money coming your way is evil.
Kevin Francis:
Absolutely. Why I wanted to go into that, we’re going back to the 3 components, and in essence when we talk about mindset it’s very easy to get off into sort of “Woo Woo Land” and be nonspecific.
But you’re very, very pragmatic on the mindset aren’t you. I mean that’s the message that’s coming over here. And I mean if you want to sum up the key thing that you’ve got to grasp in the mindset arena, how would you describe that?
Pete Godfrey:
Well you’ve got to believe in your heart that opportunities are everywhere. Get rid of the negative self talk is a big one for people, and you know look there’s a lot of crap out there that says if you believe in this stuff the universe will take care of it all. You know wake up, go pray to the universe and next minute I’ve got a brand new car. It ain’t going to happen.
There was a movie doing the rounds that I won’t mention a couple years ago that everyone jumped on like a swarm of screaming banshees, but one thing that movie left out was that you have to take action.
So I’m all for thinking positively. I’m all for affirmations. I’m all for visualizing your end goal and feeling that end goal with emotions. I’m all for dream books where you stick pictures of what, you know your car, a car that you want to have, that you want, maybe a new spouse, I don’t know, and using those dream books as motivation. But I’m also very pragmatic and I’ll list out the action steps I’m gonna take to achieve those goals.
Now that’s the big thing missing. The universe won’t provide for you if you just sit around on your backside singing songs of praise. Now when I say that to some people it offends them and I don’t mean to offend but it just comes naturally.
But that’s my opinion and it works for me, it works for my clients, it works for my members. We’re big positive thinkers but we you know we expect positive results because we’ve done the work that leads to that…positive results.
Kevin Francis:
Yeah, because you’re combining it with the right strategies.
Pete Godfrey:
Exactly. And here’s another thing Mate, bad stuff happens to good people. You know some people take this attraction thing too far. You get cancer and you’ve attracted it…you know, I mean come on. I’m a little guy Kev, I like to swim in the shallow end of the pool…
Kevin Francis:
We’ll leave all that deeper stuff out then…
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah, if people believe that, good on them. But what I’ve seen a lot of over the years is people that go to one of these courses after another and they just get more and more mixed up and they never seem to have any money in their wallet. But the universe will provide.
Kevin Francis:
What we’re interested in here is the practical application of mindset in the context of making money here in a business, right?
Pete Godfrey:
Well here’s what I do mate every morning. I think Tony Robbins calls it setting your intention, I call it getting my shit together.
And what I do is I start off the day with gratitude and this only takes me 10 minutes. I start the day with gratitude, I go through my to-do list after that and visualize getting it done, how it’s going to feel when I get it done. And I’ve got positive expectations that all this will happen and I remove any negative talk right from my head.
Once I’ve cleared my head like that and I always start with the gratitude, I’m right for the day here.
Because I’ve got a plan. If I don’t do that to-do list the night before and if I don’t go through it that next day, my day is unstructured and I don’t get nearly as much done.
Kevin Francis:
OK…So you do your to-do list the night before, before you go to bed?
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah, I just sit out on the back deck, maybe sip a glass of red and go through all the stuff I need to get accomplished for that day.
And by giving gratitude, by actually thanking…some people call it the Universe, I call it God, whatever you want, but by giving gratitude you open yourself up to receive so much more, you know.
You know I know people from my past life, what I used to call my past life. You know they wake up grumpy, and they wake up itching to be offended. And that whole negative mindset, and when I’m speaking to someone like that at a seminar I’m very intuitive, I can feel that, I can feel their energy.
And I get away… because that energy will suck…will suck your energy out. And that’s as far as I’ll go down that track, you know.
But you can feel the poisonous energy about them, a negative energy.
Kevin Francis:
Yeah it’s a weird thing but you’re absolutely right on that.
Pete Godfrey:
And they’ll infect you just like a flu, just like a virus.
Kevin Francis:
Alright. Well look let’s move onto the marketing aspect. Again really the key thing with marketing is to understand direct response and principles of direct response. I think that is your main message there I guess?
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah. And marketing is what Dan calls…he’s got his triangle too you know. Dan Kennedy, he’s got market that who you’re selling to, message that’s your copy and then media.
So you get those 3 things right in marketing, your message going to the right market via the correct media, that’s what marketing is about.
And never just rely on one media because that’s evil as we’ve discovered.
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That concludes part 2 of the interview. Part 3 to follow tomorrow.
You can find part 1 here…
“Pete Godfrey’s ‘Business Profits Triangle’ – Part 1”
More about Pete Godfrey at…
Pete’s Blog – www.PeteGodfrey.com
Pete’s Newsletter – www.EmotionalAdWritingLetter.com