I chanced upon a mention of a free marketing course today at the Your Cheeky Monkey blog.  It’s called the Brain Alchemy Masterclass at psychotactics.com.

This course is being sold on the site for $2500, but for the moment is free – by invitation only.

(If you’re a subscriber to this site and received this via email or RSS – consider yourself invited! )

Once filling out your name and email address, you are asked to invite others via email – and at completion of the course you asked to post a public review.

For the moment – here is a little review of the actual marketing strategy behind the course!

The Brain Alchemy Masterclass is interesting because it is a marketing business marketing their business.

Sean D’Souza, the owner of Psychotactics, is a New Zealand marketing consultant who conducts workshops and seminars.

He hopes to build a non-profit university in New Zealand to help people in business, and his goal is to ‘make most Psychotactics products and workshops free by the year 2020.’

But what we are focusing on today are the strategies that are being used to publicise the Brain Alchemy Masterclass.

About the course, Sean says:

The Brain Alchemy Masterclass is the structure that you need to build your business upon.

It’s about tactics and strategy that will form the very core of your business, no matter whether you’re just starting up, or have been in business ‘forever.’

With the Brain Alchemy Masterclass, Sean has created a product that:

• is valuable
• can help your business
• is available for a limited time
• is available only via invitation
• has no up-sell or cross-sell attached to it
• is free

These are compelling reasons to sign up, wouldn’t you agree?

Additionally:

• the invitation might well have come from a friend or someone you trust.
• You are put on a ‘waiting list’ before you recieve the information

Social persuasion is known for its power, and having someone you know invite you makes you at least stop and take a look.

(For a marketer, it’s also a way of getting your message into people’s inboxes, without spamming. Clever?)

And knowing that there is a ‘waiting list’ creates a sense that this product is in demand– other people want this product and are willing to go a waiting list to receive it.

Again, social persuasion.

After signing up, Sean asks that you:

• invite others
• write a review (good, bad or ugly) at the end of the course.

This achieves a few different things. You’ll now have promotion of your product appearing on websites around the web.

Positive reviews, of course, are the best possible scenario.

But even not-so-positive reviews are still providing valuable links to your website.

(And if your product is good, the possibility of negative reviews is limited.)

A lesson in itself

The Brain Alchemy Masterclass strategy to gain subscribers is a lesson in itself.

Because of the way the campaign is set up, the amount of subscribers to the course will grow exponentially.

If Sean D’Souza had just advertised his marketing course on his website, without a promotion strategy – many people may well sign up, but the chance of the whole thing going ‘viral’ is practically non-existent.

A campaign that just sits on your website and doesn’t work for you isn’t much of a campaign.

It might be worth it to you and your business to take a leaf from Sean’s marketing strategy.

Was I invited into the course? No, actually I just crashed the party.

The chance to chat about a great internet marketing strategy was too good to pass up.