There’s Always An Angle
In this article, I’m going to write about:
- Why Black Hat Marketing is Stupid… Again
- How Automation fits Into Business
- The Thing That You Should Concentrate On… Because It CAN’T Be Automated
- Why Copywriting Is Awesome
Where Black Hat Marketers Go Wrong
Automation is a massive thing. It’s only going to get more important as technology improves. Well, unless those darn terrorists drop an EMP and wipe out the grid and the oil runs out, which, if you catch me when I’m writing survivalism sales pages, might be true.
About a week ago, I made an argument against the Black Hat way of doing things.
Now, if you ask most Black Hat Marketers what Black Hat stuff entails, they’d probably tell you it was about cutting corners and not being one of the sheeple. (There are “sheeple” for every market – it’s a way of culling out the people who aren’t going to buy your product.)
Once you get past the “sheeple” stuff, most Black Hatters get into that sort of market because they’re looking to automate stuff that’s usually done manually.
Now, in most cases this is stuff like linking to their websites, spamming social media or following people on various web properties.
Automating things isn’t the problem with Black Hat Marketing. In fact, automation is a good thing.
Unless you think there’s a very busy guy sending out all those emails from Amazon saying, “How would you rate this purchase?” you know that automation exists everywhere in every industry.
But if automation isn’t where Black Hat marketers go wrong, what is their mistake?
It’s not automation but it is what you automate.
You Can’t Automate The Angle
Most Black Hat stuff is just an attempt to copy something that’s already working, throw some automated processes on it and wait for the money to start rolling in passively.
The problems come when you take into consideration that if you’re doing exactly the same thing as everyone else, there’s no value add to your business and any success will be short-lived.
The difference between a company that uses Amazon and a guy that tries to sell Instagram accounts with fake followers is this:
Amazon has a premise which is not automated.
The guy who is making $100 a week selling fake Instagram accounts has an automated premise.
If you have a unique business with a unique angle, then you don’t have to fear some upstart coming and killing you with the latest great WEBSITESTEALER4.0 software.
When your business can be easily replicated by anyone and everyone… it’s time to either get out straight away or make some quick money and then get out.
Case In Point… Every “30 Day 1-$1 Million Dropship Case Study” Ever
Go on to some entrepreneur forums and you’ll see the dropship case studies. They’re all filled with starry-eyed young-guns who are aiming to be making $20,000 a month with e-commerce within thirty days, all without ever touching a product.
The problem here isn’t that it’s impossible… the logistics of 40+ day shipping times are sketchy, but people make a living from e-commerce and even dropshipping.
The problem also isn’t that they don’t have a noble goal or any brains to see it through… though there are issues there too.
Nor is it that the technology isn’t there, because it is. You can hook yourself up with WooCommerce or Shopify, get a few plugins and have your e-commerce site up and running within a day for less than $200.
No, the real issue here is with the company premise and the angle.
Namely, if you create a faceless, boring and bland e-commerce store that looks and works exactly like the others, don’t be surprised when the ship sinks without trace.
Making $20,000 a month from something like that isn’t plausible… but it could be.
It All Starts With An Angle
Marketing majors waste countless hours poring over single adverts, analysing them and talking about what they do for vague ideas like “brand awareness.”
Coming from a direct response background, I’m not into a lot of the over-analysis that goes on.
However… there’s a point to it.
The point is to differentiate one product or service from another. Bearing in mind that most products come straight out of a warehouse in China no matter what you’re selling or who you’re selling it to, you can see why branding has become big business.
We’re not really concerned with big business in as much as we’re concerned with that question.
Namely, how do you move from bland to brand?
The answer is simple. Find an angle.
How?
Simple. Research, research and then do some more research.
There’ll always be an angle that someone hasn’t hit the market from.
Sure, you can read a hundred books on branding, but it’ll all come down to one basic thing anyway: find an unanswered need in the target market and base your business identity around it.
There are a hundred supplement companies for every square foot of inhabited land available on Earth. Yet new ones pop up every day. How can this be?
Most of them are bland and won’t last, but what’s interesting are the new angles that people constantly come up with: Paleo Protein, Supplements for Arthritic Grandads, Steroids FOR YOUR BRAIN (Or other body parts.)
Essentially, they’re all the same business, but with different markets, needs and wants covered.
If you’re stuck on how to market a new business when you’re selling the same as everyone else, remember that it’s the angle you need.
Final Thoughts
Big ideas and new angles are funny in that they’re really obvious when you point them out, but there are still millions of them floating around while people try the same old tired stuff.
Copywriting is a fantastic business to be in, because despite what people say, ours is a skill that can’t be automated.
Even if you could create a natural language processing machine that could write in perfect English with perfect grammar and construction – even if it made sense and created a flowy, strong article – automation is not going to be able to come up with creative angles any time soon.
It’s not even close.
And when we bear in mind that almost every aspect of business will be automated and thus cookie cutter blandness you’ve got to realise that the skills that separate a company from the rest of the pack are going to be in the highest demand.
That’s why you should learn copywriting in the 21st Century guys.