Busy Marketing, Empty Pipeline? Here’s Why | 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success - Episode 2

0:00You know, most small businesses don't have a marketing problem. They have a strategy problem underneath the marketing. I wrote a new workbook called Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success that walks through exactly how to fix it. From getting clear as a founder, all the way to running marketing like an operating system. 20 years of working with small businesses condensed into a framework you can actually use. And right now, it's only five bucks. Go grab it at dtm.world slash seven steps. That's dtm.world slash seven steps.

0:46John Jantsch:Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz. And again, no guests. This is actually, if you've been playing along, you know that I'm doing a series of seven podcast episodes based on the seven steps to small business marketing success, which is a new workbook program framework that we have created. You can find it at dtm.world slash seven steps. So if you did not listen to episode one, you can go to Duct Tape Marketing, go to the podcast tab and find episode number one if you'd like. It's obviously on Apple and all the other places that you get your podcasts.

1:26John Jantsch:This is episode number two. And today I am going to talk about one of my favorite topics, and that is random acts of marketing. So I think it's just a hopefully lighthearted way to name what is a common affliction, if you will, with a lot of small business owners. We see somebody doing something, we go to a conference, we read a book, and next thing we know, we're telling the team, we need to do this. And we do that for a while or two, and then we change our mind. So that's what random acts of marketing really is. And a lot of times it comes not as a budget problem, not as an effort problem. It's really a foundation problem.

2:06John Jantsch:So a lot of times we'll sit around and say our marketing is busy, but nothing adds up. Ever said that? We're doing a lot of things, but it's not adding up. Every vendor that you hire, somebody do SEO, somebody do content, somebody do ads, they all have a different plan. They're all just executing the way they want to execute rather than around a cohesive plan that you or the business is somehow directing. We're doing a lot, but the pipeline's not only unpredictable, but we're not closing as much business. Maybe we're even getting leads, but they're the wrong leads. These are all symptoms, really diagnostic symptoms, I guess would be the way to talk about it.

2:48John Jantsch:I mean, they're not character flaws. So please, if random acts of marketing sounds harsh, it's not you. It's really, in a lot of cases, what you've been told, what you've seen, the advice you've gotten from marketers. So I really want to position it that way because let's talk about what would help fix that idea. And it really comes down to something that I have been saying for really more than 30 years now. That strategy needs to come before tactics. And that's really been the basis of my body of work, if you will. Everybody that hires our firm hires us to, or is at least going to receive a part of the engagement that we call strategy first.

3:30John Jantsch:And it really has very set components. It has a very set purpose that really can then inform any of the tactics or any of the acts of marketing now that will now be intentional acts of marketing rather than random. So first element, I'm going to talk about really the three core elements, and that is your ideal client, not who you're trying to attract, what demographic are you trying to attract, you're trying to attract anybody who has money, but it's really an exploration into what would make an ideal client. In fact, a lot of times I will tell people, okay, think of your existing clients today or clients you've had over the years and picture one or two or three that you would easily say, I would take that kind of client every day because they had the right problem.

4:22John Jantsch:They had the right attitude, the right beliefs. We were able to solve that problem. We were able to deliver a tremendous amount of value very profitably. Those are the elements that really go into an ideal client profile. file. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will never take anything else as part of your business, but it's a specific, it might be a set of demographics. I mean, if you are in a certain geographic space and you sell to a certain type of buyer, you can demographically have some elements there, but it's also going to be about the problem that you're uniquely suited to solve really better than any alternatives.

5:02John Jantsch:It's going to be about their specific situation. And sometimes that can be a 25-year-old demographic and a 65-year-old demographic. It's that they had the same issue or challenge. So a lot of times people get really stuck on trying to define an age or a gender or a lifestyle or a income. And it really is much more than that. Those can be components of it, but you really have to get a handle on what problems you can uniquely solve, right? So I'm going to use a home service example. It might be people that have been in their homes for 20 years. They certainly live in certain zip codes. They are thinking about doing something like aging in place, for example.

5:44John Jantsch:Those are ways that we start kind of refining and narrowing this ideal client. And what happens then is then you could start making decisions, ads, even photos, pricing, content. Everything that you are offering, you know, aligns to that person and to the problem that you solve for that person. You know, I've spent over 20 years watching good businesses waste money on marketing that doesn't add up. And usually the problem isn't the tactics. It's the missing foundation underneath them all. So I put the whole system in a new workbook called Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. Seven steps, the right order with everything you need to build that actually competes You can pick it up right now for five bucks at dtm.world slash seven steps.

6:34That's dtm.world slash seven steps.

6:39John Jantsch:There's a saying about niches, and I think a lot of people lose, what's the saying? The riches are in the niches. I guess it should be reaches are in the niches. I don't know. Riches are in the niches. the idea that people had with that was that they had to narrowly define an industry or a certain type of person. And again, what I'm suggesting is that you focus more on the messaging of the problem that you solve and not necessarily industry. I mean, in some cases, an industry makes sense, but even inside of that industry, you focus on the client that has, or the client that at least the problem you solve resonates.

7:19John Jantsch:I talk about that. So the second component then And even if you've narrowly defined who you serve and you're starting to communicate that, the second component is, well, why are you? I mean, how are you different? Or, you know, what can you do that is different than what everyone else claims, right? So quality, service, experience. I mean, those aren't differentiators because even if it's not true, it's pretty darn easy for somebody to claim. The real challenge is to then understand in the voice of the customer, what are they saying? How you're different? How are they communicating the problem that you solve for them?

7:58John Jantsch:That's going to be one of the real challenges. And this is a really great place to start. And the beauty of this is that in many cases, you can find this information. We've for many years done interviews with our clients' clients. That's a great place to start. But in this day and age, people go and they make reviews and they make comments and they participate in places like Reddit. And so they're actually sharing, even without you asking in a lot of cases, most cases, frankly, they're sharing what they believe is the problem that you're solving for them. So we need to really focus on that differentiation and start communicating that.

8:37John Jantsch:And then the last piece is what I have just called for years your core message. And this is going to be one sentence, customer language. Is it clear? Is it different? Is it credible? And it's not about here's what we do. It's not a clever tagline. A core message is very clear that says, you know, this is who we serve. this is the problem we solve for them and this is how we solve it. So the challenge with it in many years of doing this with folks is there's a real temptation to want to say everything that you do or why you're great. And this is really about, you know, we, like for us, I mean, in duct tape marketing, what I tell people is that we install small business marketing systems.

9:23John Jantsch:And that is a huge differentiator, believe it or not. It certainly identifies who we serve, but it also communicates the difference. Now, if I were taking a longer version of that, I would say so that businesses can stop guessing and performing random acts of marketing and start really focusing on what actually moves the needle. So the last component then of a strategy first is something we call the marketing hour of us. So any long-time duct tape marketing listeners know that that is our version of the customer journey. there are seven behaviors. A lot of people call them stages. I like to refer to them as behaviors that businesses or buyers want to participate in, and they are know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer.

10:11John Jantsch:And we have to really think in terms of, it's not enough to say, okay, we're going to run an ad so somebody can come to know us. We have to actually then intentionally plan out the steps where we can activate the behavior of like and trust, and that they might be able to try what it would be you'd like to work with us. And obviously, we want to keep the buying decision or the buying experience just as high as everything that led them to that. And then after they become a customer, what are we going to do to surprise and delight them and turn them into advocates? Those are all intentional marketing activities that can come directly out of developing this marketing strategy.

10:47So you can get this full framework.

10:50John Jantsch:This is session number two. I'm going going to do five more sessions on this. Hopefully you'll get a chance to listen to the entire series. But if you want to also get the companion workbook that goes with this, it's at dtm.world slash seven steps. So dtm like duct tape marketing dot world slash seven steps. So here's what I would give you as your challenge today. Think about your ideal customer. Again, you may not have defined it yet, but think about, let's hope you have one or two of those, right? So think about who that ideal customer is if you could go out and find more of them. And think about the problem that you really solve for them, not the service or product that you provide, the problem that they are trying to solve when they engage you.

11:35John Jantsch:And think about what would be a core message that you could actually write for them. So that's your homework today. And hopefully we will see you out there on the road someday, but also in episode number three or step number three of the seven steps to marketing success.