The full title of this book by Dan Kennedy is
Magnetic Marketing: How To Attract A Flood Of New Customers That Pay, Stay, and Refer
In my review posted on Amazon.co.uk, I gave the book a Five Stars rating. This means it is Excellent and Very Highly Recommended.
Here is my book review.
Another tasty morsel from a master of direct marketing
Magnetic Marketing is the name of the author’s most famous premium priced course and it’s the one that has helped make his excellent reputation.
Kennedy didn’t invent direct response marketing – its origins go back at least as far as the late 19th century – but he’s done a great job of bringing it to the attention of business owners and entrepreneurs along with others including Jay Abraham. I’ve always felt Kennedy was stronger on the initial aspect of attracting new customers while Abraham was better at expanding the backend, that is the ongoing business with the customers. Books by both deserve a place on the bookshelf of a well read business owner.
The question I’m going to try to answer is whether this is the book by Kennedy to buy or whether there are one or two others that are better places to start. If you click with his style and personality, you will probably find his books addictive. I know others don’t like his plain speaking approach or feel he is overly promotional.
The book contains a number of key messages. In the first chapter alone, there is some hard truths about marketing, a warning about the danger of one (one customer, one key person, one way of attracting customers etc) and the importance of developing a unique selling proposition (USP).
You’ve probably heard the analogy that people buy a drill because they want holes and, beyond that, to do jobs around the house themselves. Below that are issues linked to pride and self esteem. Kennedy poses the question “what do your customers want?” This is a very useful exercise to do to help identify themes for your marketing.
He goes further and looks at 15 different sectors to reveal the underlying desire (e.g. insurance and peace of mind). This is helpful when none of your competitors are digging deep in your marketing, dangerous if some are and you produce me-too marketing campaigns. That would defeat the core message of magnetic marketing of being different from your competitors. It also suggests you haven’t defined your target market tightly enough. I recommend you see this as a list of possibilities rather than definitive direction.
Kennedy goes on to explain the idea of a widget. This is a specially designed offer which should be irresistible to your target audience. The idea is to get those interested to identify themselves and then to start the gradual lead conversion process.
The magnetic marketing approach has become much more common on the Internet than it used to be offline 20 or 30 years ago. Why? Because the techniques work.
In many ways, this is a applied business common-sense. You can’t argue with the idea of making a compelling offers to people who are likely to have the particular problem you solve and delivering the message through media sure to be seen or heard by those prospects. Indeed, it’s at the core of my own marketing coaching.
I’m adding this to my list of 5 star Dan Kennedy books (as a stand-alone book) but it’s still not the definitive Kennedy book. It reminds me of the course I bought all those years ago but it also feels like a rehash of his other books he’s written about direct marketing. He’s selling his knowledge one slice at a time so you’ll have to buy plenty of his books and bear with him as he repeats ideas, extending or introducing new elements to them.
There’s a reason for this. Dan Kennedy is true to his beliefs in direct marketing without any wavering or apology. This is a lead generating tool intended to create more purchases by you and more sales for him. It might be another book or two or it might be membership of his monthly club
Two niggles. Case studies have been inserted as images from Kennedy’s monthly newsletter rather than retyping them. This means you can’t highlight sentences or paragraphs in the kindle version. The first one has been badly reproduced with part missing which makes it hard to understand.
The second is to do with the inevitable offers at the end. Click the link in the kindle version to get an audio version. It doesn’t work. Click the link to get an assessment. It doesn’t work. Cluck the link to learn about magnetic marketing products and you finish on a No BS Inner Circle with no products on it. It isn’t good enough that the marketing from the book fails so badly a few months after purchase. Where the Kennedy organisation should be leading by example, they badly flop. As Americans say, “They don’t walk their talk.””
The other Kennedy books I’ve rated at the five stars level are The Ultimate Sales Letter and The Ultimate Marketing Plan. Both are excellent but, of course, don’t live up to the claim of being “the ultimate”. I also think there’s significant overlap between this book and the marketing plan book.
Is this the Dan Kennedy book to buy first?
I think it is.
Should you add it to an extensive collection of his books?
Probably not but, if you’re a fan, I bet you will for the nuggets that aren’t in the books you’ve read.
You can buy the book from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
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