I started thinking the other day about some of the craziest things that motivate people to complete a goal or action… and what Internet Marketers can learn from them.
How do you convince someone to kill another person? Lets look at one of the biggest genocides ever. The holocaust.
From an early age Adolf Hitler hated Jews for several reasons which really don’t matter and if your really curious you can hit Google and find out why.
When Hitler ran for office he vowed to turn the country around financially. Under the Nationalsozialisten (National Socialists) or NAZI party for short, he claimed the Jews were to blame for the WW1 loss and also the economic crisis they were going through. During that time many banks had folded and many people were out of work. But most of the wealth was in the hands of the Jews.
Hitler was an amazing orator. At many public speeches he would point out how the Jews were getting richer off the slave labor of the poor Germans. He told stories about how they played a role in the Germans losing WW1. He also pointed out how the Jews were not native citizens of Germany.
Many of his speeches are online if you want to seek them out. Again IMO Hitler was an amazing story teller. And through his stories people deducted that the Jews were evil and had no place in Germany and they would soon take over the country and enslave the German people . The National Socialists (NAZI) army, under the guise of take from the rich and give to the poor, continue to follow hitler to murder millions of Jews.
Yea its a horrible part of world history.
Lets take it down a notch. Internet marketers are not trying to kill people… We are just trying to get people to do what we want them to do. And those of us who are good at it know how to tell a story to motivate people to complete that action (lead, purchase, etc).
Here are my key take aways from what Internet Marketers can learn from Adolf Hitler.
An Enemy – I am on pretty much ever guru’s email list. When they come out with a product one of the initial emails they send is something along the lines of “Why the Guru’s Hate Me”. Then in the content of the email they describe how “those guys” are getting rich off of selling you products that are crap. “Those guys” laughing all the way to the bank.
Watch any infomercial and you are going to see the same technique. – “Those guys don’t want you to know the real way to do it.”
Conclusions – When you let your customer draw their own conclusions about the product you are selling its 10x more powerful then if you say it yourself. Just by telling what “those guys” (your competition) is doing people will draw the conclusion that you are not doing that.
Hitler never had to say “Hey lets wipe out the jewish people”. People drew their own conclusions that that is what needed to happen so when the time came they had already sold themselves on that idea.
LOL….Nice comparison, but there is something to it for sure. Hitler had some amazing leadership skills – can’t deny that. I watched many of his speeches and one thing I noticed is that he always told what people wanted to hear – How he is going to bring Germany to greatness 🙂
On the other hand, I can’t forget the stories I heard from my grandma about SS officers and how ruthless they were.
Hey shoe, perhaps this nazi-parallel you mentioned will spark some controversy 🙂 but I presume this was intended… anywayz, concentrating solely on marketing field, here are my 2 cents:
..you forgot to mention how those marketing pitches formed in a way “Why all other Guru’s Hate Me”, “I’m gonna tell you a secret..”, “Rich Jerk..”, etc. bombastic, “ego” or “arrogant” lines are actually pretty much garbage, and don’t usually bring any essential value to the table..
In my personal view, I think people are fed up with this type of marketing, (*even though it still may work – but who would be happy and respect himself selling a product he doesn’t believe in?) .. these schemes rarely reveal some essential factual value. they would bring some actual value if they were formed short and concise in way ie.:
– “you can earn good profit with vertical ad network XYZ at $6.00 CPM NET, if you made a website in XYZ vertical, with first goal to achive minimum of XYZZ daily impressions in order to get approved with that network, then you should buy additional targeted traffic at XYZ quality PPC traffic provider source, aiming 1 cent per unique, where with XYZ mentioned ad network you can generate 2 cents per user, earning profit”.
Summed up value in my view isn’t in motivational speeches, conferences etc, tagreting wrong kind of people, but would rather fit on a “post-it” paper directing those with actual chance to suceed with just slight push in right start direction like:
– you can get free hosting for start at blogger for example, here’s your starting point research further ->!
– hey you can also brand it with $8 domain as well! research yourself further!
– hey you can signup here for offers or ad network as good start!
– hey you can buy ok quality starting traffic here at reccomaned X cents per visitor cost..
..Current “marketing guru” pithes and one-pager sellers are mostly “motivating wrong kind of people” who aren’t actually ever gonna make breakthroughs themselves as they don’t have what it takes to refine, research and isolate important from unimportant data in a pile of loads and loads of information available…
just my 2 cents? hope you approve this post and share your opinion? (written in good faith! – you are free to remove this footer 🙂
To sum up my thoughts, I think “Get rich online” vertical dived up and got lost inside “cheap” retorics, providing atmosphere you get in a walk-in public greasy tabled Burger King, like the one I once set my foot in at one of the NYC underground tube stations.. I walked out immediately! If you get what I mean..
There are rare gems and posts glowing with premium atmosphere, and these are the ones like some on your own blog, specially posts from the early days with PPC Facebook campaign examples, your new discoveries.. or for example one of my own recent “discovery” -> new Facebook iOS mobile ads targeting iPhone/iPad users with App install ads, where my app for example costs few bucks, provides value and content to user, while on the other hand FB add click/cpa cost for this ad costs few cents or all the way up to acceptable <= selling App price-1 cent :=)
..20 hours of dvds, videos, lectures can't bring this kind of info any closer to wrong individual in my opinion?? what ya think??? 🙂
In a sick way hitler was a smart man. He got people to do exactly what he wanted them to do without saying it. I dont know if you are saying you are like hitler but the mind set is kinda the same
exactly, I am not saying killing people like he did was cool at all.
I hope you do not want to kill off anyone but you certainly want to take peoples money.
That was a great post… i am really enjoying these last two posts a lot. Thanks for sharing
Is it me or does this sound in line with Obama?
Kinda reminds me a little of osama bin laden and what he did with his troops only I think he told his people what to do. So this would be a bad marketer right?
Great post…. do you think that this was Hitler’s intention the whole time?
hard to say.
Great post
Strong title great bait and good points!
Wow this is so true! kinda feels like what is going on in society today given to the poor and taking from the rich …. hmmm
I totally agree with you about letting the customer draw their own conclusion about the product. Trying to force an opinion on people is like shooting yourself in the foot. People dont like to be told
trying to stir the pot Jeremy? Great post to get comments on. Hitler did a lot of bad shit I hope you are not like him at all.
No he was a terrible person, but there is still a lot someone can learn from him.
Frankly I hate Hitler in terms of what he has done for our world history but in terms of marketing as you said, we definitely learn something from his approach 🙂
[…] What Internet Marketers can learn from Hitler […]
But everybody does that, so whats different?
Amazing article! I have “kingged” it in the IM social site – Kingged.com. More so, I have left this comment:
Hitler was an amazing orator and could easily appeal to the conscious of the followers. I think this is a great skill in marketing. Every marketer should understand that. More so, when this skill is employed, the audience is engaged to draw conclusions about the competitor’s services and product.
I agree with Jeremy Shoemaker in the above point, but how many marketers are willing to learn what it takes to be like “Hitler”?
Sunday – Kingged.com contributor
http://www.kingged.com/internet-marketers-learn-hitler/
We might like to approach the story of Hitler and the German a little more thoroughly before using it as a comparison. This sort of incomplete understanding does not teach us anything…
This is one of the most interesting posts I’ve read in a while. In fact, the post title itself was so compelling, it just had to be clicked on!
Now I’m absolutely no fan of Adolf Hitler, what he did and was responsible for. But as you say, he was a great orator, there’s no disputing that. He knew how to work an audience, to whip people up into a frenzy and to get them motivated. He knew how to ‘push people’s buttons’ for sure.
In the way he connected with his followers marketers can certainly learn from him. Just so long as we’re nice, look after our customers and don’t commit genocide, we should be okay 😉
Nice article…Teaching something in a different way with different examples always do better result.This is nice comparison between Hitler and internet marketing.I am agree with you at some points but 1 point is that in which I doesn’t feel like that.By the way this is awesome post with awesome style of writing.thanks for nice read.
This is definitely a powerful tactic. I know I’ve fallen for it and the media takes advantage of it too. I think as long as people have emotions, this tactic will continue to work. It is always easier to blame someone else for problems. People love to hear that it isn’t their fault.