How to Plan a One Page Marketing Campaign

SUMMARY

Are you trying to devise small campaigns to bring in new customers, or maybe you want existing customers to be aware of a new product you’re distributing, or a new feature you’re offering? Whether it’s online or offline, a marketing campaign can be cumbersome. But, there’s really not that much to do to be effective. Today I want to talk to you about the concept of a one-page marketing campaign. We will focus on the content itself, the message, but will not go into details of budgeting, media, etc.

Why is it important to have a one-page marketing plan?

1. You need to make the message worth the effort.
2. You spend money, don’t waste it.
3. The exercise will reinforce the team’s understanding of your product as well as the client’s needs.

Here are the step-by-step instructions for creating a one-page marketing campaign:

1. Stick to a one page plan.
2. Define a problem and matching solutions.
3. Define expected objections and matching arguments.
4. Decide how to get attention.
5. Decide how to get intention.

Here are some Do’s and Don’ts when creating your marketing campaign:

• Don’t assume problems, visualize or talk to clients.
• Don’t do it alone, involve your sales team or even customer service.
• Do trust yourself, you know your customers.
• Don’t worry about where you will do your promotion, that will be figured out later.

That’s it! What’s the next step? This actual template is available for free to download. You can download the one-pager. I would challenge you to actually take your team and think of a product that already exists. Don’t reinvent the wheel. How could we push that product? Who do we want to target? And who is our persona? What kind of person is it? And go through the whole process, it’s only an hour meeting. If you have questions, feel free to send a shout-out. Please go visit my personal Facebook page or my Small Business Sherpa page. You can also subscribe if you want to be advised when a new post comes out. Thanks for watching!

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of Small Business Sherpa: The Podcast with David Salerno.]

Hey, welcome. My name is David Salerno. I'm the founder and owner of Solpak Packaging Solutions, but that's not what I want to talk to you about today. Today, I want to put my Small Business Sherpa hat on, and I want to talk to you about flash campaigns, or a one-page campaign planner. That's something that I want to talk to you about today.

Are you trying devise little campaigns where you're going to go get new customers, or maybe you want existing customers to be made aware of a new product you're distributing, or a new feature you're offering? You have a message to pass, and somehow they're just not reacting. Nobody's showing up at the door. Whether it's online or offline, doing a marketing campaign is a pretty big thing to do by itself, and when you have a small business or a small team, it can be cumbersome. There's really not that much to do to be effective.

Today I really want to talk to you about the concept of a one-page marketing campaign. We will focus on the content itself, the message, so we will not go in details of budgeting, and media, and whatnot. But we'll stick to the essential part because everything else that follows is just placing it at the right place. Right? Okay.

Why is it important for a small business or a small team to actually have a one-page marketing plan?

First, you have a message to pass on your product, your service, so you got to make worth the effort for a campaign to pass your message.

The second thing is, you're spending money. You're going to be spending money. Either you're going to print this on flyers, or you're going to put it online. Maybe you're going to spend money on Google AdWords. You want to make sure that you have a good plan in hand, so a one-page flash campaign planner is something that helps you.

The third reason why it's important to do such an exercise is that it will reinforce your team's understanding of your product, as well as the clients that are the best fit for your product, and vice versa. The exercise done with the team, with your team, will reinforce that understanding.

All right. Now, what I have here is a template of what we use at Solpak. We actually did one campaign planning yesterday, so it was a really, really, really powerful example. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to use the exercise we did so that you have a real-life example. Feel free to give us a shout-out if you have questions regarding this, and you will also have, in the description of this post, you will have a free downloadable version of that template.

Ready to start? Everybody excited? Let's do it.

Okay, flash campaign. In the example, we're going to talk about an oven, called an insert. All right. The product that I'm going to talk to you about, I'm going to describe it shortly so you have an understanding of what I will be referring to. It will make more sense as I go through this. We sell solutions to package and transport meals, prepared meals, so our clients are caterers. They need to bring the meals they prepared and packaged from their kitchen to the client's location. Sometimes it's a lot of meals. Sometimes it's bulk and whatnot. In this case, when you identify your product, well, oven, so obviously you would put your product or your service in there.

The second thing is, who are you targeting? In this case, we have many types of clients that buy this type of oven. We're going to focus on the Meals on Wheels organization. The first step, which product or service are you campaigning for today? The second step, which is your target, so the industry or the type of company you're wanting to campaign this towards? The third step, you have your persona.

The persona, I might have mentioned it in other posts. The persona is actually the actual individual that you're going to be wanting to talk to, not directly. That's a figure of speech, but really in your advertising, whether it's Google AdWords, or flyers that you're going to put in the mail, or even online on your website, a page you're going to advertise. Who's your persona. In our case, Meals on Wheels are often run by women that are aged maybe 45 to 55, very smart women, very strong characters, because they're running a nonprofit. They have tight budgets. They're almost like a mother hen to the organization. We're going to call her Linda.

When you do your campaign discussion with your team, you're going to talk about Linda, and that's very important. I want you to talk about Linda. I don't want you to say, "The clients, they like this, they like that." I really want you to say, "Okay, what does Linda," when we get to the other stages. Cool? Don't worry, your message will apply to more than Linda, but keep Linda in mind. That's very important. That basically is the setup for a campaign.

Now we're going to the second main stage. Your business exists for a sole purpose, which is to solve other people's problems, or to fulfill their wish, or what we could call opportunities. Therefore, if you're successful in your business, you're solving a lot of problems or a lot of people's problem. Any campaign should start with the focus on the actual problem. Any campaign, and that's an easy thing to forget. Quite frankly, at Solpak, sometimes we do forget.

I'll give you an example in this particular campaign. We know our customers well. We know our product well, and we're like, okay, let's do a promo where we give a percentage off if they purchase the oven. That's assuming that our clients are at the door thinking that they're going to buy, but that 10% is going to push them over the decision gate. That's a big mistake. You do not start with a discount when you think campaign. That comes at the end, and I'll get back to that in a few minutes.

Stage number one was identifying. Stage number two, talking about problems. Now you brainstorm what are the top three problems this thing will actually solve, because if this problem is well-defined, and your client, Linda, sees those listed, she's going to connect, "Yes, I have that problem. Yes, I have that other problem." If you hit the top three, you're perfect. You're right on the money, and you will get the attention.

In this case, we had the issue, first, cold meals. That's a big issue when we transport hot food is it gets cold. You probably have that issue when you order takeout. It gets cold to your place. That's a problem. A restaurant that has good food at the same price but that would guarantee you that it's hot, wouldn't you buy from them instead?

All right, so we want to address the issue of cold food, and Linda is really adamant about making sure that her clients are getting hot food. First problem, cold meals. Second element is, because we're dealing with food, there's all sorts of norms. In certain countries, and provinces or states, the laws and regulations vary, but there's always some sort of governmental control over food safety with regards to temperature. So norms not met. In our side of the planet, if somebody's delivering a meal, an organization, they could be stopped and inspected to make sure that the meals are at the right temperature. In their case, norms not met.

The third problem, and this is after brainstorm. Now it's all listed for the sake of this video, but that's something that you would debate with your team. Finally, capacity. These organizations don't have a lot of budget. They don't have a lot of ovens. Sometimes they have to feed like 300 people, so what do you do with that? They often have a capacity issue. They have meals, they don't know where to put them once they're packaged. Problems: cold meals, norms are not met sometimes, and we have a capacity issue.

All right. Phase B of stage two, solutions. You match your solution. Why is your product or your serving matching? Cold meals, with an oven that's inserted in a van, so it's basically a unit you put in a minivan, and it keeps your food hot. It's a great thing. I wish I could have one in my own car. Cold meal, so keep warm on long routes. The promise that we're making, the solution to this issue, the oven will keep your long routes in your minivans that you deliver warm. The second thing is if you get an inspection, no more stress of having an inspection. We call that benefits. You see I'm not talking about the oven. I'm not even talking about the oven. I could have described the oven. You don't want to do that. You do that later, but you do not do that now.

Finally, for capacity, we're going to call it the extra oven. Extra oven, so you get extra space, an extra oven. Could you see how Linda gets exposed to a message? It doesn't matter where it comes from, and she's like ... Do you have issues with cold meals? The norm's not met with your team? She might think, "Wait a minute, I don't know about that one." And what about the capacity, like are you guys having issue in where you put all those meals once they're cooked and packaged? The answer, you want to get a yes, yes, yes. Or, "Oh, I don't know," so that triggers a question mark, and that's where you make awareness of issues that they might not have thought of.

Then you match them to solutions. Don't you want to keep warm your meals on long routes? Don't you want to have no stress regarding inspections? And finally, wouldn't it be nice to have an extra oven at a low cost, because it's not a full-fledged oven that they would buy? That's it. That was stage two, top three problems, and how you match them with top three solutions, or promises regarding those problems.

Now stage number three, you're wanting to talk about objections. I know that in the early stages of Solpak, it's something that I had not gotten, and sometimes we would do this exercise well, but we didn't know why people were not contacting us. We would proactively call them, and then we'd realize that they had these objections in their mind, these reasons why it probably won't work for them, or it's not for them. As we asked them, we realized oh no, and then we would comment. I'm going to give an example here, but the point I want to make is, don't assume that if this is great, automatically people are going to react and contact you. You got to address the objections before you even talk to them.

Okay, so we said, what does Linda worry about? She has these problems. We are promising these solutions, but what is going to come up to her mind? What is she going to say, "Yes, but." Objection number one, let me see here, money. I don't have money. Perfect. That's the most common thing, and we act as consumers, that's our first question often. How much is it? Can I afford it? That's a first objection. The second objection that we think is I don't have a van. Some Meals on Wheels organizations don't have vans. They plan on having vans. They're not sure, so right now, it's the car of a volunteer that's delivering their meals and whatnot, so they don't have a van. That's a big objection. We can't sell you an oven insert for vans, if you don't have a van.

The third one is, I already have bags. I already have bags, so why would I need an oven, which is very reasonable. Picture this, a lot of our clients use our trays and package, and then they use bags. Why would they need an oven? That's their thinking, so they don't want to talk to you. But we have a reason why we want to campaign to them, and I'm getting to that here.

Katherine, how are we doing on time? Okay, perfect. Fourteen? Excellent. Thank you.

Money, this is the painful part of planning a campaign is that you got to do some homework. For the money part, how do you address money? You have to quantify an answer. You have to put it in numbers to see if it makes sense for a client over the money issue, because if you don't quantify it, the game is lost. They think, "I can't afford it," or "It doesn't make sense to spend money on this rather than on something else."

For the money, what we did is we started calculating what the cost was per day, and believe it or not, that oven, because it has a lasting life of seven to 10 years, and even more. Some clients I've had for 15 years. When you take the cost, installed and everything, it's about four bucks a day. You're like, "Wait a minute." Once it's amortized, and we offer financing, so we have financing. You don't have to shell out $8,000, I think that the oven is. It's going to be four bucks a day. At four bucks a day, if you do 100 meals a day, so you divide $4.00 by 100. Usually I pull out my iPhone for these calculations, but just for you I'm going to make the effort to calculate now, and it's four cents. Four cents is four cents, but if you make 100 meals a day, it puts it in perspective.

If you have money dollars as an objection to your product or service, divided by the number of days or the number of items that your product will be helping with, offer financing, and then think, "Are they going to save money because they buy your thing?" In our case, they won't need to buy a real oven, because remember they had this objection here. Sorry, they have this issue. You could say, "Increase your capacity for cheaper than an oven." If they were thinking of buying an oven, good, so capacity. I know, my handwriting is terrible. This is capacity savings.

All right. I have no van, so obviously it's quite possible that an organization has a perfect setup. They don't need a van, and that's the end of the story. That's fine, but they're exposed to the message, and maybe one day they're like, "You know what, we'd like to have a corporate van," for example. In our case, we have clients that have many routes. They have an issue with the longest routes, and they've been talking about having a van.

We're like, "Okay, dear client, you're a nonprofit organization. How about you get a sponsor?" You get a sponsor, and think about it. They're going to pay for the van, and they will put their names on the van. There are studies out there, and if you want the study, you could just give me a shout-out, and I will send it to you. But that on the road advertising on trucks has a better return on your marketing dollars. For sponsors, it's worth a lot of dollars, and we calculated. Do you know how much a van would be? Let's say it's a new van, basic van, with the oven. We calculated $17 a day. That's money. It's no denying that, but would a sponsor, to have their advertising on the road for four hours a day, example, be willing to pay $17 to commit to that kind of sponsor for the next two or three years? Probably they would. Amazing, so then you have an argument here. You're talking about the longest route. You're paying somebody to pay mileage to get these bags. Let's say it's a volunteer. Then you have a replacement, no more mileage.

Finally, they're using bags. In this exercise we said, how are we going to handle the objection of bags? Then we talked about widen your delivery territory. Imagine we could pitch this to ... In this case, we're talking to Linda, and we're like, "Yes, with your bags, they're doing a great job, as long as you're within 40 minutes. But now you could go an hour, so that extra 20 minutes, could you get 50% more customers that are just a bit longer through the van?" Fifty percent more customers, if you had 100 customers, that's 50 customers buying each meal for $6.00, let's say. That's $300 more a day. Are we paying for the van? Yes, we are. You still keep your bags, but on that route, which is longest, then you get more customers with that van. That's it.

Stage number three, figure out the top three objections Linda's going to have in her mind. Figure out a way to answer to these objections. If it's money, quantify it. It's going to work very well for you.

Excellent. We have stage one, product, target, persona. Stage two, problems, solution. Stage three, objections, answers to these objections. Now, before you jump into yes, okay, we've got our message, where do we put it. You've got to do one last thing, and that I'm ending this epic blog post with this actual part. I'm hoping you're enjoying it so far.

Here, you need to decide how you're going to get their attention, how you're going to get their intention. Attention is cuckoo, I've got something for you. Are they going to react to it? What will you tell them that's going to make them want to pay attention? The second thing is, now I got your intention, here's something that's going to make you want to buy it. Always two questions, how do you get the attention of your persona, Linda, and how do you get their intention?

Remember I talked about promo earlier? It's coming. Attention. You want to offer something that will trigger the interest, and there's so many things you could do. It could be a free trial. It could be samples. It could be a needs analysis. It could be a visit. It could be a tour. There's so many things you could do. It could be a pamphlet. You see a lot of one 800 commercials where they tell you to call, and they'll send you a kit. That's a way of getting the attention. You're getting them something for free, so they commit to that first step. In our case, hold on I have it here, we're going to basically offer them a video on improving delivery. We're offering them video. Actually, it's three videos. Well, it's one video plus emails, but anyways, you get the drift. We're like look, if you're having this issue, like our solution, offer these solutions.

The second thing is, then at this stage, they're seeing your ad, whatever it is, however it is formulated, but your message is, "I can send you a free list of videos." Then they're like, "Yeah, I want to know more about this." Perfect. You decide what is your attention message, how you're going to get to get their attention.

Once you have their attention, you need to plan how am I going to get their intention. They've been exposed to your message. They've signified a way to tell you, "You've got my attention." Maybe they filled in a form. Maybe they just called in. Maybe they sent you an email. Whatever the case may be, you've got their attention.

Now, how do you get their intention? That's where you want something that will seal the deal and create scarcity, they call it. It could be a promo. Promo. Promo could take so many shapes. It could be a percentage off by such a date. It could be dollars off. It could be a two-for-one. It could be any of these things. You guys are creative. You know your business well. You would have something for the intention.

The last stage, once you have you massage ... Okay, my mind is somewhere else. Sorry, guys. Once you have your message, you want to know how are you going to get their attention with that message, and how are you going to get their intention.

That's the gist of a flash campaign planning. Very quickly, some do's and don'ts. Don't assume on the problems. You got to make sure that they're real problems that Linda is really having. If you have to call a few clients because you're not sure, if you have to involve your sales team and ask them, "What are the most important problems you see," and ask what words do the clients use, very important. Just don't assume you know exactly how to formulate it.

Don't do it alone. Like I said, involve your sales team. Involve your marketing team, if you have. It could be customer service, because they hear clients complaining about issues of their life. Make sure that you involve your team. And finally, trust yourself. You know your customers. You want to validate with them, but then go with the flow. Then you'll adjust after. You'll have other campaigns.

That's it. What's the next step? This actual template is available for free download. You can download that one-pager. I would challenge you to actually take your team, small meeting, and think of a product that's already existing. Don't reinvent the wheel. How could we push that product? Who do we want to target? And who's our persona? What kind of person is it, so we use the words of that person, we actually respond well to. And go through the whole process. It's an hour meeting. We did it yesterday. It works beautifully. We've done it in the past, and we had good response, so I would challenge you to do that.

Once again, I hope this session was interesting to you. If you have questions, feel free to send a shout-out. Please go visit my Facebook personal page, or my Small Business Sherpa page. You can also subscribe if you want to be advised, because I usually have one a week of these little sessions. It was a pleasure again to serve you, and I'm going to wish you an excellent, excellent, excellent week. Thanks for watching.