No B.S. Direct Marketing is written by Dan Kennedy.  Not only is this book on Daoud Kakish’s top 10 list, but he also sees Dan Kennedy as the “godfather of direct response marketing”.  This isn’t to be confused with direct marketing – which is something different. 

A lot of small and midsized businesses waste their marketing budget.  They spend money on marketing consultants and agencies or marketing tactics that might not be the best fit or the best investment for a business of their size. 

Here are the big takeaways from this book we want to share with you.

The Money Pyramid

Kennedy challenges us to look at a group of 100 people.  Of this group, 5% are the ones you want to look to for wisdom, strategies, advice, and support.  He defines this in a money pyramid (shown below) which tells us that 5% of people are doing really well and those are the ones who we can lean on as examples and sources of inspiration.  By contrast, 95% are people you probably shouldn’t be listening to or taking advice from. 

Ask yourself these questions:

·        Which group of business owners should you pay closest attention to and emulate?

·        Which group’s thinking, best practices, and behaviors should you avoid like the plague?

 

Most Small Business Advertising and Marketing Stinks

A lot of marketing dollars go to agencies and tactics that work for a large business with multi-million-dollar marketing budgets.  The same holds true for academic theories about marketing.  Most of it is based on case studies or strategies of large businesses.  It’s not relevant for the marketing you do every day for your business.  It’s a completely different scenario. 

At the end of the day, the marketing money you spend should be generating sales for your business.  You can’t take “likes” or “impressions” or “followers” to the bank.  Your marketing budget should be spent on activities that help you reach your business goals.  If your goal is to have 10 sales calls per month, make sure that the marketing activities you pay for are focused on making that happen.  If clicks to your website don’t result in a sales call, those clicks aren’t helpful. 

A Big Company’s Marketing Agenda is Not the Same as Yours

This is a quick summary from Kennedy’s book that demonstrates the difference between those big budget marketing agendas and yours.   They are fundamentally different, so you shouldn’t be doing the same things those big companies do.

Big Company’s Agenda for Advertising and Marketing

1.      Please/ appease its board of directors (most of whom know zip about advertising and marketing but have lots of opinions)

2.      Please/ appease its stockholders

3.      Look good, look appropriate to Wall Street

4.      Look good, look appropriate to the media

5.      Build brand identity

6.      Win awards for advertising

7.      Sell something

Your Agenda for Advertising and Marketing

1.      Sell something now

The One-Page Marketing Plan

The One-Page Marketing Plan is not from Dan Kennedy’s book.  It’s written by Allan Dib at Successwise and is another great book that talks about direct response marketing concepts.  This One-Page Marketing Plan takes your entire marketing plan and simplifies it to one page.  It’s very applicable to solo business owner or a business with 100 employees. 

The framework fits on one page and includes a focus on the Before, During, and After of your marketing plan.  Those stages represent the prospect, the lead, and the customer - three distinct stages that we often forget to break out when we approach marketing.  In the One-Page Marketing Plan, Dib simplifies things so that each of these three stages has only three things to focus on, including a focus on direct response marketing initiatives.  A quick summary of the One-Page Marketing Plan is included below.

In the Before phase

1.      Identify your target market being as specific as possible

2.      What is my specific message to the target market

3.      What is the medium you will use to reach this market to deliver your message

In the During phase

1.      What is your lead capture system

2.      What is my lead nurturing system

3.      What is your sales conversion strategy

In the After phase

1.      How do you deliver a world-class experience and Wow your customer

2.      How do you increase a customer’s lifetime value

3.      How do I get referrals from my current customers