43. Leaning In to Lean Marketing with Allan Dib

And I think it works for some people, but. I like to think of infinite games. So I call that a loose goal where we set the direction. So where do we want to go? For example, uh, I want to keep getting stronger, right? So I lift, uh, I lift weights. Uh, so I have a tight system, meaning Three times a week I'm in the gym lifting weights and I will do this forever. This is an infinite game.

And my goal, my loose goal is to get stronger, to keep getting stronger, to keep seeing progress, to keep going that way. So the goal never ends. So it's a loose goal. But a very tight system. So I'm not yo yo dieting up and down one day, one day I feel like it. One day I don't feel like it. It's literally scheduled as a meeting in my calendar. So just the same as we're meeting today, because I've got a calendar appointment in there, I wouldn't go today. Oh, you know what?

I don't really feel like doing this podcast or whatever. So I won't do it. So no, I treat it like a client meeting. So it's a tight system, something in my calendar. Is going to get done, you know, unless there's some crazy unforeseeable, maybe find it up in the hospital or something like that or whatever. So that's a tight system. And I will keep doing that forever. I will keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

And, uh, same with other goals in my life, whether it's wealth, whether it's fitness, whether it's relationships, whatever else. And I find that's a lot more motivating. It's a lot more exciting. You always feel good because you can, even if you're not making progress, even if you go backwards, sometimes, you know, I'm in this for a long time, I'm going to be working out for the next 40 years. So, okay.

If I went backwards in strength this week, because of, I don't know, whatever else something happened, I didn't sleep well, uh, whatever it is, no problem. I've got 40 years to continue this infinite game.

So the vast majority of the things that in there, uh, pretty timeless and I think probably more relevant than ever before. Now, what has changed is we've just seen this flood of more, more, more. Every podcast you listen to there, they give you five new strategies to implement. Every course you do, there's another 10 things you've got to do. You listen to somebody else and they, they say, okay, you've got to use this tool, this AI thing, this whatever.

And so almost everybody is telling us to do more. But here's the thing. When I look at the best and most sophisticated marketers in the world. They're not doing a thousand things. They're not doing a hundred things. They're doing a few things very, very well, and they're playing that longer game. They're just doing the daily, weekly, monthly. For example, I spoke to Pat Flynn just yesterday. I was on his, uh, podcast. Great guy. Uh, but he's just been grinding away at his podcast.

You know, people see him as this massive success and he is, he's a, he's a huge success and he's done really well, but he's just been doing this. Pretty much the same thing for the last 13 years is just doing a podcast episode every week or a couple of times a week or whatever. And I'm just doing a really great job. Another friend of mine, a podcaster, Oma Zen Home, we just had a celebration, 10 years of his podcast. So if you do, Reasonable stuff for a long enough period of time.

It's almost unreasonable that you won't be successful, right? Like if I, if I ate well, uh, you know, I don't eat processed junk food or whatever, I ate fruits, vegetables, meats, all of that sort of stuff. And I do that for five years. It would be unreasonable for me to be unhealthy, right? I mean, yes, things happen, random things happen or whatever, but if we do reasonable stuff for a reasonable time. You're going to get results.

And specifically an important part of the story is it's post war Japan where the country's like decimated after the war. They cannot, they don't have the energy, they don't have the facilities, they don't have the manufacturing, they don't have the resources to do mass manufacturing. So now they've got to think of a different way to compete. And at the time, uh, Japan was considered the worst quality stuff. And like, this is like back in the forties, right?

And so forties and fifties, and then Japan turned this around. They went from the worst in the world to the best in the world. And how did they do that? They did this with a concept called lean, where you do more with less, so less human effort, less equipment, less waste, less time, less space. And you do this by following a value stream. So we only create a product when it's demanded by a client. We only use the materials that we need. We make sure that the quality is right all throughout.

So there are several principles of lean manufacturing, but the upshot is basically less waste, less time, less effort. And better quality results. And I was at a lean conference. I didn't know much about lean at the time. And, you know, I was a guest speaker there just to speak on marketing. And someone came up to me and said, you know what, I've read the one page marketing plan and I really considered this like lean marketing. And that's the first time I'd ever heard that phrase.

And, uh, uh, you know, I didn't think much of it at the time, but it kept going around in, in my mind. And so when I looked at the best marketers in the world, They had a very similar approach, a very lean approach to their marketing. They weren't doing 10, 000 different things. They weren't spending a lot of money on things that created a lot of waste, a lot of interruption, a lot of, um, spam, all of that sort of thing that was kind of like traditional marketing, but these guys were lean.

And so that brought me, uh, to create the lean marketing framework to really, uh, define and document the lean marketing framework, which I've done in that book, which you held up.

Often they're a past version of ourselves. And I think the reason that a lot of my work has resonated with a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs is because. I used to be in that position, I, in my very first business, I had no idea how to do marketing. I had no idea how to get a new client in the door. I was just an IT geek. Uh, I was really good at the technical thing that I did, but I had no clue on how to get a customer. And so I know what that feels like.

I know the journey that people go on. I know the waste that goes on where you, you know, you might spend thousands of dollars with a, an agency and then it just blows up and you get absolutely nothing out of it. So I think that's why a lot of my work has resonated because I've been that past version of myself. So a lot of times, A really good target market is a past version of yourself with whatever you've been.

So if you're a fitness coach, it might've been when you were unfit and you took that journey, you know what it took to, to get there, or it might be you're an executive coach or, or whatever else doesn't really matter. So that's a really powerful target market to create. That's not always possible. Sometimes you just see a market opportunity and you want to capitalize on it.

You've never been in that market, in which case you need to do a lot of research and figure out and understand that market at a deep level. So once we do that, The other bits start to fit in place because if we understand a market really, really well, then we can create messaging that really resonates with that audience. When we create messaging that really resonates with that audience, they will respond to the message that we put out there.

They'll click on the ad, they'll opt in on your website, they'll put reply to emails, whatever your, your funnel or your sales process is. So that, is the building block that makes everything else work. And then on top of that, we, we create lead nurturing with lead conversion and all of those sorts of things, which I cover in, in my books. But, um, a foundational element is figuring out who your target market is.

So they're things that will do things in a fraction of the time or effort, uh, and often automate things that are manual processes. So we've all experienced that. Hopefully if you haven't, then there's an opportunity there in your business. So getting the right tools into your business. So it's kind of like, if I want to Uh, smash down a brick wall. Um, if I was just to do it with my bare hands, that would be very difficult, very painful, take a long time.

If I have the right tool, like a sledgehammer, I could do it in a couple of minutes. Right? So similarly, uh, there are tools that will really multiply the force of your inputs when it comes to marketing. The second force multiplier is assets. So assets is what separates the rich from the middle class and the, and the poor. So the rich make their income predominantly from assets. They own, uh, real estate, they own stocks, all of those things, and those things generate income.

So from stocks, you generate income. Dividend income from real estate, you generate rental income and a very similar thing happens in marketing. So if you have strong marketing assets that will generate lead flow, that will generate revenue, that will generate clients. So these are things that you don't actively have to work for. They will come to you because you own that asset. I'll give you an example from my business. My books, right?

Every single day I open my email inbox and someone wants to join one of our programs. Invite me to be on a podcast just like you did. Um, uh, invite me to speak at their event. Um, all sorts of good things happen as a result of me having strong assets in the marketplace. So similarly, you want to build a really good, powerful assets in your marketing infrastructure in the absence. Of assets.

Like if you don't have assets in your business, similar to if you don't have assets in real life, then the only way that you can generate income is through labor. And that's exactly the same with marketing. Uh, there's nothing wrong with initially generating your income from labor, but it's not saleable. It's not scalable and it stops when you stop. So that's the kind of really big downside.

So similarly, you'll see people from a marketing perspective, they're doing cold outreach, cold calling, uh, sending out tons of emails and things like that. And again, I'm not saying those things are bad, but they're very labor intensive. They're very difficult to keep up and they stop working when you stop working. So if you generate marketing assets in your business, you're going to be able to generate a lot of lead flow, a lot of, uh, clients, a lot of revenue from that.

That's an asset that Michelin used to sell tires, right? Um, if you're an it company, you may offer audits or something like that. So that's an asset that you can create in your business that you'll become famous for. So basically what you want. from a flagship asset is something that demonstrates that you can help your ideal prospect by actually helping them. It also highlights, exaggerates, uh, crystallizes your uniqueness. Um, it builds a lot of trust brand equity with your audience.

So what's something that you could help your ideal target market with, show them that you can help them. By actually helping them get a little bit of a result in the beginning. Like, you know, so many people will read my book and say, you know, I read your book two years ago, didn't do anything with it at the time we got to a stage where we really needed to up our marketing. I went back to your book, but you know, now I'm ready to, to join one of your programs or, or whatever else.

So that's an asset that's out there. Like I didn't have to cold call anyone. I didn't have to email anyone. I didn't have to follow anyone. Now that doesn't mean we don't have a, a good followup funnel, but there's an asset that's out there when I'm sleeping, when I'm eating, when I'm doing whatever, that is creating a lot of value for my target market.

So you might, you might fire a hundred shots and get maybe one if you're, you're lucky. Whereas farming is a lot more. predictable. So you sow your seeds, you water them, you take care of them, and then harvest time comes and you harvest. And, you know, again, random things can happen in life. Yes, a terrible storm can come and wipe out your crop. That does happen, of course. But most of the time it's pretty predictable.

And you know, if you do the right things, you're going to reap a good harvest. So similarly from a marketing perspective, we want to do maybe some hunting, but also spend a lot of time farming. So planting those seeds, watering them, nurturing them, taking care of them, and then harvest when the time is ready. You know, so many people. Yeah. have been on my email list, for example, for a couple of years.

And they just weren't ready, you know, for whatever reason, it was maybe a budget issue, maybe a timing issue. Maybe they just didn't need it at the time or whatever. And then time comes when something's triggered in their business. They're now ready to get some help. They're ready to accelerate things or whatever. Had I two years ago said, You know, time waster or tire kicker or whatever, and not kept in touch with them. Well, that would have been a massive wasted opportunity.

So we want to be able to nurture our leads until they are ready to buy until something triggers in their life, in their business, in whatever. And And they're ready to buy. And they're now much more open to hearing our message.

So you, if you invest a small amount of money over a long enough period of time, the compound interest will massively exceed what you actually put in. So how did that work? Feels like magic. So very similar from a marketing perspective. If we do the daily, weekly, monthly Marketing stuff. If we treat marketing like a process, not an event. So an event is something we do one time. We do one big rebrand, we do one, whatever. Um, that's not marketing. That's, that's a tactic.

So marketing is the stuff that we do daily, weekly, monthly. That's how we win in the game of marketing. And that creates that compound interest in the beginning, you know, just like compound interest. It feels like we're really getting no results. It's not really working, but if you, Keep doing it over time. If you keep doing the right stuff over time, it will compound and get you a really, really good result. You'll build that brand. You'll build, build that goodwill with your audience.

You'll build that audience. Uh, you'll build that podcast. Like we talked in the, in the beginning over a long period of time. Now, there are things that you can do to accelerate. The speed and, and things that, that you can do all of all of that. But that's essentially how you win at this infinite game. That's, we talked about loose goals, tight systems. That's what we want to build from a marketing perspective. Meaning we know what happens daily, weekly, monthly.

We've got processes, we've got people who execute that stuff. We know exactly what we're doing. And that's why, uh, we start with that plan, that one page marketing plan so that we have clarity around what it is that we need to do from a marketing perspective.

So twice a week, we send an email to our list and we send value building content. Now we've done that for years and years and years. And that consistently generates a lot of revenue within our business. Now, if we didn't, if we never captured those leads. I mean, there would be tens of millions of dollars of revenue that we would have left on the table there. And more importantly, we wouldn't have had the impact that we have.

We wouldn't be in touch with as many people as we, we have, we wouldn't have guided a lot of businesses from a bad place to a much better place. So that's a very, very simple thing that a lot of people do. They simply don't capture leads and. Even if they do capture leads a lot of time, they don't keep in touch with those leads. Sometimes we'll work with a business and, um, I'll ask, tell me about your list of past clients or whatever. And they'll say, Oh yeah, we've got 10, 000 past clients.

Um, how often do you keep in touch with them? Oh, never. It's sometimes the answer once, uh, once a year or twice a year or something when we run a black Friday special or something like that is sometimes the answer as well. So there's massive, uh, wasted opportunities in.

Your existing businesses, most businesses we find can double their revenue without adding a single new client just by either, you know, doing this simple stuff, which is keeping in touch with clients, having a good nurturing system, having a better conversion system, having better delivery. So basically boring stuff, stuff that's not super exciting. It's not the latest funnel tool or the latest AI thing or whatever, but it's simple stuff. Um, I often say. Common sense is not common practice.

So a lot of what we do is making common sense, common practice.

We want to enter the conversation that's going on in the prospect's mind, you know, Uh, kind of going back to a fitness analogy, it's great that you're a wonderful trainer. It's great that you're certified. It's great that you won the Olympics or whatever, but what can you do for me? You know? So I want you to talk about my problem. I want you to tell me about how you took somebody else who was out of shape and turned them into an athlete or whatever else. So that's something that's, that's now.

Way more interesting. So when people are searching for something, they're searching for their problem. They're usually searching for what is an issue in their life. And that's, what's going to enter that conversation going on in their mind and say, yes, that's for me. That's what we want our advertising and marketing to do. We want someone to say, Hey, that's for me. That's the problem I've got right now.

So you've got my attention, but if you're talking about yourself, great, you're awesome or whatever, but I'm generally not paying attention.

Um, so yeah, many things and it's contextual to every business, you know, something might. Work really well for one type of business or one type of industry or whatever. And it just doesn't translate into, into another industry. So, um, but a lot of the things that I teach are timeless and will work across all businesses, all industries. So across all, all businesses, it's a good idea to identify your target market, be very, very clear who they are.

It's a very good idea to write copy from a problem. perspective, as I mentioned, talk about their, their problems and their life, what's going on in their mind. It's a good idea to reach them on media that they're on. So the fundamentals kind of really don't change the tactics. Absolutely. They do change. Some platforms come in and out of favor. Some platforms start off working really, really well. Some not so much. So if I was to think about.

Right now, uh, LinkedIn is a massive opportunity, especially if you're in B2B, I think the engagement is really high. It's easy to get good engagement and things like that. So who knows how long that will last. And, you know, in the past we've seen it with platforms like Instagram. Now, Instagram is much heavier of a lift. It's more video oriented, which is harder to do. And it's all about really keeping the, the watch time.

So from a tactical perspective, for sure, there's a lot of changes, but fundamentally. Uh, and most businesses don't have those fundamentals. Right. Very little changes over time.

Lean marketing thinking time to time.

So I don't think it's true that people have a short attention span, but they've got a lot of options, which means they've got a short boredom span, which is something is boring. I'm just going to click away or remove myself from it or whatever. So that goes back to your content. So if your content is we're really awesome, look at our product, then yeah, boring next. But the stuff that we're interested in, we'll watch it for hours and hours, or we'll listen to it for hours and hours.

So here's my formula for social media success on any platform. And, uh, you're not going to like it though. So it's basically number one, we choose a platform. Number two, we post every day. Number three, we get paid. And then we just repeat that over and over and over for maybe two to five years. So you will dominate that platform if you do those three steps.

And so I was recently speaking at a, Um, conference for marketing agencies who are people who are experts at all that technical stuff. They're really good at building landing pages, building websites, uh, doing lead capturing email follow up responders and all of that. And one of the things I said to them, guys, you know, do you think the value of your technical skills is going to go up or down over the next few years? And it was kind of like sucking the air out of the room.

And I said, look, the reason I'm here is to talk to you about getting better. Uh, at strategy, at the strategic elements, the, because the technical elements are going to get easier and easier and easier. You used to be able to do really well by being a really good technician at SEO or a pay per click marketing and all of that. And I'm not saying those things are not important.

Those things are important, but the AI, the machine learning, the, Technical systems are getting better and better and better at identifying, you know, this person is interested in this content, so I'm going to show them more now, you know, used to be hashtags, followers, all of that sort of thing on platforms like tick tock, even on Instagram reels. Followers are not even that important anymore. The algorithm will show you things that it thinks you're interested in.

So it takes a guess based on your behavior. So if I swipe away at something, it'll show me less of that. If it says, Hey, I'm watching more and more of this stuff, it will give me more and more of that stuff. So more and more, the technical factors are getting less important and the fundamental factors like. Right message to the right market, good offer, uh, good follow up, all of that sort of thing. Those things are getting much, much more important. So I think that's really exciting, I think.

Um, and that really makes a lot of the stuff that I talk about, like in the one page marketing plan, more relevant than ever because I talk a lot about, you know, The fundamentals, the strategy, the stuff that won't change in a year, in 10 years, in a hundred years, because we're talking about humans and humans have the same psychology. They respond to the same things. They have the same fears. They have the same desires. They have the, the same hopes and dreams and all of that.

So. A lot of the fundamentals will become much, much more relevant and the technical trickery that people have used to either get on page one of Google or spam someone or, you know, be in your Instagram feed or whatever, they're going to go away.

What's the thing that, you know, if I asked your friends or family, Hey, uh, what are you good at? What would they tell me? What's the thing that you could help someone with in your sleep kind of thing? So that's the thing I would really double down on. And I think You almost just can't be too niche. There are people who, for example, all they do is like TikTok ads for accountants, right? Or there's a company that their whole agency, all they do is help you get testimonials. That's it.

Like they will interview your clients. They will help you post it. They will help with the scripting and all of that. So just choose one thing that you can be a world class specialist at, because then it's going to be much easier for someone to refer it. Uh, someone to, you know, if you're an accountant and you want to grow on TikTok, Oh, great. I got the TikTok ads guy.

Or if you're the person who wants to grow on LinkedIn, okay, this, this guy's the LinkedIn guy who will help with cold outreach or whatever. So you want to be known as the person who can help in that specialized area. And it is getting a lot more specialized, you know, the, I think the days of the generalist marketing agency, I think they're over.

Um, that is tempting, but I would avoid that at all costs because you're going to get bad reviews. You're going to get refunds. You're going to get people who are unhappy with you. And most importantly of all, It's going to be a big opportunity cost because there are people out there who are in high demand of the thing that you are an expert at. And so, uh, you're not directing your, Efforts and your focus at the big opportunity that you could have with them.

So a lot of people waste a lot of their time on the loudest clients and the loudest clients tend to be the worst clients generally. So you want to spend time on your very best, most ideal clients. So that would be my advice.