“The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride f—ing with you. f—k pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps.”
— Marsellus Wallace
“Pulp Fiction”
Podcast listener Kyle Davidson (who’s been binging on the old school masters John Caples and and Claude Hopkins) recently sent me a thought-provoking email related to all these people (rampant on facebook especially) who don’t treat their websites as anything other than a way to build a list/make a sale.
I believe that’s only real purpose of a website.
And all the feelz good reasons people tell themselves (to deliver content, help their snowflake-precious brand, demonstrate their skills, yada yada yada) simply serve the purpose of building a list or making a sale.
(Otherwise, what is the point of doing those things.)
Anyway, Kyle says (of those who disagree with elBenbo on this):
“I would equate the people who believe this to the old mail-order advertisers who, as Hopkins describes, pay for the price of their pride. In mail-order advertising, space was a premium expense and every deviation from using your ad as pure salesmanship meant that you were paying more than bottom dollar for a new customer. Some can afford to do so, but should know the cost to determine the price of their pride.”
^^ Correct.
It’s also the same with this idea of not selling right away.
Daegan Smith and I had a hearty laugh about this kind of thinking at an Oceans 4 Mastermind, about people sending these so-called “good will” emails where they don’t sell anything to show what a nice, caring guy they are.
It’s all just emotion and projection.
And, yes, pride.
I would say it’s also selfish, too.
Especially since, that kind of thinking is not about the customer at all — it’s about the marketer’s feelz.
Anyway, back to websites:
Today’s Ben Settle Show podcast digs up some facebook controversy I got entangled in last month with some folks who have this kind of mindset — where they don’t think the only real purpose of a direct response website is build a list or make a sale.
(Which builds a list).
Ben Settle
