Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition

For the person who's been told, It can't be done, this is for you.

Preface

If you've ever been discouraged by the undelivered promises of marketing, this book is for you. You and I share something in common: We've hoped that our marketing efforts would bring us big results. We've tried and failed. We've dusted ourselves off and kept on trying—each time learning from our failures.

I wrote Launch for you. I've failed so many times I stopped counting. But along the way, I kept at it—relentlessly. Then, finally, things clicked.

My hope is that this book reveals a new way of marketing to you. It's one that involves focusing on the needs of others, giving gifts, working with outsiders, and caging your marketing messages. These principles are precisely the opposite of traditional marketing. Yet they work. And they are the future.

Let me give you a little preview of what's in store for your business.

I'd like you to think of your business as a rocket ship. Your goal is to navigate this powerful machine to new frontiers. Your fuel is great content.

People consume your fuel, moving your rocket higher and faster. Your marketing messages have been packed in long-term storage. As you travel to new galaxies, a huge community of your peers, prospects, and customers supports you. You've become unstoppable.

In older and smaller rocket ships are your competitors. They're stuck at the edge of the atmosphere. Gravity is not only working against them, many have crashed and are wondering what happened.

The world is changing. Now it's time for your business to change as well.

In this book you'll discover how to bring the masses to your business and become a hub for your marketplace—all without the need to constantly pitch your services or wares. The odds are no longer against you. Now you have a proven plan.

This book isn't like other marketing books. Rather than making keen observations about others who've achieved success, the ideas and principles in this book were developed, refined, and practiced by real businesses—my businesses. I'll reveal precisely how you can immediately implement the techniques found in this book. And of course I'll share how others have achieved success.

Here's how to use this book:

The ideal way to consume this book is to read it straight through. Study the first chapter. It'll reveal what's wrong with most marketing, and introduce you to the elevation principle (the main idea behind the entire book).

The second and third chapters are foundational. You'll learn how to put together a new mission plan for your business. You'll also discover how to set systems in place that ensure you never run out of ideas or inspiration.

Chapters 4 and 5 reveal the power of working with outside experts, how to find them, and how to recruit them. This is an essential part of the elevation principle that most businesses don't employ. Study this section carefully. It will be what sets you apart in your industry.

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 take you deep into the craft of creating engaging content—the fuel for your business. In these chapters I'll introduce you to primary fuel and nuclear fuel. Primary fuel is what keeps your business moving on a daily basis. Nuclear fuel is special content that moves your rocket ship very quickly and attracts the attention of many people.

Chapter 9 reveals what it means to cage marketing messages, and introduces you to new ways to employ marketing techniques. You'll discover that marketing doesn't need to be aggressive to achieve amazing results. Finally, in the Appendices, you'll find primary fuel content samples, to help you formulate your own.

Let today be the day you decide to set a new course for your business. It's my hope that this book will become your trusted guide. Study it. Employ the techniques. Watch what happens.

I've set up a companion site for the book at ElevationPrinciple.com. Be sure to stop by to watch free videos that provide more ideas to help you grow your business.

I'll see you out in space!

Acknowledgments

I'd like to start by acknowledging you for buying this book. Thanks!

Here are some other people who deserve kudos.

First my family: Thanks to my wife and kids, for bearing with me during Thanksgiving and Christmas as I wrote this book! Thanks to my dad, for his feedback and encouragement. I'd also like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus, for providing me endless sources of inspiration. You rock!

To my team! I'd like to thank Phil Mershon, for providing critical analysis of every thought on every page of this book. Thanks to Cindy King, for her keen insight. Thanks to Court Patton of PattonBros.com, for the great illustration work in the book. And thanks to the fans of SocialMediaExaminer.com, who provided outstanding insight and support.

Also, thanks to Mike Volpe from HubSpot, and David Germano from Barefoot Proximity (managers of Man of the House), for giving me their inside scoops!

Finally I'd like to thank my friend David Meerman Scott, for encouraging me to get this book under way and for helping me make it happen. And thanks to Shannon Vargo at John Wiley & Sons, Inc., for believing in me!

Chapter 1

Rockets Don't Fly Themselves

Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly.

—Wernher Von Braun, February 17, 1958

For businesses, change is guaranteed. Industries advance, ideas expand, products morph, and customers move on. Similar to space travel, everything's in orbit. Nothing remains still.

Whether you're just about to launch your rocket ship or you're already in flight, change is coming like a speedy comet. It won't bend to your will. You'll need to either embrace it or get out of its path.

Yes, it's scary. You and every other business owner, marketer, or budding entrepreneur have experienced the uncertainty of tomorrow. I've pondered these very thoughts: Will my business survive? Have I set the right trajectory? What's coming? Am I ready?

Despite the assurance of change, there's something that remains fixed—and most businesses overlook it. You've been watching for change and likely missed the one thing that has remained constant: people.

People don't really change. I'm talking about you, your customers, your partners, and your peers. They might leave you for a competitor, but at their core they haven't really changed at all. And people are what make or break your business.

People want valuable insight, access to great people, and recognition before they want products and services. If you can keep your eyes fixed on people and their desires, half your mission will be achieved before you begin.

My kids are girls. Have you ever tried brushing a moving child's hair? You either need to walk along with her or force her to stop. Too often, we treat our customers like children.

Stop trying to force customers to conform to your desires and instead walk beside them and see what happens.

People don't want to be pitched to, marketed to, or herded like cattle. People do want information, answers, access, and recognition—and they want it all for free.

Three Big Questions

1. How can you attract leads, prospects, and opportunity without actively selling? Imagine no cold-calling, no advertising, none of the kinds of activities that you either hate doing or you know costs a fortune.

2. How can you gain access to influential people in your industry? Is there an easy way to work with people who have the highest imaginable profile? If they were willing to help you, without hesitation, how would it impact your business?

3. Is there an easy way to connect with and gain the trust of prospects and customers? How can you cut through the noise and gain the attention of people? Is there a proven way to earn their trust and support?

The Problem with Marketing

I've been told marketing success means spending lots of money.

Here's how the American Marketing Association defines it: Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.¹ Yeah, it's a mouthful.

Focus on two words here: exchanging offerings. Most of us have been taught that marketing is about making an offer that attracts people. We've been trained to focus on crafting the right arrangement of words and delivering them in the right place, at the right time, using the right medium.

We're treating people like fish. If we just create a better lure than our competitors, silently climb into a boat, and simply cast that bait right on top of our customers, they'll bite. Or so the theory goes.

And the word exchange implies a two-way process between the company and the customer. Your business makes an offer and the prospective customer is compelled to comply.

Frankly, if there weren't some level of truth to this, marketers would be out of business. I'll be the first to admit that I've successfully employed some of these very tactics.

But here's where marketing lets us down: It can't predict when people are ready to buy the type of widget you have to sell.

For example, I'm going to eventually need a new car. But right now I'm very happy with my existing car. There's no marketer out there who can predict with any degree of certainty when I'll be done with my car. Some might notice that I just incurred a huge repair bill. Others might make assumptions based on how long I've driven my car or how many miles I've accrued. But no one knows what will ultimately motivate me to ditch my car. Heck, I don't even know.

So marketers are forced to make educated guesses about me. Worse yet, they're forced to pay others to reach me.

To get in front of my eyes and ears, auto dealers and manufacturers must place ads in the magazines I read, sponsor commercials and placements during my favorite television shows, place ads on the Web sites I frequent, and get airtime while I'm in my car—just to mention a few.

At the time of this writing, the U.S. automotive industry was spending more than $400 to market each car sold, adding up to more than $4 billion annually!²

Do you have that kind of money? Is your product or service profitable enough to include that kind of expense? Is your volume big enough to afford dropping millions of dollars into a campaign with no guarantees?

Is there a better way?

The Internet as the Great Paralyzer

The Web has changed business forever. It's the kind of change that has really scared established companies. And rightly so! Could this great equalizer also be the demise of businesses?

The idea of selling direct to consumers anywhere in the world has been transformative. It didn't just put travel agents, department stores, and newspapers out of business. It also allowed average Joes like us to compete. All of a sudden a good idea could gain traction and grow.

Businesses like Amazon and eBay became billion-dollar enterprises. Any information on any topic could be found instantly. And rich knowledge was available from anywhere—home, office, car, or the beach. Crazy ideas, like putting people's faces up on a Web site and enabling friends to connect, have brought people together by the hundreds of millions.

But for every Internet success story, there are a million ideas that never come to fruition. The success of the Web also prevents many people from taking action.

For example, back in the mid-1990s, I owned a creative services agency. We helped high-tech businesses look good. Our business was booming—until the day the tech market crashed. We lost a lot of business. I was faced with the ugly and unfamiliar face of change.

I decided to focus my business in a new area. I settled in on writing white papers (persuasive documents that help people make decisions). To my shock and horror, I discovered I was not the first agency to specialize in white papers. There were others.

My first reaction was, Oh man, this sucks. And I pondered going back to the drawing board.

Maybe you know someone with a similar story?

Competing via the Web is a lot like graduating high school: You might have been the smart kid or the popular one at your school. But the second you headed off to college, you realized there were a lot more smart people. And maybe up against some of them, you were not so smart anymore.

The Internet takes local competition to a global stage. All of a sudden you're competing with hundreds or thousands of businesses. They're everywhere. Now you're up against smart folks from New Zealand, Germany, Russia, India, and Japan.

Stepping up to compete on a national or global stage can be very intimidating, and downright paralyzing. Maybe it's even been a hindrance to you?

How can you grow your business without massive financial investments? Is there an easy way to leverage the power of the Web without worrying about the competition?

Meet the Enemy: Channel Overload Syndrome

Is your attention fragmented? I know mine is!

Channel overload syndrome happens when information is transmitted faster than it can be received. It's like those intense rainstorms that cause raging rivers, taking out everything in their paths. Instead of pouring down rain, bucket-loads of information are dumping on the brains of your customers and prospects. And simple umbrellas don't cut it.

As a result, people are retreating, shutting down, and seeking refuge from the information onslaught. People are literally tuning out!

Think about it: Your e-mail inbox is crammed with a never-ending stream of messages, you have billions of possible Web sites to surf and videos to watch, your physical mailbox is full of junk mail, and everywhere you turn you see and hear commercials. Let's not overlook voicemails, text messages, instant messages, tweets, and Facebook updates. And what about those stacks of dusty magazines and unread newspapers?

All these choices present a huge problem for any business. If your customers aren't receiving your messages, they're likely not thinking about your business either.

So what can a business do? What are the obvious choices?

One option is to try to communicate across all the channels. Another choice is to ignore how the world is changing and do what you've always done.

If you attempt to engage all the channels, it will cost you a fortune, and you'll never be able to keep up. There are just too many, and new channels seem to be emerging each year.

Hiding your head under a pillow will also lead to your demise. If you can't see the need to change, you'll slowly shrink your audience and hinder your business.

Is there another option?

Do People Really Trust Your Business?

Fewer than one in three people trust marketing messages, according to Edelman Digital's annual survey of trust.³ That's a pretty dismal number.

The study also found that trusting companies is more important than delivering great products and services.

Do your prospects and customers trust you?

If great products alone won't gain the trust of consumers, what will?

For all companies, it's about laying foundations for sustainable growth by deepening relationships with customers, and, with trust in business arguably at an all-time low, that's not an opportunity that one should turn down lightly, said Jeremy Darroch, CEO of the U.K. broadcasting giant BSkyB.⁴

If the default position of customers and prospects is to distrust your business, successfully growing your business becomes a monumental challenge. The strategic imperative for most companies is to do what they can to regain the trust of stakeholders and to more effectively manage relationships with them, stated a Harvard Business Review article.⁵

The Edelman report also found that people value guidance from credentialed experts significantly more than peers. This is one bright spot in an otherwise murky outlook for businesses.

Is there a way to establish your business as a trusted authority in your industry?

Introducing the Elevation Principle

Whether you're launching a new business, releasing a new product, or you need to transform your company, the elevation principle will quickly help improve your reputation, marketplace standing, and, yes, revenues.

I want to assure you that no matter what stage your business is at—from just getting under way to being grounded in decades of prior success—the techniques and tactics I reveal here will help transform your business. They'll prepare you for change. They'll help you grow.

The foundation for the elevation principle comes directly from the school of hard knocks (from which I graduated magna cum laude). I was never taught these concepts in graduate school. Rather, through 15 years of trial, error, tests, and failures, these principles were born and refined.

Simply defined, the elevation principle is the process of meeting the core desires of prospects and customers by helping them solve their basic problems at no cost.

The elevation principle helps businesses gain the trust and attention of people by providing them highly desirable content that lacks any obvious marketing message or motive. Rather than ending every message with a blatant sales pitch, lighten up on the marketing messages.

The right content is highly sharable and can quickly draw important people to your business, enabling you to achieve rapid growth and soar beyond the competition, without the traditional costs of marketing.

Start by Helping People

Here's the premise: If your marketing strategy centers on helping people with their smaller problems, many will seek your help to solve their bigger issues. If you can multiply free assistance to hundreds, thousands, or millions of people, they'll help rapidly grow your business, elevating you beyond the competition, and enabling you to become an unstoppable industry force.

Why? Because people's core desires don't change. Everyone wants access to great insight and to knowledgeable people who can help them. You meet this desire by producing engaging and interesting content that meets people's insatiable demand for how-to information and assistance.

Your goal should be to trigger this thought in the minds of people: If their content is this good, how much more valuable would their products or services be? Triggering the how much more? question is highly desirable and will help turn lurkers into customers.

Whether you're selling consulting services, information products, events, expensive products, or low-cost commodities, you can use these techniques to break through the channel overload syndrome and establish lasting trust, all without traditional marketing efforts.

If you lift people up, they'll help lift you up.

Get Others Involved

Applying the elevation principle propels your business growth when you shine the spotlight on people, rather than focusing on yourself, your products, or your services. Those people should include successful peers outside your company, industry experts, and customers.

When you combine great content with great people, you quickly stand apart from others in your industry, attracting large numbers of prospective customers. Down the road, it will be those people who will propel your business beyond your competitors'.

Here are three quick examples of other-focused content efforts:

If you offer consulting services, you could interview the author of a hot, new, and relevant book. This shares new insight with your readers and helps the author gain exposure. It could also lead to collaboration down the road between the author and your company.

If you manufacture cooking products, you could showcase a popular chef's unique cooking tips. This provides to your base useful ideas that might be implemented using your company's products, and helps the chef gain exposure to your audience.

If you run a new private elementary school, you could showcase graduates from similar programs around the country. This helps prospective parents visualize what their children might achieve at your school. It also helps promote the graduates.

When you get other people involved with your content, you not only provide value to your audience, you also forge relationships that can result in long-term benefits to your business.

The Elevation Principle Formula

Here's the elevation principle in a simple formula:

GC + OP − MM = G

Spelled out, the formula reads: Great Content plus Other People minus Marketing Messages equals Growth (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 The elevation principle says that great content plus other people minus marketing messages results in growth.

When you offer great content—such as detailed how-to articles, expert interviews, case studies, and videos—that focuses on helping other people solve their problems, you'll experience growth. The other people component transcends your reader base and involves reaching out to people outside your company, such as industry experts. All of this transpires in a marketing-free zone.

Once the marketing messages are caged, the focus of your company shifts from What can we sell you? to How can we help you? You shift from pitching products to boosting people. Instead of investing in ad space, you invest in creating content, experiences, gathering points, and communities where people who need help can find it.

You have the chance to own the place people go to for help, eliminating your reliance on traditional marketing channels. You can become the center of your industry, niche, or local market. And when that happens, you're launched on an unstoppable trajectory that will take you places you never imagined possible.

The result: You no longer need to sell! Instead, you demonstrate your expertise by the content you produce, the ideas you showcase, the stories you share, and the people you attract. By creating a platform for others, you can also build strategic alliances, quickly grow a large following, and dominate your industry.

Examples

Here are two examples of the elevation principle in practice, one from an established $20-million business, and the other from