Expert Interview: Marketing Isn't Everything. It's the Only Thing.

Brian Kurtz

Brian Kurtz has been a serial direct marketer for the past 35+ years. He never met a medium he didn’t like…and spent the first 34 years of his career helping Boardroom Inc. become a state-of-the-art direct marketing and publishing company and is now sharing and teaching all he learned doing that.

Marketing Isn't Everything. It's the Only Thing.

Without effective marketing, you’re not going to be able to share your mission or vision with the people who want to hear what you have to say. Whether online or off, classic marketing principles still work. “After all, Facebook didn’t invent everything. Facebook has taken some core direct marketing principles and put them on steroids.” Younger marketers can benefit from learning these principles from the legendary figures in direct response marketing and advertising. Brian explains, “Knowing the fundamentals is only going to make you better at what you’re doing today.” Older, seasoned marketers, who may be intimidated by the staggering pace of change, can learn from younger colleagues who naturally take to the emerging technologies

Why Is This Important?

“When you think about it, the internet is the ultimate direct response medium. It’s all about direct marketing,” Brian points out. In the 1980s and ‘90s, to derive the best marketing data, such as list segmentation, it was all done through big, mainframe computers. That same market data, and much more, is virtually instantaneous today, if you understand the technology. “I guarantee you that if you really understand things like regression analysis, you would be able to go to the Facebook expert you buy your advertising from and ask some very different questions about the data selection criteria when they start selecting the Facebook look-alike models.”

What Are the Key Lessons Learned Here?

Drawing on his knowledge of the six legendary experts featured in Craig Simpson’s book, The Advertising Solution, to which Brian contributed, here are the top 10 lessons from the book:

1) Know your product;
2) Know your audience;
3) Get started right;
4) Get every part of the package right, whether it’s online or offline;
5) Remember: it’s all about the prospect;
6) Be passionate about what you’re selling;
7) Showmanship;
8) Be clear and consistent;
9) Know your media;
10) Testing trumps all.