What if I told you there are 5 simple steps to create ridiculously consistent growth for your business? Would you be interested in that? If so, then do yourself a favor and grab my friend John Jantsch’s (the Duct Tape Marketing Guy) new book, The Ultimate Marketing Machine.
I just finished it (he was nice enough to send me an advance copy) and there is some really good thinking in this 207-page marketing roadmap. And while I don’t want to give away all the greatness, here is a glimpse of my favorite pieces of his brilliance.
The 5 Steps to Building The Ultimate Marketing Engine
- Step 1: Map where your best customers are today AND where they want to go tomorrow. We all do the first part, but how many of us really truly do the second part.
- Step 2: Uncover the REAL problem you solve for your IDEAL customers. No, not the one you decided you do in that conference room, but the actual problem the customer thinks you solve for THEM. Hint, there are probably more than one.
- Step 3: Narrow your focus to the Top 20 Percent of your IDEAL customers. That’s right, John thinks you should actually not try to be all things to all people. Just go find your very best customers and cater to them and only them.
- Step 4: Attract more IDEAL customers with the narrative they are already telling themselves. There is some real power in this portion of the book because John convincingly argues the point that all customers are not created equally. But, when you really focus on your very best ones, get to know them and their troubles, you’ll more effectively market to your ideal non-customers in a way that will make them convert more often and more readily.
- Step 5: Scale with your customers by serving their entire ecosystem. This is one that I’m planning to focus on more in the coming months.
Customers as Members
What if you thought about your customers as members? Think about that for a second… it’s kind of cool. Why? Because the reason someone seeks to be a member is fundamentally different from the main reason they seek to be a customer.
In a stable membership relationship, the goal is to help every member get the transformation they are seeking, not the product you are selling.
I love this because it matches my own thinking. John asks the reader, “what if you actually cared more about your customers’ transformation than about your own transaction?”
His point echos my own Sell Greatly theory that you’re far more successful when you see your sales prospects as potential relationships vs transactions.
Don’t Swipe Right On Every Prospect
In the book John tells a funny story about being visited by a Special Agent from the FBI and informed he was being subpoenaed to testify at a trial involving one of John’s clients.
While John hadn’t done or participated in anything illegal, he suspected this client wasn’t always 100% above board but in his words, he “let his guard down and took on a customer who did not reflect my values.”
How many of you have done the same? Took on a client or chased a customers or entire category of customers because you needed more… more prospects, more leads, more sales more revenue. But like John’s story, far too often, heck in my case every single time, those clients or customers end up being bad for business or simply not worth the time and effort it takes to satisfy them.
Scale “with” Your Customers
I have to admit, it took me a minute to get my head fully around this unique idea but once the light bulb lit up, I immediately saw the brilliance of the approach. John argues that to truly treat your customers as members, you need to deliver a complete, turn-key package for them vs just your little piece of the solution.
So for instance, if you’re a digital sales & marketing agency that helps clients turn conversations into customers – you might provide services designed to help your clients create, engage in, manage and convert those conversations.
But you probably don’t touch the deal once it’s converted. But what if you did — directly or indirectly? Why not become the local authority on CRM tools and then offer that knowledge to your clients. Ditto for fulfillment, invoicing, etc., so that you’re partnering with your client throughout the entire purchase process/delivery chain vs just the front end of it – creating, engaging and converting sales prospect conversations.
It’s not completely unlike our Campfire Brand approach to establishing communities around solutions or passions that brands can create or host so they become the brand that brings communities in search of certain kinds of solutions or supporting certain types of passions together.
Grab Your Copy of The Ultimate Marketing Machine
Just click here to grab a copy.
Or if you’re not quite convinced yet, head over to John’s site where he’s giving you two chapters FREE – no purchase necessary.
Click Here to visit the site.
