The Dangers of Over Delivery – In Just 7 Minutes with Brian Kurtz

Resources/Links:

• Want to know the secrets to marketing success? Click here: https://www.briankurtz.net/

Summary

Have you been struggling to find your forte or niché in the market?

Trying to solve everyone’s problems through your product isn’t going to do good for your business. If you’re thinking that by being everything to everyone is going to bring you more profit, then you’re wrong. You’ve got to narrow down your market and start from there.

Brian Kurtz has had two careers. The first spanned 34 years as a force behind Boardroom, an iconic publisher and direct marketer. The second is the Founder of Titans Marketing, a direct marketing educational and coaching company.

Grab your pen and paper as Brian puts down all his marketing cards and shares his secrets on how you can increase your sales through the right marketing and better copywriting.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:42 – Brian’s ideal client: My ideal client is not necessarily niche. It’s basically anyone who was doing direct response marketing, and that’s as a marketer, as a copywriter, and as a media buyer.
• 02:58 – The problem he helps solve: I start wide in a way by bringing them in because they want to do direct response marketing. But then I am interested in what they’re doing.
• 05:49 – The symptoms of the problem: One of them is the thing that people think they’re inventing stuff when it’s already been invented. And that’s true all the time with everybody! I start my conversations with, “I’ve never invented anything.”
• 06:42 – Brian’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): I would say that the creative, the messaging, and the words that you’re going to use to sell anything are the least important element of any campaign until it’s not.
• 07:47 – Brian’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Want to know the secrets to marketing success? Click here: https://www.briankurtz.net/
• 08:08 – Q: Why is my picture on Jimmy Stewart’s body in It’s a Wonderful Life or why is there a T-Rex on my table? A: So basically, It’s a Wonderful Life is one of my favorite movies of all time. And it’s one that always, every Christmas and not during Christmas, I always want to watch for inspiration of what life would have been like if you weren’t there.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“You have to get the market right. You've got to get the offer right. And then focus on the messaging and the creative.” -Brian Kurtz Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Greetings, everyone, and a warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. I’m Tom Poland beaming out to you from the very sunny Sunshine Coast here in Australia, joined today by Brian Kurtz. Brian, good day! A warm welcome from Down Under. Where are you hanging out?

Brian Kurtz 00:23
I’m hanging out in Westport, Connecticut, which is a suburb of New York City, basically.

Tom Poland 00:28
Right! As New York creeps. I could probably spend the entire interview just tilting my and head looking to see what you got on the wall there. Memorabilia. But we better not do that! Folks, if you’re listening to this on iTunes or iPod, you probably want to hop over to our website and check out the video because it’s worth just looking at the background. Brian, thanks for being on the show! For those of you who haven’t heard of Brian, you’re probably living in a cave if you’re in the world of marketing because he’s had two careers. The first spanned 34 years as a force behind Boardroom, which if you don’t know Boardroom, it’s an iconic publisher and direct marketer of the highest order. The second part of his career has been as the founder of Titans Marketing. He’s worked with some of the greats and he hasn’t told me to say this, but I know he has, such as Dan Kennedy and Frank Kern, and many others. He’s a direct marketing educational and coaching company. He can’t help himself but to give. And that’s partly why he’s here! Our title today, Brian, is, “The Dangers of Over Delivery”. Yay! Okay, this is going to be interesting. So let’s unpack that one. Our time starts now. Question number one, sir, who’s your ideal client?

Brian Kurtz 01:36
So do I mean to unpack the dangers of over-delivery first? I’ll tell you who my ideal clients are first.

Tom Poland 01:41
That’s fair enough. Yeah.

Brian Kurtz 01:42
So my ideal client is, and it’s weird because I focus on a niche. I focus on narrow to wide, and I always think that in marketing, it’s way easier to start in a narrow niche, and then you can be all things to all people. But if you start being all things to all people, it gets kind of dicey because then no one knows what you’re doing. And you can’t target your copy to the list in the best way possible. However, my ideal client is not necessarily niche. It’s basically anyone who was doing direct response marketing, and that’s as a marketer, as a copywriter, and as a media buyer. And direct response marketing is a certain type of marketing that I think is the only way to market which is measurable with measurable marketing, ROI on everything you spend, and making money and not wasting time. And I’m not a money gouger. I’m not going to try to rip people off with all of my whiz-bang tactics. That’s not my style. But I do believe that my ideal client has to be committed to measurable, accountable marketing. Then once they get into my marketing programs and my masterminds, I try to find out what their niche is.

Brian Kurtz 02:58
And that’s number two, what is the problem I solve? I start wide in a way by bringing them in because they want to do direct response marketing. But then I am interested in what they’re doing. I’m not just interesting, I’m interested in how they want to go about attacking a market. And more times than not when they’re on a hot seat or in one of my groups or I’m pushing them a little bit, it’s always about going to “why?”. They’re trying to be all things to all people. So I make sure I go a mile deep. And once I go there, I can solve any problem for them really, because as Gary Halbert and John Carlton talk about clicks on a dial. We all have clicks on a dial. So basically, you tell me a problem, and I have a click for that. So I’m thinking, “Okay. Tom’s problem is that he can’t seem to reach his audience because of X, Y, and Z.” And I go on my dial, I pick my dial– click, click, click– oh, yeah, that’s that! Then I can talk to him about list research. I can talk about list segmentation. I can talk about narrowing down your market. And so the problem I solve is once they let me know who they want to go after, then I can take a click on my dial and go deal with them.

Tom Poland 04:15
I find that direct marketers like you have a curious minds. It’s one of your defining characteristics if you ask a lot of questions. You probe, and you prod, and you diagnose, and you figure stuff out and you talk about the click. It’s almost like a combination safe. It’s what’s going to get the safe open for this particular client’s combinations here. I mean, you’re always interesting people to have at dinner parties because you just have that curious mind, and I’m not sucking up to Brian here, folks, because they’re not giving me the commission to do this, unfortunately, but, you want to unpack reality. That’s what you’re doing. You’re unpacking reality in terms of what is going to get cut through that’s going to motivate that particular niche to want to reach out and know more. But I better move on. We’ve only got three minutes left.

Brian Kurtz 05:01
I just want to say one of the things about that is that copywriters, in particular, are one of the characteristics of a great copywriter is that they’re great interviewers. They know how to interview their client in a way because the client is not a copywriter. What are they hiring the writer for? They’re hiring the writer to get the expression out into the marketplace. If the interview is solid, it’s basically, they’re going to get everything out of the brain of the entrepreneur, and then they’re going to turn it into poetry on paper. If you’re not a good interviewer, don’t be a copywriter!

Tom Poland 05:33
Poetry on paper. Even right there, there’s some poetry– no papers, but digital. Okay. Give us a couple of quick seconds. Quick tips. What would you say are some of the symptoms of someone whose business needs you, they need to talk with you. A couple of symptoms.

Brian Kurtz 05:49
One of them is the thing that people think they’re inventing stuff when it’s already been invented. And that’s true all the time with everybody! I start my conversations with, “I’ve never invented anything. But I’ve been able to through my 40-plus years in direct marketing. I have stories involving all kinds of marketing in all media. And once I hear what you’ve got, I can kind of come up with something.” It’s not just the click on a dial. It’s a story. It’s a lesson that I learned, maybe some tough lessons too, some that I lost a lot of money on too. That’s where it really comes out.

Tom Poland 06:27
Okay, so we’ve got like, 100 seconds left. So let’s go to question five, a top tip. What I’m after here is something someone can use whether they work with you or not. They should be working with you, but it’s at least a step in the right direction. What do you get? 90 seconds left.

Brian Kurtz 06:42
So I would say that the creative, the messaging, and the words that you’re going to use to sell anything are the least important element of any campaign until it’s not. And what I mean by that, is the most important is to list the audience, the media, and understanding the media first, and then the offer, then once you have those things dialed in, the creative becomes the most important. But if you start with the creative, you can have the best creative of all time and if you go out to the wrong audience, it’s going to get you zero orders. The opposite is not true. The perfect audience with mediocre creativity and mediocre copy, you’re going to get some orders. It may not be the best order, but you’re going to get some orders. So basically, understand that you have to get the market right. You’ve got to get the offer right. And then you really focus on the messaging and the creative.

Tom Poland 07:37
Perfect! It makes sense when you hear it, but so many of us don’t get it until after we’ve heard it.

Brian Kurtz 07:43
They think going right away to the creative and the messaging, and the words are right.

Tom Poland 07:47
20 seconds left. Folks, go to briankurtz, that’s Brian, B-R-I-A-N-K-U-R-T-Z, .net. And there, you’re going to find more information about this. You’re going to get three quite closely guarded copywriting secrets.

Brian Kurtz 08:00
It’s an interview.

Tom Poland 08:02
Brian, I got to give you the last question, even though we’re out of time. What’s the one question I should have asked you, but didn’t?

Brian Kurtz 08:08
You know you like the scenery behind me, you might have wanted to ask me like, why is my picture on Jimmy Stewart’s body in It’s a Wonderful Life or why is there a T-Rex on my table.

Tom Poland 08:20
We can all dream.

Brian Kurtz 08:21
What’s that?

Tom Poland 08:23
We can all dream. 30 seconds. Why? What’s going on back there?

Brian Kurtz 08:28
So basically, It’s a Wonderful Life is one of my favorite movies of all time. And it’s one that always, every Christmas and not during Christmas, I always want to watch for inspiration of what would life have been like if you weren’t there. And if you constantly think in terms of that, it’s powerful. And the T-Rex is important because when I started my coaching company, it was going to be called, “Dinosaurs and Cowboys”, which would be on the dinosaur teaching the cowboys of online marketing. And I made my email address T-Rex. I’ve got dinosaur socks up the wazoo. But it’s a reminder of original source. It’s a reminder that, and that’s chapter two of my book, Over Deliver, its original sources, not just where babies came from. And it’s not just for nostalgia. It’s really about learning from the fundamentals and the basics, and then taking that and latching on to what’s best.

Tom Poland 09:30
Folks, I do hope you’ll listen to this again and again because so many people want to rush to the tactic. So many people want to rush to execution and so many people want to just slap up a landing page or a sales page or whack a webinar together. You got to do the foundational stuff first that Brian has been talking about. Brian, thanks for sharing! I appreciate you being on the show.

Brian Kurtz 09:47
Thanks, Tom.

Tom Poland 09:49
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.