Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer are great marketers. In terms of the impact they have on the information marketing industry they are the standard by which all other information marketing gurus are judged. And rightfully so.
They also produce, in my opinion, some of the most “Plain Jane” looking materials that exist in the marketplace. It works for them because they’re icons in the industry. They didn’t invent information marketing, but it almost feels like they did.
So they can get away with the “Plain Jane” look. You, on the other hand, probably can’t. We talked in the previous section about branding. You need to be thinking in the long term about building your information marketing business. That means you need to create that look and feel that people will always associate with you.
So you must invest some money up front to create a professional looking package that makes people want to take you seriously. If their first impression of you is “boy, this guy looks like an amateur” then you’ve created a tremendous barrier to overcome. Your content might be great, but if people can’t get past the unappealing packaging it doesn’t matter how great your content is.
I experienced this several years ago first hand. I ordered an information product from a couple guys who I hadn’t heard of before, but it sounded like their content could be of some value. What I received in the mail was a hodgepodge of poorly copied newsletters and other pages just thrown haphazardly into a mailing envelope.
The content may have been outstanding, but I couldn’t get past my “Man, this looks like crap” initial reaction. To this day, it remains the only information product that I have ever returned for a refund.
Bottom line — you need to invest some money up front to create a professional appearance for your packaging if you want people to take you seriously.
