Business Made Simple: 60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity and More (Made Simple Series)

by Donald Miller

To understand how to create a marketing plan that works, then, we have to understand how relationships work. All relationships move through three stages (see Figure 6.1). FIGURE 6.1 When people first meet us, they are either curious to know more about us or they are not. The same is true with brands and with products. People either want to know more or they don’t. And, sometimes, it takes a few times of seeing your brand before people are willing to engage.

Curiosity Whether people are curious about you or your brand depends on whether they can associate you with their survival.

Human beings are designed to survive and are constantly running data they encounter through a mental filter. Can this product help me survive and thrive? Will a relationship with this person help me feel safer or give me more resources so I can more easily succeed in the world?

In order to pique somebody’s curiosity, then, we have to associate our products or services with their survival.

Survival can be anything from saving money, making money, meeting new people, learning more healthy recipes, experiencing much-needed rest, gaining status, and more. Nearly any product or service can be associated with the customer’s survival.

Enlightenment After piquing your customers’ curiosity, it’s time to enlighten them about whether or not we really can help them survive. Enlightening a customer about how your product can help them survive simply means telling them how. How does this product work to help me survive? How much better will my life look if I use this product? What have other people said about this product? After customers get interested in our product because we made them curious, we can slow down our communication a little and enlighten them about how the product works.

Commitment A commitment happens in a relationship when a person is willing to take a risk on another person or a product they believe will help them survive.

Relationships take time. If we ask for a commitment before we pique somebody’s curiosity or enlighten them about our product, they will walk away. We must slowly, over time, pique our customer’s curiosity, enlighten them about our product, and then ask them for a commitment.

The Marketing Made Simple sales funnel, which I’ll introduce you to over the next four days, will build a relationship with your customer slowly and naturally so they are more likely to trust you and place an order.

FIGURE 6.2 Once you know how to create a sales funnel, you will be able to execute a marketing plan that earns your customers’ trust, builds strong relationships, and grows your brand.

Learn to create a sales funnel that works so you can build strong relationships with customers.

DAY THIRTY-THREE How to Create a Marketing Campaign—Write a One-Liner That Generates Sales A great marketer knows how to craft a one-liner.

As I talked about in the introduction to this section, the key to piquing somebody’s curiosity is to associate your product or service with their survival. And there’s a foolproof formula for doing that.

Your one-liner has three components: 1.A problem 2.Your product as a solution 3.The result

Your one-liner is the closest thing you’ll ever create to a magical sentence that causes people to want to do business with you.

Here’s Today’s Business Made Simple Tip of the Day As the first element of your marketing plan, pique a customer’s curiosity by creating a one-liner.

DAY THIRTY-FOUR How to Create a Marketing Campaign—Wire-Frame an Effective Website A great marketer knows how to wire-frame a...

Your website must pass the grunt test. Most people do not read websites, they scan them.

What do you offer? 2.How will it make my life better? 3.What do I need to do to buy it?

Here’s Today’s Business Made Simple Tip of the Day As the second element of your marketing plan, learn to wire-frame a website that passes the grunt test.

DAY THIRTY-FIVE How to Create a Marketing Campaign—Collect Email Addresses A great marketer captures email addresses by offering free value.

Whatever you offer, make sure the value is clear. Here are some rules for creating something people will exchange for an email address: 1.Make it short. You don’t have to write an entire book or film a full-length documentary. 2.Give it a cover. Dress it up so the outside looks like it has as much value as you’ve put on the inside. White papers don’t collect very many email addresses. 3.Make it solve a specific problem. People will give their email addresses in exchange for something that lessens frustration or pain in their lives.

Here’s Today’s Business Made Simple Tip of the Day As the third element of your marketing plan, create a lead generator that captures email addresses.

DAY THIRTY-SIX How to Create a Marketing Campaign—Email Your Customers A great marketer builds relationships and closes the sale with an email campaign.

Creating an email campaign gives you the chance to spend quantity time with your customers. Slowly, over a period of weeks, months, and perhaps even years, your customers become accustomed to hearing from you, receiving free value, and begin to trust you. Trust, of course, leads to commitment.

After downloading or watching your lead generator, customers should continue to receive incredible value from having given you their email address. You should continue to solve their problems, encourage them, inspire and inform them.

After offering a lead generator, craft as many valuable emails as you can and stay in touch with your customers. Offer recipes, study guides, DIY tips, perspectives on ideas, whatever you think will serve your customers’ concerns and interests.

When you stay in touch with your customers by sending them valuable emails, they trust you. And when they trust you, they commit and place orders.

Here’s Today’s Business Made Simple Tip of the Day As the fourth element of your marketing plan, start an email campaign that earns your custome...

To give a good presentation, we need to understand the five questions every audience secretly wants a presenter to answer. If you don’t answer these five questions, the audience will tune out. If you do answer them, and you answer them creatively and memorably, the audience will like your presentation.

The five questions are: 1.What problem are you going to help the audience solve? 2.What is your solution to the problem? 3.What will my life look like if I take you up on your solution? 4.What do you want the audience to do next? 5.What do you want the audience to remember?

DAY THIRTY-SEVEN How to Be a Great Communicator—Give a Great Presentation Open your talk by telling the audience what problem you are going to help them solve.

An audience will not be interested in your presentation until they know you are going to do one thing: Help them solve a problem. Until you state the problem you are going to help an audience solve, they will wonder: 1.What is this presentation about? 2.Why should we listen to this presentation? 3.Does the speaker even have the authority to be up there?

Instead of opening with an introduction, open with the problem. I speak all the time and I never introduce myself when I first start talking. I introduce myself in the middle of the talk or even at the end. Or, better yet, I just have the announcer introduce me. Why? Because why should I assume anybody cares who I am until they know I can solve an important problem?

When you open your presentation by talking about a problem, you hook the audience. When you don’t open with a problem, the audience sits and wonders why they should be listening.

Here’s Today’s Business Made Simple Tip of the Day A great communicator starts their presentation by talking about the problem their pres...

DAY THIRTY-EIGHT How to Be a Great Communicator—Create Subpoints in Your Presentation A great communicator makes sure all the subpoints in their presentation fit within th...

Once you open your talk by stating the problem you will help the audience solve, they will continue to listen to you if you do two things: 1.Reveal a simple plan to help your audience solve their problem. 2.Position e...

When you opened a story loop by clearly defining the problem, you defined the plot of your presentation. The plot of your talk is the controlling idea. Once you define the problem you will help the audience solve, everything else in the presentation needs to fit within the topic of that problem being solved.

That doesn’t mean you can’t fit a bunch of other ideas into your talk. It’s just that you have to find a way for the other topics to fit within the boundaries of your plot.

Once we’d chosen the problem, also called “the plot” of the presentation, we needed to get into the plan and the plan needed to have about three (and no more than four) subpoints.

If you intend to cover any more than four subpoints to your major point, your presentation is going to drag. In fact, I recommend no more than three subpoints.

The plot of the story opens a giant story loop by asking a question that is interesting enough that it makes us pay attention for two hours. The subplots of the story, then, are minor questions that get asked and answered during that same two hours that keep an audience interested by moving the action forward.