Ultimate Marketing Plan: Find Your Most Profitable Competive Edge Book

A constructive guide to creating your USP, identifying your target market, and marketing strategically. It’s an easy read with real-world advice based on Kennedy’s experience with many large and small clients. There are many specific, quantified examples within the text and in image form (such as sales letters and ads). The third edition, published in 2006, is much more focused on print than Internet marketing.

Although it's useful, I didn't find it as engaging as the marketing books Selling the Invisible or The Referral Engine.

I agree with most of Kennedy’s advice, but strongly disagree with his wish that unrestricted telemarketing and broadcast fax were still legal in the US.

I read this because my business coach recommended it, along with Dan Kennedy’s The Ultimate Sales Letter.

Putting Together the Right Message
• Bonus gifts often drive sales.
• A business, like a novel, should have a plot (USP; point of view).
• USP idea: use membership as a USP. Sell a “preferred client” membership.
• USP idea: address what customers don’t like about your industry or competitors.
• To create your USP, think about your business and its competitors, then write every fact, feature, benefit, promise, offer, and idea you can think of. Prioritize in order of importance to customer and contribution to differentiating you from your competition. This helps reveal your USP, supporting sales story, and related offers.

Presenting Your Message
• Ignite interest by offering a secret.
• The sales letter (specifically, personalized letter) is the most reliable marketing tool. Read The Ultimate Sales Letter.

Picking the Right Targets
• Geographic targeting: 1) Be sure the people fit your target market. 2) When you find a geographic market that works, “farm” it by mailing, going door-to-door, being involved in the community, etc.
• Demographic targeting: analyze demographics of current customers. Find biases and commonalities, and use them as criteria for future target marketing.
• Affinity/association targeting: target trade or professional associations, chambers of commerce, Toastmasters, etc. “Farm” these groups.

Proving Your Case
• Display pictures of satisfied clients.
• You can’t overuse testimonials. Collect and heavily use as many as you can get.
• Good testimonials are like before and after snapshots, describing the problem or skepticism, then the positive result or pleasant experience. They should also substantiate your claims and eliminate customers’ doubts.
• Testimonials should cover as many claim-benefit bases and demographic bases as possible.
• When marketing locally, consider hiring local personality/celebrity for advertising.

Getting Free Advertising
Get favorable media attention by joining forces with a charity. Choose carefully. Local chapters of reputable national organizations are usually safe. Choose one that’ highly visible in your community and aggressive in promotion.

Media attention ideas
• Commission or conduct a survey, poll, or study and send it to the media.
• Issue forecasts/predictions
• Be a guest on the radio/podcasts
• Write a book

Malibuism...Becoming Hot
Secret Weapon #9: “Constant change”: appeal to quickly-bored customers.

To get prestigious recognition from local or trade media
• Offer new products and services
• Tie into trends and current events
• Tie into seasons and holidays
• Piggyback on fads, even if unrelated to your business.

Maximizing Total Customer Value
• 68% of customers leave because they perceive indifference from the merchant.
• Secret Weapon #14: “Make the customer feel important, appreciated, and respected.”
• Sin #4: “Letting a customer leave angry without first exhausting every means at your disposal to resolve the dispute.”
• Have “a dedicated customer retention and appreciation program, including frequent contact and communication - a newsletter, greeting cards, useful information, little gifts.”
• Go after “lost customers.” When one goes “missing” for too long, send a letter, offer, coupon, or gift, or ask why they no longer buy from you.
• Secret Weapon #15: “Developing new products and services for existent customers instead of getting new customers for existent products and services.”

Miscellaneous
• Secret Weapon #13: “Asset sharing for marketing success”: pay a “host” business to let you be a “parasite,” accessing their customers
• Many more people will listen than read. Use audio in your marketing. Benefits: higher perceived value, most people listen from beginning to end, and you can cover more material than text.
• “An aversion to long copy and a love of ‘white space’ is a dead-bang giveaway of an inept expert.”