I can admit it.
If the marketing and copywriting world were a high school…
I would be a complete poser.
I would be the scrawny kid who boastfully wore my letterman jacket in the hallways as if I were a “real” part of the team, even though I only carried the helmets and filled the water bottles for the actual football players.
I would be the guy who carried my guitar around with me wherever I went — but you would never see me take it out of its case. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to tune the damn thing.
And yes, it would be ME who would be seen wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, even though I had never heard a single Nirvana song in my life, except when I saw the music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on MTV.
So what’s fueling my sudden public admission of sheer marketing poser-dom?
Well, maybe I’m being a bit too hard on myself.
Anyway, here it goes.
My shameful admission…
My favorite Dan Kennedy book is “The Best of No B.S.”
I know… I know!
It’s about as embarrassing as someone wearing a Pink Floyd shirt who says “I thought ‘Pink Floyd’ was the guy’s name!”
It’s literally like when someone says they’re a fan of some band, so you ask them what their favorite album is, and they say:
“Oh, I like the greatest hits.”
Like, are you kidding me?
Of course, you like the greatest hits.
EVERYBODY likes the greatest hits.
I can hear the former hipster snob in me, scoffing with easily-triggered nasal despair:
“You’ve got to get into the DEEP CUTS to be a true fan!”
But that hipster snob could really learn a thing or two about marketing.
Because there is some obvious marketing genius behind the old “greatest hits” approach to publishing.
For example:
1 – You don’t need to create any new content
Just repackage some of your old gems and you’re done.
2 – It’s very likely to succeed (at least in relation to your other products/services)
Of course, this is due to the simple fact that it’s made up of the best and most successful parts of those other products/services in the first place.
3 – It inspires customers to buy your previous products.
This is where the rubber really meets the road.
If you do it right, the “greatest hits” approach is a sneaky way to get people to PAY for what is essentially the best advertisement for you/your business/your products that there is.
Nothing sells like the customer getting to have an enriching and valuable experience with your product.
And that’s exactly what the “greatest hits” approach is all about.
However, it does require having a few things in place to do it properly. (Maybe you have them now, maybe you don’t. It’s worth taking note of what they are regardless – because you could have a potential windfall success if you can execute it correctly.)
First, you need multiple products/services to cull from.
Secondly, you must package elements of these together in a way that is not only enticing in itself but also so that it is “lacking” in certain specific ways.
And what it’s “lacking”, of course, your customer will find in the source products/services that you initially took the “greatest hits” material from in the first place.
Dan Kennedy’s “Best of No B.S.” might be one of the greatest examples of this technique I have ever seen in book form.
Each section features an article or two from a few of his previous books – just enough info to get you excited and eager to act on the ideas… but not quite enough to get the full picture.
And the “full picture”, obviously, is found in the original books that the “best of” material was sourced from.
The key to making this work is providing so much value – even without giving away the “full picture” view of most of the ideas – that people are not TURNED OFF by the missing info, but are positively TURNED ON by what’s provided.
The reader’s first conclusion is to be excited by the information, which in turn makes them eager to search out the original books where it came from.
Even if you’re not an author, not a writer, and don’t have multiple books, products, or services to compile “best of” material from just yet – it’s worth thinking about:
How could YOU use this “greatest hits” idea in your own business?
If you’re a prolific Twitter user, you might be able to compile the “best of” your tweets into something enticing to your audience.
If you write daily emails to your list, you might be sitting on a goldmine of ideas that you could potentially re-package into some type of “greatest hits” product.
And even if you already have some (or most) of Dan Kennedy’s other books, I would recommend getting a copy of “The Best of No B.S.” to see this idea executed with near perfection.