The Barkless Dog That Bites

“Hype is for hosers.”

That was a subject line from one of Ben Settle’s best performing emails. (In case you don’t know, Ben Settle is the KING of selling through emails).

And it also happens to be 100% true.

Let me give you an example:

Sometimes, when I am running on trails through Forest Park the trail runs along the backyards of these REALLY rich houses. Mansions really.

Naked-peeing-baby-fountain rich.

And sometimes these mansion-ites (read: successful entrepreneurs) buy dogs. Really, really big ones.

As a runner, I hate those dogs.

The second they hear me blazing through the woods, they start barking, and barking, barking up a storm. Like a scene right out of the original Red Dawn and I’m the Soviet paratrooper storming the small, helpless little town.

But it isn’t those dogs that scare me.

It’s the ones that do nothing. That simply eye me through the fence. They drool a little and crouch down ready to bolt.

Those are the ones that make the hairs on my arm stand up, and increase my stride speed a little.

Why?

Because those dogs are all about one thing: Action.

I’ve only been bitten twice, and both times there was no barking.

Here’s my point:

Most marketers are like that first kind of dog. They bark, and bark, and bark. It gets a lot of attention, but doesn’t really cause anyone to DO anything. It’s just noise.

They spin their wheels trying to be the loudest, the shiniest, the most “expertest”.

Don’t be like that.

It’s a waste of time, and people don’t actually fall for that garbage anymore.

Be like the marketers who quietly toil away producing results.

Be like the entrepreneurs who realize that noise doesn’t pay the bills… sales do.

Don’t hype your performance.

Don’t hype your sales.

Don’t hype your copy.

Hype makes you look foolish. Like an amateur. Like, “clearly you have no idea what you are doing.”

It repels more than it attracts.

Instead, do what is EFFECTIVE.

Do what WORKS.

Do what is REPEATABLE.

If you don’t know how to do that without sounding over-hyped, then let me help you.

First, grab this book, it is only three bucks:

Copywriting For The Rest Of Us

Second, do everything it says to do in that book.

Third, profit.