I’m guilty, probably just like a lot of other marketers out there because I should be making information product for larger markets. These is a great marketing direct mail copywriter names Gary Halbert who would tell a great story about selling to a starving crowd.
You want to be making product and selling to people who are starving for what you have to sell.
If you would just do that first in your marketing, you’ll make your marketing life a lot easier. But, my ego may get in the way or people like me, they just love to create different products, and they may guess that this is going to be a hot market. They ignore that research phase. That’s why probably it really makes sense to pay someone to do your research for you.
There are people who thought they had great ideas and had spent tens of millions of dollars on great ideas, but they found out that the market, there was no desire for the product at all.
So, I wanted to start that out by saying, do your research on the market. I’ve made mistakes, and tried to create and develop products that I thought there was a market for that have failed.
But, I would say it depends on the type of interview I’m doing, and I kind of broke down my interviews in a few categories. I call one category, “Money Interviews,” another category, “Traffic Interviews,” another category, “Book Promotion Interviews,” and then, “Product Content Interviews.” These categories, there could be two of these category with each interview.
I’ll give you an example. A money interview would be if I’m an interviewing an expert, and I’ve got a JV with him or I’ve signed up for his affiliate program. So, for instance, John Carlton, he’s a very well known copywriter. I would call that a money interview, and he’s got a lot of notoriety. So, what kind of research would I do for preparing that interview? That particular one I used an Ask campaign.
I just sent out an email to my list, and said, “Hey, I’ll be interviewing John Carlton here. If you’ve got any questions for him, I’ll ask him on your behalf, send them in.” That was how that interview went.
Another way you can do that interview is you could go to his website, and depending on what product you’re promoting, he’s a great copywriter, you can go look at all his bullets. He’s done his research, and his sales letter to match his sales letter to his potential prospects. You could take his bullets and some of the copy in his sales letter and convert those into questions. So, you could use those as questions for the interview.
A traffic interview could be a big name like Ted Nicholas. Even though I signed up as an affiliate for him, and that was one of the ways I got the interview, he’s not a very big name, and I would interview him for free, even if he didn’t have an affiliate program. The name Ted Nicholas within our small market is very well known, and being able to say on my website, I’ve got an interview with Ted Nicholas. That increases my website’s credibility.
I would consider him a pretty big fish in the marketplace. Having his name on the site can be real beneficial for search engine optimization and getting traffic back to your site. We can talk more about that.
Then, there’s content interview. Let’s say I’ve got a product that’s selling, but I want to increase the value of it, and I need to add more content. I may find an expert within a certain topic. Let’s say I’ve got a product on referral marketing, and I’ve got three or four interviews already on referral marketing.
If I want three or four more interviews, I’ll find three or four experts on referral marketing. I’ll interview them, and that research, they may have a book out on Amazon, or I may find them through Google. That would be the type of interview that I’d want just for additional content. I’m not using it to promote. I’m using it as content to provide in a product after someone purchases a product.
So, these are some of the different types of interviews. I would ask yourself, “What is my goal with the interview? What am I doing? Am I using it to make money? Am I using it to get traffic back to my website? Am I using it to increase my status online, my credibility? Am I using it to develop more value in my existing information product, or am I using it to promote someone?”