If you don't know about Ken McCarthy and his "System", and you're a business owner or marketer, you are missing something!
Ken McCarthy is one of the most knowledgeable mentors you can find to help you make more money through online marketing.
He's bringing his System Intensive seminar to London on September 26/27 2009 - I'll be there, and I'd love to see you there too!
I was honoured to be invited by Ken McCarthy to present on "Web Design 2.0" at his System Intensive in London last year, and I’ll say without a moment’s hesitation that it was a truly pivotal moment in my career.
Although I was only able to attend the first day, what I learned blew my mind – and I’ve been making web sites for a living for 15 years!
It’s impossible to sum up what Ken teaches in the System, because it’s basically solid wall-to-wall marketing wisdom for two days. Ken’s someone who really stands on the shoulders of giants, having worked with many of the great names in marketing over the past few decades, as well as applying and testing his knowledge in his own ventures.
In one short day, there were numerous "Doh!" moments, which made me want to rush straight out and get marketing. Many were things I’d always suspected I should be doing, but didn’t realise quite how plainly essential they are, and how plainly stupid I was for not doing them already!!
A case in point; I’d had Web Design from Scratch running for at least 4 years, with thousands of visitors per day, and I had no mailing list! I had no way to get in touch with the thousands of people who love what we do at Scratchmedia. I went out and started that list immediately.
That’s just one example blinding flash of the obvious… There are many others, like split-testing my content to know what worked and what didn’t!
Another thing I just had to rush out and start doing was running multivariate tests on our sites. If you’ve read my recent newsletters, you’ll know I’ve been quite heavily involved in testing different content and layout options to optimise conversion rates on our own and clients’ sites.
I was very lucky to present just before Drayton Bird, one of the most successful direct marketing copywriters of recent years. Drayton showed enough examples to show that, given two options of DM letters, even an educated audience of businesspeople simply couldn’t predict which content or layout would perform best. You just can’t know.
Drayton Bird, and Ken McCarthy, and all the other really smart marketers I’ve discovered in the past year, have one important thing in common – in addition to learning from their own successes and mistaktes, they learn from the successes and mistakes of their predecessors. There are generations of past marketeers who’ve written great work that’s as relevant today as it’s ever been. If we aren’t making use of their experience, we’re doomed to repeating old mistakes, and that simply costs money.
In a Q&A session that followed, someone from the audience asked me what evidence I could show to support my assertions that simple design was more effective than complex design. I was stunned to realise that I couldn’t offer anything! Here’s the earliest post I wrote on the subject quite soon afterwards.
In short, I learned at Ken McCarthy’s System Intensive that if I wasn’t testing my design and content continually, I’d be relying on nothing more than educated guesswork to make money for my business or my clients’ businesses.
Since then, I’ve used multivariate testing to great effect – typically increasing conversion rates by 15% on the first cycle of tests. That means 15% more turnover, people! This stuff really works, and that’s just a fraction of what you’ll learn from Ken’s seminar.
So this year I’m back at the System Intensive, as a proper attendee, and I’ll be there for the whole two days.
I would be delighted if you could make it along as well. It’s on Saturday September 26th and Sunday 27th, somewhere in London, UK.
If you’re a Web Design from Scratch reader and you can possibly make it to the System Intensive, please drop me an email to let me know, and we’ll hook up. I’d love to hear about your business and projects, and to discuss what we get out of what Ken and his guests present. It’s sure to be an incredibly valuable experience again.
I hope to see you there!
Follow this link to see a video testimonial from another attendee I met last year. There are hundreds of stories like this.
Here’s a phone interview I did with Ken recently.
You can also put in your email address and Ken will keep you up to date with news on the event, and the free seminar series he’s offering for all attendees.
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