“Mass Control” is one of the most important courses in digital marketing. In it Frank Kern develops strong arguments and strategies on how to sell stuff online. The course is ridiculously long and most of the times highly confusing. And to be honest it seems to me that some of the times this is done on purpose. Kern seems to maintain this aura of the “genius” of digital marketing. He builds his magic bullet around that aura and mystic. And for this reason I feel “Mass Control” is a really horrible course.
Listen to the introduction of this video where Kern goes through his mass control formula and you get the idea – the exclusivity of listening to this (unclear and highly incoherent) “genius”. Scarcity my friends, scarcity …
Anyway, I need to recognise that if you take the time to fully understand it you will extract a some valuable information – that needs to be contextualized however in a language and in a logic that is easily assessable.
The most important contribution in that course, for me at least, is the idea of the “mass control formula”. This is a simple formula that Kern designs to build his mystic and he summarizes as the following:
MB+P+LSE = MONEY
I will dissect this formula in this contribution and look for gaps in the formula suggesting ways in which it can be improved.
The Magic Bullet
The first part of the formula is MB which stands for Magic Bullet. The product or service needs to be perceived and belief as the Magic Bullet.
The magic bullet is the answer to client’s prayers. Needs to be THE solution to whatever the client’s product. Needs to be the solution to the problem. If the client thinks “if only I had a blablabla” … then the product needs to be the blablabla.
Fundamentally identifying the magic bullet requires the digital marketer to identify:
What is the markets biggest desire?
What is the markets biggest problem?
What miracle would deliver their biggest desire while solving their biggest problem?
How would it work?
Does my product do anything close? How efficiently is it achieving the desired end result?
For example in the diet market the MB should be a diet pill of some sort, in the stock market it is a system or a strategy.
Proof
P stands for Proof – and this is the second fundamental aspect of the “Mass Control Formula”. Proof is the ultimate result by the client that whatever you are selling and whatever you are saying your product or service achieves, it can actually achieve it.
In other words, the answer to the question of how efficiently is your product or service achieving the desired end result needs to have a demonstration in the form of proof.
What Kern misses here is that proof can take at least 2 forms: personal proof – what I say I have achieved – and social proof – what other people say I have achieved in the form of testimonials.
Seeing is much better than just talking about it. A before and an after works really well and multimedia is crucial to provide proof.
You should also have more than one examples of proof. Multiple examples are, of course, much stronger than just one or two examples.
Low Self Esteem
Low self-esteem is the most obscure part of the formula – and to be honest I don’t think Kern fully understands what he is saying. Basically, it seems to me, that by low self-esteem Kern is basically address and underlying psychological condition that leads us to buy, and this is the fact that we all before we buy anything do believe that the product or service will help us somehow. We need to understand that the client is, therefore, limited in the confidence it has in achieving something – hence the reason why we buy.
Conclusion: Reinventing the Mass Control Formula
According to Kern – and in this argument lies the core message of his course “Mass Control” – in order to sell stuff online you need to follow a formula, the “Mass Control Formula”. And this formula is composed of 3 components addressed above. The way I see it is that it is really incomplete and in this article I have kind of addressed why this is so.
And the incoherence of Kern’s argument and formula is pathetically evident in the course itself – especially in the video “money magnets”. For all these reasons, and even though Kern breaks grounds and makes us think about buyer’s psychology, Mass Control is a highly confusing course that allows Kern to build his aura of digital marketing guru but does little to clarify the customer who buys it.
