Joe: 00:04 Hey guys. Joe Troyer here from digital triggers and show me the
nuggets and I’m super excited to have none other than Alan Dibb here hanging out with us today on today’s podcast. For those of you guys that don’t know, Allen, I originally heard Alan on a podcast with James Schramko and I was speaking with James and he’s like, man, you’ve got to have Alan on the podcast. So Alan is the author of the one page marketing plan. He’s a bestselling author. And I’m just super excited to bring him on, pick his brain and, and share with you guys everything that Alan is up to. So man, without further ado, welcome to the show
Allan: 00:39 A Joe. Pleasure to be on the show.
Joe: 00:42 Awesome brother. So I’m really excited, but before we kind of dig in deep, I got some very pointed questions to ask you, but before we kinda dive deep, would you give us a little background of how you ended up, where you’re at today and how you ended up, you know, running the, the one page marketing plan and success wise?
Allan: 01:00 Yeah. So I, I started my business life as a dead-broke it geek, like
in the words of Michael Gerber, I had an entrepreneurial seizure. A lot of people will probably be familiar with that. And you know, I was a, I was a tech geek, really good at what I did. And I figured, why do I need to work for this stupid boss? A, I’ll start my own business. Right? So, and I thought, that’s all, that’s all this smarts you need. You need to know what you’re doing technically. And that’s about it. Right? So, and then the, the customers are gonna come flooding into, to my a shock and surprise. And that probably shows you how naive I was at the time. The customers did not flood in. I mean, the few customers that I had that came to me by referral they loved the work that me and my business partner at the time did.
Allan: 01:46 And we loved working with them, but we just simply didn’t have
enough of them. And so I struggled for many, many years with this. And you know, I was so naive and in fact I distinctly remember a conversation I was having with my business partner at the time. We were walking to lunch and I said to him, you know, we’ve got a great business, we’ve got really good margins, the customers, we’ve got to love us. And there’s just a little thing. Sales and marketing we haven’t quite cracked. So once we do do this little thing we’ll have all our problems will be solved. And you know, I was mixing up major and minor. I thought the technical stuff, the tech stuff that we were doing
was the major thing and this little thing called sales and marketing was the minor thing. And you know, they kept me broke for many, many years.
Allan: 02:28 And so I, it probably took me a, a decade to really change my
mindset and learn marketing, learn how to get customers in the door reliably. And when I did that, that everything changed for me. You know, I built a business to be a national business. I exited for more money than I’d ever seen in my life. And then I did it again. I started a new startup, a new technology startup after that. And that was a really rapid growth journey. We went from zero to four years later being one of Australia’s top 100 fastest growing companies. And then I exited that and now I’m, I’m helping business owners do the same. I’m helping them with their marketing and really, really simplifying the complex when it comes to marketing.
Joe: 03:10 Perfect, man, you on pack so much. I’m excited to dive in there. So it seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like the, the one-page marketing plan really blew up kind of your personal following, is that correct?
Allan: 03:23 Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So I was [inaudible] even prior to
that, I, I I, I was well known in my industry and I I had some good traction, but no doubt the, the book definitely lit a fire under that for sure.
Joe: 03:36 Cool. So thinking about the one page business plan, Allen, like
what, what do you think are the problems, right, that a business face faces when they don’t go through that process? Or they don’t create a business plan. I mean, I work with so many agencies and I work with so many e-comm owners and business owners and when I ask them what their business plan looks like, like they have no idea and I’m not asking for a 34 page, you know, a long business plan, but just like, where’s the outlook, where are you going? And man, I got like none of them have any idea. Like, and when you ask two founders or two co founders, they have very different stories and ideas of where they’re going.
Allan: 04:10 Well, you raise a, a perfect, perfect point there. And you know,
the discussion I often have with business owners is, you know, imagine your boarding an airplane. You’re about to take a flight from wherever you are to somewhere else and you overhear the pilot and the copilot chitchatting and the, the copilot says, Hey you’ve got the flight plan. And the copilot says, ah, don’t worry about the flight plan. We know how to get there. Right. You know, and wouldn’t you freak out and get off that plane?
Because there’s a high chance that you might not make it to the other other side. And so businesses exactly the same you know, you, there is so much riding on it, there are you, there’s yourself, your family, your income, your community, your employees. All of those things are, are at risk and very often people do not have a plan for how to get to the other side.
Allan: 05:05 And so this is where the planning process comes in. And I think
where people kind of get a little bit freaked out is they see these 20, 30, 40 page business plans and they think too hard, too difficult, too expensive and, and they’re right. That was my experience with first in my first business. I had an expensive consultant to help me take me through the business planning process. And then I ended up with a big thick document. It had charts, it had projections, it had graphs, all of that sort of cool stuff. And it was pretty useless. I shoved it in the top drawer of my desk, never saw it again ever again until we were moving out of their office and I tossed it in the, in the trash. And so when I was working with clients again, I wanted them to have clarity by creating a plan and I was getting pushed back. Right? Yeah. Too difficult, too expensive, too hard, all of that sort of thing. And that’s really what led me to create a one page marketing plan process.
Joe: 06:02 So you took everything that everybody hated and you made it
simple. What a brilliant idea ever to have that idea. Right? Allan
Allan: 06:11 I don’t know if I’m the first person to have the idea, but, but I, I
took the, you know, it’s kind of what you mentioned James Schramko and James Schramko really introduced me to the idea of the 64 four, right? So we’re 4% of your inputs make 64% of the, the result. And that’s what I wanted to do with the marketing planning process. So yes, you could probably create a much more comprehensive marketing plan, spend, spend heaps more time. But this is the 4% that will give you the 64% of the results.
Joe: 06:41 That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. So when you talk with
businesses that don’t have a business plan, what do you think are the kind of the main key problems that they have? I mean, you hit on, you know, a lot of the people that they’re letting down from employees that team members to family to time, like all the affected areas. But I mean, what, what are the business problems you think that are really happening without an effective plan?
Allan: 07:07 The, the, the number one thing by far is clarity. You know,
people kind of do random acts of marketing, you know, they do
a little bit of PPC, a little bit of SEO, a little bit of, okay, let’s rebrand our website, let’s do a new logo or whatever. And these are, none of those things are bad things. They’re all good things to do, but it’s kind of like you know, when I started this house that I’m, that I’m living in now, we moved in about six months ago, but we spent about two years building it. But the first six months I spent with the architect, with the council, figuring out, right, where do we put the poor? Where’s the lounge room going to go? How’s it going to face? All of that sort of stuff. Had we just decided, Hey, let’s, let’s just start laying bricks or let’s start digging a foundation without a plan, without a blueprint would’ve been a disaster.
Allan: 07:53 I mean, so you, you need to have that clarity, that plan. You
need to, you say, look, this is our defined target market. This is the message that we’re going to go, go to them. This is the media that we’re going to use. And then for sure, let’s plug in the tactical, let’s get the PPC campaigns going. Let’s get the LinkedIn, let’s get the Instagram, let’s do direct mail, all of that. But until we’ve done some of the planning, spent a little bit of time putting together that blueprint so that we know where the tactical things plug into then we’re kind of flying blind. We’re just doing random acts of marketing and we’re getting kind of random results as well.
Joe: 08:29 Yeah. Ben, you said that really, really well. Random results,
right? And nothing really fit. So it doesn’t go well man, we see so many businesses like that. Super excited to chat with you about this because I feel like I would say probably 90% of the businesses I work with I engage with that, that follow us. Like they, they haven’t taken this one step that I think is just gonna make a critical, critical difference inside their business. For sure. So Alan, can we jump in man, can we, can we talk about kind of the, the three different phases and can we talk about the canvas and how this thing works and unpack it a little bit?
Allan: 09:03 Yeah, for sure. For sure. So so if you’ve, if you visualize a single
sheet of paper split into three blocks of three. And so the first phase is the before phase. So, you know, grant taking a Dean Jackson kind of concept with the before, the during and the after. And then each of those are split up into three. So there’s basically nine blocks on a single canvas and we go through the hot, we basically map out a direct response marketing plan on a single page. And so the thing about a single page that I really love is first of all it’s easy to do. You can, you know, you can do that in 2030 minutes. The second thing is it really helps you synthesize the core things like you know, if your, you know, anyone, you know, I think, was it Einstein who said it?
Allan: 09:56 I can’t remember, but they said any idiot can make something
more complex but it takes a genius to make something simpler, right? And so it really gets you thinking about, right? If I’ve got the, about the size of are posted a note to think about who my target market is and to think about who, what my messaging is I’m really going to get down to the core concepts to really, really get past all of the fluff. And so the one page marketing plan, the first block of the one page marketing plan is selecting your target market. So defining who is my target market? And then we, then we go through the, the nine, the nine steps, which are broken up into those three phases that both before, during, and after.
Joe: 10:41 Beautiful. All right. So then in the target market, if we’re looking
at before, during, and after, you’re essentially saying who’s the target market right now? Is that what you’re saying? And then who’s the target market for the future? Is that kind of the, the idea, Alan?
Allan: 10:56 No, no. So so there’s we’ve got the before, the during and the
after, and that kind of represents the the journey that someone takes. So the before phase is all about awareness, so someone doesn’t even know that you exist. So what is the target market? What is the messaging? And then what is the media we need to reach them? So those three, the target market, the media, the media, and the messaging, those three make up the before phase net. Now we’ve got awareness. So someone, let’s say, you know, if we’re thinking of the world of PPC they’ve seen it. They’ve seen our ad, right? So that’s created, created awareness. When they click now they’re in the during phase. So now they’ve got an opportunity to hit our landing page, opt in, do whatever, or call our phone number, whatever. And now they’re in the during phase. So they’ve got awareness, but we still have not converted them as a, as a client. So the phase is about taking someone from knowing that you exist to converting them to a, to a paying client.
Joe: 11:59 Perfect. That makes absolute sense. Thanks for that
clarification. All right, so then that’s your target market phase. What’s, what’s phase two then?
Allan: 12:08 Yeah, so, so so phase two is that, that during phase where we,
we we capture that lead. So there’s three parts to the, during phase there’s, we capture the leads, we nurture the leads and then we convert them. So so why do we capture leads? We capture leads and you know, a lot of people listening to this will, will obviously understand this, but we find that in any, in any target market at any given time, on average, of course there’s
differs from market to market. But this is about 3% of people who are ready to buy right now, you know, so, and everybody is competing for those people and everybody knows how to handle that. Like, you know, if someone’s ready to buy right now, right click the buy now button or sign up here or, or whatever it else else.
Allan: 12:53 But the sophisticated marketers know how to handle someone
who’s ready to buy in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, a year, two years. And that’s where you need to capture that late in a database. You need to nurture that lead and you need to take them through a conversion process. And so this is this is what makes your addressable market bigger because we know, yes, there’s that 3% who are ready to buy right now. And that’s great. We know that there’s a further 7% who are pretty open to buying. They’re not maybe ready, right, right, right now. But they’re pretty open to having that discussion and you know, looking into it a bit further and then there’s a further 30% that we know want what you want, what you have, but they’re just not ready to buy right now. And you know, like if I think about it, like I had someone sign up for my high level coaching recently and I said, how long have you been on my mailing list?
Allan: 13:43 And he said two years, right? So if two years ago I had have said,
you know, this, this guy has a Thai kick. Or if I hadn’t have captured that lead, I hadn’t nurtured it in my system, then that would have been a missed opportunity. And I find that the vast majority of people who come through my funnel have been there for some time because people want to get to know you. They want to see if, if there’s a connection, if you’ve got something that fits, assuming you’re selling something of value, like if you’re selling a $20 widget, people might just take a flyer and hit the buy button, go into the, into the shopping cart. But really we need that during phase to take people through that lead nurturing process.
Joe: 14:20 Perfect. So then how do you know, like when one of these is
working and maybe one, one of a, another phase isn’t like what are the telltale signs that like Allen you know, you’re looking at a business and you’re like, man, like they nailed the message but their target market, like it’s, it’s off. It needs adjustment, right? Like how, how do you course correct once you have the one page marketing plan, right? Because that’s obviously going to be part of the journey, right? Like you’re not going to hit a home run or a single on every one of these kinds of nine steps.
Allan: 14:50 Oh, very, very, very much so. And it’s very much about course
correcting. And the one thing I, the thing I love about having the
a one page marketing plan is that it is something that, you know, at any time when you’ve got better or more information, you can update it and, and you should, you know, it’s something that it’s a living document you can have on your desk. You can have a pinned up on your office and you figure out, you think, you know what I didn’t quite nail my target market before. It’s really, it’s really more this, we’re going to drill deeper in or my messaging wasn’t spot on and it’s, this message really lands better. And so the, the troubleshooting process is really you know, in all of the phases if you’re so that in the before phase, if you’re not getting people who are even aware of you, then we’ve got a problem in that awareness phase in that before phase. If we’re having people who are not, you know, who are aware of you and who are maybe opting in, who are seeing your offer and all of that, but they’re not converting well we’ve got a problem then in that during phase or if, if we are having people who are converting, but there are a lot of refunds are a lot of complaints that has a lot of dissatisfaction, then we’ve got a problem in that after phase.
Joe: 16:03 That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. So I have pulled up the one page canvas in front of me and I’ll make sure that we link up to your site in the show notes so that everybody can see it. And so we got, we got the target market. When one prospects are talking to you about the, the market how, how do you advise them to, to pick out the part of the market that that is really the right fit for them?
Allan: 16:26 That’s such a great question. So a lot of people, you know, and
this is a mistake I made early on, you know, when you do something that can help a lot of people, when you’re a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or whatever, it feels like you want to cast the widest net, you want to say, well, I can help everyone, right?
Allan: 16:44 I can help all business owners or I can help all everyone, you
know, and if we have that temptation, and the thing is about that is, you know, ah, people want to deal with someone who is a specialist. You know, these days, especially when w when you think of, imagine your target market in front of that Google search box. They’re not typing generalities. They’re typing very, very specific things. And in fact, I, I saw my wife, my wife recently injured her knee and I was sort of looking over her shoulder when she was on her iPad, on the couch and she types in knee specialist and then the area that we live in. So, even though someone who maybe treats heads, necks, knees whatever could help her, she’s looking for that person who’s a knee specialist in, in our area. And that’s exactly what your
target market is doing. They’re looking for a specialist. So when you really have a whole bunch of generalities and you say, we help everyone that’s equivalent to saying we help no one. So you know, someone has to look at your messaging and say, Hey, that’s for me too, to connect with that. [inaudible]
Joe: 17:51 Man, it’s crazy. We, we help a lot of agencies and we do a lot of
work on behalf of agencies for other businesses. And I see that so often. They’re casting this huge wide net. We work with everybody. And again, like they, they really are specialists and masters to, to nobody then and the value that they’re bringing and, and the value of their businesses reflect that. And I’m always trying to get people to buy into the end, right? You want to sell your business, right? Like this isn’t a freelance thing. Like you’re not gonna live forever. Are you going to hand us down? Probably not. So I find that I have to get people to buy into the, to the end so I can get them to even think about some of the things on your one page marketing plan.
Allan: 18:34 That’s so awesome. And that’s something that I spend a lot of
time talking about in on the book is how is this thing going to end? And you know, I think it was Neil Armstrong said, you know in going to the moon, we really need to solve only two problems, right? How do we get there? And then how do we get back? Right? and so, so many business owners in the excitement to start and build their business, they think about how to get there, how to get to success, and then how do you get back? Like, how do you exit and how do you, you know, what are you going to do once you’ve gotten to where you want to go? And like you say, there’s gonna come a time when you get bored with the business. When you have a health problem, when you will find a better opportunity when you want to pass it on or sell it.
Allan: 19:16 And if you’re only thinking about that at the time that you want to exit, that’s really way too late and you’re going to sell it for a massive, massive discount if you can sell it at all. There are some businesses that are just not saleable because the person is the business, they don’t have a business. So that’s such an important part is really getting some of those systems into place and being that specialist, you know. So and I believe, I think I heard, I think it was Ryan Deiss who said the days of like the general marketing agency are over and I 100% agree. You need to be an absolute laser targeted specialist in, in what you do.
Joe: 19:55 Definitely. I mean, if you look at the market sophistication level,
right? Like it demands that like if you’re just another generalist agency, what differentiates you from that business is, you know,
a nephew of that now does social media. Like, why, why aren’t they just going to give the job to them versus anybody else? So definitely I think you’ve gotta be laser targeted for sure.
Allan: 20:17 Exactly. Exactly.
Joe: 20:19 So I’m curious, Allen we’re on the topic of getting people to buy
into the one page marketing plan. I found that to get people to really think through the systems and to get them to really buy into doing just some of the things on this one page plan in my experience I have to sell them what happens down the road. Anything else that’s worked for you to get them to really understand, right. The implications of if they don’t do this, like this is going to be the effect because I want to make sure that people, that, that, that listen to this episode, people that watch the episode on YouTube, that they really buy into this because I know the outcome that it will have on their business if they can just spend the 20 minutes, 30 minutes to really think through these things.
Allan: 20:59 Yeah. So there are three things I talk about that you will, will
happen as a result of the planning process and particularly the one page marketing plan. These are the three things that, that I want people to take from it. Now the number one thing I want is clarity for you to go from confusion to clarity, to really go from like doing random stuff to knowing what we’re doing, why we’re doing it. And really understanding the map. So, you know, you know, it’s one thing to kind of walk through a forest kind of blindly go left, go right, go here, go there. But it’s another thing to be in the forest with a map and you know exactly where you are and exactly where you need to go. So the number one thing you will get is clarity. The second thing is direct response marketing is a complex field.
Allan: 21:47 And you know, I spent so much time going to seminars, reading
books, learning from mentors and all of that. And I got value from almost all of those. Almost every book I’ve got a nugget of value. Almost every seminar, I’ve got something valuable. But the thing that I was missing was that structure. Like I was like, you know, I’m a tech geek, right? Like, what do I need? What? Tell me, what process do I need to follow to get clients in the door? What’s step number one? What’s step number two? What’s step number three? And I just could not find that anywhere. And I don’t know, maybe it exists or maybe it doesn’t. But and so I wrote the book and created the process that I wish I had when I was a dead, broke it gig, struggling with that stuff. So it’s going to give you structure.
Allan: 22:34 It’s going to say, start from step one, go to step two, go to steps
re and, and really clarify that for you. And the last thing is it’s, it’s simplicity. So it’s not something complex. It’s not where you need to be a rocket scientist. I write in very plain English in very simple terms and you know, sometimes I’ve been criticized for that. They say, look this book is too simple, or this, this book is really just takes you through the ABCs. And that’s because they’re not understanding who my target market, my target market is not other marketers. My target market is business owners. It’s people who were like me, who are struggling with figuring out how to get new business in the door. Who were the doctor, the lawyer, the dentists, the PPC guy though the whatever, who who are people who are just struggling to figure out how do I get more clients in the door? I’m really good at what I do, but how do I get more clients in the door? And so I’ve put together a very simple framework where people can do that and go through that process.
Joe: 23:35 That’s really interesting that you said that marketers kind of think that it’s too simple. And it’s funny because I think that marketers historically, and I know a lot of marketers, I have a list of a lot of marketers. They have problems building teams and getting their teams to understand what they’re thinking because they’ve thought through the first seven things on this sheet, right? But then their team has no idea what’s happening, right? They can’t get the team to understand like the team needs that one page. So they can make sure as they’re working on the sales conversion strategy that they’re getting the points across, that the visionary or the marketer really that that’s the entrepreneur is looking for, right. And thinks will be effective. So I think it’s, it’s as much an important tool for you as a marketer, but it’s also a great tool for, for your team if you have a team to help you really get the words out of your mouth to help them understand your grander vision because they won’t if they’re not a marketer. I have thought through probably almost any of these nine things,
Allan: 24:36 But that’s 100% right. And literally just yesterday, I mean, we’re, we’re in the middle of planning for a, a launch of a new product. And I was talking to my operations manager yesterday and we were walking through some of the campaign and, you know, to get more clarity, I shared my screen and we, we loaded up our own one page marketing plan where, right, okay, let’s, let’s have a look. Do these, does this email series, is this congruent with our messaging? So let’s pull up our own one-page marketing plan and, and check check the messaging. Let’s have a look. If the target market is still, we’re hitting that right. So you’re absolutely right. Even though it may be a, a fully clarified in your
head, you do need to make that clarification for your team and the team members that the, you know, the person doing your, your website, your copywriting, all of that sort of stuff.
Allan: 25:27 They don’t, they can’t download your brain just by osmosis. So you need a way of communicating what’s in your mind to your team, to your clients, to, to contractors that you, that are external to you. So if we hire, so we recently did a website redevelopment. So we, we were working with an external designer and external contractor. And so we need them to be, be on the same page, eh, as respects our marketing plan. And so we need to say, look, this is why we need a, an opt in here and this is what we need to do. E here and there. So and that’s part of the planning process. So yes, it’s, it’s for you, it’s to help you get clarity, but it’s also you’re 100% right. It’s too for the people around you, your team, internal and external to really understand where you’re going
Joe: 26:17 For sure. So I’ve always had a doc talking about kind of missions
and values and what we believe in. And then I’ve also always had docs, Alan, that were like SLPs for processes. Here’s how you write an email sequence, like the way that we write it, here’s how we build opt in pages. Here’s how we have hooks, like that level of detail. But I’d never had something that kind of guided all of that together. And I think that the, the one page marketing plan is definitely kind of for me, I think one of the missing ingredients to help my team really understand what the heck we’re trying to do with a product or division or a particular business. So as I scale from like one business and acquire another, I, I find that getting my team up to speed is difficult on that new business, whether it’s a new team or a shared team. And so I, I’m really excited to start playing with the one page marketing plan. Awesome. Awesome. I’d love to hear how you go for sure. So any tips on kind of just making the most of this right? So I’m bought in and I’m sure everybody listening is bought in. We’ll, we’ll link up the one page canvas and the book. What next steps, expectations, best practices w what would you suggest?
Allan: 27:30 So I would suggest is basically just do it. Don’t think, don’t
overthink about it. This is designed to be a simple process. It is designed to [inaudible] and simple is kind of different to easy, right? So so it’s a simple process, but you do need to deeply think about, you need to think about who is really my target market, who w, you know, who do I want to work with? And the criteria that I often say is, you know, who’s fun to work with? Who’s going to value what you do and then who’s going to be profitable to work with. So if you can hit those three, then that’s
a great target market. Because, you know, as business owners, we don’t want to be miserable work with people we hate working with, or you know, people who pay later have difficult to deal with and don’t respect what you do.
Allan: 28:13 Or, or you might have people value what you do and why it
might be fun, but there’s just no profit in it. And so you need to you know, that’s gonna make your life miserable as well, right? Because we, that’s called a hobby. That’s not a business. So so we, we want to really hit those three, you know, who’s gonna value what we do, who’s going to be fun to work with and who’s going to be profitable to work with. So for thinking those kinds of things through then messaging. So that may be where you actually have to have some conversations with your target market. And you know, that’s kind of scary for us. Digital geeks kind of thing, you know. So we, we often want to just sit and hide behind the computer and that’s okay. You can do surveys and things like that.
Allan: 28:55 But I find there’s nothing like actually having a conversation
with a target market because it’s, it’s often the things that they say between the lines. So, you know when you do a survey, you know, in a survey for you say would you prefer burgers or would you prefer a salad? People say, Oh, of course I prefer a salad. You know, because it’s a, it’s healthy, it’s good for you and everything like that. But if you put a burger and a salad in front of someone, often they’ll take up the, the burger instead. So people are not always truthful in surveys, but when you have a conversation with someone and when you use probing questions, you can often get between the lines. And the other powerful thing is really capturing some of the words they, they use the jargon that they use because you can use that in your copy and you can use that in the marketing and that helps you enter that conversation that’s happening in their mind.
Allan: 29:44 So that’s a really powerful technique. So in summary, I would say just do it, you know, so you literally, you could, you could start right now you don’t even have to buy the book. You can grab the one page marketing plan from the front page of my website and you can download that and start working on it. Of course, I’d love you to buy the book. I’d love you to buy the course and all of that sort of thing. I think that that will genuinely help you, but you don’t have to, you can literally download the one page marketing plan canvas right now and start creating it. A sophisticated direct response marketing plan on a single page. It’s going to help you get clarity, is going to give you structure and it’s going to give you a simple framework for you to do your marketing with. Perfect.
Joe: 30:24 Perfect. Perfect. So let’s talk about seven number seven here
real quick, Allen. So how I deliver a world class experience. I was recently a workshop with Roland Fraser and he talked about this and the perspective I think is really interesting and maybe you’ve heard this before, I’m not sure where Roland got it, but he said, if anything was possible and you’re not just looking to deliver a five star experience, you want to deliver a 10 star experience of nothing was impossible. You know, constraint time constraints weren’t impossible. Money constraints weren’t possible. What’s, what’s the 10 star experience that you could give somebody? And it makes you think of all this outlandish stuff. So a client gets onboarded to our digital marketing agency and we’re going to fly them in first class and you know, we’re going to have a full day catered, we’re going to have a workshop, we’re going to do everything together.
Joe: 31:18 Once you do that, then you work through the five star. I found
that, all right, so what do we do now that we do have time constraints and what do we do to have similar types of impact and results that is actually achievable? It makes the, the process of coming up with how do you deliver that world-class experience? Actually relatable. Like I found it hard looking at a blank piece of paper to say, how do we deliver a world class experience? I just found it, it was kinda surface level answers, if you will. It was like, Oh, well we’re gonna stay in constant communication. We’re going to be on the bleeding edge. Like we’re going to show them that we are experts and we’re continuing to help them longterm. But I found that that exercise really made me think completely different about the about the kind of, as you say it, number seven, the world class experience.
Allan: 32:06 Yeah. So the, the, the, that’s a, that’s a really great th that’s a
really great exercise to really figure out. If nothing was impossible, what would I do? But the other thing is you don’t have to do crazy stuff like to stand out. Like it’s so easy to stand out like, because everyone’s just, it’s the blind following the blind the vast majority of the time. And if you have a look at some of the unique, unique examples that I’ve got in the book, like, you know you know, there’s an eCommerce store or I don’t know if it’s still running, but it was called baby, right? [inaudible] Derek Sivers and you know, instead of saying, Hey, your shipments on its way, he had this story, this crazy kind of email and all that went viral everywhere. What did, what did that cost him to do that?
Allan: 32:53 It probably an afternoon of his time to put together a little bit of
a story, a little bit of a fun story. And then that was done. Another example I often use both personally and, and with
clients is handwritten notes. Nope. You know, people will send an an email or a text or whatever, but very few people send like a handwritten note in the mail. And you know, if you think about it, you know, for the, certainly for the gentleman in the audience, you know imagine it’s your, you know, it’s your one year anniversary with your, with your wife or your girlfriend or whatever. Yes, you can send a nice, a very nice text message or whatever and say, Hey, you know, happy anniversary sweetheart, or whatever. But doesn’t that mean a lot more when it comes written on a, on a card with a bunch of flowers?
Allan: 33:37 I mean, that, that makes a much bigger impact, same message,
much bigger impact. Right. So and so thinking about some of those ways that we can create experiences for our clients, which are kind of a bit of a pattern interrupt because you know, think about what are your clients used to thing. Yes, they used to seeing the normal stuff, the, the confirmation email, the, the whatever automated thank you message or whatever via email or whatever. But when you send, you know, a copy of your book and a handwritten note or it doesn’t even have to be your book, it could be any book or it doesn’t even have to be a book, can be just a handwritten note. I mean, how much more impact does that, that does that happen? And I’ve seen sales conversions just jump when you introduce little things like that.
Allan: 34:21 Like, Hey Joe, it was great speaking to you the other day. Say
thank you so much. And it comes a delivered in the post in the hand with a handwritten note. And so these things are kind of easy to do, but a lot of people kind of discount them or dismiss them because they’re easy not to do as well. So and so like, like you said, I mean, you’ve got to think about what’s all that I could do to create that 10 star experience. But often it comes down to it’s just small things. It’s not world changing stuff.
Joe: 34:52 No. And I think it’s probably just as you’re going through this,
thinking about that perspective, what is the pattern interrupt? How can we stand out here? How can we do things that are a little different here? And you’re right, like CD baby is a great example. I’ve I’ll have to find that welcome email and put it in, in the in the show notes here for the podcast, but it’s absolutely ridiculous. Like, you know the, the whole story that they tell instead of just saying we shipped your order, like so, so I think you’re definitely right. And I think just thinking through that as a frame or as an angle as you’re going through and you’re doing the planning with the one page marketing plan makes it simple. Right? And should help get you some great results.
Allan: 35:36 Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, I remember, I think, I think it’s in Robert Cal Dinis influence. He talks about, you know, how, how how interactions can become much more magical or, and create reciprocity. Any, any lists, three criteria. He says it’s when they’re meaningful, it’s when they’re unexpected and it’s when they’re personal, right? So if you can hit those three, and you know, like I said, it can be with something as small as a handwritten note. It can be, Hey Joe, congratulations on winning that that award well done. Or, or, you know, a happy birthday or congratulations on the birth of your, your first child or whatever. So these things, these thing kind of things can be meaningful, personal and unexpected and that really triggers that five star experience with prospects.
Joe: 36:28 Man, this has been beautiful. This has been awesome. I think
that this is such a practical exercise that I’ve been preaching for so long that people need to do. You know, probably on this list there’s probably about five of these that I’ve been adamant about for most of the year, like pounding into people’s heads. Like you gotta be thinking about these five things. And obviously there’s the, the before, during, and after, and kind of a three by three. So you’ve got nine things. I absolutely love it and I’ve so appreciate you coming on the podcast. I don’t want to overcomplicate the simple so to speak system, and I want people, usually these episodes are an hour, so I’m gonna link up everything in the show notes, but I want people to take the extra 20 minutes that they have and I want them to go actually implement the first iteration of the one page marketing canvas because I know the impact that that’ll have on people’s businesses. And that’s how everybody’s going to get the most results. Right? Like that’s how we’re going to get the thank you is that’s how you’re going to get the lifelong followers. That’s how I’m going to get them as well. And so with that in mind, I guess any last leading thoughts, Alan, before we wrap this up?
Allan: 37:31 Yeah. So that’s great. Yeah, it really like like Michael Jordan, the
great philosopher said, just do it right. So but I’ll leave people with this. Really the best marketer wins every time. This is something that was a turning point for me in my transformation from just being a dead-broke it gig to becoming a marketer of it services. You know, I was telling a mentor of mine how much you know, how good we were and all of that sort of thing. And he said, well, when does someone find out how good you are? And I said, well, well, when they buy, and he said before they buy, they only know how good your marketing is. So, and then he said, the best marketer wins every time. And honestly, I wish that was not the case. I wish the world was just a meritocracy where the good people won. And you know, where, where the
best products just automatically Rose as a result of being the best products. But that’s not the case. Really. The best marketer always wins. So you need to become a marketer of whatever you do. A marketer of PPC services, a marketer of medical legal services, whatever you do. So you’re a marketer first and a technician second and so that’s what I’ll leave paper with. The best marketer wins every time and you know, your job is to become one of the best marketers in your niche.
Joe: 38:51 That’s so well said. Then I’ll, I’ll leave it with that. Such a
beautiful, beautiful wrap up of an excellent podcast interview. I know this is going to be a hit. Thank you so much Alan. I really appreciate it. I’ll make sure we link up to the book and the one page marketing canvas in your course in the show notes. Is there anything else man that we should link up for you?
Allan: 39:09 Yeah, just grabbed the canvas from the one page marketing
plan where from the website, which is success-wise dot com grab the book wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and noble, all of that sort of stuff and yeah, and just join in the conversation.
Joe: 39:21 Awesome brother. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Super excited. We finally got this interview on the books and I know people are going to absolutely love it. Awesome. Great speaking to you, John. Thanks so much man. Looking forward to connecting again soon.
Allan: 39:33 Pleasure.
