Your 1-Page Marketing Plan - Part 1: Before - Prospect

[Pesso]

Hey Square Readers,

Who’s ready to read?

We hope you picked up a copy of our second book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib and are excited to dive in!

The book jumps right into practical information and instruction to help you make your own 1 page marketing plan. You can also sign up through his website for a digital version of the materials. 

He breaks down the book and plan into the three sections, following the three customer stages: Before – Prospect, During – Lead, After – Customer. Our discussion questions will follow this along, having you fill out your own Marketing plan here.

We’ll start off today with the Prospect Phase from Chapters 1 to 3. The author describes this phase as “get them to know you and indicate interest,” and the focus is identifying who your core target customers might be and to figure out how to best reach them.

Target Market

It is incredibly important to start by narrowing into a specific niche for your business that is enjoyable, lucrative, and profitable, that you can succeed in. The tighter and more specific, the better!

Messaging

Your messaging here is your Why. If you've read Start with Why by Simon Sinek, our first Book Club book, that's a big chunk of how you position yourself here.

Media

How you reach your prospective customers is essential. You don't want to rely on what Dib calls "Accidental Marketing," just throwing everything out there in the hopes of someone accidentally stumbling on you. You want to be direct and reach your core audience where they engage.

So jump on in with your answers in the comments below:

1. What is your Target Market and Audience?
2. What is your messaging to your Target Market?
3. What Media will you use to reach them?

Feel free to share any other thoughts you have about this book!

We can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

After you're done with this, check out Part 2, the During -- Lead Phase.

Happy reading,

Pesso

P.S. here’s the full 1-Page Marketing Plan Worksheet, showing it all:

[Pesso]

No such thing as being behind! You're a business owner, you're on your own pace and that's perfectly fine!

Thanks so much for joining us and diving into both books at once -- I really appreciate it and love having you here with us.

Right? The intro is very straightforward and no nonsense, I loved it!

I love that you're looking into the niche and trying to figure it out. What do you know so far? What are the values and habits and qualities of the customers you want? Who are they?

The big lesson I learned from the book is the target audience bit -- don't be afraid to really narrow your focus into one specific type of customer. Just because you're global or North America, doesn't mean you need to be everything to everyone. Laser focus on one small group, and take small steps from there.

Rooting for ya, and can't wait to hear more!

[Smellthis1919]

Happy Saturday everyone .... i think i am ready to answer these questions now ....phew what a lot great learning 😜😉👍

1. What is your Target Market and Audience? SPAS AND MASSAGE THREAPIST
2. What is your messaging to your Target Market? NATURALLY MANUFACTURED PRODUCTS WITHOUT TOXIC CHEMICALS GIVING THEIR CLIENTS A MORE MEMORABLE AND HEALTH ENHANCING EXPERIENCE
3. What Media will you use to reach them? LINKED IN, IN PERSON POSSIBLY PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS...THIS IS THE ONE I FIND THE HARDEST TO FIGURE OUT FOR OUT FOR THIS INDUSTRY 

WOWIEWOW now on to the next parts ...happy learning everyone 👍😊

[Pesso]

Thanks for sharing @Smellthis1919 !

I absolutely love all of this -- it's a really great niche market, and both of your messaging are really on point. I do love the focus of non-chemical and health-friendly. It's a bit more specific than just overall unforgettable. What makes your stuff unforgettable? What's your why and your differentiating factors?

[Smellthis1919]

Thank you so very much i will definitely narrow dowm my unforgettable and my differentiating and why factors 

Awesome help 👍🙏😊... this such a great group ...sooooo much support

[Pesso]

So glad that we can help, @Smellthis1919 !

[Smellthis1919]

Hello again... been doing my homework this fine day and have come up with i hope a better message for my target market.... looking for some constructive criticism..please read and advise what you think...

We are here to support you ....we will help you help your clients experience an unforgettable and healing spa visit each and every time...they will leave your spa wanting more and spread the word about their memorable spa experience to all who will listen

Thanks for reading 

[TheArtChild]

Hi Everyone! I'm Ms. Alicia from TAC (The Art Child) where I teach Therapeutic Art Classes to adults, kids, and teens. I teach the process not the product mindset, and I have been trying to get better at what my marketing is and explaining my why in a more focuses way. We picked up the book from my library about a week ago and have been reading, and already re-reading. So, to answer the questions; 

What is your Target Market and Audience?

I believe my target audience is parents, and teachers of teens & younger students. 

What is your message to your Target Market?

My message would be that you don't need to be perfect, you just need to get out of that mindset and into the process not product mindset. Also considered a "growth mindset". 

What Media will you use to reach them?

Right now, I use Facebook and a program called HiSawyer that is linked to my Square Website. I had out cards at live events, and painting demonstrations to show how the program can benefit as well. Live events is usually where I get most of my clients. I also love painting live! It's fun, the same people will stop at the beginning and then come back when I'm done and you can see their faces so excited, and sometimes they go home with that original piece.

I hope that was clear lol 

[Pesso]

Thanks for sharing, @TheArtChild !

I love that you've completely dived in to reading and re-reading the book! I hope it's been helpful so far.

Everything looks really great here! 

I would say that maybe it might be beneficial to narrow in your audience even more to just one of those groups. Teachers and Parents have different needs, habits, and values, and might be reached in different ways, so your strategy there might be different. It could be easier to focus into just one of them to have a really cohesive message. 

Love it all!

[Moreplease]

1. What is your Target Market and Audience? 

I'm still trying to narrow this down but am struggling to figure out how. My target market and audience are those who don't prioritize self-care. People who take care everyone/everything but themselves, who are too busy to go out and do things they enjoy and therefore don't do anything for themselves. It's self-care, I feel like no one is excluded lol. 

2. What is your messaging to your Target Market?

My messaging is it's easy to implement self-care into your daily lives/routines. It's important to take care of yourself so you can put your best self towards the people around you and the things you do. It doesn't have to be going out and it doesn't have to be hard. 

3. What Media will you use to reach them?

I mainly use Instagram and my website. I use Facebook and Twitter some but I'm most active on IG.

[Pesso]

Thanks for sharing, @Moreplease !

It's absolutely tricky to narrow down the target market, but suuuuper important. I like what you have so far, but let's definitely go even deeper. What kind of people are those? What do they do, who are they? The author talks about crafting a persona, or imagining a single individual that fits the bill and creating a profile and life for themselves. Give them a name, think through their day to day life. Who are they?

The first thing that strikes me from your description is a parent of a young child, but I'm sure there are others that fit! Come up with one and share it here- 

[Moreplease]

Busy moms and business owners is where I'm thinking. 

[Moreplease]

And moms of young children is really good especially since I use all natural products and even plan to move into natural cleaning essentials as well. hmm

[Pesso]

I absolutely love that super specific niche, @Moreplease ! I think health conscious moms with young children is great, and running with that could be a really cool test! Rooting for ya-

[Moreplease]

Thank you so much!

[scastrotattoo]

Hey everyone! So I must say I'm enjoying the book and learning a lot from it, however its quite difficult to adapt the page method itself to my business.  The only way i can fathom the spreadsheet would be to fill one out for each individual at my shop, which kind of defeats the purpose and selling point of the book haha.

I Co-own a tattoo, art and piercing studio in North Carolina. Each artist has a different target market/audience depending on their style of tattooing, as well as piercing and our piercing apprentice have their own separate target audiences. Then, in addition, there's the gallery side of showing and selling original art or prints (yet another different target) 

There's also not much of an overlap that could maybe further be dialed in across the board.

I would love to hear some insights and opinions.

[Pesso]

Hey @scastrotattoo -- thanks for jumping in here and sharing that. 

It's definitely tricky! 

So I think the big thing to remember is that when the author talks about a marketing plan, it's not a full marketing strategy for your entire business and every provider. But rather, by doing filling out the plan, it's essentially guiding a single marketing campaign or a small group of campaigns. 

In the first section about Target Market, he discusses how important it is to pick a really niche group. He brings up the fear that most people would have here of missing out on potential customers. But he then offers that it's essential to dive in to corner and take over that niche, and after that, then move over to a different segment. So the goal is to do it now and focus in somewhere on a profitable segment of customers, and then later go through it again. 

I do think that you did land on something there, and that to a certain extent, your business is semi-unique in the sense that you're essentially multiple businesses. You can absolutely do the exercise multiple times for each of the different segments, or even better, if each of your artists are essentially their own businesses within your shop and do their own promotion and marketing, is to have each of your artists go through this. 

But totally, doing the exercise for each of the separate parts of business in the shop that you'd want to market (overall tattooing, overall piercing, and art gallery), can be a solid option.

I would suggest to maybe just start with one element for yourself and see how it goes. 

Hope this helps!

[scastrotattoo]

Great advice, thank you! 

I was leaning in a similar direction myself.

Looking forward to reading more of this book!

[Pesso · Accepted solution]

Hey friends!

Y'all did an amazing job here on Part 1, so let's keep it up and jump on over to filling out Part 2: During - Lead phase!

I can't wait to see more of your plans!

[Smellthis1919]

This is perfect timing i was just about to start it... yipppeee...glad to be working through this with all of you ...looking forward to our book discussion 👍😊

[Pesso]

Terrific, @Smellthis1919 ! Looking forward to seeing what ya got!

Thanks for being up for it-

[DinaLRosenberg]

Our niche are people on their spiritual journey that are looking to find and make meaning in their daily lives. We provide them the tools to do so as well as the education if they need it in a judgment free zone. We reach these people on social media by providing content that teaches them about the tools we offer for sale. Our TikTok content is very conversational and off-the-cuff while our instagram content is more beautiful. We also offer free classes weekly on instagram. To reach existing customers we send emails and text messages (thru square of course) weekly.