The 1-Page Marketing Plan:
Get New Customers, Make More Money, and Stand Out from the Crowd
Allan Dib
Book Summary, Notes & Highlights
I found it motivated me to try to implement new tactics and methods that I haven’t previously tried in marketing. It provided me with a birds-eye view of modern marketing.
Table of Contents
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
- Action-packed marketing information without the fluff.
- Doesn’t go into specific details but gives a more overview of how to structure a complete marketing plan at different stages.
- A great read for understanding modern-day marketing.
🧠 My Thoughts
Well written and examples provided when needed. For someone new to the world of small business marketing, it does a great job of summing up the general process and importance of marketing.
🥷 Who Should Read It?
Anyone who has a small business of any sort. It could benefit anyone also interested in how marketing works at a base level.
💡 How the Book Changed Me
Well, a lot of the information is not new to me personally, it can help novices. It motivated me to try to implement new tactics and methods to try that I haven’t previously tried in marketing. It provided me with a birds-eye view of modern marketing.
🪶 My Top 3 Quotes
- Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing.
- Sell the result not the product.
- Systems allow mere mortals to run an extraordinary business.
🔥Top Actionable Take-Aways
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📒 Summary and Notes
Introduction
Knowing What to Do
50% of businesses fail after 5 years and that’s an optimistic figure.
People do not know how to run a business generally, like the e-myth revisited the book, just because you are good at a technical job of a business doesn’t mean you’re good at running a business one day.
The 80/20 Rule
The Pareto principle predicts that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. In this context, it is success=more money while doing less work.
The 64/4 Rule
Essentially this is applying the 80/20 rule to itself which gives you 64/4.
So 64% of effects come from 4% of causes. The majority of success comes from 4% of your actions or put in another way, 96% of the stuff you do is a waste of time comparatively.
The Best Kept Secrets of the Rich
Struggling business owners will spend time to save money, whereas successful business owners will spend money to save time.
You can always get more money but you cant get more time.
You need to make sure the stuff you spend time on makes the biggest impact. This is called leverage. Leverage is the best-kept secret of the rich.
This leverage is what makes up the previous rules above. By far the biggest leverage point in any business is marketing.
If you only get 10% better at marketing, this can have an exponential or multiplying effect on your bottom line.
The money is in the marketing.
Strategy vs Tactics
Just like building a house, strategy is like the architect designing and creating what needs to be done and while tactics are the bricklayers following the plan. Most businesses just start building a foundation and hoping it all works out.
Just Because You Have a Good Product Doesn’t Mean Its All Win
A customer only knows you have a good product once they try it, otherwise, they won’t know.
That’s why a good product or service is a good customer retention tool.
But before they can be retained they need to be acquired and that’s through marketing.
Killing Your Business
Don’t copy large companies in your niche. Their strategies will be different to your business. You have to compare apples with apples.
- Large companies have different agendas – Pleasing the board of directors etc.
- Large companies have very different marketing budgets.
While bigger companies’ core focus tends to be branding and top of mind. Small businesses benefit from direct marketing. If you still make a profit after ad spend then you are profiting.
The Three Phases of the Marketing Journey
| Phase | Status | The goal of this Phase |
|---|---|---|
| Before | Prospect | Get them to know you and indicate interest. |
| During | Lead | Get them to like you and buy from you for the first time. |
| After | Customer | Get them to trust you, buy from you regularly and refer new business to you. |
Act 1: The “Before” Phase
Dealing with prospects. Prospects are people that may not even yet know you exist. In this phase, you’ll identify a target market, craft a compelling message for this target market and deliver your message to them through advertising media.
Chapter 1: Selecting your Target Market
If you try to target everyone, you end up targeting no one.
Even if you throw plenty of ads at the general public and hope something sticks when it does stick you would have run out of money to spend on adverts because of wasted spend. Targeting your audience gives you the greatest chance of a return on investment.
Niching-Harnessing the Power of Focus
Why would you want to limit your market so much by niching down?
- You have a limited amount of money. If you focus too broadly, your marketing message will become diluted and weak.
- The other critical factor is relevance. The goal of your ad is for your prospects to say, “Hey that’s for me.”
Being all things to all people leads to marketing failure.
Understand that each category of service is a separate campaign.
Targeting a tight niche allows you to become a big fish in a small pond.
The type of niches that you want to go after are “an inch wide and a mile deep.” An inch wide meaning it is a very highly targeted subsection of a category. A mile deep meaning there are a lot of people looking for a solution to that specific problem. Once you dominate the one, you can move on to the next.
Niching Makes Price Irrelevant
A specialist is sought after, rather than shopped on price. A specialist is much more highly respected than a jack of all trades. A specialist is paid handsomely to solve a specific problem for their target market. You wouldn’t pay a specialist doctor less than you would pay a GP.
By going too broad you kill your “specialness” and become a commodity bought on price. By narrowly defining a target market that you can wow and deliver huge results for, you become a specialist.
How To Identify Your Ideal Customer
Using the PVP index you can figure out your ideal target market, even if you have multiple segments you target.
(Personal fulfilment, Value to the marketplace and Profitability)
Give each market segment you serve a rating out of 10.
P – Personal fulfilment: How much do you enjoy dealing with this type of customer? Sometimes we work with “pain in the butt” type customers just because of the money. Here you rate how much you enjoy working with this market segment.
V – Value To The Marketplace: How much does this market segment value your work? Are they willing to pay you a lot of $$ for your work?
P – Profitability: How profitable is the work you do for this market segment? Sometimes even when you are charging high fees for your work, when you look at the numbers it may be barely profitable or even loss-making. Remember it’s not about the “turnover,” it’s all about the “leftover.”
Photographer Business Example:
Who is your ideal target market? Be as specific as possible about all the
attributes that may be relevant.
What is their gender, age, geography?
Do you have a picture of them? If so, cut out or print a picture of them when you think about and answer the following questions:
What keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling?
What are they afraid of? What are they angry about?
Who are they angry at?
What are their top daily frustrations?
What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or lives?
What do they secretly, ardently desire most?
Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions? (Example: engineers = exceptionally analytical)
Do they have their own language or jargon they use?
What magazines do they read?
What websites do they visit?
What’s this person’s day like?
What’s the main dominant emotion this market feels?
What is the ONE thing they crave above all else?
Create An Avatar
Creating an avatar helps tell their story so that you can visualize life from their perspective.
The more detailed you make it the more immersive it becomes.
Chapter 2: Crafting your Message
Most marketing messages are boring, you need to stand out from the crowd and create a compelling message that grabs the attention of your target audience. Once you have that, your goal is to get them to respond.
An accident waiting to happen
Most businesses treat their marketing like going to the casino, they put ads out with hopes that it will bring in a few winnings. If it does great but then the ad spend drops and we lose again. Most businesses also put ads out solely talking about themselves and who they are.
You need to market with purpose. This can be done with two vital elements:
- What is the purpose of your ad?
- What does your ad focus on?
A rule of thumb is one ad, one objective. If something in the ad isn’t helping you achieve that objective then it’s detracting from it and you should get rid of it. That includes sacred cows like your company name and company logo.
Rather than trying to sell directly from your ad, simply invite prospects to put their hand up and indicate interest. This lowers resistance and helps you build a marketing database—one of the most valuable assets in your business. Once your objective is clear, you need to communicate it to your reader. You need a very clear call to action. Visit our website, call us on this number…
Give them multiple means of response so they can choose the one they are most comfortable with.
Speak less about yourself as a business and focus more on talking about the needs and problems of your prospects.
Direct response marketing focuses heavily on the needs, thoughts and emotions of the target market.
You will resonate at a deeper level with your prospect and your ad will stand out from 99% of other ads that are just shouting and talking about themselves.
Developing A Unique Selling Proposition
Most businesses don’t have a reason to exist, take away their logo from their website and you wouldn’t know who they are.
This leads to a customer having no compelling reason to buy from you and any sales made are due to them just being there. Most businesses copy each other and are “me too” businesses. Blind leading the blind.
Marketing is an uphill battle if you haven’t clearly clarified first in your mind why your business exists and why people should buy from you rather than your nearest competitor. You need to develop your unique selling proposition (USP).
Think garage coffee to Starbucks coffee. They are the same commodity at the end of the day.
The entire goal of your USP is to answer this question: Why should I buy from you rather than from your nearest competitor?
The commonplace people go wrong with developing their USP is they say “quality” or “great service” is their USP. There are two things wrong with that:
- Quality and great service are expectations, they are just part of good business practice—not something unique.
- People only find out about your quality and great service after they’ve bought. A good USP is designed to attract prospects before they’ve made a purchasing decision.
The answer is to develop a unique selling proposition (USP). Something that positions you differently, so that prospects are forced to make an apples-to-oranges comparison when comparing you with your competitor.
There’s Nothing New Under The Sun
“There’s nothing unique about my business, how do I develop a USP?”
Two questions you must ask and answer are:
- Why should they buy?
- Why should they buy from me?
What is the unique advantage your offering? It doesn’t have to be the product itself, it can be the package, support or how it’s even sold.
Think of computers, Microsoft and apple.
Getting into the Mind of your Prospect
What do they really want? It’s rarely the thing that you are selling, it’s usually the result of the thing you are selling.
Sell the result, not the product.
A $50 watch and $50 000 are both watches, but one carries status, luxury and exclusivity.
Discover what result they are actually buying, then craft your unique selling proposition based on the result your prospects want to achieve.
Start by asking open-ended questions: Printing Business example
Why are you coming to a printer?
What is it that you want to achieve?
What are you trying to accomplish?
The prospect doesn’t want business cards and brochures, they want what they think business cards and brochures are going to do for their business.
If you confuse them You Lose Them
- Why should they buy?
- Then why they should buy from you?
Confusion leads to lost sales, can you explain your product and the unique benefit it offers in a single short sentence?
How To Be Remarkable When You Are Selling A Commodity
How do you charge high prices for your products and services while having your customers thank you for it? In short, by being remarkable.
How can you be remarkable when you sell a commodity?
Being remarkable doesn’t mean the product or service you sell is unique. Just be different.
An example of how coffee shops serve their coffee with shapes and pictures in the foam. You would pay more for that and yet it’s the same commodity.
An e-commerce order shipping email example:
Nothing unique about the product, but the transformation of something from boring and ordinary gives the customer a unique experience. Be remarkable.
When Apple sold their iPods, they didn’t promote how big the storage was in it. They promoted the message “1000 songs in your pocket” Technical jargon means nothing but people will relate to 1000 songs.
Prospects will pay a premium for a commodity if they find the experience remarkable. We all want to share things and experiences that are remarkable.
What can you do in your business that’s remarkable?
Lowest Price
Lowering your price as a USP is a dangerous game to play, someone will always be willing to go out of business faster than you. You also attract bargain hunters which end up being difficult clients.
Instead of discounting to increase the value of your offering. Bundle in bonuses, add services, customize a solution, these call add genuine value without costing you much.
Create your Elevator Pitch
Distil your USP in a 30-second time span.
Bad marketing is highly product-focused and self-focused. Good Marketing is always customer and problem/solution-focused, and that’s exactly how we want our elevator pitch to be.
The Elevator Pitch Formula: You know [problem]? Well, what we do is [solution]. In fact [proof].
Creating Your Offer
Remember if you don’t give your ideal target market a reason why your offer is different, they will default to price as the main criteria for making their decision. Most businesses are lazy when creating an offer. Copy competitors, discounts or something boring.
Two great questions to think about when you’re crafting your offer are:
- Of all the products and services you offer, which do you have the most confidence in delivering? For example, if you only got paid if the client achieved their desired result, what product or service would you offer? Phrasing it another way—what problem are you sure that you could solve for a member of your target market?
- Of all the products and services you offer, which do you enjoy delivering the most?
Supplemental questions that can help you craft your offer include:
- What is my target market really buying? (e.g. people don’t really buy insurance, they buy peace of mind)
- What’s the biggest benefit to lead with?
- What are the best emotionally charged words and phrases that will capture and hold the attention of this market?
- What objections do my prospects have and how will I solve them?
- What outrageous offer (including a guarantee) can we make?
- Is there an intriguing story we can tell?
- Who else is selling something similar to my product or service, and how?
- Who else has tried selling them something similar, and how has that effort failed?
What Does My Target Market Want?
Ask your clients through surveys what they want; however, when it comes to actual purchasing, this is done with emotions and justified with logic after the fact.
- Look at google to see what they are searching
- What are topics trending on social media around it
- Look at what products and categories are trending on marketplace websites like amazon.
Create An Irresistible Offer
Once you know what they want, here are essential elements to create an irresistible offer:
- Value: What is the most valuable thing you could do for your customer? What is the result which takes them from point A to point B that you can take them through while making a good profit?
- Language: Speak the same language as your target market their slang and jargon.
- Reason Why: Have a reason for your great offer, people are used to being short-changed, this makes them understand and rationalize it better. Clearing sales etc.
- Value Stacking: Packing in many bonuses makes your offer a no brainer. That’s not all…
- Upsells: When your prospect is hot and in the buying frame of mind, this is the perfect time to offer them a complementary product or service. The fries to the burger. Creates added value and also profit for you.
- Payment Plan: Critical for high ticket items. Payments are a better pill to swallow.
- Guarantee: People don’t trust claims as much anymore. You need an outrageous guarantee. One that totally reverses the risk of doing business with you.
- Scarcity: Your offer needs to have an element to encourage people to respond immediately. People respond to the fear of losing much more than the prospect of gaining. Ie. Limited supply, countdown timer.
Target the Pain
If you have a headache, you don’t price shop for pain pills. You most likely will purchase them at a higher price, no problem solving your pain. The same is true for customers. Most businesses speak about features and benefits instead of the pain customers already have.
Selling a tv example:
Instead of features like 4 HDMI inputs etc. Talk to the pain of delivering it and setting it up and mounting it and getting it set upright. Offer that instead of discounting as a value add. Offer those pain points and price becomes less of an issue. Raving fans also spread word of mouth for you.
Targeting existing pain rather than promising future pleasure will result in much higher conversion, much higher customer satisfaction and lower price resistance.
Copywriting For Sales—You Can’t Bore People Into Buying
People buy from people, not from corporations.
Using “professional” and generic lingo is boring. Meaningless clichés and claims of being the leading provider in your category makes you look like a “me-too” business.
People love authenticity, personality and opinion.
Don’t use your marketing material as a screen to hide behind. Use it to give opinion, insight, advice and commentary and above all be yourself and be authentic.
Elements Of Great Copy
A change of a word or phrase can dramatically change the effectiveness of an ad.
Free
You
Save
Results
Health
Love
Proven
Money
New
Easy
Safety
Guaranteed
Discovery
People buy with emotions first and then justify with logic afterwards. Trying to sell to their logical brain with facts and figures is a complete waste of time.
The five major motivators of human behaviour, especially buying behaviour are:
- Fear
- Love
- Greed
- Guilt
- Pride
If your sales copy isn’t pushing at least one of these emotional hot buttons, then it’s likely too timid and ineffective.
Enter the Conversation Already Going On in Your Prospects Mind
Before you ever write a single word of copy, you must intimately understand how your target market thinks and talks.
What are their fears and frustrations?
What gets them excited and motivated?
Another way to enter the conversation going on in your prospect’s mind is to address the elephant in the room.
Part of the job of good sales copy is to tell potential prospects who your product or service is NOT for. There are three very good reasons you should do this.
First, it filters out people who aren’t part of your target market or those who wouldn’t be a good fit for what you have to offer. This ensures you don’t waste your time on low quality, low probability prospects. It also reduces the number of refunds and complaints from customers who misunderstood what they bought.
Second, it immediately makes it more credible when you tell them who this product is for. It feels much more even-handed when you cover both angles by telling them who it is for and who it isn’t for.
Last, the prospects who it is for will feel the product or service is much more tailored to their needs versus if you had said your product is for anyone and everyone. It feels more targeted and exclusive.
Another excellent way to enter the mind of your prospect is to find out what they blame and use a device in your copy known as “the enemy in common.”
Take something relevant from your prospect’s blame list, side with them and tie it into a solution you have to offer.
Accountant Ad Example:
“Free Report Reveals How To Reclaim Your Hard Earned Cash From The Greedy Tax Man”
By using a common enemy, you connect with the prospect, and you’re seen as the saviour against a foe—in this case, government taxes.
Chapter 3: Reaching Prospects With Advertising Media
The ROI Game
In modern times we can track advertising returns a lot better than we could back in the day (analytics, tracking pixels etc.), because of this what gets measured, can be managed.
How do you measure the success of a marketing campaign?
The short answer: Did the marketing campaign make you more money than it cost you? What was the return on investment?
Work out your customer acquisition cost. Marketing Spend / Number of customers acquired
The “Front End,” “Back End” and Lifetime Value Of A Customer
A campaign that looked like a loser can in fact become a winner when we take into account their lifetime value as a customer. This looks at the lifetime spend with us. ie. Nail clients becoming repeat booked clients month on month. We acquired them initially (the front end) and now they bring in business at no additional marketing spend (the back end).
Lifetime value and customer acquisition cost are two of the key numbers you need to know to measure marketing effectiveness.
Your “front end” offer is the offer that gets seen by prospects (people who aren’t yet your customers). These are people who don’t know you and have no reason to like you or trust you. In general, the goal of your front end offer is to create a customer and make enough profit from the first transaction to at least cover the customer acquisition cost. This makes it very sustainable to keep advertising. The real profit is made on the “back end” through repeat purchases by existing customers.
Is Social Media A Cure-All?
Things to keep in mind with social media:
- Not the ideal selling environment – Rather than come across as pushy and repelling people rather use it to build relationships and value with customers. (Use it to educate people for free)
- Good at having social proof – a place where customers can view and comment about your business. People can communicate with real people, not just a business.
Potential Traps with social media:
- Can be a time suck. Time could be better spent on better ROI marketing efforts.
- You don’t own the platform, so your audience reach could change if the platform decides to change. Rather push them to your own email lists etc.
Email Marketing
Email is a direct, personal way to engage with prospects and customers.
A prominent part of your website should be an email opt-in form. This enables you to capture the email address of website visitors and gives you the opportunity to nurture those visitors who may not be ready to buy immediately but who are interested and want more information.
Having a highly responsive list of email subscribers enables you to almost create cash on demand. You create a compelling offer with a response mechanism and send an email blast to your list. You’ll get instant feedback whether it’s a hit or a miss. It’s a great way of cheaply testing offers prior to investing in more expensive media such as print or pay-per-click advertising.
You own your email database which is a massive asset.
Key Do’s and Don’ts with email marketing
- Don’t spam
- Be Human – write like you writing to a single individual
- Use commercial email marketing systems – they do the heavy lifting for you
- Email Regularly – To keep the relationship warm, stay in touch with your email subscribers at the very least monthly. Better weekly.
- Give Them Value – A good ratio is three value building emails for every offer email.
- Automate – Email triggers do the heavy lifting for you on autopilot.
Three Challenges of Email Marketing
- Get your email delivered.
- Get your email opened. Use a compelling subject line.
- Get your email read. Keep it brief and you can also include a link to a full blog post to direct them to your website.
Snail Mail
One of the most underutilized media channels today because of how technology has advanced.
Email doesn’t replace postal mail, it complements it.
It’s a mistake to underestimate the power of physical objects when it comes to moving people emotionally. And moving people emotionally towards a desired action is what marketing is all about.
Compare a Happy Birthday email to a handwritten card.
How To Have An Unlimited Marketing Budget
Essentially once you have found a marketing channel that gives you a positive ROI on your marketing, crank the budget up.
Have an unlimited marketing budget for marketing that works. It’s making you money.
The Most Dangerous Number
If you rely on one of anything, you are leaving yourself in an exposed position.
You need multiple sources of leads, anything can change in today’s times and then leave you in trouble.
Ie. Google algorithms changing all the time.
Have at least five different sources of new leads and new customers.
ACT 2: The “During” Phase
The during phase your dealing with leads. People who have indicated an interest in your marketing message. You need to nurture them and make them buy from you for the first time.
Chapter 4: Capturing Leads
Capturing leads in a database for future follow up is critical. Only a small percentage of captured leads may be ready to purchase immediately.
Hunting vs Farming
Most businesses hunt for customers and hope they catch a customer day today.
Whereas farmers plan, plant and nurture their crops for food.
In direct response marketing, the purpose of your advertising is to find people who are interested in what you do, rather than trying to make an immediate sale from the ad. When interested leads respond, you put them on your follow-up database so that you can build value for them, position yourself as an authority and create a relationship built on trust.
Mining For Gold With The Ethical Bribe
All other things being equal, the more money you can spend marketing to high probability prospects, the better your chances are of converting them to a customer.
How do we separate the people who would be interested in your product from the people who wouldn’t? We offer an “ethical bribe” to get them to identify themselves to us.
Photography Example:
A very simple lead generating ad could be headlined: “Free DVD Reveals The Seven Costly Mistakes To Avoid When Choosing A Photographer For Your Wedding Day.”
Anyone requesting this “ethical bribe” would be identifying themselves as a high probability prospect.
The goal is to simply generate leads, not sell from your ad!
The other big reason you want to avoid selling directly from your ad:
If you tried selling directly from your ad, you’d be targeting only the 3% who are ready to buy immediately and losing the other 97%. By creating a lead generating ad, you increase your addressable market to 40%.
Knock-on effect to the people who are actually ready to buy now:
They see you’re not desperate to sell or discount your product or service. They see that you are interested in building a relationship first rather than just going for the jugular to make a sale.
When you educate and teach you are seen as an expert and an authority. You’re no longer questioned, instead, you are obeyed and seen to have a personal, genuine, helpful interest in other people.
Chapter 5: Nurturing Leads
Taking people from interest to wanting to do business with you.
The Secret Behind the World’s Greatest Salesman
Joe Girard is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “the world’s greatest salesman.
Between 1963 and 1978, he sold over 13,000 cars at a Chevrolet dealership.
What was his secret? He constantly kept in touch with his customers. He sent personalized greeting cards every month to his entire list of customers. Ie Happy New Year, Valentines etc.
This kept him top of mind with his customers when they eventually needed to purchase a car.
Marketing Like a Farmer
The money is in the follow-up.
Once you have captured a lead, they should go into your system where repeat contact is made over time. These are not contacts where you repeated contacts are made over time. These are not contacts where you obnoxiously try to pester them into buying. You build a relationship, giving them value in advance of them buying anything from you and in the process building trust and demonstrating authority in your field of expertise.
Most people are not ready to buy straight away, put them in your database, give them value and when they are ready to buy, the next logical step for them will be to buy from you.
The Three-Step Process:
- Advertise with the intention of finding people who are interested in what you do. Do this by offering a free report, lead magnet etc. Any kind of relevant, free information that presents a solution to a problem they have will work. This positions you as an expert and as an educator rather than a salesperson. Which would you prefer to buy from?
- Add them to your database
- Continually nurture them and provide them with value. For example, a newsletter on your industry or information on how to get the most from whatever it is you do or offer. Important point—do not make this a constant sales pitch. That will become old very quickly. Be sure to offer them valuable information with an occasional pitch or special offer. Most important of all, be sure to keep in contact regularly, otherwise, the prospect will forget you and your relationship will then be relegated to that of a cold prospect and pest salesperson.
Building Your Marketing Infrastructure
Now that you have a database of high probability prospects, your job is to market to them until they buy or die.
Instead of being a pest, become a welcome guest. Send your high probability prospects a continuous stream of value until they’re ready to buy. This could be in the form of tutorials, articles, case studies or even something as simple as a monthly newsletter that’s related to their area of interest. This builds trust, and goodwill and positions you as an expert and educator rather than just a salesperson going for the jugular.
This is one of the most ethical and painless ways of selling because it’s based completely on trust and an exchange of value.
Lead capture websites
Free recorded message info lines
Newsletters
Blogs
Free reports
Direct mail sequences
Email sequences
Social media
Online videos and DVDs
Podcasts and Audio CDs
Print ads
Handwritten notes
Email auto-responders
SMS auto-responders
Shock and awe packages
Lumpy Mail And The Shock And Awe Package
Lumpy Mail is when you insert something into a direct marketing mail. It stands out and is sure the get the attention of the customer.
Magnets, keyrings, and fake money are all things that can be inserted with a theme in mind. On top of that, customers more than likely don’t throw these items away making them great to be kept top of mind.
Taking Lumy mail to the next level is the “Shock and Awe” Package. One of the best direct response marketing follow up tools around.
The typical dance:
Prospect clicks “send me more information”
The business then follows up with:
- Link to webpage
- Sent an email
- Spoke with you over the phone
First impressions can be:
- same same
- crappy
- mind-blowing amazing
A shock and awe package is essentially a physical box that you mail or deliver to prospects full of unique benefit-laden assets related to your business and industry.
Items that can be included in a shock and awe package
Books – great for making yourself an authority
Testimonials from past clients
Clippings from media mentions
Brochures
Coupons for them to try out
Coffee mugs or other unusual items
A handwritten note thanking them for their enquiry.
You want to create that Wow effect. Keep these three things in mind when creating one:
- Give your prospect amazing, unexpected value.
- Position yourself as an expert and trusted authority in your field.
- Move your prospect further down the buying cycle than they would otherwise have been.
Of course, you must know your numbers, particularly numbers like customer lifetime value otherwise you will go negative. You can’t substitute good marketing for bad maths.
Make It Up, Make It Real and Make It Recur
Play to your strengths, don’t try and do everything yourself.
It takes different “types” to make a business work. Here are the three major types that it takes:
- The Entrepreneur: This is the ideas person or visionary. They see a problem or gap in the market and are willing to take risks so they can solve that problem for a profit. They make it up.
- The Specialist: This is an implementer of your vision. They could be an engineer or a graphic designer. They take your vision, or part of it, and help make it a reality. They make it real.
- The Manager: They come in every day and make sure things get done, work gets delivered and the vision is on track. They make it recur.
You need to hire people for the roles otherwise you cannot do everything yourself. They simply won’t get done.
Create a Marketing Calendar: This helps enforce you get done what needs to get done.
- Daily – Check social media for mentions and respond appropriately.
- Weekly – Write a blog post and send the link in an email blast to email list subscribers.
- Monthly – Mail customers and prospects a printed newsletter or postcard.
- Quartley – Send past customers who haven’t purchased recently a reactivation letter.
- Annually – Send all customers a gift basket thanking them for their business.
Event-Triggered Marketing Example:
- You get an inbound sales inquiry: Send them a handwritten note and your shock and awe package.
- You get a new email list subscriber from your blog: Add them to your CRM system which automatically emails them an educational five-part video series over the next thirty days.
- Received a customer complaint: After the issue is resolved send them a handwritten apology note and a $100 discount coupon on their next purchase.
A rule of thumb I like to use is if someone else can do it 80% as good as you can, then you should delegate it. You need to delegate to others so you can focus on the higher end decisions that will generate a bigger return.
More money can always be made but time cannot be.
Don’t be afraid to outsource to other countries using geo arbitrage. As you grow your local talent will grow as a byproduct to support them.
Chapter 6: Sales Conversion
Creating enough trust to motivate interested leads to becoming paying customers.
There’s No Money In Your Product Or Service
The law of diminishing returns comes into play when your product or service reaches a “good enough” level.
Once you’ve reached a level of competence, the real profit comes from the way you market yourself.
An accountant can only be so good, IT support can only be so good.
As a social experiment:
A talented musician, playing the same music on the same violin, yet in one instance he earns $32 an hour (playing in a subway) and in another, he earns $60,000 per hour. (playing in a concert)
What made the dramatic difference? In a word—positioning.
If you’re a professional musician and you position yourself as a subway busker, your “customers” will treat you as such and pay you accordingly. Conversely, if you position yourself as a professional concert performer you attract a totally different customer and once again get paid accordingly. In other words, people will generally take you at your own appraisal—unless proven otherwise.
Transitioning From Pest To Welcome Guest
Pests= the annoying sales guys just trying to push sales.
welcomed guest= someone you trust and don’t mind spending with.
Don't sell sell sell - rather educate educate educate.
Potential clients get their back up and end up doing nothing because they don’t trust you.
With education, you build trust. With education, you position yourself as an expert. With education you build relationships. With education, you make the selling process easier for both buyer and seller.
Delaying the sales also accomplishes two things:
- it shows you’re willing to give long before you take, which breaks down sales resistance.
- it presents you as an educator and expert in your field.
You must stop selling and start educating, consulting and advising prospects about the benefits your products and services deliver as opposed to each and every competitor in your category.
Think about yourself as a doctor who diagnoses and then prescribes solutions to people’s problems, then I’m sure you’d be much more comfortable selling under those circumstances—as a trusted, educated, knowledgeable, qualified, confident, capable adviser.
And that is exactly who you need to be perceived as in the eyes and minds of your prospects—someone who educates them and solves their problems.
This would be a good time to share with you my definition of an entrepreneur, “Someone who solves people’s problems at a profit.”
Manufacturing Trust
Because of technological advancements, even the little guys can look like big companies.
- Website
- Real Address
- Have privacy and terms of use policies
- Don’t have a cheap-looking website
- Email Address – Not Gmail
- Phone Number – Display everywhere
- CRM – The marketing nerve centre
- Ticketing System – Deal with customer inquiries professionally
Outrageous Guarantees
By having something to lose if it doesn’t work out, you have an easier path to the sale and you’ll much more easily avoid alarm bells set off in your prospect’s brain.
First, find out what points your customer might fear and then counter them with your risk reversal guarantee.
Avoid vagueness such as satisfaction guarantee, service, quality blah blah.
Your guarantee should be very specific and address the fear or uncertainty that the prospect has about the transaction.
This creates almost zero risk for your prospect and thus makes closing the sale so much easier.
A smart entrepreneur will look at their business from the eyes of a fearful, sceptical prospect and reverse all the perceived risks so that the path to the sale is much smoother.
Pricing Strategy
Your prices influence how your consumers think about you.
Number of options
The psychology behind this finding is that people get caught like a deer in the headlights. Fear of making a suboptimal choice prevents them from making any choice at all.
Offering too much choice can actually prevent sales.
A pricing strategy that I’ve seen work very well is offering a “standard” and “premium” variation of a service or product. The “premium” version is priced at about 50% above the “standard” but offers twice or more value than the “standard” variation.
Reverse Risk With “Unlimited”
Most people are risk-averse and are afraid to get stung by unexpected charges.
If you can remove risk for them you greatly increase your chance for a sale.
An excellent strategy for removing this risk is to offer an “unlimited” variation of your product or service at a fixed price.
Ie. unlimited coffee or unlimited technical support for a monthly fee.
People generally overestimate how much they will actually use the product or service.
Add terms and conditions which would allow for fair use but would stop or limit abuse.
The Ultra High Ticket Item
A small number of people will want to buy the best variant of your product.
The best is often associated with price as an indicator.
A knock-on effect generally is that this high ticket item will make your standard prices seem reasonable in hindsight.
Resist The Urge To Discount
This will always put pressure on your margins and market position.
Unless you have a good loss leader strategy.
With a loss leader strategy, you try to entice a customer based on price and then upsell or cross-sell other higher-margin products or services.
A better option than discounting is to increase the value of your offering. Bundling in bonuses, increasing quantities or adding peripheral services can be of genuine value to your customer but cost you very little to do.
Invite Them To Try Before They Buy
As a business owner, you should make it abundantly clear to all staff that sales are the lifeblood of the business and that everyone is in sales.
One of the best ways to get this point across is to have an incentive program where sales get rewarded regardless of the position of the person they came from.
Train staff to look for all the relevant ques to jump on a client to sell to.
“Try before you buy” is sometimes known as a free trial.
- Breaks down sales resistance – customer feels like they committing to something less reversible.
- Put the power back on the customer to reverse the sale which puts inertia back on your side.
- A genuine customer is unlikely to return a product that is actually meeting their needs.
Close Down Your Sales Prevention Department
It’s almost like they have a sales prevention department, whose job is to make the buying process a painful experience.
Your job is to make it easy for customers to buy from you.
You need to offer your customers their preferred payment method—not yours. Ie a cash-only business so that you can save on merchant fees.
Are you requiring prospects and customers to jump through hoops, fill in useless forms or conform to processes that aren’t really necessary? How could you remove these roadblocks or at the very least make them much easier?
ACT 3: The “After” Phase
You’re dealing with customers in the after phase now. The goal is to get customers to trust you and buy more from you. Deepen your relationship with customers, do more business with them, and get more referrals.
Chapter 7: Delivering A World-Class Experience
By delivering world-class experiences, you turn customers into raving fans who want to continually buy from you.
Building Your Tribe Of Raving Fans
One that acts as a cheerleader and is actively conspiring for your success. Your tribe members amplify your marketing message and take it to heights you’d never be able to reach on your own with paid advertising. Apple has an almost cult-like following of tribe members.
Sell Them What They Want But Give Them What They Need
You may have the best vitamin in the world, but you need to make it taste sweet so the kids will eat it. That’s giving them what they want but also what they need.
Leadership is an attractive quality and people want to be led. By taking the initiative of packaging up the implementation of your product or service, anticipating roadblocks that will be encountered along the way and having solutions to overcoming these roadblocks shows leadership. Helping your customers all the way through to achieving results will have a big payoff for both yourself and them.
Remember your goal is to create a tribe of raving fans—not just transactions.
Create Theatre Around Your Products and Services
Innovation can go far beyond the actual product that’s sold. Innovation can be applied to how the product is priced, financed, packaged, supported, delivered, managed, marketed or a myriad of other elements related to any part of the customer experience. One area where businesses fail spectacularly is creating a sense of theatre. Your customers don’t just want to be serviced. They want to be entertained. Give them what they want by creating a sense of theatre around your product.
Ie. Boring blender company using “Will it blend?” YouTube Series. Or a restaurant that offers pickup and collection of customers within 5km so that customers can spend money on wine. Win-win.
Use Technology To Reduce Friction
The purpose of any new technology in your business is to eliminate friction. We want the fastest and easiest path to the sale, while increasing customer satisfaction. Technology does the heavy lifting for us, take advantage of that when you see fit.
Become A Voice Of Value To Your Tribe
Part of delivering a world-class experience to your customers is becoming a voice of value to them.
Hard selling tactics days are over, you need to be seen as an authoritative figure and trustworthy.
How do you do this? By creating content that educates your market.
By regularly releasing valuable, educational content to your target market, you lay the foundation for a relationship—and after all who would you prefer to buy from, a trusted source who has been giving you a lot of value or a stranger who wants to make a quick sale?
Create a blog, monthly newsletter, and youtube videos.
Tell Them All The Trouble You Go To
Tell your audience about all the effort that goes into delivering your product or service. In your sales copy and even in your packaging give them the details of how you painstakingly prepare or manufacture your product.
This applies equally if you deliver services. Tell them about your skills, how you acquired them, all the checks and balances you have in place and how you train your staff.
The backstory to your product or service is an absolutely essential part of your marketing. Don’t let your efforts and skill go unnoticed. It gives them an assurance that there is substance and quality behind your product. This is especially important if you are pitching a premium product
or service.
No one cares about your logo, company name or some dubious claim about being the leader in your industry. They want to know about what your product will do for them, and your backstory is essential to this.
Products Make You Money, Systems Make You A Fortune
The most valuable business systems are those that are easily replicable.
Systems allow mere mortals to run an extraordinary business.
- Customers want to do business with you because you deliver consistent results.
- Licensees wanting to license your system.
- Franchisees who want to buy into your franchise system.
- An investor or competitor wanting to buy out your business.
Four Main Types of Business Systems:
- Marketing System – Generate a consistent flow of leads into the business.
- Sales System – Lead nurturing, follow-up and conversion.
- Fulfilment System – The actual thing you do in exchange for the customer’s money.
- Administration System – Accounts, reception, human resources, etc. Support of all the other business functions.
If you don’t have all four systems set up to run concurrently then it throws the whole balance off. If you don’t market because you not getting around to it because of fulfilment, you will fail as an example.
The problem is that customers don’t find out how good your products and services are until they have bought from you. And if your marketing and sales systems aren’t in place, they will never buy in the first place and find out how good you are. It’s a vicious cycle.
How to create business systems?
Document processes and procedures to allow your business to run without you. Capture all the “know-how” of the business.
Ie.
- Checklists
- Video training
- Audio training
- Operations Manual – from hiring to customer interaction and services
Further benefits of having systems in place:
- It builds a valuable asset. When you want to sell one day, you sell the turnkey solution.
- Leverage and Scalability. It gives you the ability to expand and replicate in other geographics, franchising example.
- Consistency. Key to delivering a good customer experience.
- Lower Labour Costs. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel the whole time. Improved efficiency.
The Power Of Systems—The Ability To Fire Yourself
Systems enable you to step back and let the operation run without you. Many business owners have no time to work on their business because they are too busy working in their business. They are stuck in a self-made prison.
Your job as an entrepreneur is to be an innovator and a builder of systems.
- Identify all the roles in your business
- Identify all the tasks each role needs to accomplish
- Document exactly how each task should be performed (Checklists or step by step)
This way it’s plug and play and just the people change, not the process. Customers get a consistent experience also.
Chapter 8: Increasing Customer Lifetime Value
Increasing the lifetime value of existing customers is where the real money is made.
Most businesses focus on trying to get new customers the whole time and fail to see what’s right under their noses, their existing clientele. It’s far easier selling to existing clients than to new ones.
The real profit is in figuring out how to sell more to existing and past customers and increase their lifetime value.
Five Ways to Sell More to Existing Clients
1. Raising Prices
Depending on the business most customers will not be too aware of the price increases if done right.
If you hold your prices constant for a long time, in real terms you’re effectively lowering them because inflation makes the same nominal amount of money less valuable over time.
The key to raising your prices in a way that makes it palatable to your clients is giving them a reason why. Explain to them the increases in quality of your product or the increased input costs that you’ve borne. Explain to them the benefits they’ve already received from your offering and how they’ll benefit from your future innovations.
2. Upselling
The contrast principle comes into play when two different things presented sequentially feel more different than they really are. – Robert Cialdini
Use this principle during upsells. When someone buys the original expensive product, the suggested upsell item add on feels comparatively cheap. This is a powerful persuasion technique.
Two things work in our favour with upsells
- The contrast principle
- Because the prospect was not specifically shopping for your suggested add-ons they’re much less likely to be price-sensitive to the item being attached.
Upsell framing could also be “most customers who bought this X also bought Y” – this plays on people’s deep-seated psychological human desire to fit in.
When a customer has just made a purchase is when they are at their hottest to be sold more too. Take advantage of that. Bundle items.
3. Ascension
This is the process of moving existing customers to higher-priced plans within your business.
The idea is that most customers get complacent about their current plan when they could be on a better plan for their needs and they can afford it. It gives clients something to look forward to also.
4. Frequency
Increasing the frequency of clients coming back to purchase from you thus increasing the lifetime value.
Reminders – People lead busy lives. You need to send reminders out to bring them back in-store. If it’s a longer consumable item that needs a longer period in between to repurchase then just keep yourself top of mind by sending birthday cards etc.
Give them a reason to come back – By giving people a voucher after they have purchased X amount. The voucher cant be used that same day it was given and would expire in 6 months, thus forcing clients to come back in store another day. This tactic enables you to increase your initial transaction value and create a psychosocial pain associated for not coming back for a repeat purchase.
Help them buy repeatedly with subscriptions – The world is moving to subscriptions. Ie dollar shave club selling cheap disposable razors. This creates convenience for your customers while at the same time you’re able to charge them until they say stop. You create a predictable cash flow.
Reactivation
As business owners, we should have built a current database of clients. This list can contain plenty of people who are not your customer anymore due to any reason. They are a lot easier to reactivate than spend to get new clients.
Basics of running a reactivation campaign:
- Go through your database and pull out customers who haven’t bought from you for a while.
- Create a strong offer to induce them back into you. A gift card, coupon or free offer with a strong call to action usually works well.
- Contact the past customers and ask them why they haven’t returned. If it’s something you’ve done wrong, offer an apology and show corrective action. If they reactivate and buy from you again, follow up with them and make them feel special.
Campaign themes and headlines are “We Miss You” or “Have We Done Something Wrong?”
Numbers Tell Us The Whole Story
What gets measured gets managed.
Marketing is a game in that you need to constantly measure your numbers and performance.
Numbers don’t lie.
Key numbers you need to know:
- Leads
- Conversion Rate
- Average Transaction Value
- Break-even point – All operating expenses needed to run the business.
See an example of the impact below in just increasing your leads, conversion rate and average transaction value by 10%.
If you have subscription businesses these will be the key numbers to check:
- Monthly Recurring Revenue – If it’s flattening out or declining you may have either a churn problem or a customer acquisition problem.
- Churn Rate – This is the percentage of recurring customers that cancel subscriptions or stop buying from you.
- Customer Lifetime value – increasing this value pays dividends.
All Customers are Not Equal
This separates the loyal customers from the bargain hunters.
The NPS Model (Net Promoter Score)
Ask a question in customer callbacks “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”
The Promoter: score of 9 – 10
The Passives: Score of 7 -8
The Detractors: Score of 0 – 6
Ask for the reason for the rating afterwards so you can fix it!
Fire Problem Customers
Customers that you can never please are better off sent to your competitors.
The wasted time and resources that they consume are not worth it and most times end up doing more damage than good.
The right customer is always right.
Chapter 9: Orchestrating And Stimulating Referrals
By implementing some simple tactics you can make the flow of referrals a more reliable part of your marketing process.
You made the referral because it made you look and feel good. That’s the exact same concept we want to use in our referral marketing, but rather than waiting and hoping someone discovers us and shares, we want to orchestrate and stimulate the process.
Ask and You Shall Receive
The law of 250
The average person knows about 250 people close enough in their lives to invite to a wedding. This means one person has the potential to refer 250 if the business is good or negatively impacts 250 people about your business.
One of the best strategies for getting what you want in business and indeed in life—is just to ask.
Example 1:
“Mr Customer, it’s been such a pleasure working with you. If you know anyone who’s in a similar situation as yourself we’d love you to give them one of these gift cards which entitles them to $100 off their first consultation with us. One of the reasons we’re able to keep the cost of our service down is because we get a lot of our business through referrals from people like you.”
- We’re acknowledging them and appealing to their ego. People love being acknowledged.
- We’re not asking them for a favour but instead offering something valuable they can give to someone in their network.
- We’re giving them a reason why they should give us referrals—a reason that had directly benefited them.
Example 2:
“Mr Customer, I’m going to do an awesome job for you, but I do need your help also. Most of our new business comes through referrals. This means that rather than paying for advertising to get new clients, we can just pass the cost savings directly to you. We typically get about three referrals from each new customer. When we’re finished working together and you’re 100% satisfied with the work we’ve done, I’d really appreciate it if you could keep in mind three or more other people that we could also help.”
- Letting them know that they’re going to get a great result
- Showing them a direct benefit that they’re going to be, or already are, deriving by referring to us
- Creating an expectation of a certain number of referrals (without being too pushy) so that they can start thinking ahead of time about who would be suitable
- Leaving the power with them by telling them that it’s subject to us doing a great job for them.
Who Has Your Clients Before You?
Look at who has your customers before you and after you and find ways of creating value in both directions.
Finding other complementary businesses that your customer deals with before they deal with you can help you uncover untapped profits in your business. Setting up a joint venture (JV) arrangement with one or more of these businesses that are not in direct competition with you can be a cheap or free source of leads.
Synergy Examples:
- Accountants send lawyer leads
- Mechanic sending car detailer leads
- A vet sending pet food retailer leads
As a vet, you could give the vet a $50 voucher to their customers to claim at your pet store.
Everyone wins in this situation, value all around.
The second source of revenue could be from finding out who would benefit from your database and arranging a deal.
Ways to monetize your existing customer base:
- Sell the leads – You must have customers’ permission though.
- Exchange the leads – with a complementary business.
- Resell complementary products and services – buy complementary products and services as a wholesale, white-label and resell them to your database.
- Become an affiliate referral partner – commission-based lead sales.
Building Your Brand
A brand is the personality of a business.
- What’s its name?
- What does it wear? (i.e. design)
- How does it communicate? (i.e. positioning)
- What are its core values and what does it stand for? (i.e. brand promise)
- Who does it associate with? (i.e. target market)
- Is it well-known? (i.e. brand awareness)
When all is said and done, branding is something you do after someone has bought from you, rather than something you do to induce them to buy from you.
Brand equity is the goodwill you build up that compels people to do business with you rather than your competitor.
Conclusion
Remember it’s all about implementation. I’ll reiterate—knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing. You need to make the mistakes, risk looking foolish and invest in yourself and your business.
Three Reasons Entrepreneurs Fail to Implement Action:
- Paralysis By Analysis: You only truly learn by doing. Don’t let perfectionism become a source of procrastination to you. Remember 80% out the door is better than 100% in the drawer.
- Inability To Delegate: People’s time and other people’s specialist expertise. This can reduce your learning by trial and error by years. What you don’t know will hurt you. Hiring specialist expertise will save you time, money and huge amounts of frustration.
- “My Business Is Different”: The reason the same stuff works over time and across different business types is that you’re dealing with humans —big bags of emotion. People behave in a remarkably predictable manner, which is why I know that these direct response marketing principles will work for your business.
Time Is Not Money
As entrepreneurs, we only get paid for bringing value to the market—not for time. Put simply entrepreneurs work in the results economy whereas most other people work in the time and effort economy.
The money we make as entrepreneurs is an automatic side effect of creating value. If our focus is on bringing value to the market, it will stop us from making all kinds of foolish mistakes.
Focusing on the cause (value) rather than the effect (making money) will lead to much greater long-term success.
Instead of playing business, you must do business. Winning in business requires you to have a relentless focus on the activities that deliver value.
For the entrepreneur, time is not money. Value is money. Time is just one of the inputs it takes to deliver value to the market. Make marketing a daily process. Create your own 1-Page Marketing Plan and most importantly implement the plan. Spend time daily doing business and building value.
Keeping Up with Future Developments
Today almost all the value of a business is in the eyeballs it has access to and the customer base it has acquired.
Look at what’s happening today and the central role that acquiring customers through effective marketing plays:
Uber, the world’s largest taxi company owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer owns no inventory. Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider owns no real estate.