If youâve ever struggled with a lack of focus in your business, youâre not alone. In this episode, weâll uncover how you can beat Shiny Object Syndrome once and for all with a simple, practical system for marketing: The 1-Page Marketing Plan.
Today weâre talking to Allan Dib from Successwise.com. Heâs a serial entrepreneur and marketing expert who wrote the Amazon bestseller, The 1-Page Marketing Plan. Allan has come up with a breakthrough method for marketing your business in an easy, 9-step process that he reveals in the interview.
Everyone explains that making your business different is vital â but NOÂ ONE (not even experts) explains how to actually do it... Until now.
Just click on that big fat red button, answer a couple of questions, and learn to stand the f*ck out in a no-bull, super-practical way:
"When are you going to do something in French so I understand it?"
"You're literally the only marketer I can stomach."
"A terrific celebration of marketers and marketing in all its forms."
Itâs called the 1-Page Marketing Plan because you can fit your direct response marketing plan for your small business on a single page.Â
It covers three marketing phases: before lead generation, during lead generation, and after the prospect becomes a customer.
Each phase has three steps, totaling 9 steps on the page.
The beauty of the 1-Page Marketing Plan is in its simplicity.
If you canât fit your plan on a single page, itâs too complicated.
While you donât have to fit every detail of your plan on the page, you can outline each step of the plan in simple fashion so that you, your team, and your clients can understand your marketing plan clearly.Â
This is probably the most crucial step in your marketing plan because it sets you up for success without marketing bullshit.
It begins with this step.
The key is to find a target market thatâs in pain.Â
If you think about the last time you had a bad headache, the pharmacist didnât have to hard sell you on pain relief medicine. You probably picked something up from the corner store without even looking at the price because youâd do whatever it took to relieve that pain.
Likewise, you want to pick a target market thatâs in pain, and if you can solve that pain, youâre in business⊠without sleazy marketing.
Itâs also important that your target market is narrow and deep.Â
As Howard Gossage says, âPeople donât read ads. They read what interests them. Sometimes itâs an ad.â
If people feel like theyâre reading something that was written for them, theyâll be more likely to continue reading, which is a lot easier to do if your target market is very narrow.
In short, specialists eat generalistsâ lunch.
So, how do you come up with your target market?
There are two ways to start.
First, if youâve been one of your target market, then you intuitively understand their challenges and worries, so you can start there.
Otherwise, youâll need to start with an educated guess and do some market research. Find books they read and forums where they ask questions to get a feel for their pain points. Next, evaluate the PVP, which stands for personal fulfillment, value to the marketplace, profitability. Does this target market bring you joy, money, and have a deep pain? Finally, test your idea on the target market by seeing if they actually pay money for it.
To craft your message, start with an offer that converts.
For example, Allan Dib knew that the 1-Page Marketing Plan converted from his experience as a keynote speaker at events, so he repackaged it as a book and sold it.
Then itâs just about getting into the conversation thatâs already happening in your target marketâs mind.
To get into their mind youâll need to interview them, preferably via Zoom so you can record the call and transcribe it.
Get to know whatâs happening in their lives/industry.
Find out what keeps them awake at night.Â
Then use their exact words from the transcript in your messaging.
When the person reads your message, they should say, âHey, thatâs for me.â
First of all, donât think of yourself as a digital marketer, because âdigitalâ often equates to lazy.
Digital doesnât mean magic.
Digital is just a medium.
Digital is exposed to all the same factors that make or break your marketing, like having a powerful headline and a strong call to action.Â
The point is that you can reach your customers through digital media if they spend their time online; however, if they are more responsive to direct mail, for example, then it suits you to send them direct mail instead.
Reach your target market wherever they spend their time.
It could be at an in-person conference, for example.
Once you identify the media to use, unless youâre already an expert in that field, youâll likely need to pay a specialist to handle paid outreach for you.
For example, trying to do AdWords by yourself with no experience is likely a waste of time and money.
This is the most expensive part of direct response marketing, so make sure you can do it right, or otherwise hire a specialist that can do it right.
âLead capturingâ sounds like such a yucky term, doesnât it?
Think of it less like using lead magnets to capture leads, and more like connecting with real human beings on the basis of making their lives a little better with a nice gift.
Ultimately, youâll want to collect their contact information so that you can stay in touch and continue to contribute to their lives, which leads to step 5...
Youâll need to have a good follow-up method that makes people feel less like a number and more like a welcome guest.
For example, the Everyone Hates Marketers podcast nurtures listeners with high-value content.
Daft Punk nurtured their listeners by obsessing over their craft to produce outstanding music.
When you nurture your leads with genuinely valuable content, theyâll be much more likely to be open to whatever you offer down the road.
Itâs about building trust, not burning bridges with incessant requests to pay you money before they forget who you are.
This phase is where you go from a prospect only knowing about you to trusting you â and then spending money on your product.Â
Once you deliver value, you can make an offer that is much more likely to convert, and you can do it without being pushy.
Our goal in marketing is to take a step beyond the transaction.Â
With an endless amount of options, people are seeking something special today.Â
They want to buy from a company who can deliver a âwowâ experience.
Itâs much easier to convert an existing customer than a brand new customer.Â
Increasing your lifetime value is about finding ways to increase the amount of money someone spends with you.Â
But itâs not about scamming people â this step comes back to delivering genuine value to your audience.
You canât sit and hope for referrals.Â
Instead, you need to create a specific system where people expect that you have to give them referrals (or you have a defined process for requesting those leads and referrals).
No, thatâs just a suggestion, but you do need something to bridge the gap between your target market and your message.Â
Ads are a form of outbound marketing.
You could do other forms of outbound marketing as well.
However, it often makes sense to focus exclusively on building an audience organically with inbound marketing instead.
For example, instead of using ads, I created a podcast to build my audience.
Then I was able to move onto step 4 just as well.
A pharmacist doesnât have to hard sell you on pain medicine when you have a severe headache.
Likewise, if youâve done step 1 correctly, you wonât have to hard sell your customers at all because they have a pain that you can solve.
Itâs less of a sales pitch and more like a conversation with a friend.
Like, âBro, my head hurts.â
âOh yeah? I got some pain meds if you want âem.â
âYes, please.â
In marketing, there are only three activities you should be working on at any given time:
Anything else is a waste of time.
Increasing the lifetime value of a customer speaks to the latter two bullet points.
You can either increase the average transaction size, or you can increase the number of transactions a given customer makes.
How you go about doing that will vary depending on whether youâre an e-commerce business or a consulting business, for example.
Regardless, at the heart of marketing is listening to what customers need.
If they could use an add-on to make their purchase even better, perhaps you could increase the average transaction size by bundling products together.
If their needs change a year after their initial purchase, you could offer them something different to increase their transaction frequency.
Louis: Bonjour! Bonjour! Welcome to another episode of Everyone Hates Marketers.com, the marketing podcast for marketers, founders, and tech people are just sick of shady, aggressive marketing. Iâm your host, Louis Grenier.
One of my listeners, Max Peters, sent me an email saying. âIâve just read The 1-Page Marketing Plan from Allan Dib, and after reading dozens of marketing books, I can say itâs easily one of the best ones out there, so I suggest you bring him to the show.â
And this is what Iâm doing today. So, Iâm really happy to have Allan Dib on the show. He, like many marketers, believe that we should stop the shiny object syndrome. The fact that so many marketers are trying to chase after those shiny objects and switching trends every time.
He also believes that a lot of them are overwhelmed by a sea of possibilities, and they really donât know where to start their marketing. Most of the time they fail marketing for this reason. And I believe the exact same thing, so Iâm very happy to have him on the show.
Heâs the author of the Amazon bestseller The 1-Page Marketing Plan. He also has a website called Successwise.com. Heâs a serial entrepreneur, rebellious marketer, and technology freak. He has started growing successful multiple businesses in various industries. As you can see, we have an expert on the show today, so Allan. Thank you so much.
Allan: Louis, pleasure to be on the show.
Louis: Right, letâs get started. So your book is fascinating for two reasons: one, itâs simple. And I love simplicity and I believe that marketing should be simple enough. If not then youâre doing something wrong, but two, itâs really practical, really actionable.
Iâve already used some version of the template in helping out people I know in marketing to give them a base so that they can start. Iâve also sent the marketing plan to a few of the listeners to get them started. So, how did you come up with this idea? Did it develop over time or was it something that you just came up with after a week of work?
Allan: Laughs. No, it wasnât a week of work. I think like many good things that happen, it comes out of necessity. They say necessity is the mother of invention and that was certainly the case with The 1-Page Marketing Plan.
I run an international coaching and consulting practice in the marketing field. One of the things I always asked my clients to do very early on was create a marketing plan. Because anyone whoâs in any field where the results matter and where the stakes are high has a plan.
I give an example in the book: doctors follow a treatment plan, airline pilots follow a flight plan, and soldiers follow a military operations plan. Imagine youâre getting on a plane and you overhear the two pilots speakingâŠthey say âI look donât worry about the plan. I know how to get there.â
Wouldnât you freak out and get off that plane? Or would you say that Iâll sit in the front seat, and hope they get it right?
Itâs exactly the same thing when it comes to small businesses. You need to have a plan, right? Otherwise, things just go to crap very quicklyâand sometimes even when you do have a plan that happensâŠgenerally to a lesser degree.
Long story short, I wanted a lot of my clients to put together a marketing plan. They struggled with this very much. In their mind, it was something that had to be very long, very complicated, and very expensive to do. And very few of my clients ever did it. Thatâs where this came from, so I created a process called The 1-Page Marketing Plan where itâs literally one page.
You can make out a very sophisticated direct-response marketing strategy for your business, and I wanted to be a living document. I didnât want it to happen to what happened to my first business plan. My first business plan, I had a consultant came in. He helped me write hundreds of pages had beautiful graphs and projections and financials.
It went into the top drawer and never got seen again until I was cleaning out my office and threw it out. So, I wanted it to be something practical. They could hang on the wall and refer to on a regular basis as a living document.
Louis: Itâs insane when you think about itâthat companies are still using business plans. Nowadays, I mean some of them are useful because theyâre focusing on consumer trends and especially for big companies, but as a small business, startups usually donât need those. So, thanks for this intro. In todayâs episode what I really want to do is try to go through this process together. I hope that we have the time to go through the nine small steps in this plan.
But before we start, Iâd like to say that you are a fan of the approach the 80/20 rule and you even have a deeper rule which is a 64/4 rule, which is like this marketing plan is usually going to take you four percent of the effort that You know you will usually do, but thatâs usually leading to 64% of the results and this is so true because Iâve done it a few times.
Iâve set up one-page strategies in the past and this gives you so much clarity, this gives you so much purpose that it gives you most of the results and you will see yourself coming back to this document over and over and over again. Printing it, and printing it on the plastic and putting it next to your desk. This is a truly amazing way to focus, right? Because in this world attention is very scarce. So how to come up with a marketing planâwhere do we start?
Allan: So, where we start is, and thatâs actually a really good question. I know itâs sort of gels into one of the things that you explore very often. I listen to a lot of your podcasts, and one of the things you explore is why marketers have such a bad reputation. Â Very often, itâs because someone comes up with a product or service, and they think they get it to market, and they think âoh crap, okay. I need to now add marketing, right?â
Then they use the pushiest, sleazy tactics to try and push a product that they think that the market wants. But in my view, Â good marketing happens before the product development stage, before you even create a product, or before you even think about creating a product.
Because what we want to do as good, ethical marketers who deliver a lot of value, is we want to tap into demand. We donât want to have to ask officially create demand. Itâs usually when you have to artificially create demand that you have to now resort to sleazy tactics, and pushy sales, and all of that sort of thing.
In my world, sales is something that should come very, very naturally after having a conversation with a human being. You and I; we have a conversation, and we talk about what are your needs, and what do I offer?
And then at the end of that conversation, it should be a very natural thing that happens is either: look, I donât think itâs a really good fit for each other, or okay, looks like itâs a really good fit, how do we progress it to the next step? Thatâs an ethical, easy, low-pressure way of doing business, and I love doing business that way.
Louis: Yep, Iâm into that. I completely agree with you on this is the point of good marketing; as you said you shouldnât have to create demand artificially. This is where you start doing sleazy stuff. Â Start with the customer, start with people in mind, and then your product would come at a later stage. So letâs maybe give an overview of this one-page marketing plan very briefly, and then weâll go through each step.
Allan: Sure, Iâll go through them briefly and Iâll give you highlights. We probably donât have enough time to cover it in detail. Otherwise, weâll be here for three hours. Iâm happy to be here for three hours, but Iâm sure you and your audience probably have other other plans. Laughs.
Louis: Laughs. What we can do isâweâll go through the nine steps like, as a whole, as a summary; and I think, to be honest with you, the most important are the top three: the market, the message, and the media. I think we might we might talk about other phases if we have time, but I think people would have a good understanding of whatâs going on already.
Allan: Perfect, I love it. So, youâre exactly right. Iâve split up the marketing plan into three distinct phases. This is an idea I shamelessly stole from Dean Jackson. But itâs the Before, the During, and the After. And then within those three stages, thereâs three inner stages. So basically The 1-Page Marketing Plan is a 9-step process, and itâs a single page, thatâs divided into nine squares, and you fill in each of the nine squares.
Now, the first square is selecting your target market, and this is absolutely critical. Because a lot of people think, âYou know what? Letâs service the maximum number of people that we can.â So, I do everything for everyone, right? And it feels intuitive because it feels like okay, youâre catching the widest number of people.
But as counterintuitive as it is you want to choose a target market that is an inch wide, so not very wide, but very very deep. So, youâve got an audience who has a lot of interest, who has a lot of depth to it. Thereâs a lot of facets to what you do, and Iâll give you an example. So for example, the beauty industry is a massive, massive industry.
Thereâs hair, thereâs cosmetics, thereâs all sorts of things. Then if you take that down a little bit you might get to, for example, the beauty part of that. If you niche that down again you might target, for example, just women. If you niche that down again, you might target, for example, cellulite treatment.
You can even niche that down further. For example, cellulite treatment for women who have had a child, right, and even that tiny, sliver of a niche goes very, very, very deep. Selecting a target market absolutely critical.
Louis: Right, step two.
Allan: Step two is crafting your message. So, the second one is all about creating a message that your target market responds to. And I read an interesting quote the other day by Howard Gossage, and it says, âPeople donât read ads. They read what interests them, and sometimes thatâs an ad.â
So crafting your message is where you want to get into the mind of your audience. You want to get into the thing thatâs worrying them at 3 a.m when theyâre lying in bed thinking about this problem that you can solve. What are they thinking? You want to get into the conversation thatâs happening in their mind. Thatâs crafting your message.
And then that leads us into number three. Itâs probably the most expensive part of your marketingâthatâs reaching your prospects with advertising mediaâso, basically bridging your target market with your message. And thatâs the bridge that the media. It can using digital marketing, Facebook ads, or Google ads.
If youâre using offline media, it could be direct mail, it could be print advertising and so on. So, theyâre probably the first three and youâre absolutely rightâI also believe that theyâre the most critical for two reasons:
First of all, theyâre often the most overlooked, and theyâre the things that will make the biggest difference in crafting your product in your offer. So very often people try to doâŠwhat I call putting lipstick on a pig. Laughs.
Louis: Laughs.
Allan: They have an offer thatâs so-so and they think adding marketing to it is the thing thatâs going to make it work. And thatâs when you get into pushy, sleazy tactics.
Louis: Yep, exactly. So, we talked about this a lot on the show. We had Philip Morgan around positioning, mentioning the exact same idea, that your market should be very narrow, at least when you start. Seth Godin says the same thing. So, when Allan Dib, Seth Godin, Philip Morgan and plenty of other people say the same thing, this usually leads to thinking.
That perhaps, this is something that you need to do at home. Whether youâre starting your business, whether youâre a marketer in a larger business, whether youâre planning on selling a product in the future. It is a tough exercise because you have to say no to a lot of things, but picking a very narrow audience is the best way to really solve their problems in a nice way.
Allan: And itâs all about having the person who is receiving your message say, âHey, thatâs for me,â right, and you want someone whoâs reading your message to, because otherwise if youâve got a laundry list of services.
If you say, I do web development, I do this, I do that, I do Google ads, I do all sorts of other things; itâs just a laundry list and you become a generalist, and people donât look at that and think, âHey, thatâs for me.â
Louis: Yeah, you donât want to become a generalist. So those are the first three steps, then the During Phase, which is the lead phase? What are the three steps in there?
Allan: In the During Phase we want to do three things. We wanted to capture leads, for example, capture leads in an opt-in or a CRM; then the next thing we want to do is nurture those leads. So, we want to have a good follow-up. and when I say good follow-up itâs not pestering them. Itâs not being a pest.
Itâs becoming someone who delivers value on a very regular basis. So, I think your podcast is a really good example of that, right. When you put this podcast out you deliver a lot of value to the world. Itâs not about pushing something on someone but they donât want it.
So, when you do go ahead and one day make an offerâor perhaps you currently do make offers to your listâsomeoneâs going to be much more likely to say, âYou know what? Louis has given me so much value. Iâm really open to seeing what else he has available.â
So, then the third part is sales conversion. Thatâs when you take someone from just knowing about you to trusting you, and then spending the first dollar with you; or more so, turning someone from a prospect to a customer.
Louis: So, before we go through the next three steps briefly, as a summaryâwhat do you think of the of the term lead capture? And okay, thatâs a very leading question, so maybe rephrase. I actually donât like the term lead capture.
Itâs like lead magnet. I find it very impersonal and that leads to me, to a lot of people thinking, those leads are just numbers on a spreadsheet that you know, you need to capture it to grow your sales. So, Iâm just curious your view on the term. Did you use it because other people are using it, or do you believe that this is the right definition?
Allan: Yeah. Look, I use it because it is the most common definition and I like to use things that donât need a lot of explanation. So, very often people will talk to me about you know, what should I name my business?
Or what should I name my podcast? Or what should I name my book? And things like that. And you can do one of two things: you can have a clever kind of naming and maybe not so clear, or you can have very, very clear naming, and where the title equals the content.
For example, if you think about my book The 1-Page Marketing Plan, the title tells you exactly what itâs all about, right, and Everybody Hates Marketers that tell you exactly what thatâs all about. So, I donât like to have to use uncommon terms that you have to explain, even if I donât love those terms.
I agree with you 100% that lead capture is probably not the best term, but itâs probably the most common term and one that doesnât need the most explanation. Iâm probably more in favor of, you know, delighting a customer, but that would be an awkward way of putting it in a book.
Louis: Yeah, this is a good point, and I think this is a good lesson in terms of marketing and customer behavior. Iâm not gonna name the company because I respect them. I donât want to get to any bad publicity from them, but this is a software company that recently launched new features.
They try to call those featuresâŠthey try to come up with a new nameâthose features were not new, so they were in the marketplace for a long time, and people used to call them a different thing right. and that led to a big failure the product retention rates for those features were very low.
That led them to change the names, to the thing, to the words that were being used by the most amount of peopleâeven though those they werenât necessarily happy with those words.
They had to use them because thatâs what people think about first when they describe such a feature. So, I think itâs a good example that sometimes you do have to to make sure that you are in sync with your market and people and how they call stuff.
Allan: I always tell people to choose clarity over cleverness. You know sometimes, you want to use some clever name and itâs kind of witty or something or funny or something like that, but itâs not really clear, and I always say if you need to explain it, itâs failed. Your name, or title of your product, or your podcast, or your book, or anythingâŠshould need no explanation.
Louis: Yeah, and that goes back to an episode that Iâve recorded with Momoko Priceâwhoâs a conversion copywriterâand we went through how to come up with a good value proposition on your website in particular.
And she made the same point, you know, you need to make it very clear. Very, very clear what youâre doing. You donât have to be clever, you know, we are the #1 leading provider in a category that nobody has ever used before.
Instead, you can say we do the best product in x, that we last longer, etc. The more clear you are, the easier it will be for people to understand what youâre doing. And therefore, to act and maybe sign up to your newsletter or buy your product.
Allan: Yeah, I mean, as marketers weâve got enough challenges to deal with anyway without having to add in our own challenges of trying to be unclear.
Louis: Yes, right. So, those other six first steps. What are the last three?
Allan: So last three. This is in the After Phase, so someoneâs become a paying client and for a lot of people, this is where it ends, right, so this is where my marketing ends for a lot of people. Youâve got to paying client. What else do you need to do, right? We finished the end, we look for another client. No.
So, in the After Phase, itâs really where the real money is made, and a lot of people make a big mistake of just ignoring this. So, thereâs three parts to the After Phase. Thereâs delivering a world-class experience, then thereâs increasing customer lifetime value, and the last one is orchestrating and stimulating referral. So, Iâll go through each of these very briefly.
So, delivering a world-class experience. This is all about creating a tribe of raving fans, and youâve probably heard Seth Godin talk about this kind of thing. And thereâs other marketers who talk about this, but itâs about creating fans rather than clients.
We donât want to be transactional; we want to be someone who is respected and loved and almost an entertainer to our clients. Because people are seeking something differentâand people are seeking entertainment, as well as good service.
Itâs all about delivering a world-class experience so that the client whoâs dealing with you just says, âWow.â You know, itâs all about creating a wow experience for our clients.
Then we move on to Increasing Customer Lifetime Value. This is all about finding ways to increase the amount that you can charge a client. And when we say that, we donât say that in a way that we want to be scamming, or take advantage of clients, or anything.
No, we do that by delivering much, much more value. Very often someone will sell something to a client and thatâs it. The client never hears from them again, but the clientâs needs have not ended, right. So, very often a higher level of service, a more frequent level of service is something that the client looks for.
If you take, for example, your internet service. If you bought it a few years ago, itâs satisfied your needs there. But, now since those few years have gone by, youâve got now much more streaming applicationsâyouâre using online cloud and drop digital services much more, so maybe someone who sold you internet a few years agoâthat fit the purpose, but today, itâs unfit for purpose.
Unless someoneâs keeping in touch with you, and increasing the lifetime value, upselling you to the next plan that has higher data limits, or higher speed; youâre going to be underserviced.
And thatâs going to create an event in the client where the client thinks, âYou know, this internetâŠitâs just become so slow. Iâm going to look for some alternatives,â Youâve created a turn event by not being in touch with your client on a regular basis.
That leads us into the last part of the After Phase, and thatâs Orchestrating and Stimulating Referrals. And I purposely titled that chapter Orchestrating and Stimulatingâand the reason I say that is because a lot of people sit and hope for referrals.
They hope that someone will send them a new lead, a new customer, a new prospectâand sometimes, at a chance, that does happen. But if you orchestrate and stimulate referrals, that implies that the system in place and the system is, you know, baked into your marketing.
Where people expect that you have to give them referrals, or you have a very, very specific and targeted system for requesting those leads and referrals. So, thatâs basically the last three parts of The 1-Page Marketing Plan. The After Phase.
Louis: Right. So there we have it. As you can picture in your mind right now, you have a one-pager. You have nine boxes and you have three boxes per row, and you should be able to summarize your marketing plan in one page.
I strongly believe that if youâre not able to summarize any plan or any strategy in less than a page, then itâs not clear enough, itâs not simple enough. And donât expect your team, or your colleagues or your clients to understand it. So, this is why I love some of this template.
As you said Alan, as wellâand I really appreciate that from youâyou said in the book that you didnât come up with that on your own.
Youâve been inspired by Seth Godin, by other people; itâs not like something that is brand new, but you add a twist to it, add your methods to it, your personality to it, and this is one of the reasons why?
Simplicity; one of the reasons why your book is an Amazon bestseller right now, and why so many have recommended it to me. So thanks for doing what youâre doing, and thatâs what I wanted to tell you.
Right, letâs go back to the actions; the first three steps, and perhaps we can go through them together. So this is a bigger phase, rightâthe Prospect Phase. So, coming up with your market, your message, and the media, and how youâre going to reach out to them. So, how do we go with that?
Allan: So, as we discussed earlier, we want to find a target market thatâs in pain. If you think about the last time that you had a really, really bad headache, and you went to the chemist, and you looked for pain relief.
Do the chemists have to sell you? Or convince you to buy the medication? Probably not. You probably grabbed it and paid whatever was this on the sticker. You probably didnât even look at the price because you wanted pain relief, so thatâs where it all starts.
You want to find a target market who are in pain and provide pain relief. Itâs as simple as that and it kind of merges into the second step, which is crafting your messageâand thereâs really no substitute. A lot of people ask, you know, where do you start?
And itâs really starting with an offer that converts, and so a lot of people try to force an offer thatâs not interesting to people; thatâs not solving a big pain point, which is maybe either marginal or not solving a problem.
In Silicon Valley, Iâve heard the phrase, âItâs a solution in want of a market,â Laughs. So, theyâve created a solution and now theyâre looking for the marketâwhich is completely backwards.
We want to find the market thatâs in pain. We want to find a gap that they have and create an offer that converts. So, as an example, the bookâI didnât just invent this kind of strategy, and create a book, and hope that it worked.
I knew absolutely with 100% certainty that The 1-Page Marketing Plan was an offer that converted. Now, I didnât know how successful the book was going to be; it definitely exceeded my expectation, but Iâve been a keynote speaker at many events, Iâve offered The 1-Page Marketing Plan as a process.
I had very, very high conversion rates, so I knew for a fact that this was an offer that converts, and thatâs whyâwell, that was part of why I wrote the book, and I knew that it would get traction. I didnât know how much because Iâm a first-time author, Iâve never written a book before.
There were definitely some unknowns, but I knew absolutely without a doubt that this was an offer that converts, so thatâs something that I would put to your audience and I would get them to think isâyou know, whatâs your offer that converts?
Whatâs something compelling that you can solve for your target market? And what is your target market for a start? So, whatâs your target market and whatâs a pain point that you can solve for them? How can you be their pain relief?
Louis: Right, so I very much like this explanation, but Iâm gonna challenge you to go deeperâbecause I can listen to the voice of the listeners in my head already asking, âOkay, thatâs all good, but how do you actually come up with this target market in the first place?â
And in this podcast, we talk a lot about customer research, and talking to people, and you kind of imply that with the example of your bookâbecause youâve been in touch with clients, youâve been in touch with people in conferences reaching out to you, and you kind of did similar research.
Over the years you heard this pain coming back to you over and over and over again, and you were certain that this was a pain that had to be solved. And you also were certain that the plan, the solution you put togetherâthe pain reliefâwas something that was working.
How do you advise people who donât have the chance of inside years of experience behind them, a lot of clients reaching out to them with their problem. How do you advise them to pick a target market?
Allan: So, thereâs two ways to start. Number one isâif youâve been one of your target marketâfor example, youâve been in the past an IT guy. I was an IT guy, and if youâve been an IT guy, a really good thing to doâbecause you intimately know that target market; you know what theyâre worried about, you know what their challenges areâis to target that target market.
Some target market that youâve been part of in the past. Thatâs one way and thatâs a really, really good way. If I was just starting out thatâs probably one thing that I would probably do, but sometimes we find opportunities that are not necessarily in a target market that weâve been part of.
In that case, itâs really just a matter of doing some educated guesses, but itâs not just wild guessing. Weâre doing some educated guessing and weâre doing some research. So, we want to do some market research, we want to see what are the books that these people are reading? What are the forums that they hanging around on?
So, you might go on to their forums, and you might start saying okayâwhat questions are they asking? Quora is a really good resource as well. You can go into Quora and see what questions areâŠlawyers asking for? What questions are doctors asking? And what kind of questions are they asking?
Then you go through a process called PVP, so P stands for personal fulfillment, V is value to the marketplace and P is profitability. So, when I talk about personal fulfillment itâs, how much do you enjoy working with this target market?
So you know, are they people that are interesting to work with, you enjoy dealing with themâŠor are they kind of just really are a pain-in-the-butt type of customer? You know, demanding and donât want to pay a lot and all of that sort of thing.
The second one is V, so value to the marketplace. How much does your market segment that youâve chosen value your work? Are they willing to pay a lot of money for your work, right? This can vary dramatically from market to market.
And the last one is P, profitability, and this is an interesting one. Sometimes even when a target market is willing to pay a lot of money for your work itâs actually not very profitable work when you when you look at it.
It might be something thatâs very, very labor-intensive, something that you have to spend a lot of time outsourcing or managing. So you want to look at those three factors. Does it bring you personal fulfillment and joy to work with?
Because if itâs going to be an uphill battle building this business if you hate dealing with this kind of client, or you hate dealing with this type of person. The second thing; does it bring value to the marketplace? And the third thing; is it profitable?
Louis: So, you come up this and I like it because you talked about mining Quora, and all this kind of online sources, to get the questions that people are asking in your target audienceâthat youâre thinking of going after. Do you have a process to actually go through those online sources? Do you put them on Excel? What do you do with them?
Allan: The process really doesnât matter. Do whatever process works for you, but what I find is if you want to use Excel, you want to use Google Docs thatâs thatâs not something thatâs going to move the needle.
But thereâs a few things that you can do. So, you can survey your target marketâyou do have to be careful about this thoughtâbecause people lie.
People will say oh yes, thatâs a great idea, or sometimes you might ask friends or family; you might say, âHey, Iâm planning to start a business creating leather hats for turtles,â and people donât want to hurt your feelings, and they say, âOh, thatâs a great idea. You should really do that,â and then you say oh, is thatâ
Louis: Laughs. It is a great idea. Like letterhead photos. Itâs fantastic. You should go about that, you should do this.
Allan: Laughs. Exactly. People want to be nice to you. They donât want to hurt your feelings, so a better thing to test is just your offer on check-writers. So rather than saying, âIs this something you might be interested in?â Make an offer. Say something, âWould you like to buy this?â
âWould you like to to write a check for this?âand then thatâs when, very often, the truth will come out where they will say, âOh heck yes. Thatâs great. Thatâs exactly what Iâve been looking for,â or you might start to get, âUh⊠well. You know, not right nowâŠ.Iâve been a bit busy,â or whateverâthat sort of thing. Thatâs, I guess, the acid test of an offer; whether someone will write a check forâ
Louis: Right.
Allan: âit.
Louis: How do you come up with the message, then, once you have your target market? You know roughly who they are. How do you come up with a message that will make people interested?
Allan: So, a really good way is to interview and speak with your target market. I know as digital marketers, sometimes we want to just hide behind a computer, or emails, and things like that.
But I found the best thing is, very often, just to get on the phone, and very often someone will reveal something over the phone that they generally wouldnât over an email, or over a digital communication, because thatâs usually very highly curatedâwhereas over the phone,youâll get insights that you werenât expecting.
So, you might ask the question and someone might answer the questionâbut reading between the lines, youâll get some insights. A little might be something that they mention in passing, or something that they mention adjacent to some of the questions youâre asking, but I found itâs awesome when you can get your target market on the phone speak to them about whatâs happening in their industry.
Whatâs happening in their lives? What are some of the things that theyâre concerned about? What are the things that theyâre lying awake at night worried about? So, depending on your industryâthatâs going to be a number of things. I mean, right now if I was in the taxi business Iâd be very, very concerned.
That would be things that I would be worried about, even if youâre in certain other industries that are being disruptedâlike hotels, and travel, and things like that. Youâd have to be very, very concerned. Itâs kind of like the destruction that the book industry, that the movie industry, that the audio and music industry experienced years ago.
So, there are industries currently being disrupted; you want to speak to people and get their words. When you interview them, thatâs one. Thatâs a very, very valuable thing.
You donât want to just get their message. Sometimes someone will answer your question, but you want to capture their words. You want to phrase it the way that they would phrase itâbecause basically you can grab that and put that straight in your copy.
Because when someone in your target market reads the exact words that in their mind, theyâre going to respond to a message in a much better way than you would if you were trying to paraphrase it, or coming up with some clunky thing that they didnât quite understand.
Louis: Yes, we did talk about this before, didnât we? And this is the key people. Marketers, founders; they try to be too smart about the way, you know, to explain their products. Thatâs heavy stuff.
Instead, if you just interview a customer, and really try to understand how they describe the productâor the pain that they have in their own worldsâthen itâs much easier to come up with. I would recommend you go and check three episodes of Everyone Hates Marketers âCustomer Service 101.â
Just done the introduction and the latest episode with Joanna Wiebe from CopyHackers around this exact framework. How to actually capture the thoughts of people and put it on paper. Allan, so we have the market, the message, and now the last step of the before phase: the media, picking the media, and how to reach out to them.
How do you do this?
Allan: Yeah, this is an interesting oneâand Iâll preface this before by saying, I know this podcast is targeting digital marketers. But one of the things are pushed back about it is using the phrase âdigital marketersâ because sometimes I find that digital is a substitution for lazy.
Sometimes people are lazy marketers but call themselves digital marketers, and hereâs the reason I say this, because some people think that digital means magic, and whereas digital is really just a media. Iâll ask you, Louis, in digital marketing. Do you need a powerful headline? I would think the answer is yes. Do you need a compelling offer?
Louis: Yes.
Allan: Do you need very, very good, compelling copy? Do you need a coat? Do you need a strong call to action?
So, these are all things that are not specific to digital marketing. Leads are specific to any kind of marketing, whether youâre writing an ad in the Yellow Pages, and the newspaper, on Facebook, on Googleâjust because something is digital it doesnât mean magically the concepts of and the key part of marketing simply just go away.
A lot of people think, âOkay. Iâll just send an email blast to my list,â and thereâs not much thought to the headline. Thereâs not much thought to the copy, and itâs because it feels like itâs free, but itâs itâs very, very far away from free.
So, thatâs one thing I would say is that if youâre a digital marketerâand thatâs totally fine to say you know what I work in this type of mediaâI love working in digital and thatâs what it is, but donât ever substitute the word digital for lazy.
Learn the key concepts of marketing, learn how to write headlines, learn how to write copy, learn about a good call to action. Learn about all of these things that have been in marketing for hundreds of years. Really, digital is just the newest media that we were using for that.
Louis: Allan. Iâm sorry, but this is important. I did change the positioning of the post of this podcast recently because of this and now I say that itâs a marketing podcast, because purely for two reasons: one, a lot of my listeners are not digital marketers and marketers in general and two, exactly for what you just said.
I guess you might restrict yourself as a digital marketer. If you truly believe you are only a digital marketer from using mediums and media, that might be outside of digital purely because you think this is not your realm, but if your consumers hang out in like conferences and like to receive Direct Mail.
Then you must be more than just a digital marketer you have to be a marketer, full stop. So, Iâm very glad you made this point.
Allan: And I can tell you from personal experience that all the most sophisticated digital marketers, they actually use a lot of analog media. So, Iâve never heard anyone call themselves an analog marketer, but if you think whoâs the most tech-savvy company in the world? And probably Google would come to mind would that be correct, Louis?
Louis: Yeah.
Allan: So, guess what I got in the mail the other day? I got a direct mail from Google; it had a headline, it had an offer, it had a coupon, it had a call to action. So, this is the worldâs biggest direct mail marketing company is Google. If thatâs not a lesson for digital marketers than I donât know what is. Laughs.
Louis: Yeah, thanks for making this point. Right, so how do you understand where people hang out and how to reach out to them?
Allan: So, we want to reach out to them where they hang out exactly. That comes from the research phase, in when youâre selecting your target market, and when youâre crafting your message.
You want to understand, where do they hang out? For example, depending on who youâre targeting; so if I was targeting, maybe older peopleâand these are of course generalitiesâand as marketers, we generally deal with generalities.
Of course thereâs exceptions to every rule, but if you were targeting a much older audience you might think about more about print. Maybe about local newspapers, or national newspaper, or whatever. If youâre targeting, for example, teenagers or that sort of thingâyou might think about Snapchat or Instagram or something like that. So, itâs very much going to be driven by the target market.
And the other thing Iâll say about media is, itâs the most expensive part of your marketing. So, you know if youâre running ads youâre either in print, or in direct mail, or in Google, or in Facebook. This is the most expensive part.
One of the things that I often see is people try to cut corners and either learn it themselves, or do it themselves, and thereâs nothing wrong with that if youâre a specialist in the field. Like, if youâre an AdWords marketing expert then absolutely go for a do-it-yourself, but if youâre not, youâre going to waste a lot of money, youâre going to waste a lot of time.
I mean, even just choosing AdWords marketingâthatâs a field on its own. There are people who even carve that niche. You know there are some who specialize in retargeting, and remarketing, and all of that sort of thing. There are others who specialize in writing the headlines, and the copy, and all of that sort of thing.
So what I would say isâhire specialists when youâre dealing with media. If youâre writing a direct mail piece, hire someone who specializes in postal direct mail. If youâre running Google ads, hire a Google ad specialist, or hire a Facebook ad specialist. So, donât skimp on the expertise when it comes to your media spend.
Louis: And that goes back to the positioning. That the point that we made earlier on, right. So, you naturally recommend someone who specializes in one area because this is the sign that this person knows what sheâs doing. That ties back to what you should be doing in your target market; in your messaging, you should be narrow enough so that people say, âWell, he or she is the expert in X, and you should reach out to her.â
Allan: Exactly. Itâs like if youâve injured your knee. Do you want to go see the general doctor, or do you want to see the specialist?
Louis: Right. Okay, I think weâve gone through a good overview of this plan. Obviously, we didnât have the time to go through every single step one-by-one. They are nine steps in total, but I think that the first three ones are really the ones that are the cornerstone to this plan.
So, you can visualize it once again. Itâs a one-pager, 9 boxes, and yes, you wonât be able to write everything in there. This isnât about the details. Itâs more about the direction, the focus, the purpose, and being able to share this document to your colleagues, to your clients, to your bossâand Iâve seen that for us.
One of my friends used a version of this document not that long ago, and she printed it out, and she uses it with our her entire team, and shares that with our entire team. Now everybodyâs on board with their marketing and this is truly a nice exercise.
And the last point I wanted to make about this display in particular; in the book mentioning a lot the fact that this is usually you know small business, and you mentioned that itâs more like direct response marketing, which is like, you invest and then you get a response back. Itâs not like branding of any kind, but I strongly think that these exercises would also work if you work for larger business.
Even if you have, you know, thousands of people doing this exercise; simplifying your strategy, or plan in one page, even if itâs not necessarily the exact sameâstricter than the one we went throughâitâs probably a good advice. Would you agree? And once again this is a leading question, Allan. But would you agree to this statement?
Allan: I fully agree. Whether youâre a one-person company or a billion-dollar company, direct-response marketing will work for you. The one thing that I findâthe nuance isâthereâs very different agendas when it comes to large businesses and small businesses.
I write this in the book. Large companies often have a management team. Thereâs board of directors, so when they do marketing; making a profitâitâs there in the list of prioritiesâbut you know, above it are things like pleasing the board of directors, making sure that the shareholders are happy, satisfying biases of your superior and things like that.
Making sure that your existing clients preconceptions are satisfied, then you want to win some creative advertising awards, and then somewhere down the bottom thereâs making a profit, right? Whereas for small business the only priority is making a profit.
So, itâs not whether direct response marketing will work for a big client or a small one. It absolutely will work for both but in large companies youâve got to deal with a lot of decision making, red tape very often. Youâve got to deal with a lot of people whoâve got preconceptions and biases and things like that. And thatâs when the marketing kind of gets muddled, right?
Thatâs when if you were to walk in and say, âHey, letâs do this and letâs do that,â in a large company very often. âOh, no weâve got to clear the CEO and the CFO, and then weâve got to talk to legal, and weâve got to make sure that the board is happy with it,â and all of this sort of stuff. And the CEOâs wife; she wants to be in the ad as well. Thereâs a lot of politics in larger businesses.
Louis: Right. So, you sold a lot of books on Amazon. You mentioned that exceeded your expectations. How much did you make with this with this book sir?
Allan: I do six figures annually from this one book from royalties.
Louis: Pretty good investment. So it goes back to the 64/4% Rule.
Allan: It does indeed, and itâs interesting that the packaging makes a lot of difference. So, if I release this book in a series of blog posts, sureâit might have gotten some traction, might have got some link backs, and things like thatâbut because itâs in the book because itâs in a structured form, it makes a massive, massive difference.
And thatâs a lesson. Sometimes the uniqueness in what you do is not necessarily in the information because you know, Iâm open in the first page of the book. I say I did not invent most of these strategies.
Yes, I created the framework and I created a unique way of putting these things and planning them, but I didnât invent direct response marketing.
I didnât invent copywriting, or headlines, or any of the things that we use, but I definitely put a new spin on itâI created a bit of a breakthrough in the marketing planning process. A lot of times when people talk about USPs or Unique Selling Propositions; they think that youâve got to reinvent the wheel, right, but you donât.
Sometimes itâs just a matter of packaging it differently, or having a bit of a different spin on it because really, thereâs nothing new under the sun.
Most things have been invented, unless youâre Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, youâre probably not going to come up with anything completely and radically new. Very often when we talk about Unique Selling Proposition; itâs about just doing a new take on something, a slight different way of packaging it, a slight different way of looking at it, and that can make all the difference.
Louis: Do you think marketers today that will help them in the next 10 years 20 years or even 50 years
Allan: I think the thing that is not well understood by marketers is that they need to become content creators. They need to become voices of value. So, back in the past you created an average product, or you had an average service, and maybe you put an ad in the Yellow Pagesâand your marketing was done for the year. Or maybe you bought some media, you bought billboards, you bought TV advertising and that sort of thing.
Thatâs what we mentioned earlier in the episode; thatâs putting lipstick on a pig. That worked in the past because you could interrupt people, and if you interrupted enough people youâd sell enough product, but in the next 10, 20, 30 years, you need to understand that you need to become a voice of value.
People who are a voice of value create content and theyâre prolific creators of content, so anyone who wants to be an authorityâI would be seriously thinking about okay. What are you doing about a book? I mean literally in the name authority is author, right, so I would be thinking about how do I create a book and how do I come up with a concept?
So, you know Iâm not the only one to come up with a concept. In the book, for example, if you think of GTD getting things done, or if you think of the e-mythâ these are good concepts packaged up in a book and then rolled out in the media.
So, how do you become a voice of value in your target market? And then once youâre a voice of value, how do you start creating raving fans and creating content for those raving fans? People are dying to consume high-quality content, and thereâs just so much garbage out there that you will stand out by a mile if you create something thatâs very, very high quality, thatâs content that people want, thatâs things that are shareable. does that make sense?
Louis: It does. What are the top three best resources you would recommend?
Allan: So, of course, I recommend my book. Laughs. I was looking at speaker event recently and I held up a copy of my book, and I said, âThis is the best book on marketing Iâve ever read,â and you know, it sounds like bragging.
But I really wrote this book because there was just so much garbage in the marketing area; on how to get your message out there, and all of this sort of stuff. And a lot of it was written by professors, by doctors, and things like that, and itâs people who have generally have never done actually run a business outside of academia.
So Iâd recommend my book because itâs starting point. Laughs. I know it sounds, selfish or whatever, but I truly believe it delivers a lot of value in terms of software, and podcasts, and things like that. I think absolutely critical is to have a very, very good CRM. A CRM system where it can help you tag and segment, and we havenât really talked about segmentation, but that is absolutely critical. So, itâs where you can tag someone with an interest or a demographic or a geographic and be very, very, very relevant to them. So youâre an island, and if I had a product that was very geographic I would tag you in my CRM as being an island. I might tag you as being our podcast creator. On my tag, you as being a marketer, and then when Iâm sending a message to someone in Ireland who has a marketer, you would get a very, very relevant messageârather than a message that was just very, very general.
Louis: Right, so those are the top three resources because you mentioned CRM your book. Do you have any other another one?
Allan: I think they were two, and if I was thinking of a third one, it would be getting help. Because a lot of entrepreneurs try to do everything themselves and businesses of team sport, and Iâve never seen anyone make big breakthroughs in their income who havenât built a team. So, you need to have a team.
And an example is my book, right, so you think I just wrote this book and they came about by magic and ended up on the Amazon store. No, I had literally a team. I had a researcher. I had a typesetter. I had an editorâactually, I had multiple editorsâI had also advisors who were telling me the best way to do SEO on the Amazon web store, so I literally had a team.
Now, I wrote this book in a very, very short, compressed timeframe. Actually, I wrote it in about 30 to 40 days. I nearly died doing it. I donât recommend doing it that way. Laughs. My next books are going to be written over a longer time frame.
But the point Iâm trying to make isâthis was a product launch and I treated like that. I didnât create it like literature, or like a lot of people think that a lot of authors think theyâre above marketing. They think, you know, thatâs kind of shady, sleazy, Iâm here to write literature, and then they never sell any books.
So for me, I treated this like a product launch, and with a product launch, I had a team. And thatâs probably the third resource that I would recommend for your listeners. If youâre doing trying to do this alone youâre absolutely going to have a very tight cap on your income because weâve only got 24 hours in a day, and the good news is you can buy hours by hiring people, so that makes a massive difference in your scalability.
Louis: Where can listeners connect with you and contact you?
Allan: Sure. A good starting point would be on Amazonâif you look up the name Allan Dib or The 1-Page Marketing Planâor if youâd like to get on my mailing list, then please visit Successwise and then just join in the conversation. So, we have a good time. We talk about marketing, we talk about business, and we talk about systems, and we have a lot of fun with goals. And we get things done.
Louis: Alan, itâs been an absolute pleasure to interview today. Thank you so much for going through this exercise with us.
Allan: Thanks, Louis. Pleasure to be on the show.
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