You Will Respect My Authoritah

Anyone who is a member of of our community likely knows that I am a fan of Cartman. It all comes down to Cartman's understanding of marketing principals:

Being perceived as a trusted authority is a powerful marketing tool for many reasons. Here are a few examples...

• People fear making bad decisions. The fear of loss is one of the biggest emotional hurdles in the conversion process. And so we turn to authorities to help us out. This is why...
  • Google is huge and only getting bigger.
  • many scammy diets run "As Seen on Oprah" or some such on the ads.
  • Fakevertising goes so far as telling you a fake weight loss story from a specific celebrity.
  • cumulative advantage is such an important concept for online marketers to understand.
• When I was sitting in jury selection one potential juror did not feel it was fair that the DA had to prove guilt. She presumed guilt based simply on accusation, without any other facts.
• Most people are ignorant to the sausage-like nature of media, the corruption that is core to large centralized governments, and the fraudulent private banking interests that skim off the top of every transaction and enslave society in debt. We are trained to be ignorant consumers who trust authority. How else could you justify virtually nobody caring about bankers & politicians robbing trillions of Dollars from the country while budget constraints are forcing some local sheriffs to call in the national guard for security. The head of the Federal Reserve put in a half-trillion Dollar short on the US Dollar to aid foreign central banks (at our expense) and yet nobody cares! Steal from the semi-rich, middle class, poor, super-poor, unborn, etc. and give to the super rich. Let them have another round of casino capitalism until the country is bankrupt.
• If you ever want to sell anything, then people trusting you and seeing you as an authority makes sales far easier. Back when I sold a how to SEO ebook there was a month where Google rolled in a filter that whacked some branded sites from ranking for their brand. Even though our site was selling an SEO how to book ***while not ranking*** our sales that month were still 85% of the record month. Because the site had so much perceived authority it developed distribution channels outside of search strong enough to sell even when the rankings made the site look like it was (at least temporarily) lacking in credibility.
• Think of how the vast majority of searchers click on the top few listings in the search results. That is because perceived relevancy and authority. Even if you most the most relevant result down the page, many people will still click the first listing because of the perceived authority of that ranking position.
• Many of the quality links that can't be easily replicated and are actually organic only come about after you are established as an authority. I just got referenced on the Network Solutions blog in passing...no way those types of links happen unless you already have lots of established exposure and perceived authority. But how do you develop it?

Anyway, enough of my rambling.

Brian Clark recently announced a free report called Authority Rules. Its killer, and you should go check it out right now! There are tons of gems in there like

Brain scans show that the decision-making parts of our brains often shut down when we encounter authoritative advice or direction.