The Silent Underground Force

Attend my landmark Autoresponder Workshop September 27-28 in Chicago - where top performing copywriters will sit down with you and write 10 autoresponder messages, ready-to-rock, uploaded before you go home. The most instantly profitable seminar you've ever attended or your money back. Details here.

Click here for Part 1

The Silent Underground Force, Part 2
The Autoresponder Irony

The psychological kicker that doubles the power of the Underground

Most people want to build an online business by writing a Google ad, sending people to a product page, selling a product and pocketing the profit.

Nice work if you can get it. And seriously, that 3-step process IS the core of many, many online businesses.

But it's pathetically easy to do and even easier to knock-off. People whose business is that simple are profoundly vulnerable to competition. Businesses that are no more sophisticated than that spring up in the morning and whither in the noon-day sun. If your business is this simple, you'd better get your ass in gear and deepen your roots - and fast.

For a business to survive a long time, it MUST have something that's hard to replicate. Now if your product requires a $200 million manufacturing process using plants that take 6 years to build, your product alone may be sufficiently unique.

But if your product is easy to knock off (and most are - somebody just sends it off to China and the rest is history) then something else needs to be hard to replicate.

So let me tell you the easiest thing to do that SEEMS to "hard" to be replicated by most people.

Or more specifically it's NOT LIKELY to be replicated... by most people.

The secret is:

A lengthy and complex sales follow-up sequence.

That's it.

Let me use a real simple example, for the sake of illustration:

Let's say you sell e-books on dog grooming.

You have dog grooming keywords, a dog grooming Google ad, a dog grooming sales letter and a dog grooming e-book.

Congratulations, you have the most basic kind of online business.

Problem is, the book sales will probably barely cover the cost of your clicks and there are 10 other people just like you. Not a stable or secure business.

So let's add a dimension of sophistication:

You offer a white paper or guide to up-and-coming dog groomers, instead of going for the 1-step sale.

People download the report and then over the next few weeks, they get autoresponder emails that help them digest the content of the report. Thse messages give people links to the page where they can buy your book.

After they buy the book they're put on another autoresponder sequence that introduces them to an advanced version of the book.

The autoresponders also describe the importance of organic dog grooming shampoos and why the ones you sell are head and shoulders above all the others. (Bad pun, I know.)

The messages tell dog grooming stories. Stories of dog grooming shop owners who have achieved great success with their businesses by marketing and publicizing their businesses better.

They invite people to join a dog groomer's discussion board and membership site.

They invite people to a dog grooming conference where the latest techniques and technologies are discussed.

They get automated FAX broadcasts 4-5 times in the first 2 months.

There's an automated Teleseminar that is broadcast 1 week after they subscribe.

They get Voice Mail broadcasts to announce the special teleseminar.

They get links to special instructional videos and interviews.

They get postcards and letters in the mail. Maybe they receive a CD or a DVD.

Every time they buy a product or participate in a teleseminar, they get added to lists that further nurture their interest.

In all, the total sales sequence has 50 steps not 3.

THAT is a business that will survive while others come and go and come and go.

This is the power of the silent underground.

It's like a tree whose roots are even bigger than the part that's above ground. So a hurricane or wind storm can't take it out.

That, my friend, is the key to long term success.

Now, here's the KICKER that I alluded to in the title of this article:

Once at a seminar, Dan Kennedy described what I'm describing to you - the immense power of complex, thorough customer follow-up systems. He described the 20, 30, 50 step sales funnel. With email, snail mail, FAX, teleseminar, video, whatever makes sense.

He said, "I could stand in front of a room full of people and describe every single step of one of these businesses - a business that makes the owner a million or two million dollars a year - and one by one everyone in the room will either fall asleep or leave. As simple as this is, almost NOBODY goes to the trouble of doing this. Even when you stand in front of a room and show people every single detail of the whole thing."

"The ones who do easily control entire markets, just for the trouble of creating the 30 steps."

That is what I call The Autoresponder Irony. That a thorough follow-up sequence is so deceptively simple yet powerfully effective that almost nobody bothers to do it.

Dude, I'm telling you, if you're looking for shortcuts in the world, this is one of the BIG ones. A monster opportunity that's disguised by its glamor-less-ness.

Dude, if you have an online dog grooming publishing company and you decide to have 50 steps instead of 3, honestly... how hard is that? A few weeks of focused effort... maybe? Sitting with your laptop at your favorite coffee hangout, sipping lattes? Watching people come and go, inserting people-watching stories in the middle of your sequence?

Yeah baby, drinking coffee and writing follow-up messages, that's h-a-a-a-a-r-d work!

Crap. Anybody who thinks that's too hard deserves the punishment of a real job.

Years of business longevity for a few pleasant weeks of effort? That's the power of the Silent Underground.

Harness it.

Perry Marshall

Attend my landmark Autoresponder Workshop September 27-28 in Chicago - top performing copywriters sit down with you and write 10 autoresponder messages, ready-to-rock, uploaded before you go home. The most instantly profitable seminar you've ever attended or your money back. Details here.