Understanding the Most Important Element in Marketing – In Just 7 Minutes with John Jantsch

Check out episode
  • Learn about John Jantsch’s book: The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business
  • Learn how to identify your ideal client and then articulate your core marketing messages and strategy
  • Know how to design the best path to profit for your business

Resources/Links:

Summary

John Jantsch is a small business marketing speaker, consultant, and bestselling author of Duct Tape Marketing, Duct Tape Selling and The Referral Engine. He is known as the world’s most practical small business marketing speaker and expert. John Jantsch is a veteran marketing speaker and workshop leader with over 200 successful events under his belt. Event organizers and attendees frequently comment on the nature of the practical, actionable “takeaway” value of his presentations.

In this episode, John shares how he helps small business owners design the best path to profit through understanding the most important element in marketing. John also shares his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business that taps into the wisdom of 19th-century transcendentalist literature and the author’s own 30-year entrepreneurial journey to challenge today’s entrepreneur to remain fiercely self-reliant while chasing their own version of success.

Check out these episode highlights:

  • 01:17 – John’s ideal client: It’s really the small business owner with local businesses
  • 02:34 – Problem he helps solve: The biggest one is that they buy everything ala carte. They buy social media from somebody’s nephews of brother, and they buy SEO, they buy a pay per click, and what happens is, or worse, so they start with a web designer, to get their website done. And what happens is none of those people, none of those things are talking to each other, none of them have a cohesive strategy, that they’re trying to accomplish.
  • 03:11 – Typical symptoms people experience with that problem? SOne of my favorites is that when they come to me and say we’re just in a commodity business, and all people care about is price.
  • 04:14 – Common mistakes they’re going to make? The biggest one is that they buy everything ala carte.
  • 05:19 – John’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): Interview half a dozen of your happy clients. Get them on the phone, ask them, why did you pick us in the first place? What do we do that other people don’t do? If you were going to refer us to your friends, what would you say? And what you’re looking for there really are the themes. See, what people don’t understand is they don’t, our customers are happy customers don’t buy what we sell. They buy what they get, they buy the problem that we solve.
  • 06:33 – John’s Valuable Free Resource(VFR):ducttapemarketing.com
  • 07:37 – Q:’John, do you have a new book coming out?’ A: I’m releasing a book called “The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur” and it’s a daily 366 lessons of hopefully the wisdom and some of the things that I’ve gained to give you some inspiration and give you a hard question to answer every single day. So, you can just read for 30 seconds and you’re done.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“ Customers don't buy what we sell.They buy the problem that we solve.” -@ducttape Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: 0:09 Hello everyone, a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, joined today by John Jantsch. John, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. A very warm welcome sir, where are you hanging out?

John Jantsch: 0:20 Well, I am in my summer home in Kansas City, Missouri. I say that half kidding-ly because I also have a home in the mountains, west of Boulder, Colorado, and so that has become my winter home as well. But currently, I’m in Kansas City,

Tom Poland: 0:37 Kansas City. All right. Now I’m in little Castaways Beach in Queensland, Australia. So, hands across the water. For those of you who might have been living in a cave for the last 30, 40 years, and haven’t heard of John, he’s a small business marketing speaker, consultant, best-selling author, I mean, globally, internationally mega best-selling author of Duct Tape Marketing, Duct Tape Selling and The Referral Machine. Two of the three books which I have and hold a treasured spot on my library shelf, John. So, the subject of the interview today is “Understanding the Most Important Element of Marketing” from one of the world’s great authorities on marketing, John Jantsch. Sir, your time starts now. Question number one is, who’s your ideal client?

John Jantsch: 1:17 Well, it’s really the small business owner, but you know, that’s sort of generic, but I love working with local businesses, that contractor, that foundation repair person, because today really those businesses, if they’re not showing up digital, if they’re not showing up online, they almost don’t exist. And so much that we can do for them and I love helping those folks. But it’s also got to be somebody who’s ready to invest, and to go to the next level. Who’s realized that they’ve only gotten so far doing what they’re doing. And now they need to put into place a marketing system, somebody who’s come to that conclusion, that’s who is my ideal client?

Tom Poland: 1:55 Thank you, sir. And question number two, six and a quarter minutes left? How would you describe the problem that you solve for them?

John Jantsch: 2:01 Well, I’ve long time been using four C’s that I think a lot of the folks that are attracted to me really talk about all the time. We give them clarity, control, confidence, and in the end what they all want, customers. So, clarity is really around a message. I mean, a lot of times they’re not really sure what to say, what to do, what’s working, what’s not working. I think they feel increasingly out of control because there’s all these new channels and new platforms and new things to learn when they just want to run the business. Sometimes they lack the confidence to know how to make the right choices. I mean, the SEO people call, the pay per click people call, and they just, you know, they, who do I trust? So, we give them really a lot of that clarity, and control, and confidence. And in the end, what we give them is customers, which is really the problem that they want solved, no matter what.

Tom Poland: 2:57 Right, thank you. So, five and a quarter minutes left. Question number three, you’ve covered some of these already. But are there any other symptoms that people are going to experience that kind of has them, look at them and go, yep, I need to talk to someone at Duct Tape Marketing?

John Jantsch: 3:11 Well, one of my favorites is that when they come to me and say we’re just in a commodity business, and all people care about is price. That is actually a symptom of no strategy, quite frankly. I know that happens quite often is that they will come to us and say I just, you know, I can’t shake the competition, you know, bills, auto bodies always ranking above me, you know, what I do to really shake them? And then of course, you know, I did allude to that idea that, that they’re just overwhelmed and sort of frustrated with, do I do Facebook? Do I do, you know, Snapchat? What, you know, what do I do? And then lastly, we work with businesses all the time that are, you know, outwardly very successful looking, they don’t know what’s working, and what’s not working. So, they just throw a little bit at everything.

Tom Poland:3:57 Interesting. Spraying and praying. Thank you. Four and a quarter minutes left, question number four. So, someone realizes they’ve got a marketing system problem, and they’re going to try stuff, maybe before they get to you. What are some of the most common mistakes that you find people make before they find your solution?

John Jantsch: 4:14 Well, I think the biggest one is that they buy everything ala carte. So, they buy social media from somebody’s nephews of brother, and they buy SEO, they buy a pay per click, and what happens is, or worse, so they start with a web designer, to get their website done. And what happens is none of those people, none of those things are talking to each other, none of them have a cohesive strategy, that they’re trying to accomplish. And so consequently, none of them is as effective as it could be when they’re working together. And that’s what really, when I start telling people a system so that everything’s integrated, so that it will all work together to support and amplify everything you’re doing. That’s when the light bulb really kind of comes on. And the good news is, oftentimes we tell them, you actually should be doing less, but with more intention.

Tom Poland: 5:06 Right. Right. Perfect. Thank you. So, three minutes left, question number five out of our seven questions. What’s one valuable free action that an audience member could take that’s, probably not going to solve the whole problem, but it might take them a step in the right direction?

John Jantsch: 5:19 A great starting point that we do with every single one of our customers is that we get them well, we actually do the work. But I’m going to tell you as a listener, interview half a dozen of your happy clients. Get them on the phone, ask them, why did you pick us in the first place? What do we do that other people don’t do? If you were going to refer us to your friends, what would you say? And what you’re looking for there really are the themes. See, what people don’t understand is they don’t, our customers, our happy customers don’t buy what we sell. They buy what they get, they buy the problem that we solve. And it’s always the little things, you know, we work with a tree service. And recently we interviewed their clients. And every single one of them said, they show up when they said they’re going to and they clean up the job site. It was just, they could cut the tree down. The theme was that they would actually show up and not inconvenience me and they clean up the job site. And that’s the marketing message that you need to communicate because that’s the problem that you’re solving.

Tom Poland: 6:23 Yeah, perfect. Great. Thank you. So, question number six. One and three quarter minutes left, so we’re doing well. One valuable free resource that we could direct people to that’s going to help them even more?

John Jantsch: 6:33 Well, I wish I could tell you there’s this one magic page on my website that if you go there and download the thing, all your problems are going to be solved. But I’m just going to send you generically to ducttapemarketing.com, that’s D-U-C-T-T-A-P-E marketing.com. Because what I want you to do is start following that, start listening to my podcasts if you’re one of those kinds of people. Start reading the blog, we’ve created these hub pages or guided pages. So, you’ll find the guide page, which is the ultimate guide to local marketing, the Ultimate Guide to strategy, the Ultimate Guide to content marketing. Start digging into some of those and just commit to really lifelong learning. You know, even if you are not going to go out and hire a marketing consultant, you need to know enough about say SEO to not get burned by somebody might bring in to do that work for you. So, you’ve got to commit learning enough to actually be a good buyer of these services.

Tom Poland: 7:30 Great advice. Thank you and 35 seconds left, question number seven. What’s the one question I should have asked you but I didn’t? And the answer, please. John, do you have a new book coming out?

John Jantsch: 7:37 Well, Tom, I’m so glad that you asked that. I actually do depending upon when people listen to this show. In October of 2019, I’m releasing a book called “The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur” and it’s a daily 366 lessons of hopefully the wisdom and some of the things that I’ve gained to give you some inspiration and give you a hard question to answer every single day. So, you can just read for 30 seconds and you’re done.

Tom Poland: 8:04 John Jantsch, thank you so much for your time.

Tom Poland 8:35 Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.

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