Convert By Frank Kern
These are my personal book notes on Convert by the author and marketing genius Frank Kern.
Let’s dive in.
Facts
- Title: Convert 2.0
- Subtitle: How To Create A Cult Following Of Raving Fans And Repeat Buyers For Any Business
- Author: Frank Kern
- Author’s website: frankkern.com
- First published: 2014
- Type: non fiction
- Genre: marketing / online marketing
- Rating: 4/5
- Recommended: Yes
The most dependable and consistent way to generate wealth is to turn advertising into profit.
- Frank Kern
Key Concepts & Ideas
It’s much easier to sell people products and/or services if they:
- Know, Like and Trust You.
- Already Want What You’re Selling… Before you even try to sell it.
Personal comment: Although this concept is undoubtedly very powerful, it’s not new at all.
Please see also:
Frank breaks this psychological and tactical process down into three steps:
- Pre-framing
- Indoctrination
- Conversion
Pre-framing means they’re going to draw a conclusion about you before they ever consume any of your content, before they ever consider buying anything from you.
Pre-framing is essentially using marketing to control their opinions and feelings about you before they even have a chance to read your sales message or interact with you in any way.
Indoctrination is where you create a bond with the people who consume your stuff because you’ve helped them.
You’ve helped them.
They’re getting value from you.
For lack of a better word, they’re your fans, but they’re real fans, not like a “like” on Facebook.
These are people who actually consume your stuff and they feel like:
“Oh yeah, I like that person because that person helped me.”
Your indoctrination materials are what they see after they have been pre-framed to already think you’re awesome.
Conversion
The goal of the conversion process or the conversion mechanism is to make the sale while maintaining position and goodwill.
A good example would be a classic internet marketing funnel, such as a product launch:
Email List -> Opt-In -> Video 1 -> Video 2 ->
Video 3 -> Sales Letter
Intent Based Branding
Frank Kern defines the term Intent Based Branding as:
- Intent Based Branding
- Brand building for the sake of selling - specifically to help you accelerate the sales process by building a bond and relationships between you and your prospects.
In a nutshell, here’s how Intent Based Branding works:
- You find out the exact type of content that’s going to provide the most value to your ideal prospect, and you present it to them in a way that is going to cause them to bond with you on an emotional and psychological level. So you’re actually helping them, and you’re also creating a bond with them so they like you.
- Once you’ve done that then you start showing them ads that pitch things without breaking that bond.
The whole idea around this is to genuinely help people by actually helping them with your content and then use that as ads that you pay for.
Intent Based Branding is all about creating, building, maintaining, nurturing and strengthening the bond between you and your audience.
Don’t Be Worried About Copycats
Plenty of people can copy the actual words in an ad, or the pictures, or even the strategy behind it.
But nobody can ever copy the relationship and bond that you have with your customer base and prospects.
You Can’t Fake This
You have to actually give a damn about the people that you’re trying to sell stuff to, or else they’re going to see right through you.
You can’t get away with anything in the world of social.
It ain’t gonna happen. (And that’s a good thing.)
You have to genuinely care.
But your mission, your very first mission, is to really build this strong bond.
Frank Kern On Building Surface Affinity
My goal is to have my viewer feel like:
“Hey, I can relate to this guy. He’s just like me. I get it. He’s not trying to come off as showy. He really cares about me.”
Don’t try to make yourself all fancy.
Just be who you are.
What Really Drives The Deep Bond With Somebody? (Deep Affinity)
The first thing we have to understand is that nobody cares about us.
Everybody just cares about themselves, and that’s good because we need to make it our sole freaking focus to show those people that we can help them and that everything we do is about them.
Core Messaging Pillars
What are the immediate steps someone can take to get from unhappy, where they are not getting the results they want, to getting the results that you can help them get?
Emotion Through Story
Every piece of content that you have, to the best of your ability has to be able to convey some type of emotion.
You want to instill emotion into the minds of your prospect.
The way to create emotion is through story.
How To Structure Your Content Using Intent Based Branding
Point (One Core Messaging Pillar) -> Story -> Metaphor
Indoctrination Materials
- Launch videos
- Webinars
- Manifestos / PDFs
- Teleseminars
The bottom line is don’t overthink this.
Whatever one feels natural, use it.
We have to really indoctrinate them to feel like they know us, like us, trust us and want our stuff.
The Complete Process - Big Picture
Here’s the complete process described above at one glance:
Closing Thoughts
My book notes only cover small parts of the book.
So if you like what you read, please consider buying the book from the author.
Thank you for reading and stay awesome,
Tim for Online Business Dude
PS: Start Your Own, Profitable Online Business From Scratch, Step-by-Step, Today!