MBA968 Must Read: The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib

Hey O welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show, your daily business podcast that helps you get better at business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and today's episode is a must Read episode on our Must Read Episodes. I share with you a book that I've read that has greatly influenced me as an entrepreneur, that's helped me in some way and I share with you its takeaways, its insights and why you should read it too. And today's must read is the One Page Marketing Plan by Alan Dibb. I stumbled upon this book by searching on Amazon for a good business book and it got rave reviews. I mean, I was reading every single review and each one of them was just loving what the book had to offer. This book really focuses on having a strategic plan when it comes to marketing your business. A lot of us when we're getting started, or even after we've gotten started or been in the game for a few years, we're not really sure how to market the business. Some of us just neglect marketing, thinking that if we build it, they will come. This book does a solid job explaining what marketing is, how to put a marketing plan together regardless of your budget, and how to scale up your marketing as you have more money to spend on it. There were so many simple yet priceless gems in this book when it came to marketing that I want to share with you in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode is supported by Acer Looking for a laptop that delivers on both performance and price. The Acer Swift 5 offers a powerful Intel Core processor, super slim design, and more. Discover new possibilities with the Acer Swift 5. Go to acer.com click on store and enter coupon code 100 MBA at checkout to receive 10% off plus free ground shipping on a Swift series laptop, including already discounted models. Offer valid through April 30, 2018 and limit to one per qualified order. Windows hello, the password is you. Windows 10 the one page marketing plan is a great book if you know a bit about marketing but don't know where to start. You know you have to market your business, you know you need to market your products, but you just don't know where to concentrate your efforts so you are spending your money wisely. One of the first Things he addresses in the book is what marketing actually is. A lot of us confuse it with advertising or sales, but marketing is really just the whole system in getting somebody to buy your product. So. So that means inside of marketing, there are so many components like advertising, like sales, like webinars, like Facebook ads, like sales copy. All that kind of stuff is inside of your marketing plan. So the best way to look at it is like marketing is a system. It's kind of like the word fitness. What exactly is fitness? Well, fitness is eating right, it's doing the right exercises, it's cardiovascular work, like running and jogging, but it's also lifting weights to build muscle. And in order to be fit, you have to have a fitness plan. So that's a really good parallel when it comes to marketing. Now, Alan Dibb is a straight shooter in this book. He really lets you know that businesses that know how to market rarely fail. Now, I've seen a lot of businesses in my time, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that he's got a point. It's true. There are a lot of businesses with great products, with great customer service, with an amazing website, but they go out of business because they just don't know how to market their business. And I've actually seen the opposite. People with a mediocre product, with not so great customer service and a hideous website, and they're making seven and eight figures because they really go to town when it comes to their marketing plan. They make marketing a priority. And it makes complete sense. If you're not constantly getting new customers, you're in trouble. To survive in the business world, you got to constantly be acquiring new customers. And that's why a marketing plan is so important. He emphasizes this at the start of the book to pump you up and say, hey, you got to really focus on this. This is important. It can make or break your business. Now, even though this is called the one page marketing plan, the book is not one page, obviously. But early on in the book, he shows you his marketing canvas. It's a one page kind of layout guide. And there's different boxes on this one page. And it shows you how all the different elements work together to have your marketing plan. Then he explains that one page plan throughout the book. Now, I mentioned boxes in that one page marketing plan. So he's got nine distinct steps and three phases in this one page marketing plan. So imagine nine boxes in each phase. You guess it has three boxes and actually color codes it red, yellow, and green. This may not be obvious if you're reading on a Kindle. And he does this for a reason. He says that most great stories, plays, books, movies, they're broken up into what's called a three act structure. So he breaks down the book into three acts or these three phases. And he does this for a reason. Because, hey, you're going to do the same thing with your marketing. Why? Because whether we recognize it or not, our minds have been trained throughout life to receive information in three acts. Even when we were a child and we were told fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, which has three acts to the latest movie that you just saw. I just saw Black Panther. And that has three acts, right? If you look back at the last movie you saw, you'll notice there are three acts set up. Conflict resolution. I love this because it's kind of meta. He practices what he preaches in the book and in the delivery of the information of the book. Now, one of the reasons why I highly recommend this book and love it so much is that in each step, as he goes through each step, he gives lots of great examples of how to implement that step. He doesn't just give you theory, he gives you practical examples, which really helps. It really helps you understand what he's talking about and really relate it to your own business. In this book, he doesn't only just give you all the different steps to your marketing plan, but he also takes a step back and asks the question, are you in the right market? Maybe you should niche down. He gives examples of how to niche down to make your life a little bit easier. Now, when he says niche down, he doesn't necessarily mean change your product or service. He means when you speak to people niche down to the group you speak to so you can resonate with them directly. Rather than trying to speak to a large wide group of people, you're not going to be able to resonate with them. You got to be laser focused when you're marketing. Now some other things he touches on in the book, he doesn't go into extreme detail, but enough just to get your feet wet and understand the importance of each topic. Things like sales copy, things like SEO, blogging, Google AdWords. He talks about how these things can really be used in your marketing plan. To be quite honest, this isn't going to a level of depth where you can actually like, implement some of these things like AdWords or SEO. But he shows you the importance and how you can utilize them. So therefore, you can go on and read another book that's specific on SEO and in fact that's exactly what happened to me. I came across how he was explaining how SEO can really help your marketing plan in certain ways. And I thought I need to get a better handle on understanding the ins and outs of of SEO. And I've been doing SEO or understand SEO for over a decade. But I need a refresher. I need to know what's the latest thing when it comes to SEO. So I actually looked up a book that I will be reading and reviewing here on the show in a future must read on SEO. So look over that now. I mentioned nine steps and I want to read them to you right now. Just read them out so you can understand what these steps are like or what they are. But obviously you're going to have to read the book to know the ins and outs. It's going to take a lot more than me just saying the title of each step, but it's gonna give you an idea of how this all comes together. Number one, my target market. Number two, my message to my target market. Number three, the media I will use to reach my target market. Number four, my lead capture system. Number five, my lead nurturing system. Number six, my sales conversion strategy. Number seven, how I deliver a world class experience. Number eight, how I increase my customer lifetime value. And number nine, how I orchestrate and stimulate referrals. So I hope I got you interested to read the book and read every chapter on each of these steps. Now one of the things I want to mention is that the magic of this book is not like, wow, this is game changing stuff. A lot of stuff that he mentions in this book that we've covered in the $100 MBA in different episodes. But he actually just lays it out in a system that's easy to digest. After you go through the book, you're kind of like, okay, this is not that complex. I can have a marketing plan. I can be good at this. This is a great case for excellent delivery of content. As a former teacher, I gotta give Alan Dib an A when it comes to that. I got more. When it comes to today's must read. The one page marketing plan by Alan Dibb. I actually got a few more gems I want to share with you. But before that, I gotta give love to today's sponsor. Here's an Interesting stat. 1/4th of all Americans say they'd start their own business in the next year if they could. But only a fraction of those actually do. Why? Well, because taking that leap can be very scary. Luckily, there's Weebly we've mentioned Weebly a whole bunch of times on this show. Weebly is the easiest way to create an incredible looking website. But more importantly, it's a whole E commerce platform packed with tools to help you sell your products, process payments, manage inventory, create marketing campaigns, tell your brand's story, and a whole lot more. Weebly's mission is to help turn people's great ideas into successful online businesses. You see, that's the key here. Yes, you want a beautiful website, but you want to make sure you have a successful online business on your hands. This is why Weebly focuses on providing top notch customer service. If you have a question, you can just pick up the phone and talk to an expert. Many of whom have started online businesses themselves. This shows Weevly knows their success comes from the success of their customers. So if you have a product idea you want to share with the world, check out Weebly. You can have a beautiful, powerful online store up and running in a matter of hours. And because you're listening to this podcast, you can visit weebly.com mba and get 15% off your first purchase. That's weebly. W E-E-B-L-Y.com mba to get 15% off your first purchase. Don't just build a beautiful website, build a successful online business with Weebly. Alright, before we wrap up on today's must read, I want to share with you a few gems I really loved from this book. The first one is be a farmer, not a hunter. I love this analogy. When it comes to your marketing, don't try to just get somebody to buy right away. Take your time to nurture the customer. Get them on your email list, Give them great value, build a relationship with them. It's like harvesting for the winter, right? This is like planting the seeds and really enriching your soil so that later on in spring and summer everything blooms and you're able to harvest, right? And this leads to my second gem which is don't be too eager to sell. Don't try to close the sale as soon as you meet somebody. Some of us, we just want to make an offer right away and we want to hard sell people right away. Hey, they're finally listening to me or opening up an email. I'm going to make an offer right now. Chill out, Give them some time to enjoy being on your website, enjoy reading your emails, understanding what you're all about. Most people are just kind of confused about what they actually need or want, so let them sort that out first via your great value and information. Feel like you really helped them and then after that, make the offer. And the last gem is think about your customers or your potential customers as a tribe. Think about building a community of raving fans. Think of the best companies out there, whether it's Apple or Tesla or Starbucks or whatever. They have a loyal fan base, they have loyal customers, people that just absolutely love them. They are evangelists, they are their best marketers, they're the best salespeople on the Starbucks team. And they don't pay them right, they actually get paid right. Starbucks gets money when they buy coffee, right? But the point here is, is that when you focus on that, where you get a group of people that just are in love with everything you do, they will knock down your doors just to buy the latest thing. There are people out there that just love Samsung. Anytime Samsung comes out with a new phone, you know they just released what the Samsung S9. And even though the S9 is not that different from the S8, it's an upgrade. But people are dying to buy it because again, raving fans. So cultivate that community. A lot of that has to do with your product, but it also has to do with your marketing and nurturing the people that come into your business. Whether it's by consuming something for free like a video course or an ebook, or just simply visiting your website. I highly recommend you pick up the one page marketing plan by Alan Dibb. Very well written, very strategic, very easy to read, laid out, very nice and simple for you to follow. If you want to improve your marketing quickly, this is the easiest way to do it. Even if you've been doing some marketing with your business for some time, this is a great refresher and a great way to kind of reorganize your mind. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 MBA show. Every other Monday I do a must read. If you have a book you want to recommend, you want to say, hey, I just read this book, you got to read it. If you haven't read it yet, email me over at omar100mba.net, I'd love to hear your book recommendations. Alright guys, hit subscribe on your podcast app right now. You don't want to miss an episode. Tomorrow we're going to be talking about should you buy a physical business? If you look at any classified ad section, whether it's online, offline, Craigslist, whatever. People are selling physical businesses all the time. Whether it's a cafe or a massage place or a bowling alley or of course a restaurant. Should you take one over? Should you buy a physical business, should you? Is this a good idea or not? We'll talk about it in tomorrow's episode. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss it. That's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Marketing can be overwhelming. I'm going to tell you that right now. This book reduces that feeling of overwhelm in a great way. I think it's one of the best books I've seen in showing you the whole picture of marketing. And when you're implementing those nine steps, your marketing plan, take a deep breath. Understand that you have to take it step by step. And there's only so much you could do in one day. Try your best and just stay on course. And once you set up your plan, it's gonna be a whole lot easier for you to tweak it afterwards. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 MBA show. I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take. Sam.