*A Book Review*
Monetization
By Caleb O'Dowd
by Michael C. Gray
December 4, 2024
Caleb O'Dowd worked with the late, great direct marketer and copywriter, Gary Halbert, for three years, launching and scaling businesses for Gary's clients. Gary Halbert was well-known as a marketing teacher and for his newsletter, The Gary Halbert Letter.
Caleb then built his own successful direct response businesses, including in the cardiovascular health supplement industry, newspaper advertising, online marketing, webinars and affiliate marketing.
Caleb shares many of the lessons learned from Gary Halbert and his experiences building successful multi-channel businesses in his book, Monetization.
The book is titled Monetization because so much of what is available online is free and doesn't generate revenue or profits for the businesses that post them.
Caleb distinguishes hackers, those who have one product, promotion and channel, from monetizers, who offer many products to an assembled community of customers with many campaigns and using many channels. While hackers focus on acquiring customers to make a sale, monetizers focus on maximizing the (long-term) lifetime value of customers and the average order value. While hackers try to minimize the cost of acquiring an order, monetizers justify higher costs of acquisition with the lifetime value of customers acquired.
Caleb explains how to do research to find out who ideal customers are and what they really want, identifying the ultimate outcomes they really desire, especially those who have an urgent problem to solve and money to pay for a solution.
He also shares an experience where he learned you also have to understand your competitors, including the advantages and disadvantages of what they offer. He was failing at promoting a medication for diabetes when a much less expensive option was available for solving the problem he identified. He found another problem for diabetes sufferers that the competitor's medication didn't solve and was able to successfully sell on that promise.
Caleb shares the "ten 50s" system that he developed to create "Mafia" offers that customers couldn't refuse. It's a brainstorming technique to list items that must be addressed and then choose the best ones to include in your marketing materials.
In Part III of the book, Caleb outlines "The Ultimate Multichannel Marketing Funnel", how to use a combination of websites, email, text messages, video, webinars and direct mail to create to create massive marketing assaults.
The book includes URLs to download worksheets to help implement the ideas in the book.
Creating and maintaining a high-powered direct response marketing business is a big job. Caleb O'Dowd has created a valuable guide to help you in the process.
Buy it on Amazon: Monetization: How to Optimize Sales Funnels and Skyrocket Backend Profits
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