MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Joel Roberts used to be with KABC radio in Los Ange­les. He went from radio to mar­ket­ing, and he now trains peo­ple on how to become direct marketers.

His list of clients speaks for itself; it includes Harv Eker (Secrets of the Mil­lion­aire Mind) and Stephen Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effec­tive Peo­ple), and he is also the offi­cial media coach for Chicken Soup for the Soul.

The last insight I shared was from Chet Holmes, and he said to focus on the mar­ket data — focus on the prob­lem. Chet’s advice is to build the pain until they can’t stand it any longer and they have to take action.

Joel Roberts has a sim­i­lar but unique perspective.

How Do You Get The Atten­tion Of The Mass Media?

Joel used to be a talk show host, and a lot of peo­ple wanted to be guest fea­ture on his radio sta­tion. He shared some key insights and points on things that we don’t usu­ally think of, but it’s use­ful because you can learn how to lever­age pub­lic relations.

If you’ve ever seen him speak at a live sem­i­nar, you’ll under­stand why he gets a stand­ing ova­tion –he’s polit­i­cally incor­rect yet funny at the same time.

When The Stakes Are High and the Moment Is Brief

This is the basis of his posi­tion­ing, because he knows that you only have a snap-second to either get people’s atten­tion, or not. That’s how he became super suc­cess­ful. His expe­ri­ence in radio taught him that it’s all about cliff hang­ers and build­ing sus­pense, oth­er­wise peo­ple go to another radio station.

He says that the #1 mis­take that peo­ple make is that they have the temp­ta­tion to jump to a solu­tion before they have really talked about the prob­lem. He notices this again and again. To illus­trate his point, he had 10 peo­ple come on stage, pre­tend they were on his radio sta­tion. They had to talk and try to engage the audience.

He humil­i­ated all 10 of them –it was like stand-up com­edy. I tried to get on stage to be humil­i­ated, too, but unfor­tu­nately, he didn’t do me the favor.

Define the Problem

Joel really focuses on defin­ing the prob­lem that you are try­ing to solve. You should not talk about the solu­tion before you have talked about the problem.

He also has a very unique way of peel­ing things back –he thinks really dif­fer­ently, and that’s what I really enjoyed. He gave this example:

Ini­tially, 100 years ago, there was music…and you couldn’t get it on the go. There was just no recorded music. The prob­lem was record­ing music, and that gave rise to the gramo­phone. That, ini­tially, was how you had music in your home. Then, you had radio –although it wasn’t portable, you now had music every­where, all the time. But it wasn’t your music. So along came the Walk­man. And then, the famous iPod.

The iPod focuses on the last prob­lem that hadn’t been solved: record­ing music had been solved; hav­ing it any­where had been solved; hav­ing your own music any­where had been solved…what hadn’t been solved was how to have 10,000 songs –your entire music library – in your pocket. , That was the gap that the iPod came to fill – that was THE positioning.

It was the last prob­lem that hadn’t been solved.

The most obvi­ous les­son is this: don’t focus on the first prob­lems that came before and have already been solved: focus on the very last prob­lem that you haven’t solved. Why? Because the oth­ers are so obvi­ous that every­one is doing it.

That’s how not to get atten­tion — a class I won’t be teaching.

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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