Book Summary - The 1-Page Marketing Plan (Allan Dib)

The 1-Page Marketing Plan - Book summary

There are so many aspects to marketing that it can seem a bit overwhelming and confusing at times. In this book, Allan Dib explains the marketing process in layman’s terms, and provides a step-by-step guide for developing your marketing strategy and plan. In this free version of The 1-Page Marketing Plan summary, we’ll outline the 3-phase, 9-part template that any small or medium-sized business can use to position the company, attract customers and create marketing systems for sustainable growth.

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Overview

For any business, money is like oxygen. A business that doesn’t make money can’t survive, much less create value or a positive impact.

For small- and medium-sized businesses, it’s even more crucial to direct your limited marketing resources in the most effective way. The 1-Page Marketing Plan is a powerful tool to help you crystallize and implement the high-impact elements of your marketing strategy, so you can leverage the 80/20 Pareto Principle.

In any business, marketing provides the biggest leverage: a 10% improvement in marketing skills can lead to an exponential improvement in your bottom line.
In addition, the 1-Page Marketing Plan captures the most critical aspects of the marketing planning process, to help you focus on 20% of actions that will deliver 80% of your results.
Small/medium businesses can’t afford expensive branding campaigns used by large corporations. They must rely on direct response marketing which can deliver high returns even on small budgets. Direct response ads are trackable and measurable; they target a specific niche with compelling headlines and sales copy, a highly-targeted offer, a clear call-to-action, short-term and long-term follow-up.

Specifically, The 1-Page Marketing Plan breaks down the marketing process into 9 sets of activities over 3 phases of marketing:

Before: when you help cold prospects to know you and indicate interest in your offering.
During: when you get interested leads to like you enough to buy for the first time.
After: when you get customers to trust you, buy regularly and refer others as raving fans.

Here’s an overview of 9 key parts of the plan:

In this free summary, we’ll outline these 3 phases and zoom in on the 1st step (target market) in detail. Do get our complete version of The 1-Page Marketing Plan summary, where we (i) elaborate on all 9 steps and (ii) explain the difference between technical vs business skills, marketing strategy vs tactics and how to weigh your time vs money.

The “Before” Phase (Prospects => Leads)

In this phase, your goal is to attract cold prospects, get them to know you and indicate their interest. To do so, you must (i) identify a specific target market, (ii) craft a compelling message for them and (iii) deliver your message via the right advertising media.

Select Your Target Market

Select a specific target market, so you can focus your limited resources and tailor a targeted message that’s directly relevant to your audience. The more limited your resources, the more laser-focused you must be. When you try to target “everyone”, it’s like shooting arrows blindly in the dark hoping to hit something.

A niche is a tightly-defined section of a sub-category. For example, within the broad category of “health and beauty”, a specific niche could be “cellulite treatment for women who’ve just had a baby”. A good niche is one that’s “an inch wide and a mile deep”—it’s extremely targeted, yet there’re many people looking to solve the same problem. This allows you to be focused without limited your business potential.

Once you become a specialist at solving a problem that your target market badly wants to solve, price will no longer be an issue. That’s why people pay so much more to a top brain/heart surgeon than a general practitioner.
After you’ve dominated a niche, you can continue to expand 1 niche at a time. However, if you target too many groups at the same time, you’ll dilute your message and resources.

Use the PVP index to identify your ideal customer segment. For example, photography can be further segmented into niches including: weddings, corporate, family portraits, and journalism. You can then rate each of these segments (from 1-10) against 3 factors:

Personal fulfillment: how much you’d enjoy serving the segment;
Value to the marketplace: how much the customers will pay you for your work/solutions; and
Profitability: How much profits you can make from serving the segment.

One of the best ways to truly understand your prospect is to create an avatar, or a detailed description of your prospect and his/her life. Consider the gender, age and location of someone in your target segment. Put yourself in their shoes: What are their biggest fears, desires, hopes, and frustrations? What are their decision-making biases? What media and websites do they use? What language/jargon do they use? What’s the key emotion that drives them? What’s the 1 thing they desire above all else?

Craft Your Message

To stand out, capture people’s attention and motivate action, you need a compelling message that resonates with your audience. In our complete book summary, we’ll break down the specific tips for:

What to consider when crafting an ad;
How to come up with your unique selling proposition (USP) and distill it with an elevator pitch;
How to craft an irresistible offer based on what your customers want; and
Tips for effective copywriting that’ll appeal to emotions and compel action.

Reach Prospects With Advertising Media

Advertising is a good way to communicate your message to your target market, but it’s also the most expensive part of your marketing. To get a good return on investment (ROI), you must choose and manage your channels carefully.

In our full version of The 1-Page Marketing Plan summary, we’ll elaborate on:

The 2 vital numbers you must know and track–Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)–versus other metrics;
Examples of advertising media you can consider, and what to look out for in each one; and
Why you should hire experts for your selected media, and rapidly test your ad components until you find a winning formula with positive ROI.

The “During” Phase (Leads => Customers)

In this phase, your goal is to nurture leads who’re mildly interested in your offer, until they like/trust you enough to buy from you. This involves (i) capturing leads and (ii) nurturing them until they’re ready for (iii) sales conversion.

Capture Leads

The goal of direct response marketing is not to make an instant sale. It’s to find people who’re interested in your solutions, so you can gradually build trust and relationships. So the first step is to capture your leads in a database. In our full version of The 1-Page Marketing Plan summary, we’ll explain exactly why/how to do so.

Nurture Leads

Nurturing leads is like farming, not hunting. Many salespeople give up after just 1-2 tries. In reality, most prospects must be nurtured over several contacts. The good news is, once you’ve earned their trust, they’ll be ready to buy without any hard-selling on your part.

This step requires you to offer value continually until your prospects buy or drop off. To do so, you must:

Use creative ways to stand out and make an impression; and
Automate, delegate and build a marketing infrastructure to make the process sustainable.

In our full 18-page summary, we’ll explain what’s involved in the process.

Convert Sales

Don’t behave like a pesky salesman peddling a mass-commodity. If you do the previous steps properly, and position yourself as a sought-after expert who can improve your prospects’ or customers’ lives, they’ll be asking to buy from you after some time.

To improve your rate of sales conversion, you can get many techniques from our complete version of The 1-Page Marketing Plan summary:

Present a positive first impression that evokes trust and confidence;
Offer “outrageous guarantees” to make it risk-free to buy;
Adopt a sound pricing strategy; and
Use other useful techniques e.g. free trial.

The “After” Phase (Customers => Raving Fans)

This phase is about converting your customers into raving fans. To do so, you must (i) deliver a world-class experience, (ii) increase CLV, and (iii) proactively encourage referrals.

Deliver a World Class Experience

To build a tribe of raving fans, you need to deliver a consistently wow experience, build lasting relationships, and be fun and easy to deal with. Your ultimate goal is to help your customers to achieve results. In our full version of The 1-Page Marketing Plan summary, we’ll share various ways you can (i) create a superb experience to win over your customer, and (ii) build a scalable, replicable business system.

Increase your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The real money is made by selling more to past or existing customers. Here, you can learn:

5 main ways to increase CLV (with specific examples/tips);
What marketing metrics to track and how;
Why/how to retain good customers and remove bad ones.

Orchestrate & Stimulate Referrals

Hoping for word-of-mouth is like waiting for a free lunch. This step is about proactively generate a steady stream of referrals by (i) asking for them at strategic points in time, (ii) partnering with complementary products/services, and (iii) building brand equity/goodwill.

Here’s a visual recap of the entire marketing planning process, and how the components of The 1-Page Marketing Plan fit together:

Getting the most from The 1-Page Marketing Plan

In this article, we’ve briefly outlined some of the key insights and strategies you can use to achieve desired change. For more examples, details, and actionable tips to apply these strategies, do get our complete book summary bundle which includes an infographic, 18-page text summary, and a 28-minute audio summary.

This is a compact guidebook packed with useful insights and details to help any small/medium business owner or marketer to attract, nurture, convert and satisfy your customers to earn more money. However, they’ll only work if you apply them. With practice, you’ll deliver better value, refine your marketing process and see phenomenal results. You can purchase the book here for the full details, or visit 1pmp.com for more resources/templates.

About the Author of The 1-Page Marketing Plan

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd is written by Allan Dib–a serial entrepreneur, marketer, technologist, business coach, consultant and public speaker. He has started and grown multiple businesses in various industries including IT, telecommunications and marketing. One of his previous startups (in the telecommunications industry) was named one of the 100 fastest growing companies by Australia’s Business Review Weekly (BRW).