More Promotions, Not Necessarily More Products

My philosophy is that once you've got a decent backlog of products and services, you're best off by creating more promotions, as opposed to strictly more products. To me, it's the quality of the marketing system that determines the profits; the product is secondary. So I'm looking to create far-ranging and larger-scale marketing campaigns, with forays into radio and TV sooner rather than later. Direct mail and space ads will be my primary vehicle, of course, but I want to add more media to our arsenal. I believe this is something that you must consider as your business matures.

Let me give you an example: how can somebody make $50,000 on something, while somebody else makes $1,200,000 with the same product? The answer is the marketing system. For proof, I offer the true story of two companies that marketed the same product: a business opportunity program. One guy raked in the dough, while the other guy got a relative pittance. Now, guy number one—let's call him Albert—does have a substantially larger house list than guy number two, whom we'll call Bert. Albert huge list helps enormously, but I believe he also built a better marketing system, and that's what led to his outstanding results. He made $1.2 million; Bert made a decent but hardly comparable fifty grand. Now remember, it's the exact same product; the only variable is the marketing system. That's why you must focus on creating world-class marketing systems as often as you can, with more steps, through more media, with more follow-up, and with more personalization than ever before.

As I've already pointed out, fulfillment is the Achilles heel of all marketers. It's expensive. You may be able to sell like crazy, but it's quite an undertaking to do all the fulfillment—yet it's also an absolute necessity. But aha—if you can join programs that do all the fulfillment for you, and you have a killer compensation plan to boot, then my oh my—that's a jackpot waiting to happen! That is what you should be looking for. It's certainly my model, and it's our friend Albert's, too. As a matter of fact, I don't think Albert has created or currently creates any products of his own. He simply finds opportunities that fit the aforementioned criteria, and milks them for all they're worth with his legendary marketing systems. You should consider doing the same.

Now, I don't recommended that you abandon product development altogether, but you can certainly delegate a larger chunk of it to someone else; and you can strive to create a better system that will eventually make product development happen independently of you.