Key Themes from Allan Dib's Quotes

Lean Thinking

• Lean Thinking Influence: Jeff Bezos cites Lean Thinking as a favorite, emphasizing efficiency and customer value.
• Lean Principles in Marketing: Lean marketing is about creating more value with less effort and resources. It includes principles like embedding marketing throughout the product life cycle and focusing on value stream mapping and flow to reduce inefficiencies.

Value Creation

• Creating Valuable Marketing: Marketing should be so valuable that the target market would pay to receive it. There should be genuine potential to turn it into a paid product.
• Value Throughout the Customer Journey: Embed marketing throughout every interaction in the customer journey, from sales to customer service.

Customer-Centric Approach

• Understanding Customer Needs: Identify activities that are value-creating versus those that are wasteful. Focus on understanding and tapping into existing customer demand.
• Stages of Customer Awareness: Tailor marketing efforts to different stages of customer awareness, from unaware to most aware, providing relevant content and solutions at each stage.

Marketing as a Holistic Practice

• Integration Across the Organization: Marketing is not confined to a single department; it happens throughout the organization, influencing sales conversations, delivery processes, and customer service.
• Systematic Referral Generation: Create a systematic approach to generating referrals, understanding that referrals are motivated by the referrer’s desire to look good and raise their status.

Content and Engagement

• Content Marketing Strategies: Effective content marketing involves creating content that is relevant, engaging, and adds value. Different content creator archetypes (Expert, Curator, Interviewer, Amateur on a Journey, Enigma) can be leveraged based on the creator's strengths.
• Human-to-Human Marketing: Focus on H2H (human-to-human) interactions, where emotional connections are crucial. People buy with emotion and justify with logic.

Efficiency and Optimization

• Marketing Metrics: Key metrics like LTV (lifetime value), ROAS (return on ad spend), and conversion rates are essential for measuring marketing success.
• Fix It Twice Philosophy: Address immediate problems and also fix the underlying systemic issues to prevent future occurrences.

Differentiation and Innovation

• Standing Out in the Market: Differentiate by doing common things uncommonly well and being willing to take risks and fail. Understand the psychology of referrals and leverage it to your advantage.
• Leveraging Technology: Use tools and systems that you will actually use consistently, and automate processes where possible to maintain efficiency and focus.

Social Media and Content Creation

• Focused Social Media Strategy: Start with one social media platform, ensure consistency, and engage actively with the audience. Treat social media as a documentary of day-to-day activities to create authentic content.
• Polarization and Engagement: Attract the right audience by taking a stand and being opinionated. Negative feedback indicates that you are on the right track.
• Long-Term Content Strategy: Building an audience takes time and consistency. Focus on creating valuable content and improving over time.

Practical Advice and Tools

• Customer Retention: The first 100 days of a customer’s experience are crucial for long-term retention.
• Marketing Assets: Build strong marketing assets to reduce reliance on labor-intensive activities. Treat flagship assets as public services to build trust.
• Actionable Insights: Provide checklists, worksheets, and additional tips to help readers apply knowledge and achieve desired outcomes.

Final Thoughts

• Balancing Art and Science: Successful modern business combines storytelling and understanding the numbers. Continuously seek to improve the quality of your marketing efforts by focusing on the core commodities and leveraging the major levers of value.

Your marketing should be so valuable that your target market would pay you to receive it. While you may price it at no cost, there should be a genuine potential to turn it into a paid product in its own right.

Allan Dib

marketing is happening throughout your entire organization. It’s happening in your sales conversations, it’s happening in your delivery process, it’s happening in your customer service. You may or may not call it marketing, but these interactions with current and prospective customers affect future buying decisions, customer lifetime value, and revenue.

Allan Dib

Brand marketing is subject to the John Wanamaker rule: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Allan Dib

Specificity Sells, Generality Repels

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Your aim is to tap into demand rather than trying to generate it.

Allan Dib

Even within a market where demand exists, it will have varying intensities. In his classic book Breakthrough Advertising, Eugene Schwartz talks about the five stages of customer awareness: Unaware: Someone who doesn’t even know they have a problem. Problem aware: Someone who has a problem but doesn’t know there are solutions to that problem. Solution aware: Someone who knows there are solutions but hasn’t chosen one and doesn’t know about your solution or product. Product aware: Someone who knows about your solution or product but isn’t sure it solves their problem or hasn’t selected you from your competitors.

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Most aware: Someone who knows a lot about your solution or product. They’re on the cusp of buying but need to know the specifics.

Allan Dib

Someone who’s problem aware is in pain or knows they have a problem but doesn’t yet know about any potential solutions (including yours). These are excellent targets for content marketing (discussed in Chapter 13). Their search queries often start with “how to,” followed by their desired outcome.

Allan Dib

Solution aware prospects are slightly warmer. They know they have a problem and know that solutions exist but are unaware of you. A typical search query for someone at this stage would be something like “best luxury SUV with 7 seats.” These prospects are good candidates for content marketing that gives them a tool or resource to help them measure or understand their problem in a way that lines them up for your solution.

Allan Dib

Product aware people would be considered warm leads. They’re aware they have a problem, they know you have a potential solution to it, but they’re unsure if what you have will solve their problem. They’re likely comparing you to other competing solutions. A search term by someone who’s product aware might be something like “BMW X7 vs Range Rover.” Lead nurturing is essential for these prospects. Proof, testimonials, and demonstrating how good their life will be with your solution are also important.

Allan Dib

The most aware are hot leads. They know what you do. They know you solve their problems, and they want your solution. They may just need an incentive, a reason, or a deal to buy. Typical search terms may be “Best deal for a BMW X7 in San Francisco.” Strong calls to action, fear of missing out, and guarantees can be useful in getting them across the line.

Allan Dib

If you’re an accountant, you don’t need to be the world’s best to get your clients awesome results. But if you want to capture their attention and stand out from every other accountant, you’ll need to do better than just tell them about saving money on their taxes, which is what every accountant does.

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Imagine you’re a spy whose top-secret mission is to infiltrate a target market and gather as much intelligence as possible. What would you do? Search engines are a good starting point, but real market research must go beyond a few basic search queries. Come on—you’re the country’s top spy, and the president has personally tasked you with infiltrating this target market and producing deep, actionable insights. What are their dreams? What are their desires? What are they afraid of? What’s motivating them? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are their biases? Your country is depending on you and the quality of your intelligence gathering. Here’s what I would do.

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capitalist Marc Andreessen. He writes, “In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup.”

Allan Dib

The concept of customer pull is a key component of lean thinking. The customer pulls, or demands, products, services, or solutions to their problems from you rather than you pushing them, often unwanted, onto the customer.

Allan Dib

Why is the production line experiencing downtime? Because a critical machine is malfunctioning. Why is the machine malfunctioning? Because it’s overheating. Why is it overheating? Because the cooling system is not working properly. Why isn’t the cooling system working properly? Because it’s clogged with debris. Why is the cooling system clogged with debris? Because there’s no regular maintenance schedule for it. So, the root cause of the downtime is a lack of a regular maintenance schedule for the cooling system.

Allan Dib

When I ask, “What are you really selling?” it can take a few iterations of interrogation, but we’ll eventually get to one or more of the following seven things: Money and wealth Time and convenience Sex and mating Status, fame, and approval Safety, peace of mind, and basic needs Leisure, entertainment, and play Freedom These seven

Allan Dib

As Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter (now X), put it, “Convenience decides everything.” Convenience very often makes our decisions for us, sometimes even overriding our innate preferences.

Allan Dib

You can get more of most things, but you can never get more time, which makes it an incredibly powerful driver of human behavior.

Allan Dib

The four major levers that affect the value of what you do are time, effort, risk, and side effects.

Allan Dib

Time: How long will it take to get the desired result? Pain relief medication that fixes migraines instantly is more valuable than medication that takes three hours to take effect. Some products or services involve an unavoidable time delay, but this can be somewhat mitigated if you can demonstrate some quick wins.

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Effort: How easy or hard will it be to get the desired result? If the desired result is a garden shed, one that comes pre-assembled or with an assembly service is more valuable than one that has to be assembled by the purchaser.

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Risk: How likely is it that the desired result will be achieved? A medical procedure with a 90 percent chance of success is more valuable than one with a 50 percent chance. The risk lever has two variations—supplier risk and customer risk:

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Side Effects: What will be the negative aspects of getting the desired results? A brand-new car might be the desired result, but having to service and maintain it is a negative side effect. The car is more valuable if servicing and maintenance are included.

Allan Dib

I’m often asked what the “best” CRM system is. The best CRM system is the one that you’ll actually use.

Allan Dib

The reality is people don’t have short attention spans, they have short boredom spans. The volume of available content has massively increased, so why would anyone choose a boring option when more entertaining ones exist? If you keep your audience engaged, they will pay attention.

Allan Dib

Copywriting Commandment 2: A Confused Mind Says No

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French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal famously wrote, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

Allan Dib

Legendary adman David Ogilvy said: “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.”

Allan Dib

A trick used by journalists for a long time to create attention-grabbing headlines is to make an extreme or unusual claim but frame it as a question.

Allan Dib

This is so prevalent in journalism that Betteridge’s law of headlines states, “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word No.”

Allan Dib

I see a lot of websites, emails, and marketing material that do many things right but are timid when asking for action. You need to lead your audience and tell them exactly what you want them to do. “Click Here,” “Get Started,” “Download Now,” and “Reply to This Email” are some good examples.

Allan Dib

You’re not selling to CEOs, nor are you selling B2B or B2C—these are all conceptual designations. You’re selling H2H: human-to-human. And humans buy with emotion first and justify with logic later whether they’re the CEO or the janitor.

Allan Dib

2. Make numbers mean something. Don’t just say, “five gigabytes of hard drive storage.” Say, “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

Allan Dib

Relive the story rather than just reporting it. The difference between reporting and reliving is VAKS (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, smell). This is how you add color to the story and bring it to life. Reporting is “I almost missed the bus.” Reliving is “I was pummeled by the ice-cold rain as I sprinted through the dimly lit streets. Out of breath and exhausted, I reached the bus stop just as the bus pulled up.”

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Once you’ve drafted your message, ask yourself: Is it about them? Is it easy to understand? Is it believable? Is it interesting or unique? Is it the good thing without the bad thing? Is it clear who it’s for? Is the next action clear?

Allan Dib

In 1930, the union of American singers spent the equivalent of $10 million on a campaign to prevent people from listening to recorded music and watching movies with sound.

Allan Dib

Nike started with its founder, Phil Knight, selling running shoes from the trunk of his car at track meets and local sporting events. Coca-Cola started with Dr. John S. Pemberton selling it as a syrup at soda fountains in pharmacies. Apple started with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak selling single-board computers to hobbyists and enthusiasts in computer clubs and electronics stores.

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Another common mistake is forcing prospects to give up lots of information or forcing them to get in touch with your sales team before giving them your flagship asset. It’s important to capture their details in your CRM system, but at the beginning, when trust is low, capture the minimal viable data possible. While you want your flagship asset to generate revenue, from a mindset standpoint, treat it like a public service.

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Checklists: A summarized, actionable version of the key points covered on the web page that the prospect is visiting. Worksheets or templates: Tools that help readers apply the knowledge or concepts presented, making it easier for them to achieve desired outcomes. Additional tips or strategies: Supplementary information that builds on the web page content, providing further insights or advice.

Allan Dib

It comes from billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. When he was running PayPal, he insisted that every employee have only a single focus, and he would evaluate them only on that one thing.

Allan Dib

Someone unwilling to give you their attention likely won’t give you their money either.

Allan Dib

Your prospects fall into one of two categories: people ready to buy today or people ready to buy sometime in the future. Only a tiny percentage, typically about 3 percent, are ready to buy today.

Allan Dib

It turns out the paid ads that work best don’t look or feel like ads. Also, organic content reach can be enhanced with a pay-to-play element. This is unsurprising given that the platforms owned by Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon are deep in both camps. They want organic media that hooks eyeballs; similarly, they want ads that won’t annoy their users and will perform well.

Allan Dib

The words of adman Howard Gossage have never been truer: “People don’t read ads. They read what interests them, and sometimes that’s an ad.”

Allan Dib

Jeff Bezos once asked Warren Buffett, “Your investment thesis is so simple… why doesn’t everyone just copy you?” Buffett replied, “Because nobody wants to get rich slow.” The same goes for building a social media audience.

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Most people who “try social media” won’t focus on a single platform. Even fewer will have the endurance to post daily. Fewer still will work on improving their craft. Almost no one will do all of these things for 700+ consecutive days.

Allan Dib

I recommend choosing only one platform to start with. The decision to be on multiple social platforms must be made carefully and deliberately. You’ll need to resource appropriately so you can be consistent on each.

Allan Dib

Social media is not a broadcast medium. Most social media algorithms optimize for engagement so you (or someone on your team) need to actively interact with your audience. One thing to be aware of across all platforms is that as they become smarter and less reliant on legacy indicators of relevance like follows, backlinks, and keywords, your content will be shown to people who may not have much context on you and what you do.

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Creating content in your field doesn’t necessarily imply you’re the best in the world. Also, the “best” person in your field may not necessarily be the right person for your ideal prospect. For example, Tiger Woods likely wouldn’t be the best instructor for a novice golfer because he’s so far removed from that level.

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The Expert: The Expert is the most common content creator archetype. This person has domain authority through knowledge, expertise, or experience. An important component of this archetype is opinion, insight, and personality. One of the big challenges for The Expert archetype is being too boring and just supplying information. You’ll never outdo search engines and Wikipedia as sources of information. Your audience wants your unique perspective and the way that you deliver it. Being boring will neuter your content marketing efforts and make you invisible.

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The Curator: The Curator archetype creates a lot of value by sifting the wheat from the chaff. Their value proposition is that they’ll save you time and effort by sorting through everything and only sharing valuable and interesting content with you. Media companies, best-of lists, museums, and the news are all examples of curation. The Interviewer: The Interviewer archetype is somewhat similar to The Curator but is more focused on people and conversations with them. If you don’t have a lot of expertise or authority of your own, it’s a great way to borrow them and have some rub off on you. The challenge is ensuring that at least some of the spotlight shines back on you so that the discussion is not solely a PR exercise for the interviewee. You

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The Amateur on a Journey: The Amateur on a Journey archetype openly admits that they have limited or no expertise in their field of focus but will take you on their journey to mastery and discovery. They share both their wins and losses along the way, which makes them very relatable and can make for compelling content.

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The Enigma: The Enigma archetype lives an original, interesting, or unusual life and shares some of it with their audience. Our natural voyeuristic tendencies make this irresistible content. Entire industries have been built around getting a look inside the lives of the rich and famous. While you don’t necessarily have to be a celebrity, the key to success with The Enigma archetype is doing cool or unusual stuff that people wouldn’t normally get to see.

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You Are a Media Company I’m constantly asked, “How can I get more traffic to my website?” If you want more traffic, hop on the freeway. You don’t want “traffic.” You want relevant interest in what you do—the right eyeballs. I’d rather have one relevant visitor to my website than 10,000 irrelevant ones.

Allan Dib

Many get into the trap of creating content that will make them look cool to peers and competitors or get them lots of “likes.” These are vanity metrics. You can’t deposit “likes” in your bank account.

Allan Dib

The product that media companies produce and monetize is content. This is now expanding into every type of business and industry. Treating content as a product line in your business is a smart way of thinking about it.

Allan Dib

Getting limited views early on is actually good because it’s likely your early content creation efforts will suck. Early on, it’s about building the habit of content creation, continually improving, and finding your unique voice. As hard as it is, don’t look at your views, downloads, or numbers at first. This is your rookie phase, and it’s going to feel awkward.

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Also, remember that your efforts aren’t going unnoticed if you have the right value proposition for your audience. You might only get a limited number of eyeballs on a post, but imagine speaking to a small live audience made up of your ideal people. You’d be delighted.

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The second challenge is polarization (or lack thereof). Attracting the right eyeballs implies that there are wrong ones. By being attractive to the right people, your content may exclude or even anger the wrong people. That’s a good thing. Be opinionated and take a stand for what you and your audience care about.

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If you’re doing content marketing right, you will get negative comments and feedback. Guaranteed. That indicates you’re on the right track, though it makes many entrepreneurs uncomfortable. They may try to argue, defend, and appease, putting more energy into their haters than their fans. The moment you start arguing with stupid people, you’ve already lost.

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The first strategy is what Gary Vaynerchuk calls “Document, don’t create.” Treat what you’re doing day-to-day in your business as a documentary. So rather than staring at a camera, microphone, or blank page each day and trying to come up with new content to create, just document what you’re already doing.

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Initially, this may sound dumb. You think, “Who wants to know about all the boring stuff I’m doing?” Your ideal customers do. I’ve created all sorts of content over the years, and the biggest hits have been “behind the scenes” stuff where I show what my team and I are doing and how we’re doing it. It’s also the easiest content to create because we’re already doing that stuff, so all we have to do is press “record.”

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Start in the modality you most naturally create in.

Allan Dib

Isaac Asimov said the classic phrase of discovery in science isn’t “Eureka!”—it’s more like, “Hey, wait a minute…”

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Welcome Aboard In his book Never Lose a Customer Again, Joey Coleman talks about how crucial the first 100 days of a customer’s experience are for retaining them long term.

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Do things that bigger competitors won’t do. As discussed in Chapter 3, doing the common thing uncommonly well can be a powerful differentiator. This could mean providing more customized service, being more responsive to customer feedback, or being more flexible and innovative.

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Fix It Twice “Fix it twice” is a problem-solving philosophy that has been a part of industrial engineering and quality management practices for many decades. It’s a core concept in methodologies like the Five Whys, which I introduced in Chapter 3. The idea is that when a problem is identified, you address the immediate problem at hand, which might mean resolving a customer complaint, fixing a software bug, repairing a machine, and so on. But also look at the broader systemic context. Identify why the problem was able to occur in the first place and fix that as well to prevent future recurrences.

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To regularly receive referrals, you need to go beyond what most people do, which is hope. Hope is not an effective marketing strategy. You need a systematic way of generating referrals. I’ll outline three practical ways to stimulate more referrals, starting with the simplest.

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And you’ve gotta be willing to fail, you gotta be ready to crash and burn, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

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An important point on the psychology of referrals is that people don’t refer to do you a favor, even if it feels that way to you. They do so for themselves. If they refer someone to you and that person has a great experience or gets their problem solved, it makes them look good and raises their status within their peer group.

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In my business, when we’re working with a partner or potential referrer, we’ll give them copies of my books to pass on to their community. Books almost never get thrown out, and recipients appreciate the gift, both for the intrinsic value and the value of the content. It’s

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Meaningful means the gift should have some level of importance or significance to the recipient. It’s not about the financial value of the gift but rather its perceived value and meaning to the recipient.

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Most people won’t click your ad. Most of the people who click your ad won’t opt in. Most of the people who opt in won’t open your email. Most of the people who open the email won’t click the link to your sales page. Most of the people who click through to your sales page won’t click through to the order form.

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LTV is something you need to spend a huge amount of time and energy thinking about. It should dominate your thoughts so much that if I woke you up at 3 a.m., I’d find that you were dreaming about ways to increase it. LTV

Allan Dib

Return on ad spend (ROAS) and return on investment (ROI) are important metrics for measuring the success of your marketing and advertising. ROAS is the revenue generated by an ad campaign divided by the cost of running it. ROI is the total profit generated divided by what it cost.

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Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action, whether that’s buying a product, opting in to your email list, or any other conversion goal. Click-Through Rate (CTR): For digital ads, this metric represents the percentage of people who clicked on the ad after seeing it. Cost Per Click (CPC): The average amount paid for each click in a pay-per-click advertising campaign. Traffic: The number of visitors to your website or a specific page. This can be measured by unique visitors or page views. Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. Engagement Rate: On social platforms, this measures interactions on a post or campaign, such as likes, shares, and comments. Lead-to-Customer Rate: How many potential customers convert into actual customers. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A lead deemed more likely to become a customer based on their engagement with marketing initiatives but isn’t yet ready for a direct sales approach. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A lead that has been qualified further, met specific criteria, and is considered ready to engage with sales. Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer loyalty and satisfaction. Customers are asked how likely they are to recommend a business on a scale from 0 to 10. Customers who rate their likelihood as 9 or 10 are classified as Promoters. Those who rate it as 7 or 8 are Passives, and those who rate between 0 and 6 are Detractors. The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters, resulting in a score ranging from -100 to 100. Email Open and Click Rates: For email marketing, these metrics track how many recipients open an email and how many click on the links within it. Average Order Value (AOV): The average amount a customer spends in a single transaction. Products Per Customer: The average number of products each customer has purchased.

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