Marketing Practicality: Lessons from 30 Years in the Field with John Jantsch

John Jantsch: [00:00:00] you know, I contend that almost. Every business has a percentage of their customers that would do 10 times more business with them, or a hundred times more business with them if they narrowed their focus to serving them and figuring out what else they need.

Alright, John, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you. For folks who don't know you, and I think that would be a very short list. You are the author of Duct Tape Marketing. That's probably your most well-known book, but you're the author of many different books and you're someone I highly respect in the marketing space.

You've been doing this for a very long time. I remember maybe 15 years ago driving in my car listening to Duct Tape Marketing Thinking. This is awesome. And so, it's so good to have you on the show and so good to have you in our world. John tell us about yourself and anything I've missed, anything I've got wrong.

I actually have been doing this for 30 years, but I created really the Duct Tape brand in early 2000 or so. I had built a traditional agency. Before that I was working with small to mid-size businesses. [00:01:00] Frankly, tell you the truth, I was taking any work I could get like a lot of folks.

And, but I found, I loved working with small business owners, but they were kind of frustrating, they needed everything and didn't have the budgets or attention spans for it. So, what I decided to do to solve my frustration really was, was create an approach where I could walk in and say, look, here's what I'm gonna do.

Here's what you're gonna do. Here are the results we hope to get. Here's what it costs, you want it or not. And Quickly found out that I actually was tapping into what is still today. Uh, one of the greatest frustrations for small businesses. It's hard to buy marketing services changing rapidly.

Everybody's selling the idea of the week. You don't know who to trust. And so the fact that somebody said, look, we're gonna come in and we're gonna install a marketing system, and it's gonna start with strategy. was create an approach where I could walk in and say, look, here's what I'm gonna do.

And really for the last 10 years or so, in addition to having agency, we've also licensed our methodology that we now call fractional CMO plus to agencies around the world that, and consultants, I mean, any kind of, anybody who's [00:02:00] working with business owners who wants to really be seen as a much more strategy forward practitioner.

Allan Dib: I love that and I love that you've always taken a very practical approach. I mean, there are many people in the marketing space who have a lot of cool theories, a lot of cool books, a lot of cool ideas, but you take a very practical approach. I. You're like, okay let's get this done.

And with that in mind you and I were chatting just e earlier we've probably got similar approaches, but I think we take it from different angles. So a small business comes to you, maybe they're doing half a million dollars to a million dollars, $2 million in revenue more. But typical scenario is that.

It's grown based on the founder's hustle, right? There's been no real marketing systems. There's been no one really waking up in the morning thinking about marketing, how would you approach that? What would your recommendations be to really help them? Because often they've plateaued at that level.

They've like gotten to the ceiling where they can get to based on their own hustle and pushing. So how would you approach that, John?

John Jantsch: Yeah, that's exactly the scenario [00:03:00] we found quite often. I mean, I've run into $10 million businesses where it's just the founder was just good at selling what they do. But they didn't really understand marketing. They didn't really appreciate marketing. They certainly didn't have a formal approach to, all of the aspects of marketing.

but they have realized, hey, we've plateaued. we believe now to go to the next level. And it's not just marketing strategy, sometimes it's just. Business or growth strategy, what new markets should we be in or what new products should we develop? So what I think that we end up doing is helping focus their thinking.

John Jantsch: The first thing we try to do is help 'em understand how they got to where they got, you know, a lot of times really they don't appreciate The top 20% of their customer base that they should be focusing more attention on. They're talking about themselves and their products as opposed to really getting in the head of the customer and figuring out what problem they solve for them.

They think of marketing as lead generation. Getting the phone to ring, as opposed to the process of creating a great experience [00:04:00] for that person that does come in, who then stays a customer who then tells their friends, to become a customer. So the entire customer journey.

And I think you know, at that point then you can start thinking about what are the channels we should be playing in and maybe what should we be ignoring? If you've got limited time and li limited budget sometimes. Just not chasing every new channel or every new approach is the way to kind of keep your sanity.

Allan Dib: I love that you say that because one of the things that I noticed, and I've got this in my new book, Lean Marketing, is that the best and most sophisticated marketers, one of the most surprising thing that I've seen is their not to-do list rather than their to-do list. Every marketing book, every program, every YouTube, every video tells you to do more and more and more, more, right? But when I look at some of the best markers in the world. They're actually got a very short list of the stuff they're actually doing, and the list of the stuff they're not doing is very long. So, having that focused approach on the things that actually work is a huge game changer for a [00:05:00] lot of businesses because.

I dunno about you, but a lot of the business owners I encounter are just overwhelmed. They're like, I've gotta be doing social, I've gotta be doing Instagram, I've gotta be doing TikTok. Then some new channel, then blogs and all of this sort of stuff.

How do you go about really focusing in on what's the 80 20?

What's the stuff that's gonna give you the biggest impact? Yeah.

John Jantsch: Well, the first part is narrowing their focus. You know, Quite often they're trying to serve everybody with no very specific messages. I don't know if you need remodeling, if you need accounting. that's what we sell. Right. As opposed to really getting, digging in and figuring out, what are our most profitable engagements? What are our most profitable types of clients? What are the clients that we love working with? What are the clients that refer us? Because they have a great experience. Once we can understand everything about them, and quite often that's what got them to where they are today.

We can actually start talking specifically to them and maybe. At the elimination of everything else. Because what we've found is that if we can get very specific about here's the specific [00:06:00] problem I solve for a specific person in a specific way, we're going to start attracting more of those ideal customers.

But the other thing I think it really allows us to do is then we can start focusing on what else could we do for them. I contend that almost. Every business has a percentage of their customers that would do 10 times more business with them, or a hundred times more business with them if they narrowed their focus to serving them and figuring out what else they need.

Allan Dib: Yeah, one of the ways I get my clients to visualize this, I say, look, and sometimes not even just visualize it and not even imagine it actually do it. But I say, take all of your customers from export them out of whatever your accounting system or your CRM or whatever, sort them from best to worst in a spreadsheet, right?

And you'll find that the bulk of your revenue, the bulk of Your goodwill is all with that top maybe 10, 20%, and the bulk of your headaches is right at the bottom. The customs that you hate working with that pay the lease, that pay late, that are difficult to work with. Always wanna speak to the CEO, all of those sorts of [00:07:00] things.

And. If we can just take all the huge resources we're using to service those suboptimal customers and go for more that's gonna be a game changer for the business. And that is a game changer for many businesses. It's just really doubling down on ideal customers.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And I don't want to leave that last point. There's most businesses that bottom 10 to 15%, they're probably losing money on. And guess who's writing the one star reviews? It's those folks too. So, I mean, just eliminate that from your business altogether.

Allan Dib: Yeah. Okay. So, practically, let's say you've worked with a client, you've identified their ideal customer. We've gone from working with everyone, which a lot of people do and, it's, so difficult for a lot of business owners to fathom that, hey. I want to narrow my focus. It feels natural that hey, if we want more business, we want more revenue, we're gonna widen the net.

Right? But what we are actually saying is, no, we want to narrow your focus. We want to go for these ideal kind of clients.

So with the day-to-Day marketing implementation, [00:08:00] how do you go about that with your clients and people that you work with? How do you, alright, we've agreed that such and such is our ideal client, we want more of those.

How do we go about getting those.

John Jantsch: Yeah. First I want to acknowledge that I get it. It's tough. I mean, I still, today somebody will dangle, a project in front of me that I know is not right, that we have to figure out how to do it even, to make money on it. And I'm still tempted. So I want to acknowledge that for, I get it.

But the next step that we do, once we've identified who we think that is, I mean, let's really find out what they value. what problem do we really solve for them? Because a lot of times we either underestimate or don't fully understand they came to us because they weren't getting X, from somebody else.

I, an example I love to give all the time is we had a tree service and they just, they're promoting how great they were at cutting down trees. And we interviewed their customers and their customers all said, well, yeah, they have a chainsaw and a truck. We figured they could cut a tree down.

But what we love is that when they tell us they're gonna be [00:09:00] here at one, to quote the job or whatever, they're there, they show up on time, and then at the end of the day, they clean up the job site thoroughly. And that's ultimately the problem that they were solving for their best clients.

And so, recognizing the things that our clients really value and then communicating that, you know, promising to solve that problem for other people, that's how you really start attracting more of that ideal customer.

attract. Yeah. I call that doing the common thing, uncommonly well, right?

Allan Dib: Because in most services and in most industries, the main thing that you do is relatively undifferentiated. Like if I think of myself, I've switched accountants in my career maybe three, four times. And it's never been because they've been a bad accountant or they did something wrong with the tax code and.

Most accountants are working with the same tax code. They've got relatively the same bag of tricks for legally minimizing tax. So they're relatively undifferentiated. It's been the common things that have made me switch accountants. There's things like returning phone calls, being proactive, [00:10:00] responding to emails, all of those sorts of things.

So. Often it's these common things that make the switching trigger between someone. So a lot of people feel like they've gotta invent something huge or brand new or whatever, and very rarely is that the thing that makes people buy or switch to suppliers.

John Jantsch: In fact it goes beyond that switching. I read a recent survey of. B2B businesses and 86% of them said they'd pay more for a better experience. So it's not just the better experience makes me switch. It's like, I will pay you more if I believe I'll get a better experience.

And so that, alone makes, focusing on that experience or as you call it, doing the common things uncommonly. And I think most business owners kind of underestimate. The value of that, because I think a lot of times people who are wired to provide good service, it's just, it's their values, and they just believe that's, what you do. And so the idea that would be a differentiator is kind of odd.

Allan Dib: kind of odd. Yeah. so with practical implementation, where do you recommend [00:11:00] someone starts where they've got. No IT department. So, similar scenario to what we were talking earlier we're a business owner.

We're doing maybe a couple million in revenue. We've gotten there just because, you are a hustler and you push every day and you are making the sales and doing the deals. But now we've kind of hit a growth plateau. We know we need to invest in marketing. Where do we go from here?

John Jantsch: if we've taken the time to do strategy, the couple of things we've now refined who our ideal client is. So we wanna make sure that we're talking to them we've refined our message and so we wanna make sure that we're communicating, that point of differentiation. So. For most businesses it's gonna start with a little trip to tidying up the website.

And, making sure we're getting that, message said correctly. And we're identifying here's who we work with. There are many other factors that should go on that website, that homepage. But that's certainly a place we're gonna start because we want to tell the new story.

Then we will immediately, drop into other forms of content. If we're going to. Educate [00:12:00] our customer on, who we are and how we're different and who we serve, today like it or not that involves a lot of content through blog posts or podcasts or videos or all the various ways that we can do it so that we built start building assets that we can use with prospects, but also certainly that the search engines and, even if we're gonna run paid ads we're driving people to things that are going to actually convert for us because they're telling the right story.

Allan Dib: Yep. So you mentioned a few things. So already I can feel business owners, blood pressurizing their, okay, I've gotta change my website, I've gotta start doing content marketing. I've gotta do all of these things. Who's doing this? Like, is the business owner doing this? Are they finding an agency? Are they hiring someone?

Who do they hire? Like how do I get these things done?

John Jantsch: So there's a lot of. Possible scenarios. Rarely is it profitable or wise, for the business owner to try to take the time to figure out how to do those tasks, there are people that are better at it that the business owner's time should be spent developing [00:13:00] relationships, selling, maybe fulfilling, doing all the things that really make money ultimately or frankly that they're the best at doing.

And really outsourcing almost. Everything else, frankly. So, that could be hiring people, but again, one of the challenges there is if you don't fully understand some of the nuances or even some of the changes in marketing it's difficult to hire effectively and certainly. Difficult to manage that person if you're not really sure what you need them to do as well.

So, one of the best approaches is really to hire maybe it's an agency but again if I were going to advise you it certainly would be, I would not be talking to anybody about marketing. Who is coming in selling tactics you need to be doing Facebook ads or you need to be on TikTok now.

Hire somebody or find somebody that can become a trusted advisor, that can advocate for your customers, that can help you build marketing strategy. And they can either then orchestrate on the plan or manage, the folks that, partners [00:14:00] or freelancers or whatever it is that might actually be the best suited to do the work.

Allan Dib: I totally agree. I wanna underline something that you just said, which is the business owner is often not the perfect person to do the implementation for a couple of reasons. So to borrow a term from Gino Wickman there, often people. Fall into either an integrator or a visionary type of category.

And most entrepreneurs tend to be visionaries, meaning we're good at the big picture stuff. We are good at the ideas the product development, all of that. We're not so good at the day-to-Day implementation, which is where you really need an integrator and this case really a marketing integrator because.

Personalities of most entrepreneurs, they usually get bored very easily. They get distracted very easily. They're also very busy people, generally not the ideal people. So you really need someone who wakes up in the morning and thinks about, okay, what are we gonna do from a marketing perspective today?

has that been your experience, John, or What are your [00:15:00] thoughts?

John Jantsch: Absolutely. And you know, a lot of times if you just sit down and do some math and, as a business owner, you know, should probably for. My business to make any profit and for me to actually take home a paycheck, my effective hourly rate as an entrepreneur or solopreneur, whatever it is you are, has to be about $200 an hour.

If you do the math on, the amount of time that I'm gonna put in it and the takeaway that I hope to gain. And so it's pretty easy then to start saying. Could I find somebody for 20 or $30 an hour on Upwork or somebody that, can manage those those folks as an outside party to do that work and probably do it faster than I could do myself.

I mean, most smart people can figure out how to do a WordPress website, but they could also find somebody who could do it for a fraction of what it would cost them in their, effective hourly billable time.

Allan Dib: I totally agree. So do you guys run as like the outsourced CMO or strategy or do you guys help with the actual implementa? Like do, are you doing websites and

John Jantsch: Yeah, [00:16:00] so our approach really is strategy first. So people hire us as they may call it a strategist. They may call us an agency. We position ourselves as a fractional CMO, so they can, to think of us as a trusted advisor, we are going to do strategy first.

It is a very set engagement, usually takes 30 to 45 days. But it gives us really the plan for where we're going, at least for the next year. Now in most cases, well a hundred percent of the cases somebody looks at that and says, this is awesome, who's gonna do it? And in our particular case, we then also have an implementation arm to effectively on a retainer basis for.

As long as you feel like you're getting value we're going to execute on the plan. We're going to restrategize every quarter and then obviously, really look at where we're going, year to year. Many of our clients have been with us for years. One, literally decades now.

Allan Dib: Okay. And so you said the strategy runs for about 30 to 45 days. What happens after this? So does this [00:17:00] fractional CMO stay on beyond that period? Or like how does all of that work?

John Jantsch: Yeah, I mean, really we haven't, I can't remember the last time we just did strategy with somebody and said, good luck. In many cases, even if they have a team, they want us to do ongoing support and ongoing advising and coaching even of that team. I mean, one of the challenges, a lot of business owners they realize they need marketing help.

They go out and hire some folks. Internally even to do, social media or write content. But, nobody's really given that team any direction quite frankly, because the owner typically doesn't really know how to. And so, in some cases we'll actually work to coach those people and get them really working on objectives that are gonna really move the needle.

Allan Dib: And so, I take it the people delivering the strategy and the people delivering the implementation is that your Duct Tape Marketing certified program? So they've gone through your certification

John Jantsch: Yeah, so we have an agency ourselves, so we do both. We train and certify [00:18:00] consultants, but we typically always work with a handful of clients ourselves as an agency because it's really where we learn, it's how we evolve, tools. It's how we then are able to train The folks that certify are get certified. So, typically the way we will do is we'll have a lead consultant on our team that will do the strategy. And then that person will have an account manager on our team that will then be client facing and do a great deal of the work manage any of our third party we outsource, various aspects to people that, specialize in say paid campaigns and things.

And so our account managers then manage that team of folks as well.

Allan Dib: I mean, you've been in this game for a very long time. And so like you said, I think 30 years, so what have been the biggest shifts and importantly what is the stuff that's stayed the same? That Jeff Bezos question, what's going stay the same?

Right? Everybody talks about what's different, but what stays the same and what's radically shifted.

John Jantsch: Yeah, so some of the obvious things, I mean, you go back 30 years, we were not using the [00:19:00] internet.

the internet.

in not using

it in marketing. I think the CIA maybe was using it, but that was about it. And and so, those are the obvious things, right? Websites, rights, media.

AI now is the new, obvious thing that everybody's talking about. The thing I like to tell people that I think has changed the most in a lot. It really impacts us as marketers. Those are the things that are all just platforms.

John Jantsch: We just have to figure out how to use them, The thing that's changed really the most since I've been in this business is, how people buy, how they're able to choose the companies they wanna do business with.

That's changed dramatically. And that's the part that I think we have to really understand.

Allan Dib: understand, But

John Jantsch: I. Honestly the fundamental thing we're here to do, get somebody to trust us enough that they want to exchange money for whatever it is that we're offering. That's never changed. It's just really the tools and platforms that we have that people get obsessed with. But, using these tools to build trust and to communicate in a way that makes somebody, want to become a customer.

That I don't think will ever [00:20:00] change.

Allan Dib: Yeah, I totally agree. What have been the biggest kind of levers in terms of creating that trust? Because that is a huge element. I mean, you look up, product reviews now, and there's all sorts of spam that comes up on Google, and there's all of these ads and these review sites, which, are all just affiliate links and things like that.

What are the biggest factors or tactics that you've used to really help people develop that trust?

John Jantsch: Well,

Well, it's multi-layered. It isn't simply you had a review or, there's no question that social proof's important reviews that are. Genuinely, authentically written are important. It doesn't mean people aren't tricked by, other things as well. Just the depth of content and your willingness to share and teach people is important.

Even really just demonstrating your, the fact that,

that

John Jantsch: The New York Times or the local publication, has either written about you or you've written in those publications. Those are all things that they kinda mentally are check boxes, that people would make that, [00:21:00] believe, you're trustworthy case studies that, seem to prove that you got the result.

Testimonials from happy customers. one of my favorites is, genuinely, customer generated content so you know them, doing a video for you or them posting on Facebook about what a great experience they had. Those are all things that, add up to trust, but so does it the way you answer the phone.

So does the way that your forms work on your website, so does the impact of when somebody's greeted, at your place of business. It's an ongoing process of building trust and any one of those steps can erode it greatly as well.

Allan Dib: Yeah. I love your focus on the customer experience because when a lot of people think about marketing, customer experience is the something that the support folks do or that the customer service folks do.

And when you. Visualize. the one page marketing plan, it's split up into three phases. There's the before, the, during, the after, and a lot of people are like questioned. Like, why is there an after phase? I mean, after we've got the sale, that's the end of marketing, right?

I mean, surely. [00:22:00] But that's really where the money is made where the customer experience because to me the single most important metric in marketing. And to me, that's LTV customer lifetime value. If you can get your customer lifetime value to be high, because people stay for a long time because they don't churn before, because they refer people who perfect customers for you. That changes everything. That changes how much you can spend to acquire a customer. That changes how easy it is to get a customer. So that to me is everything. LTVI literally got a T-shirt made up with LTV, just to remind me of that fact and, me that's really one of the most important metrics and something that a lot of people don't think about when it comes to marketing.

They're like, Hey that's a customer support thing, customer satisfaction and all of that. I like your focus on that. What was the turning point for you in really thinking about the customer experience as being so integral to the marketing process?

John Jantsch: It's fairly intuitive and the reason is I say that is because we're all customers. I mean, we [00:23:00] all buy stuff. We all have experiences with companies and we recognize when we've had a great experience. We're, most referrals come because somebody was. Surprised or their expectations were exceeded in having such a great experience.

So to me, it's just always felt very intuitive. In fact, I'm one of those idiots that, you know, if somebody is like, when I'm checking out or they're doing something and I, the person that's checking me out, isn't like doing it the way I think a good experience would be.

I will tell them that, Hey, this would be a much better customer experience if it doesn't always go over very well. But it just, it's one of those things that just always really kind of, shines a bright light for me.

Allan Dib: light. I love that.

From a tools perspective, now we've obviously got AI is very hot and there's lots of tools that make things easier. What's your take on that? What are you seeing that's working? What are you seeing that's not working? Is it overhyped, is it something that, part of your workflow?

How are you thinking

John Jantsch: Yeah, well, it's like every new thing that's come along, it's overhyped. if you go [00:24:00] back to 2006 or oh seven or oh eight or so, and all of a sudden Twitter was, just exploding and that's all anybody could talk about, that they, you had to get on Twitter and then nobody could explain why.

They just said you had to. And you see a lot of that going on. There's no question. I mean, you've seen it, Alan, people selling, make $5,000 a minute while you sleep with ai, and all of that, every time something new comes along, a whole new crop of those things come along.

There's no question that AI is a game changer. It is an amazing. Productivity tool that, for people that do what we do if you're not marrying AI with a strategic approach you will get passed up. Because it just makes things so efficient. beauty of it.

There's a lot of people in marketing that are worried about it. But to me the beauty is. You can fail so badly using ai. Like a lot of people will use that. People who are using it effectively that are, that take a strategic approach are probably never going to be in more demand than they are right now.

To help people harness the [00:25:00] usefulness. AI is not at a point where you can go to it and say, write me a blog post about x. It has to be taught it has to come from your voice, your tone. It has to come from the strategy that you are trying to use. It is tremendous assistant. It is a tremendous efficiency tool.

We do a lot of content production with it, but we. Sort of reverse engineer it. I will record, say a 20 minute video on a subject. And that I'm passionate about that has my tone, has my point of view has says things the way I would say things. And we can take that transcript now to one of these tools and use that to educate the tool.

Here's how John Jantsch talks. Here's his point of view about x. So now take that and turn that already good useful content. Turn that into a blog post or a LinkedIn post. Now you really can produce, use the tool as an efficiency tool to create a much larger volume, but you still have to produce that high quality on brandand content for [00:26:00] it.

Allan Dib: Totally. So many times I see the, I'm on TikTok a little bit or Instagram, and there'll be this, kid who says, I'm gonna show you how to create a hundred Instagram posts in two minutes. And a lot of people get excited by that. They're like, oh, wow.

Great. I don't have to do all of this content and all this, it can just do it for me. But when you have a look at who you are following on Instagram or TikTok, or really any platform, you're usually following a. Human being with a personality, they're usually doing some cool stuff, or they're teaching you some valuable things.

You are generally not following these faceless accounts with just crappy motivational quotes or some cliched content or whatever, which is really what a lot of AI spits out because cliches and generalities really. It's called business because it's trained on so much data and it's designed to spit out the most common phrases and words.

So if you give it, the sky is blue often follows the sky is, and so it'll give you the most cliched, the most general content. So I think you're a hundred percent right, but using those tools as a [00:27:00] strategic research tool to help you summarize, to help you do things faster, better, cheaper. That's really the way that I'm thinking about it.

I'm thinking about it a combine harvester, right before farming, used to be hugely labor intensive. You might have hundreds of people working a farm, and then the combine harvester comes along and then it can do food much cheaper, much better with a lot less labor. But you still need farmers.

You still need someone to figure out how to grow the crop, all of those sorts of things. But you can now produce better, faster, cheaper. And that's the way I'm thinking about. AI and these kind of tools, they help you do stuff quicker, better, easier, cheaper, but they still require your creativity. They still require your storytelling.

They still require your opinion and point of view, and I think that's really been something that people are glossing over. So yes, these tools are incredibly powerful, but they're no substitute for you and your experience, your stories, the value that you bring to the marketplace.

John Jantsch: That's right. I always tell people our job is to provide [00:28:00] context for, these tools. And that's people that aren't doing that. People that don't get that idea are, it's gonna show. I mean, they're actually going to be penalized. I mean, they're already starting.

These people that are writing, 400 blog posts or heaven forbid, an entire book in 10 minutes the search engines and even the Amazons of the world are rejecting that content because it's clearly just garbage.

Allan Dib: Yeah, and I mean a lot of previous success I found online used to be related to technical trickery. Look, how can I get heaps of back links or the right SEO keywords or buy a whole bunch of followers and things like that. But what we're finding now is you can have a viral video.

Even if you've got very few followers, because the algorithm now detects that, hey, lots of people are interested in this. They're watching right through, or whatever. And so we are gonna promote this video and let a lot of other people see it as well. So the algorithms are getting much better at weeding out this technical t trickery and really finding things that people actually find valuable, that [00:29:00] people share, that people watch right throughout.

So I think it's more important than. Ever before to have value in your marketing rather than be reliant on kind of these technical tricks.

John Jantsch: Well, and I think people are getting sick of the, push a button and send out a thousand, LinkedIn connection requests. And so, when you make a personal genuine effort it just shows and it really, shines through. And, for many people.

they don't need a thousand customers, they need five. And so, why not put the energy into building a true, authentic, engaging relationship with five instead of just spamming, you know, a thousand and getting nothing for it.

Allan Dib: Yeah, totally. Back to working with agencies and working with external providers, I mean, every single day. I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners, they're like, look, I work with this agency a blue through $50,000.

I've got a shiny new logo and a cool looking website and zero lead flow as a result. What are they doing wrong? Like, who's [00:30:00] messing up? What's gone wrong? Because this is such a common story that I come across, and I'm sure you do too.

John Jantsch: Yeah, it's tough because, I mean, business owners rarely got into business because they understood marketing. They got into business 'cause they knew how to do a thing. They worked at a company that did that thing and they decided they could do it. And so they're very focused on the deliverable, the thing that the business does, the service it provides the widget, it builds.

And so it's very easy to get, unfortunately. Anybody can call themselves a marketing consultant or a marketing agency today and, throw up a website and it looks like you're, in business. So it's pretty easy to get bamboozled, hoodwinked. I don't know what's a good Aussie term for that.

I,

Allan Dib: both those are good.

John Jantsch: okay. I thought it was like thrown off the side of the kangaroo or something I was waiting for, but anyway.

Allan Dib: I don't have a, I'm sure there is a good one. But I can't think of anything.

But any rate a lot of ways it's [00:31:00] not their fault, but in some ways it is. If they're kind of tricked by the shiny object, the person that just comes in and says, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do it overnight, and, you're gonna have all this stuff. I mean, I get these pitches.

John Jantsch: I'm sure you do because you're in the agency world, we'll get you 65 appointments booked this week. It's like. Appointments booked with who for what, right? so don't fall prey to that. Marketing is not a quick fix. There is no silver bullet. it starts with strategy and it is a never ending, long term investment in your business.

And so, make a smart investment do your due diligence, but don't fall prey to people that are promising the moon, overnight.

Allan Dib: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. It really underlining that it's not a silver bullet, it's not a magic trick, it's not a push button thing. I often say marketing is a process, not an event. A lot of people are like, cool, we've done the rebrand or we've done watched the website, or whatever else,

and the way that you win at marketing is doing the boring stuff daily, weekly, monthly, and just reaping that [00:32:00] compound interest that comes from creating those assets, from doing the boring stuff. Like when I have a look at the stuff that really works in our business, and I mean, we try all sorts of things.

We're like a marketing mad scientist laboratory. Really, it's the basic boring stuff that you would think, stuff like, ads that go to a landing page, stuff that, like emails that go regularly to our list. Really high quality content that's designed for our audience. So the stuff that we are doing is just really.

Basic, there's nothing, no crazy trickery. There's no magic button or anything like that, but we reap that compound interest that comes from just like when you are working out, you build that muscle, you, that comes from the lifting, increasing weights daily, weekly, monthly, that's how you get strong.

That's how you get healthy. That's how you have a great relationship just doing the normal common stuff for an uncommonly long time.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And I would add one thing to that. We occasionally have customers that are like, we just wanna set it and forget it. [00:33:00] And I'm afraid that doesn't work either. You're constantly changing, the platforms are changing, Google's changing, what worked today might not work tomorrow.

So you, have to constantly stay vigilant. Track your metrics, ask a lot of questions about why this is working, why this is not working, experiment. And that's really one of the values of having a long-term trusted partner.

Allan Dib: Yeah. Where do you see A CMO fitting in versus, say, a marketing coordinator versus an agency? Where do you start? Like, so let's say I've got nothing. Do you feel like you start with A CMO or a fractional CMO, do you start with someone just implementing the basic stuff, the email marketing?

Do you get an agency in, where do you guys usually start?

John Jantsch: Well, CMO may feel a bit like a fancy term, for some of your listeners who maybe don't have a see anything. So really just think of it as somebody who's going to come in with a wealth of experience in other industries, which quite frankly is very valuable. That is going to take a look as a.

Third party, [00:34:00] not like in the weeds with you, is going to take a look at what you're doing, what you're not doing is going to offer to interview your customers and really come up with a solid, here's our message, here's our brand promise that we're going to then, take to the various channels if that investment done correctly will pay far greater than just getting a few things working while you can, so you don't have to call it a fractional CMO but certainly work with somebody who has the ability to. To help you develop a marketing strategy. It's even, better if they have a very proven framework or process that they can bring to you so that you get that kind of strategic result pretty quickly.

And, effectively

Allan Dib: I totally agree. It's pretty similar to what we do in our program as well, so no surprise. Obviously we take a pretty similar approach, so we don't call them CMOs. We've got, we maybe we call them coaches or consultants, and again, they'll do very similar to what you said is really take that strategic approach.

They've got a wealth of experience across [00:35:00] industries that's so valuable to crosspollinate what happens in different industries because in some industries. Subscription is just the common business model. Whereas in other industries, billing by the hour, billing by the day is the only way things are done.

And being able to cross pollinate ideas and business models we've had huge unlocks with clients where we just change a pricing model or a packaging model, whatever, and it unlocks a completely new market and a way of doing things. So I think that's incredibly valuable. So I totally agree. And one page marketing plan is all about really.

How do we get our strategy right? And by strategy is how are we going to deploy our scarce resources, our time, our money, our energy, really figuring out, okay what's our message? What's our target market? What's the media we're gonna use to reach people with? And then getting tactical, then hiring that marketing coordinator, or in your case an agency who's actually gonna implement that and see it become a reality.

John Jantsch: Absolutely.

Allan Dib: John, you've published tons of books [00:36:00] now. How many books are you up to?

John Jantsch: Well, not tons, but seven. Duct Tape Marketing was my first. And then the Referral Engine, my last book was called The Ultimate Marketing Engine, which is in some ways just an update or a, an evolution of how I see marketing. But there are all of them. Strategy before tactics will be the first thing you hear about.

Allan Dib: Yeah, totally.

Well, I consider seven to be tons. As someone who's just on the cusp of a book releasing book two, I can tell you that seven is tons. So two felt like tons.

John Jantsch: you've done a great job of selling a ton of your, the one you have written, so, kudos to you for that.

Allan Dib: Thanks John. Well, John it's been a pleasure speaking to you always. Is how do people find out more about you? What you're doing, what's the next step that people should take in getting

John Jantsch: Sure. Just, really the, for what I've been doing the last couple decades, it could be found at ducttapemarketing.com. That's just D-U-C-T-T-A-P-E marketing.com.

Allan Dib: Thank you so much, John. It's been a pleasure having you on.

John Jantsch: Always great to see you.

​[00:37:00]

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