Most small businesses mistakenly think "branding" means spending money on mass market image advertising. But true branding occurs after the sale, not before.
A brand is simply a collection of thoughts and feelings a customer has about your business. You create these impressions by:
- Delivering a remarkable product/service
- Providing memorable touchpoints and experiences
- Meeting and exceeding customer expectations
- Communicating with personality and values
- Engaging your tribe and community
When you focus on serving your customers at an exceptional level, you build brand equity. This powers word of mouth, allows premium pricing, and protects you from competitors.
So instead of spending on pre-sale brand advertising, invest in post-sale brand experience. Deliver a product worth talking about. That's how you build a great brand.
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
Create detailed "avatars" to vividly visualize your ideal target customers:
- Give them names and find/create pictures to represent them
- Describe their demographics - age, gender, location, income, etc.
- Outline their day-to-day life and activities
- Identify their top frustrations, fears, desires, and problems to solve
- Note the emotions they feel and language/jargon they use
- Determine the media they consume - websites, magazines, influencers
Refer to these avatars whenever creating marketing content to intimately understand the conversation already going on in your prospect's mind.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
"Fifty percent of all salespeople give up after one contact, 65% give up after two and 79.8% give up after three shots. Imagine if a farmer planted seeds and then refused to water them more than once or twice. Would he have a successful harvest? Hardly."
Section: 2, Chapter: 4
Focusing your marketing on a narrow niche or target market, rather than trying to appeal to everyone, allows you to:
- Maximize the impact of limited marketing budgets
- Craft a more relevant, compelling message that resonates with prospects
- Dominate a category or geography in a way that's impossible by being general
- Make price largely irrelevant by specializing
Targeting everyone with your product or service is a terrible idea that leads to diluted, ineffective marketing. The riches are in the niches.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
When someone inquires about your product or service, most businesses respond in a minimal, boring way - sending a brochure, quoting a price, or directing to a website.
Instead, wow prospects and establish authority by sending a "shock & awe" package. This is a carefully crafted physical box that contains items like:
- Books, special reports and white papers
- CDs/DVDs explaining your methodology
- Testimonials, case studies and media mentions
- Product samples or trial offers
- Checklists, flowcharts and process maps
- Personality-revealing personal notes or gifts
Example: A landscape design company could send a package with a photo book of stunning projects, a time-lapse DVD of an installation, a book on water-wise garden care, testimonials, and a gift card for a free design consult. This blows away competitors still sending basic quotes.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Most businesses are "hunters" - they spend huge amounts of time and energy trying to get a new customer to buy immediately. This is extremely inefficient.
Instead, shift to a "farming" model where you plant seeds by capturing leads, then nurture them over time until they're ready to buy. This allows you to:
- Build a huge pipeline of future customers at various stages
- Focus your time/money on high-probability prospects
- Position yourself as a trusted authority instead of a pest
- Make the final sale a natural, low-pressure event
Capturing leads is all about casting a wide net, then filtering prospects based on their level of interest so you can invest in the most promising ones.
Section: 2, Chapter: 4
Successful businesses have three key roles covered:
- The Entrepreneur - Has the vision and creates the strategy. They "make it up."
- The Specialist - Executes the strategy and produces the core product/service. They "make it real."
- The Manager - Handles ongoing customer service, admin, finance, HR etc. They "make it recur."
Early on, the founder often covers all three. But to grow, you need to delegate the specialist and manager roles so you can focus on the high-level entrepreneurial work.
Most businesses are missing the manager piece. They deliver a great product but don't have systems for generating leads, onboarding clients, upselling, getting referrals, etc. As a result, growth is limited.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Many businesses rely on a single source of leads - e.g. Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, or trade shows. This leaves them vulnerable if that one channel dries up.
For example, when Google made major changes to its Adwords platform, many advertisers found their cost per click suddenly increased 5-10x. Others who relied 100% on SEO had their traffic evaporate with algorithm updates.
The solution is to diversify and have at least 5 different pillars in your lead generation system. Don't put all your eggs in one media basket and build a "single point of failure" into your business.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Don't treat all prospects equally. Use an "ethical bribe" to get ideal potential customers to raise their hand.
For example, instead of a generic ad saying "Call us for a quote," offer a valuable free report, video, tool or sample that helps the prospect solve a problem. To get it, they give you their contact info. This allows you to:
- Spend more time/money nurturing high-probability prospects
- Build your database of interested leads to follow up with
- Avoid wasting resources on uninterested or unqualified people
Trying to sell to everyone is a losing strategy. Separate the high-probability prospects from the mass market so you can invest in them accordingly.
Section: 2, Chapter: 4
Craft an irresistible offer for your market by stacking immense value:
- Lead with the biggest, most unique benefit
- Provide reasons behind the offer to minimize skepticism
- Pile on bonuses worth more than the main offer itself
- Add an upsell for a related high-margin product
- Offer a payment plan to make the price feel smaller
- Include an unbeatable "double" guarantee that reverses risk
- Add authentic scarcity with limited time or quantity
The offer is one of the most important parts of your marketing campaign. A lazy "10% off" offer will fall flat compared to a value-packed, thoughtfully crafted offer.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that clearly answers:
Why should the prospect buy your product/service?
Why should they buy it from you specifically?
Your USP should:
- Concisely convey the unique advantage/benefit you offer
- Avoid clichés like "quality," "service," or claiming to be the "best"
- Focus on what the customer really wants (the end result), not just the features
- Be understandable in a single sentence
- Force an apples-to-oranges comparison with competitors
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
There's often a big difference between what prospects want and what they actually need to solve their problem. As an authority, you need to give them both.
For example, a prospect may want "six-pack abs" but need a sustainable fitness & nutrition plan. Sell them on the exciting end result they want, but deliver what they need to actually get that outcome.
A framework for this:
- Identify the symptoms the prospect is aware of and desperately wants to fix
- Diagnose the underlying root cause that's responsible for those symptoms arising
- Prescribe the full treatment plan required to solve the root problem
Don't just be an order taker. Be a doctor who guides the prospect to the best solution for their situation.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
"Understand a very important concept: confusion leads to lost sales. This is especially so when you have a complex product. Many business owners erroneously think that a confused customer will seek clarification or contact you for more information. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you confuse them, you lose them."
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Your goal is not just to make sales, but to build a loyal "tribe" of people who identify with your mission. To cultivate a tribe:
- Deliver a world-class customer experience, and exceed expectations and delight at every touchpoint
- Gather feedback and address issues promptly
- Build culture and community around your brand. Showcase your best customers
- Provide insider perks and surprises
When you have a tribe, sales and referrals happen naturally. You can also launch new offers to an enthusiastic, loyal base. Building a tribe takes time and careful attention. But it's one of the most valuable assets you can develop in your business.
Section: 2, Chapter: 6
The goal of marketing is not "branding" or getting likes on social media - it's to generate leads and sales profitably. This means:
- Ruthlessly tracking ROI on all ad campaigns
- Cutting losing campaigns and reinvesting in winners
- Spending unlimited amounts on campaigns that consistently yield positive ROI
Effective marketing is like having a money printing press. Restricting it with an arbitrary budget is like having the ability to buy $100 bills for $80 but limiting how many you'll buy. If a marketing method isn't producing a positive ROI, improve it or drop it. But don't cap spending on winners.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
There are two components that make up the lifetime value of a customer:
- Front End - The initial purchase when a prospect first becomes a customer. Rarely profitable by itself. Goal is to offset acquisition cost.
- Back End - All subsequent purchases a customer makes after the first. This is where the real profit comes from in most businesses.
Many businesses focus only on making the first sale without a plan to re-sell to those customers. But the back end is where fortunes are made through upsells, cross-sells, recurring billing and re-activation of past customers.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
To create compelling marketing copy that emotionally moves people to action:
- Enter the conversation already going on in the prospect's mind
- Focus on their problems/desires, not your company
- Use language you'd use when talking to a friend
- Convey your authentic personality to build rapport and stand out from bland marketing
- Address "elephant in the room" objections to build trust
- Tell people who your product is NOT for to boost credibility
- Agitate the pain they want to avoid and pleasure they desire
Trying to look generically "professional" with your copy makes you invisible. Entertaining marketing that speaks to emotions gets read.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2