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

by Allan Dib

Chapter 1 Summary

Highlights covered in this chapter include: Why targeting everyone with your product or service is a terrible idea Why mass marketing can be harmful to your business and cost you far more than it makes you How to use the “PVP index” to select your perfect target market Why you should focus on a niche and become a big fish in a small pond How to make price irrelevant Why you should stop advertising a long list of products and services How to go deep into the mind of your prospect so you can understand exactly what they want

Selecting Your Target Market

It’s Not E...

To be a successful small business marketer you need laser-like focus on a narrow target market, sometimes called a niche.

Niching—Harnessing the Power of Focus

A niche is a tightly defined portion of a subcategory. For example, think of the health and beauty category.

This is a tightly defined niche. Now you may be thinking why on earth would we want to limit our market so much? Here’s why: You have a limited amount of money. If you focus too broadly, your marketing message will become diluted and weak.

The other critical factor is relevance. The goal of your ad is for your prospects to say, “Hey that’s for me.”

Being all things to all people leads to marketing failure.

understand that each category of service is a separate campaign. Targeting a tight niche allows you to become a big fish in a small pond. It allows you to dominate a category or geography in a way that is impossible by being general.

The type of niches that you want to go after are “an inch wide and a mile deep.” An inch wide meaning it is a very highly targeted subsection of a category. A mile deep meaning there’s a lot of people looking for a solution to that specific problem. Once you dominate one niche, you can expand your business by ...

Now you can have all the advantages of being highly targeted without limiting the potent...

Niching Makes Price I...

If you had just suffered a heart attack, would you prefer to be treated by a general doctor or a heart specialist? Of course you’d choose the specialist. Now if you had a consultation with the heart specialist, would...

How did price suddenly become irrelevant? That is the beauty of serving a niche.

A specialist is sought after rather than shopped on price. A specialist is much more highly respected than a jack-of-all-trades. A specialist is paid handsomely to solve a specific problem for their target market.

Trying to target everyone really means that you’re targeting no one. By going too broad you kill your “specialness” and become a commodity bought on price.

By narrowly defining a target market that you can wow and deliver huge results for, you become a specialist.

Dominate a niche, then once you own it, do the same with another and then another. But never do so all at once. Doing so dilutes your message and your marketing power.

How to Identify Your Ideal Customer

These are vastly different market segments. 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.

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?

Remember it’s not about the “turnover,” it’s all about the “left over.”

For our photographer example, his PVP index may look as follows:

The ideal customer for the photographer is people wanting family portraits. They are the most fun and profitable, highest-value and best-paying types of customers.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t take on work outside your ideal target market; however, for now, our marketing efforts will be directed at one ideal market segment.

Who is your ideal target market? Be as specific as possible about all the attributes that may be relevant. What is their gender, age, geography?

Homework

Do you have a picture of them? If so, cut out or print a picture of them when you think about and answer the following questions: What keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up in their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling? What are they afraid of? What are they angry about? Who are they angry at? What are their top daily frustrations? What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or lives? What do they secretly, ardently desire most? Is there a built-in bias in the way they make decisions? For example, engineers are exceptionally analytical. Do they have their own language or jargon they use? What magazines do they read? What websites do they visit? What’s this person’s day like? What’s the main dominant emotion this market feels? What is the ONE thing they crave above all else?

Homework

Create an Avatar

An avatar is a detailed exploration and description of your target customer and their life. Like a police sketch artist, you piece together a composite that creates a vivid picture of them in your mind. It helps tell their story so that you can visualize life from their perspective.

Hopefully, by now, you can see how powerful avatars are. They are the marketing equivalent of method acting. They get you right into the mind of your prospect, a perspective that is going to be absolutely crucial when it comes to crafting your message to your target market.

Chapter 1 Action Item: Who Is Your Target Market? Fill in square #1 of your 1-Page Marketing Plan canvas.

Chapter 2 Summary

Highlights covered in this chapter include: Why most advertising is totally useless and what to do instead How to stand out from the crowd even when you’re selling a commodity Why you should never compete solely on price How to craft a compelling offer for your target market Examples of some of the most successful advertising headlines in history How to enter the mind of your prospect and join the conversation going on in there How to effectively name your business, product or service

Crafting Your Message An Accident Waiting to Happen

You could summarize the structure of most ads from small businesses as follows: Company name Company logo A laundry list of services offered Claims of best quality, best service or best prices Offer of a “free quote” Contact details It’s basically name, rank, and serial number. Then they hope and pray that on the very day their ad runs, a prospect in immediate need of their product or service stumbles across it and takes action. This is what I call “marketing by accident.”

It’s like these businesses are visiting a slot machine in a casino. They put their money in, pull the handle and hope for a jackpot—but most of the time the house just takes their money.

It’s time to start marketing on purpose—treating advertising like a vending machine where the results and value generated are predictable, rather than like a slot machine where the results are random, and the odds are stacked against you. To start marketing on purpose, we need to look at two vital elements: What is the purpose of your ad? What does your ad focus on?

These are all very different, and you cannot possibly do all of these with one ad.

My rule of thumb is one ad, one objective.

Once your objective is clear, you need to communicate it to your reader. What exactly do you want them to do next? Do they call your toll-free number to order? Do they call you or visit your website to request a free sample? Do they request a free report? You need a very clear call to action—not something wimpy and vague like “don’t hesitate to call us.”

You need to be clear about what they should do next and what they will get in return. Also, give them multiple ways to take that action. For example, if the call to action is to order your product, give them the ability to do it online, over the phone or even via a mail-in coupon. Different people have different preferences when it comes to the modality of communication. Give them multiple means of response so they can choose the one they are most comfortable with.

most advertising by small businesses is inwardly focused. Instead of speaking to the needs and problems of the prospect, it is focused on self-aggrandizement.

Don’t be the advertising equivalent of that guy at the party obliviously talking about himself the whole night while his uninterested audience looks for the exit. Also, don’t leave anything to chance. Know exactly what you want your ad to achieve and the exact action you want your prospect to take.

Developing a Unique Selling Proposition

The problem is that these businesses are just another “me too” business.

Here’s the thing: the chance of you getting your marketing perfectly right—message to market and media match—on the first go is impossibly small. Even the most experienced marketer will tell you they hardly ever hit a home run on their first go. It takes several iterations. It takes testing and measuring to finally get your message to market and media match right.

If you haven’t first clarified in your mind why your business exists and why people should buy from you rather than your nearest competitor, marketing will be an uphill battle.