August has been a bit quiet as half the country seem to be off on holiday, so I spent some time reviewing my marketing. This normally results in zoning out within half an hour as even 15 years on, I still feel a bit ‘dirty’ when thinking about marketing my business. Allan Dib’s “The 1-page Marketing Plan” jumped out at me so I worked through that. It was £2 on Amazon.
Short and Sweet
I haven’t got the time or attention span to be reading endless cheesy anecdotes, so really appreciated The 1 Page Marketing Plan being straight to the point. It draws on Michael Gerber’s EMyth, Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and various other solid sources to back up his points, as well as his own successes. You’ll get through the reading in a couple of hours – the exercises need a bit more thought but it’s still very quick to work through.
There are worksheets and other materials for download as well as the blog on their site at https://successwise.com/
Clear, Easy Steps
The plan is broken down into three stages, with three steps per stage. This helicopter view was really useful and physically filling in the worksheet showed me where I need to focus my efforts. I’d already got many of the points covered but really benefitted from the explanation of percentages of people who are not interested, interested but not right now and ready to buy. The chapter on ‘lead magnets’ made me realise I haven’t been using these AT ALL and missing out on people who might be interested but just not yet!
There was a good point about following up on warm leads – that most of us give up after one or two ‘touches’ as we don’t want to come across as a pest. It can take up to nine contacts before someone buys, so we’re often bailing out and losing business.
Extra Resources
There’s also some absolute gold on their blog, including not posting links to my blog articles on LinkedIn, as those posts apparently get demoted from people’s feeds! (Don’t get me started on how much of a dumpster fire LinkedIn is..).
A free one page PDF of the marketing plan is available on their site to download and print off, or you can just draw your own; it’s that simple. There are some other freebies on that link to help you fill in your plan as well.
The ‘1 page marketing plan’ worksheet – a free download from their site
Ethics
This book advises against using the worn out old sales tactics that we’re all sick and tired of. Small business owners aren’t stupid, and we’ve seen high pressure sales tactics and marketing lies a hundred times over. The 1pmp rather promotes the idea of becoming a trusted advisor to your clients, and offering them value before working together. This really appealed to me as I don’t want to coerce or trick people into working together – we have to be a good fit for us to do our best work.
Building Systems
We’re all busy doing client work or selling our products, so getting round to our marketing can be an afterthought or as Dib calls them; Random Acts of Marketing. He talks about building marketing systems based on lead magnets to keep the enquiries coming in while we are busy doing the production work. Checklists, CRM systems and other tools can help us keep on top of things and maintain quality even when things are busy, helping us to deliver value to clients so they keep coming back and referring us to their networks.
Summary
I REALLY recommend the 1 Page Marketing Plan – it’s a quick, clear way to review your marketing efforts and make sure you’re making the most of your existing client base. I like it so much that I think I’m going to start working through this with clients to focus their message, and then design their websites around their plan.