The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd

Struggling business owners will spend time to save money, whereas successful business owners will spend money to save time. Why is that an important distinction? Because you can always get more money, but you can never get more time. So you need to ensure the stuff you spend your time on makes the biggest impact. This is called leverage and leverage is the best kept secret of the rich.

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Therefore we need to clearly understand an important concept: a good product or service is a customer-retention tool. If we give our customers a great product or service experience, they’ll buy more from us, they’ll refer other people to us and they’ll build up the brand through positive word of mouth. However, before customer retention, we need to think about customer acquisition (AKA marketing). The most successful entrepreneurs always start with marketing.

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By far the biggest leverage point in any business is marketing. If you get 10% better at marketing, this can have an exponential or multiplying effect on your bottom line.

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It’s trackable. That is, when someone responds, you know which ad and which media was responsible for generating the response. This is in direct contrast to mass media or “brand” marketing—no one will ever know what ad compelled you to buy that can of Coke; heck you may not even know yourself. It’s measurable. Since you know which ads are being responded to and how many sales you’ve received from each one, you can measure exactly how effective each ad is. You then drop or change ads that are not giving you a return on investment. It uses compelling headlines and sales copy. Direct response marketing has a compelling message of strong interest to your chosen prospects. It uses attention-grabbing headlines with strong sales copy that is “salesmanship in print.” Often the ad looks more like an editorial than an ad (hence making it at least three times more likely to get read). It targets a specific audience or niche. Prospects within specific verticals, geographic zones or niche markets are targeted. The ad aims to appeal to a narrow target market. It makes a specific offer. Usually, the ad makes a specific value-packed offer. Often the aim is not necessarily to sell anything from the ad but to simply get the prospect to take the next action, such as requesting a free report. The offer focuses on the prospect rather than on the advertiser and talks about the prospect’s interests, desires, fears, and frustrations. By contrast, mass media or “brand” marketing has a broad, one-size-fits-all marketing message and is focused on the advertiser. It demands a response. Direct response advertising has a “call to action,” compelling the prospect to do something specific. It also includes a means of response and “capture” of these responses. Interested, high-probability prospects have easy ways to respond, such as a regular phone number, a free recorded message line, a website, a fax back form, a reply card or coupons. When the prospect responds, as much of the person’s contact information as possible is captured so that they can be contacted beyond the initial response. It includes multi-step, short-term follow-up. In exchange for capturing the prospect’s details, valuable education and information on the prospect’s problem is offered. The information should carry with it a second “irresistible offer”—tied to whatever next step you want the prospect to take, such as calling to schedule an appointment or coming into the showroom or store. Then a series of follow-up “touches” via different media such as mail, email, fax and phone are made. Often there is a time or quantity limit on the offer. It incorporates maintenance follow-up of unconverted leads. People who do not respond within the short-term follow-up period may have many reasons for not “maturing” into buyers immediately. There is value in this bank of slow-to-mature prospects. They should be nurtured and continue hearing from you regularly. Direct response marketing is a very deep topic with many…

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From a customer’s perspective, there is no compelling reason to buy from them and they make sales just because they happen to be there. You see…

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Getting into the Mind of Your Prospect We want to get into the mind of our prospect. What do they really want? It’s rarely the thing you are selling; it’s usually the result of the thing you are selling. The difference may seem subtle, but it’s huge. For example, someone buying a $50 watch is purchasing something very different than a person buying a $50,000 watch. In the latter case, they are likely buying status, luxury, and exclusivity. Sure, they want it to tell the time, just like the buyer of the $50 watch does, but that’s unlikely to be their core motivation. So, to get into the mind of the prospect, we need to discover what result they are actually buying.

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Bad marketing is highly product-focused and self-focused. Good marketing, especially direct response marketing, is always customer and problem/solution focused, and that’s exactly how we want our elevator pitch to be. We want to be remembered for what problem we solve rather than for some impressive but incomprehensible title or line of business.

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A great way of figuring out your ideal target market is to use the PVP index4 (Personal fulfillment, Value to the marketplace and Profitability) and give each market segment you serve a rating out of 10. P—Personal fulfillment: 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 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 “left over.”

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Put another way, the majority of your success comes from the top 4% of your actions. Or put yet another way, 96% of the stuff you do is a waste of time (comparatively). The most surprising thing is that the 80 /20 rule and 64 /4 rule still hold up in a remarkably accurate way. If you look at wealth distribution statistics from the last century, you’ll notice that the top 4% own about 64% of the wealth, and the top 20% own about 80% of the wealth.

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Direct response marketing is a particular branch of marketing that gives small businesses cut through and a competitive edge on a small budget. It’s designed to ensure you get a return on investment that is measurable.

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