The Marketing Channel AI Can’t Commoditize

0:00John Jantsch:So marketing output is way up everywhere, right? But results are kind of down. Phones are ringing less than they did two years ago. I wrote a book in 2010, and I think the answer to this challenge is sitting in that book that I wrote then. And I'll explain why AI has made that book possibly more relevant than ever. Hey, you want to keep up on all things duct tape marketing? the stuff I read, the books, the people I interview, check out the Duct Tape Marketing Newsletter. Every week, we're going to send you out. We're going to keep you up to date on what's going on in the world of marketing. And just for subscribing, you're going to get our free chat GPT prompts that will allow you or assist you in the creation of marketing strategies and plans.

0:52So check it out. It's at dtm.world slash news. That's dtm.world slash news.

1:09John Jantsch:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantz. I'm doing a solo show. Let's title this AI Just Made Referrals, Your Most Important Channel. So let's dig in. So as I said at the outset, AI has made competent marketing, cheap, passable marketing. Everyone can produce decent content, email ads, I mean, in an afternoon. Now, what nobody says is everybody's working harder than they did before because they're trying to manage the machine now. But the fact of the matter is everybody jumped in. Everybody sounds the same now. Buyers can tell you, can't really tell who's good or not good anymore.

1:52John Jantsch:The way that they search now, they're depending and relying on the AI engines to actually give them recommendations. Ad costs are doing two things. Ads are doing two things. It used to be a really reliable channel. Now ad costs are soaring and their effectiveness is way down. We certainly are seeing that with many of our clients and we're seeing it ourselves. But I think the biggest thing is that buyer behavior has changed. And I think that is going to really make a really shift in marketing from, you know, I talked about many years ago, I created the marketing hourglass. The idea being that, you know, most people focus on the front half or the top half of that.

2:32John Jantsch:No like trust, try that, you know, getting the phone to ring, getting leads generated. And I've said for many years that it's the back half of that. When somebody buys, when they repeat, when they refer, those are the stages of the buyer journey that we really need to be focused on today. It's hard to get chosen today with a lot of what's going on, the noise, just the fact that if AI doesn't include you in the shortlist, somebody may never come to your website or check you out. And so getting chosen has become more difficult. But what that really means, I think is instead of doubling down on getting chosen, maybe double down on retention, on repeat business with those ideal clients, and certainly on a systematic approach to referrals.

3:21John Jantsch:The top half of the hourglass, you know, the lead generation part has gotten really cheap, but it's gotten less effective. So again, as I said, the second half of the hourglass has become probably the most important element. You know, I told you in the intro that a book that I wrote in 2010, most people, certainly, if you were going to ask a lot of people that follow me at all, they would say, well, Dark Tape Marketing's your best book, right? Or your best selling book, or certainly the one you're known for. I mean, frankly, it's the name of this podcast. It's the name of my website. It's the name of my business, quite fair.

3:53John Jantsch:So, but however, the book that I wrote in 2010, The Referral Engine, teaching your business to market itself, is actually, in terms of pure numbers, my best-selling book. A lot of people wouldn't know that, but I think it really, it still sells well today. And I think what that really is a testament to is it's evergreen. The idea of referrals is evergreen. It doesn't take Twitter necessarily to get to a referral. And I think that that's really at the foundation of this because a referral is the most trusted lead in most cases. It's a lead that comes to you expecting to pay a premium or at least not price sensitive because somebody has told them, somebody they trust already, even if it was in a review of somebody they didn't know, talked about the fact that you solved that problem.

4:44John Jantsch:It was proof. You were just saying it in your marketing. Somebody else said it about you. And I think that that really leads people, because a lot of cases, people aren't that, they're not completely price sensitive, especially for trying to solve a big, expensive problem, but they're risk averse. And so it lowers the risk. And because of that, they're willing to pay more because let's face it, I mean, going with the low price leader involves a lot of risk if that's the only decision or that's the only data point that you're using. And so I think a lot of people are okay with paying more if they can actually feel that risk of a total failure.

5:24John Jantsch:And it's not just money. I mean, it's time, it's energy, it's what we've invested. We get pitched every single day, as I'm sure many of you do as well, on services that want to generate leads for us. and a lot of the pitches or a lot of the value proposition pitches that, hey, we'll generate 10 appointments and if they aren't good, you don't pay a thing. Well, it really kind of belies the fact that you put a ton of energy, you put a ton of your reputation into getting some sort of cold outreach thing going. And if it flops, okay, you didn't pay the service to do it, but now you've lost opportunity, you've lost time, maybe you've sullied your reputation in the process.

6:04John Jantsch:And I think a lot of people don't really talk about those types of costs when people are really pitching you. So here are three ideas from the book that I think matter the most now. People are wired to refer. I have said this for many years. Now, it's not everyone, but certainly a lot of people, if they've had a great experience, if they have something unexpected has happened to them along the way, they will talk about it. And so that's what I mean, we're wired to refer. There certainly are those people out there that are connectors. I mean, they get a lot of juice from that idea of being able to introduce people.

6:41John Jantsch:But I think the real thing is if somebody's had an exceptional experience, they are wired to talk about it. Most businesses that are doing anything halfway decent are getting some amount of referrals. It's unpredictable, it's accidental, you know, it's hope that they get those. And so what this book, what the book introduced is the idea that you need to create a system around it. It needs to be intentional. You need to have processes in place that actually make sure that you are taking advantage of your referability. I mean, this is not about tricking people into referring you. You've got to do that first half.

7:20John Jantsch:You've got to have a referable service. You have to be referable. But once you are, then you have to amplify that referability. And I think that's point number three. I kind of stepped on it. But I mean, I think that's really the key there is no amount of systems or processes or great copy are necessarily going to generate referrals if you're not referable. And a lot of that referability comes down to being able to communicate what it is that you do that would be of value to the person, like what's in it for them in a lot of ways, that's always going to be a consideration, even if what's in it for them is they just want to help their friend out, or maybe they just want to help you out.

8:03John Jantsch:But they've got to understand what that value exchange is going to be, is going to contain. This is a piece a lot of people miss. I mean, they miss this in marketing in general. Your value proposition or what you are going to do when you are referred has to be easy for them to understand and therefore easy for them to explain. You put those two things together, a system where you are actually asking for referrals and then a way to actually teach somebody why they should refer you and how they should refer you. And you really are very far along the path. Now, there are many other things that you can build into this.

8:41John Jantsch:You can build timing, like when to ask for referrals, especially with customers. There's always are going to be kind of moments of truth when you want to ask for them. You can build tools, you know, having web pages, they don't necessarily have to be open to the general public, but when somebody wants to refer you, just say, hey, send your friends to this page, make it really easy for them as well. And I, and, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to finish this with a few just kind of steps that I think everybody should take. But we actually, I want to tell you, I love customer referrals, but I think the real hidden opportunity that most people don't tap is in partner referrals.

9:21John Jantsch:So other businesses that have your same ideal client as a client or prospect aren't really the richest sources for referrals. And the reason I say that is because a good customer might know two or three people, two or three businesses they could refer you to. the right strategic partner business might have a hundred that they could refer you to over time. And so I think that is reason enough to really focus on that channel. And I think most people, when they think of referrals, they just go after their customers. And again, they know how brilliant you are. It's an obvious channel, but the real goal is if you could develop a system to go after businesses that could refer you as well.

10:07John Jantsch:So for one example, many of you know Mike McCallow, it's author of Profit First. He also has a network that's called the Prosper Network where he actually helps businesses turn their businesses around and grow them and apply a lot of the things from his books to those businesses. Well, he has seen that in many cases, a lot of their clients stumble because of marketing. They don't have a strategic approach to marketing. Hired agencies, they've hired people to do their marketing. And just because not everybody takes a strategic approach, it just feels like kind of tactic of the week. So Mike has started bringing businesses to us to actually do a strategic audit on their business, a marketing audit on their business, and then make recommendations that frankly have turned into fractional CFO or CMO engagements.

10:58John Jantsch:I think we're working with three businesses of his. There's another advisor group out there, business advisor group that is starting to send us businesses. So we formalized this. I mean, frankly, it came about because of the relationship that I have with Mike, as many things do. But we've now formalized this. So we actually have an offering. We have a web page for it. We're actually out there pitching other EOS implementers and profit-first professionals and fractional CFOs because they really are running up against the fact that marketing is always going to be a hurdle in trying to help a business grow and expand or exit.

11:35And so we can help them patch that.

11:38John Jantsch:And I think that a lot of it has to do with our approach. We are not just coming to them as a typical agency. I mean, our approach is more closely aligned with their business advising because we always start with strategy. But again, that's really just an example of a way that you can structure one of those that can really turn into a, in some cases, a very steady stream of referrals. Another kind of twist on the whole AI environment that we're in, testimonials, case studies, referrals, reviews. You know, all of these things have always been very important from a social proof standpoint. But increasingly, what you're seeing is people are turning to even the search engines, which are now very powered by AI, or they're turning to an actual AI model.

12:29John Jantsch:And they're putting very long, like, criteria. Here's what I'm looking for. Well, guess where a lot of those AI models are driving or deriving, you know, the recommendations? they're not necessarily like in the old days where it was like well you had the most authority you've done the best seos and now you're going to win they're actually diving deep into voice of customer what customers are saying in reviews what they're saying on social media sites what they're saying in reddit and they're using that to compile who those are so some of those businesses aren't necessarily the biggest or the been around the longest or have the most you know spend in marketing, a lot of cases, they're the ones that have really done a good job mining and amplifying what it is that their customers are actually saying.

13:14John Jantsch:So machines are talking to machines now to make a referral, if you want to look at it that way. And so a lot of the energy that you might spend on building assets around referrals, on amplifying your case studies, on getting video testimonials, those are actually going to be AI referral assets as well. So here's your homework. Ask three AI assistants who they'd recommend for your category and compare that to what your customers say. That's really where some of the gap's going to be. So track, here's another good exercise for you. Track the last 10 customer sources, like where they came from. And really think in terms of, you know, in the experience of onboarding, in the experience of getting that customer going?

14:01John Jantsch:Are there trackable moments or talkable moments where you could actually say, this is a place where we should start asking for a referral, for example. And then start thinking about who are those strategic partners out there? Some of whom you might actually be working with already in some cases that you could really start thinking about a formal program. If you want to learn more about our advisor program, how we've structured it to work with advisors, business advisors. It's just dtm.world slash BA, like business advisor. So dtm.world slash business advisor. So that's all I have for today. Hopefully this gets you thinking a little harder about the idea of referrals and what referrals, where the role that they're going to play and do play, I think in this AI era is going to become increasingly significant.

14:52John Jantsch:and I think just, I guess just go buy my book. That would be the easiest, fastest one. But actually, if you want us to design a system for you, if you are a business advisor and you'd like to learn how we can work with your clients, so those are all things that we'd love to do, just send us an email. All right, take care.