This assignment contains four parts that flow together and complem.docx

This assignment contains four parts that flow together and
complement one another. I've included the point value for each
section. Again, the page number references are from the book,
The One Page Marketing Plan. You will also find additional
resources at the bottom and in the module.
1. Create your USP – 10 points. State in paragraph form why
your business exists. Why should they buy your product/service
and why should they buy it from you or specifically, what sets
you apart from your competition?
2. Write a succinct elevator pitch (examples on p. 54 – think
problem, solution, proof) - 10 points.
3. Create a Business/Company Profile - 20 Points - see links
below
How to Write a Business Profile (Links to an external site.)
https://m.wikihow.com/Write-a-Business-Profile?amp=1
7 Creative Company Profile Examples (Links to an external
site.)
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/company-profile
In addition to these two articles, I encourage you to also review
company profiles of companies similar to yours to get ideas.
These can be smaller, local companies.
4. Give your business or service a name. 10 points
Be sure to choose clarity over cleverness, but if you can do
both, then do it. If it is an established business or franchise,
write why you choose this business and if you would revise it
based on
.................
Elevator Pitch ExampleElevator Pitch Examples with Chris
Westfall (Links to an external site.)Links to an external
site.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98WlZJqscVk
6 Elevator Pitches for the 21st Century –Daniel Pink6 Elevator
Pitches for the 21st Century (Links to an external site.)Links to
an external
site.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvxtC60V6kc

Make Your Pitch Perfect – Youtube video:Make your Pitch
Perfect: The Elevator Pitch (Links to an external site.)Links to
an external
site.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZTWx2bftaw
School Social Work with Grieving Children
Lisa Quinn-Lee
The purpose of the research reported in this article was to
advance understanding of the
work of school social workers with grieving students. This
research was aimed at answering
the following question; What are school social workers'
experiences working with grieving
children? There were two steps in this study. Fifty-nine school
social workers in the Twin
Cities, Minnesota, agreed to participate in the preliminary e-
mail survey. Of these partici-
pants, 22 school social workers were interviewed in person for
approximately 45 to 60 min-
utes. This exploratory study required an open-ended, inductive
approach using qualitative
methods. Interviews were transcribed and coded. Major codes
were developed using the
guided interview questions. Constant comparison was also used.
The data analysis identified
four main themes in the responses; (1) harriers to helping
grieving students, (2) variations on
how grief is defined, (3) social workers' preparation for dealing
with grief and loss issues, and
(4) referrals of grieving students to outside resources.
Subthemes were developed under each
theme.

KEY WORDS: children; grief; loss; school; social work
D
eath is a part of life, and many children
will experience the death of a loved
one. According to the Social Security
Administration, in the United States, an estimated
3.5 percent of children younger than 18 years
(approximately 2.5 million) have experienced the
death of a parent (Haine, Ayers, Sandier, & Wol-
chik, 2008). There are 70 million children under
the age of 18 in the United States, with 36 million
enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grades and
14 million enrolled in ninth through 12th grades
(Huxtable & Blyth, 2002). There are more than
15,000 school social w^orkers across the United
States who interact with grieving children (Consta-
ble, McDonald, & Flynn, 2002). The topic of child-
ren's grief, school social work, and the school
system is important, because it affects so many people.
Social workers "can play a crucial role in strengthen-
ing the foundation of a child who suffers the death of
a parent" (Hope & Hodge, 2006, p. 125).
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Grief in School
A student's reactions after a loss may include a
decline in school performance and difficulty mas-
tering new academic material (National Center
for School Crisis and Bereavement, 2006). The
National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement
recommends that "students should be offered addi-
tional supports, such as tutoring or participating in

mentoring programs to assist them in maintaining
their academic progress before academic failure
occurs, which would represent an additional Stres-
sor" (p. 6).
School social workers encounter children who
have experienced a wide variety of stressful events
on a daily basis. Therefore, they need a working
knowledge of crisis intervention, grief work, and
treatment for posttraumatic stress. Although many
school-age children experience grief reactions, "the
impact of the death of a parent often is not appreci-
ated in all its importance by school personnel," even
though it can affect a child's academic performance
and social behavior (ZambeEi & Clark, 1994, p. 3).
Children in our society are referred to as the forgot-
ten moumers (Wolfelt, 2004). Children grieve, but
all too often they do not get the opportunity to
express their feelings openly.
Holland's (2003) research in England with adults
who were bereaved as children found that, for these
individuals, returning to school was sometimes a
negative experience. In fact, children's return to
school was often challenging, with school person-
nel and peers not knowing how to respond to them
once they returned to school. Children felt ignored,
isolated, embarrassed, uncertain, and different, and
they thought that their schools gave them little sup-
port or understanding.
Holland (2008) stated that schools are in a "uni-
que position to help grieving children" (p. 415).
d o i : 1O.1O93/cs/cduOO5 © 2014 National Association of

Sociai Wori<ers 93
Even though grief is a family issue, it has the potential
to affect children while they are in school, especially
because children spend so much of their time in
school. Schools can be a safe and supportive place
for students. It is important for school staff to establish
trust and rapport with grieving students and their
families. Staff who acknowledge the needs of griev-
ing students can help them cope with their loss.
Children's Grief
How one explains death to children and intervenes
with them in their grief depends on the children's
developmental stage. Age and developmental stage
may affect the nature of children's emotional re-
sponse to death, understanding of death, and ability
to deal with death. Webb (2010) identified three
age ranges that correlate with children's response
to death.
Children ages two to seven (a) do not understand
that death is final, (b) often believe that death is
reversible or temporary, (c) believe in magical
thinking, (d) may believe they caused the death,
(e) may ask repeatedly about the whereabouts of
the deceased, (f) may not show outward expected
signs of grieving, (g) may be afraid that someone
else may die, and (h) may be angry with the
deceased (or with the surviving parent or sibling).
Children ages seven to 11 (a) may have an inabil-
ity to deal with death, (b) may use denial to cope
with the loss and may act like the death did not

occur, (c) may hide their feelings in an effort not
to seem childish, (d) may do their grieving in pri-
vate, (e) may feel guilty and/or different from peers
because of the death, (f) may express anger or irri-
tabihty rather than sadness, (g) may overcompensate
for feelings of grief by becoming overly helpful and
engaging in the caretaking of others, (h) may
develop somatic symptoms of hypochondria, and
(i) may have anxiety due to an increased fear of
death.
Children ages nine to 12 (a) may feel helpless,
frightened, or numb, (b) may behave in a manner
younger than their years, (c) may feel conflicted
between the desire to behave in an adult manner
and the wish to be taken care of as a child, (d)
may experience guilt about teen behaviors, (e) may
use anger to defend against feelings of helplessness,
and (f) may respond in a self-centered or callous
way.
Children's grief differs from adults. Children's
immature cognitive development interferes with
their understanding about the irreversibility, uni-
versality, and inevitability of death. They have a
limited capacity to tolerate emotional pain. Child-
ren's acute feelings of loss may occur in spurts over
many years, and children are sensitive about being
different from their peers. Children have limited
ability to verbalize their feelings but are able to
express their feelings in play therapy (Webb, 2010).
By using the various theories of grief as a guide,
social workers can help students work through
grief. For example, the dual-process model (Stroebe

& Schut, 1999) depicts grief as an oscillating process
in which a bereaved individual uses two different
ways of coping with loss: loss orientation and resto-
ration orientation. Loss-orientation coping refers to
the person's acceptance of the suffering and involves
the grief work. Restoration-orientation coping
refers to attempts to sort through various life
changes and find ways to cope with these changes;
it provides respite or distraction from suffering.
School social workers can help students accept the
loss and find ways to cope with it.
Effective Interventions with Grieving
Children
It is important to make the distinction bet-ween
bereaved children who are struggling with adapta-
tion to the loss and those who have serious adjust-
ment disorders. The treatment and interventions
for children who are experiencing serious emo-
tional and behavioral difficulties following a loss
will be very different from the interventions offered
to children who are coping more adequately (Wor-
den, 1996).
Models of intervention with bereaved children
include peer groups, individual counseling, family
interventions (including communication, family
readjustment, and problem solving), and a combi-
nation of these (Worden, 1996). Activities for
intervention include art activities (drawing, clay
modeling, making puppets), writing activities
(journahng, letters, hsts, memorials), memory
book making, storytelling activities, and games.
Intervention activities are intended to help
bereaved children by facilitating the various tasks
of mourning, providing children with acceptable

outlets for their feelings (including ways to address
their fears and concerns), helping children get
answers to their questions, and helping counter
children's misconceptions about the death (Wor-
den, 1996).
94 Children ó" Schools VOLUME 36, N U M B E R 2 APRIL
2014
Because children only cope as effectively as the
adults around them (Anewalt, 2010), the best way
to support grieving children is to work with the
adults closest to them. Informing, including, and
involving parents and key adults is critical. School
social workers could meet with parents at a time
and a place that is convenient to parents, perhaps
meeting at the parents' place of employment or vis-
iting them at home in the evening or on the week-
end. School systems should provide education and
trainings for all personnel, including information on
grief, loss, death, trauma, and normal and compli-
cated signs of grief in children (Anewalt, 2010;
Goldman, 2000).
In addition to undergoing training on how to
identify and respond to a grieving chud, adult care-
takers must also advocate for these children. For
instance, caretakers and school personnel could (a)
pemiit the child to leave the room if needed with-
out explanation; (b) suggest the child choose a des-
ignated adult to talk with; (c) choose a designated
place for the child to go within school as a safe
space; (d) allow the child to call home; (e) invite
the chOd to visit the school nurse as a reality check;

(f) assign a class helper; (g) create private teacher
time; (h) give the child more academic progress
reports; (i) modify some work assignments; and
(j) inform faculty, the Parent—Teacher Association,
parents, and children ofthe child's loss (Goldman,
2000).
PROBLEM AND SIGNIFICANCE
There is a great deal of infonnation in various dis-
ciplines on grief and loss; ho^vever, there is not as
much information on how to help students or
school communities deal with grief and loss. The
topic of grieving children appears "very minimally
throughout the social work literature" (p. 107) and
it is "very important for social workers to further
investigate children's grief. . . so that we can
know how best to intervene" (Hope & Hodge,
2006, p. 106). Death is a part of life, and schools
need to enhance their response to grieving children.
The available literature indicates there is a need for
school personnel to learn how death affects the stu-
dent and the school community, and there is a need
for schools to develop specific plans to respond to a
death, including in-service training programs
around grief and loss (Klicker, 2000).
Schools are not just buildings or classrooms but
are conceptualized as communities of families and
school personnel engaged in the educational pro-
cess; school social workers assist in making schools
real communities (Constable, 1992). For some chil-
dren, school is a respite from their problematic
home life; for others, school is a source of anxiety
and stress (Huxtable & Blyth, 2002). The larger
community and societal context affects schools; if

social supports are not present for children and their
families to buffer the consequences of issues and
problems affecting them, school success is unlikely
(Allen-Meares, 2004).
There are many grieving students in school dis-
tricts throughout the country (Anewalt, 2010).
Outside a child's immediate family, the most signif-
icant environment is the school. Consuming most
of children's weekday hours, school is their primary
source of social relationships and activities. School
personnel play an important role in helping students
cope with their grief (Anewalt, 2010).
Grieving children often experience some initial
depression and anxiety. Although this is normal,
these feelings can sometimes linger and become
problematic. Grief can sometimes lead to more seri-
ous mental health issues. Social workers are the
largest group of mental health providers in the
United States (NASW, n.d.), and it makes sense
that they would provide mental health services to
students in the schools.
School social workers who are clinically trained
can differentiate between normal and problematic
grief, depression, and anxiety. If school social work-
ers are given enough time to work with grieving,
depressed, and anxious students, they can help
decrease these symptoms, improve students' func-
tioning, and help them feel better emotionally.
School social workers help students and families
with coping with stress; family issues (divorce,
domestic violence, financial, parenting); gdef and
loss issues; medical and mental health issues; par-

ent education; physical and educational neglect;
physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; pregnancy;
relationship concerns; school-related concerns (ab-
sences and truancy, academic achievement, bully-
ing, dropout prevention, harassment, misbehavior,
school avoidance, special education, tardiness,
underachievement); sexuality issues; and substance
abuse (School Social Work Association of America
[SSWAA], 2012). Because school social workers
help many students with myriad concerns, it would
not be surprising if there is not enough time for
them to assist grieving children.
Q U I N N - L E E / School Social Work with Grieving Children
95
Social workers need to be available to all stu-
dents, not just students with special needs or in spe-
cial education. Schools need to enable every
student to reach her or his full potential (Constable,
1992). School social workers are in an excellent
central position to work with all types of students,
issues, problems, and needs, particularly those
resulting from changes in family structure (Consta-
ble, 1992). To provide assistance to the entire stu-
dent population, school social work involvement
must be increased in a multitude of issues and prob-
lems that students are facing, including grief (Con-
stable, 1992).
METHOD
Research Question
The purpose of this research was to advance the

understanding of the work of school social workers
with grieving students. This research was aimed at
answering the question: What are school social
workers' experiences working with grieving chüdren?
Design
The exploratory nature of the study required an
inductive, open-ended approach. The purpose
was to uncover rich meaning and thick description
to aid in a better understanding of school social
work with grieving children. The data analysis pro-
cess included discovering themes and pattems and
the relationships among them, which in tum would
lead to increased knowledge and understanding.
This study consisted of two stages. School social
workers from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota,
metropolitan area were invited to participate in a
preliminary, six-question e-mail survey and a 45-
to 60-minute in-person interview. This study was
approved by the institutional review board at the
University of Minnesota.
Sample
The sample consisted of school social workers in the
Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. The par-
ticipants were licensed as school social workers by
the Minnesota Department of Education and the
Minnesota State Board of Social Work with one
of the following licenses: licensed social worker,
licensed independent social worker, and licensed
independent clinical social worker.
Purposive samphng is the dominant strategy in
qualitative research; this type of sampling seeks
information-rich cases that can be studied in depth

(Patton, 1990). A convenience sample of 105
school social workers was selected based on the fol-
lowing criteria: (a) currently licensed in Minnesota
as a school social worker, (b) currently employed as
a school social worker in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and
(c) currently a member of the Minnesota School
Social Workers Association (MSSWA). Approxi-
mately 105 school social workers were sent an invi-
tation via e-maü to participate in both parts of the
study. Fifty-nine school social workers agreed to
participate in the preliminary e-maü survey. Subse-
quently, 22 school social workers who agreed to
participate in the second part of the study were
interviewed in person for approximately 45 to 60
minutes.
To obtain a list of possible participants, I con-
tacted the MSSWA to obtain a list of names and
e-mail addresses of school social workers who
belong to this organization. There are approxi-
mately 105 school social workers who belong to
the MSSWA and work in Minneapolis-St. Paul
schools, and all of these members received an
e-mail invitation to participate in the study. Of
the 105 e-mails sent, 10 came back as undeüverable.
Therefore, only 95 participants received the e-mail
invitation. The e-maü invitation stated that con-
sent was implied if they chose to complete the
survey. Individuals who were interested in parti-
cipating in the preliminary six-question Internet
survey clicked on the link from the e-maü and
completed the survey. Individuals who were inter-
ested in participating in the 60-minute, in-person
interview provided me with their name and contact
information.

Data Collection
The first question that participants were asked was,
"Have you worked with grieving students?" Only
participants who answered yes to that question
could proceed with the rest of the survey and the
subsequent interview. There were no participants
who answered no to the first question; therefore,
all participants participated in the complete e-maü
survey.
One week later, I followed up by again contacting
possible participants via e-mail and asking them to
participate in the study. No participant was compen-
sated for volunteering to be part of this study. Before
in-person interviews, each participant signed a con-
sent form. The in-person interviews were face-to-face
and were audio recorded and transcribed.
96 Chi/dren & Schoo/s VOLUME 36, N U M B E R 2 APRIL
2014
Instrument
Two instruments were used in this study. The fint
instrument was a six-question survey distributed to
social workers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro-
politan area. The survey consisted primarily of
open-ended questions about what experiences
they had working with grieving children, including
types of services they had provided. Participants
were also asked to describe the death the child
was grieving (who died and how the person
died). Last, they were asked if they would agree
to be interviewed further on the topic.

The second instrument was an interview with six
open-ended questions. These questions asked par-
ticipants to describe their experiences working with
grieving children in the schools, the losses the stu-
dents had experienced, and barriers to helping
grieving students. All who volunteered to be inter-
viewed {N= 22) were asked the same questions.
The last question in the interview asked participants
if there was anything else they wanted to add to the
intervie'w.
Data Analysis
Data analysis was completed on both the online sur-
vey and the in-person interviews. The researcher
completed the transcription, the coding, and the
data analysis. There were no preliminary codes.
Data analysis on the six-question preliminary survey
began immediately and continued as more res-
ponses were received. The sixth survey question
was used to identify those participants who were
willing to be interviewed, and the researcher con-
tacted these subjects immediately. The researcher
collected survey data via the Web site https://
www.surveymonkey.com, which also notified
the researcher when responses were received. Data
analysis on the in-person interviews began immedi-
ately after transcription. As soon as possible after
transcription, the researcher began coding to sepa-
rate and categorize the data using NVivo 9 analysis
software (QSR International Pty Ltd., 2010). Cod-
ing grounded the analysis in the actual data.
Triangulation—using different or multiple
sources of data, methods, investigators, or theory
—affords research credibility (Lincoln & Guba,

1985). The researcher used several techniques to
address credibility: data triangulation, methods tri-
angulation, a second (interrater) coder, and mem-
ber checks. The coding unit was at the level of a
phrase, and each coding unit could be placed into
only one category. Each of the two coders inde-
pendently coded the data. During the course of
the first coding, each coder placed participant
responses into various themes. The two coders
then met to delineate themes and agree on the
labels. During the second coding, each coder placed
responses into the themes and subthemes. If the
two researchers disagreed about which theme to
categorize the response, they discussed it until
they both agreed.
Lincoln and Guba (1985) discussed the confirm-
ability of research, which is the degree to which the
researcher can demonstrate the neutrality of the
research interpretations, through a "confirmability
audit." The researcher of this study provided an
audit trail consisting of raw data, analysis notes,
reconstruction and synthesis products, process
notes, personal notes, and preliminary develop-
mental information (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
RESULTS
When the data obtained from both methods used in
this study were triangulated, the findings were con-
sistent. Of the 59 participants who responded, 43
provided services at the elementary school level,
19 at the middle school level, and 15 at the high
school level. Many social workers pro'vdded services
at more than one level.

Of the 59 participants who completed the online
survey, 56 pro'vided social work services to grieving
children. The 10 services provided, in order of fre-
quency, were (1) individual counseling, (2) group
counseling, (3) family counseling, (4) referrals/
resources, (5) education and training on grief and
loss issues, (6) bibliotherapy, (7) play therapy, (8)
art therapy, (9) memorial services, and (10) advo-
cacy. Fifty-five participants stated that the students
they worked with were grieving the death of a par-
ent, 46 said the students were grieving the death of a
grandparent, 38 said the students were grieving the
death of a pet, 30 said the students were grieving the
death of a sibling, 28 said that the students were
grieving the death of a friend, and 20 said the stu-
dents were grieving the death of someone else
(including deaths of principals, teachers, aunts,
uncles, cousins, stepparents, and other relatives).
School social workers said that students experi-
enced loss from a wide variety of types of deaths,
including natural causes, stillbirths, homicides, sui-
cides, car accidents, cancer, drownings, shootings,
heart attacks, and bicycle accidents.
Q U I N N - L E E / School Social Work with Grieving Children
97
Grieving students were referred to school social
workers by several sources, including teachers,
principals, parents, students themselves, friends of
students, school nurses, and community profession-
als. Several participants stated that they learned
about students' losses from the media and then con-

tacted the students to offer support.
The themes that were identified are not unfamil-
iar to school social workers. Similar themes have
been identified in other areas of school social prac-
tice. However, the area of school social work prac-
tice related to grief and loss has not been explored as
closely as other areas of school social work.
Four main themes were identified: (1) barriers to
helping grieving students, (2) variations on how
grief is defined, (3) social workers' preparation for
dealing with grief and loss issues, and (4) referral
of grieving students to outside resources. Sub-
themes were identified under each theme. These
themes and subthemes were identified from both
parts of the study, but they were primarily drawn
from the interviews. T h e themes and subthemes
identified from the data are illustrated in Figure 1.
Theme 1: Barriers to Helping Grieving
Students
Participants reported many barriers to their effec-
tiveness in helping a child through the stages of
grief. Some of the barriers were minor, such as par-
ents being difficult to reach because they work, but
some of the barriers directly affected social workers'
ability to help the child. Major barriers included
parents, teachers, limited time, limited resources,
religious barriers, and lack of space to meet with
groups of students for counseling.
Parents. Participants reported that the greatest bar-
rier they experienced was either parents or teachers,
both of whom seemed to think that grief counseKng

interfered in some way with their rights and respon-
sibilities. Many participants said that parents often saw
them as part of "the system" that was there not to
help the families recover but instead to separate the
families. Parents did not want to be questioned about
how they raised their chud. Almost all of the social
worken reported that they often encountered resis-
tance from parents when it came to counseling chil-
dren. For example, participant 7 commented on
parents' mistrust of school social workers;
Language barriers, sometimes families have mis-
trust of social workers; you are going to remove
my kids. If one of their children dies, am I going
to get blamed for the death. Sometimes the
families are really hard to reach. They are hard
to get a hold of, to find out what is exactly
going on. They will keep the kids out of school
Figure 1: Themes and Subthemes
Parents
Teachers
Time
Resources
Spiritual
No private space
y
/
/
Barriers to
helping grieving
students

^
X
Variations on
how grief is
defined
Death
Divorce
Change
Other losses
V
Special courses
Little preparation
On-the~job experience
Social workers'
wide range of
preparation for
dealing with grief
and loss issues
Referring grieving
students to outside
resources Time
Resources
Outside agencies
Community groups
Why it is necessary
98 Children & Schools VOLUME 36, N U M B E R 2 APRIL
2014

for a long period of time and if you ask about
that, they get defensive.
Some parents believed the social worker was
invading the family's privacy. Participant 3 summed
up the privacy issue the best:
We say that in my school that I can see children
one time without a parent's consent, and after
that they have to sign a consent form. So, if
for some reason, the parent were to say no,
like if a parent, because, and I think this is a
legitimate thing too, I mean, these are cominu-
nity schools, do they want the school to know
everything that is going on in their family?
Well, maybe not. I respect their confidentiality
and their privacy and that they might not want
this looked at within the school for privacy sake
and you know, that's where all the neighbors of
this child are going, and you know that's how
schools work.
Although the social workers acknowledged the
difficulty that they faced because of the way that
parents perceived their role in schools, they main-
tained that parents did not understand how a child-
ren's grief influenced their school behavior and
achievement.
Teachers. Teachers were also considered a barrier
to helping children. The social workers reported
that teachers did not like children leaving the
instructional classroom. According to the school

social workers interviewed, teachers believe it is
more important that the child remain in the class-
room regardless of the situation. Participants said
that teachers do not cooperate when the school
social workers want to meet with students during
class time. Participant 1 described the situation:
In the school system, the barrier I run up against
most often is teachers not seeing that. . .
there are some teachers who don't think that
school is the time or the place to deal with per-
sonal issues. And so they will struggle with a
student leaving their classroom and that type
of thing.
Overall, social workers cited feeling very frus-
trated with the lack of support from teachers. One
participant wondered if teachers realized that the
only time a social worker could see the students
was during school time. Some participants thought
that teachers were not being sensitive enough to the
needs of these grieving children.
Time. Many participants stated that there is not
enough time in the school day to handle the issues
and problems of grief and loss. Though many social
workers try to create groups for grieving children so
that they can receive comfort from others who are
experiencing the same pain, participants reported
that there is very little free time during a school
day in which to hold these group sessions. Likewise,
there is almost no possibility of conducting any type
of group after school. Many participants in this
study thought that their job of helping children
cope with life's stresses was considered to be sec-

ondary to the child's academic performance.
Resources. Many participants stated that there are
not enough resources allocated to helping students
with grief and loss issues. School social workers
cited both time and money as resources that are
lacking. Often school social workers have to pay
for special books or games that children can use
during counseling sessions. Participants reported
having to be very creative with the limited resources
they do have.
Spiritual Issues. Participants described the spiri-
tual implications of answering children's ques-
tion regarding the whereabouts of deceased loved
ones. Because of the separation of church and state,
discussions of spiritual and religious issues must be
hmited in public schools. School social workers
stated that the spiritual aspect of grief, death, and
loss is often an important part of a student's coping
experience, but that they are limited as to how
much they can discuss this issue. School social
workers in this study agreed that it was important
to honor the separation of church and state, but
they also acknowledged that it is important to be
open to comments the children themselves might
make about religion and where people go after
they die. Some participants thought that spiritual-
ity was a big challenge for them when dealing with
grieving children. School social workers reported
that it was necessary to deal with spirituality on
some level in their jobs. Participant 6 described a
technique for addressing spiritual issues in public
schools:
I think that one thing that is really interesting is

the religion aspect and being in a public school.
The one way I get around that, is by saying to a
Q U I N N - L E E / Sehool Social Work with Grieving Children
99
child, where do you think your grandma is? I
can't share my beliefs with them and I would
never try to convince them, but I have said
oh, so you think that your grandma is in heaven,
what do you think she is doing up there? I
won't discourage their belief, hut I think spiri-
tuality and the separation of church and state
and what I can talk about with the student is
the biggest harrier.
Need for Private Space. Participants mentioned
that they often lack private office space where
they can meet with students, yet it is important to
provide confidentiality and privacy so that students
feel comfortable. As Participant 4 noted.
My office space is a barrier. I don't really have a
private, confidential area to meet with some-
body who might want to share.
They also noted that private spaces are necessary
for meeting with parents.
Theme 2: Variations on How Grief Is
Defined
Participants discussed students' grief related to the
death of a parent, extended family member, and
student. However, participants mentioned that

children grieve because of all sorts of losses and
that it is necessary to keep an open mind about
the definition of grief and loss for the students.
School social workers gave examples of many types
of grief and loss that students experience, which
include divorce, sexual abuse, absent parents, devel-
opmental transitions, moving, peers, and change.
Thus, a child's grief comes in many unanticipated
forms. Participants also discussed how a student's
grief affects the larger school community and peer
group. Participant 16 commented that losses other
than death can cause students to grieve:
Just about even with regard to divorce, when par-
ents have to separate, there is a grieving process
that goes along with that. Relocating, coming
into a new environment that can cause grieving
because they had been moved to a new state for
whatever reason, or you have a new student come
in and they start making new friends and then
they are uprooted again. Grief conies in düFerent
shapes and fomis—not just death.
Theme 3: Social Workers' Preparation for
Dealing with Grief and Loss Issues
There was a wide range of preparation for dealing
with grief and loss issues. Some school social workers
had a tremendous amount of background, training,
and preparation, and others had almost none.
Some social workers learned how to deal with stu-
dent grief entirely on the job, leaming through trial
and error. There was no standard of education or
training that social workers received regarding grief
and how to help grieving children. Often, social
workers who had a personal interest in the topic of
grief and loss sought out education and training on

the subject. Most did not receive specialized training
in grief and loss issues but rather chose to take elective
courses or trainings on the topic. Grief was not a
required topic in their social work training.
Special Courses. Several of the school social
workers noted a special interest in taking courses
to help them deal with grieving children because
they believed that their graduate training had not
placed enough emphasis on this topic. Participant
20 described pursuing grief and loss training outside
of a formal academic program:
Initially the graduate program I was in, we were
only allowed three choices of électives. I still
wish that I had had grief and loss as an elective.
I initiated leaming about it because I . . . knew I
needed more information. Fortunately I had
some experience with groups, hut even when
I started out as a social worker at this end, I
had a lot of great mentors. I really sought the
help that I needed. I do reading, I talk to my
colleagues, I go to conferences.
Little Preparation. At least half of the school
social workers reported that they had little prepara-
tion for dealing with grieving children. Some said
that they do not deal with grief that often. These
participants expressed their anxiety over dealing
with death and reported that they were unsure of
how to cope with a grieving child. For example,
participant 7 stated,
I feel Uke the jack of all trades, the master of none.
You feel Uke you know just about enough about
everything but you are not a master of any.

On-the-Job Experience. T w o participants said
that they had learned how to deal with grieving
children through on-the-job experience. They,
2014
too, had not received training, so they did what they
could when presented with the problem. The fol-
lowing statement by participant 16 represents some-
one who learned through experience:
I feel comfortable. I have been around awhüe. If
I can't help, I feel really good knowing that
there other places that this chud can get help
that they need.
Theme 4: Referring Grieving Students to
Outside Resources
All of the participants said that outside referrals are a
necessity for a variety of reasons. First, not enough
resources or time exists in the educational system for
school social workers to deal with long-term grief
issues. Second, some social workers do not feel pre-
pared to deal with grief and loss issues. Third, some
students need famüy therapy to cope and recover
from certain types of grief and loss, and family ther-
apy may be outside the scope of the school social
worker's job description. Fourth, students need
and want assistance and resources when school is
not in session. All participants acknowledged the
need to rely on outside sources to support grieving
children. The following statements by two of the

participants represent the overall comments of the
participants. Participant 20 stated,
I can't give all the support. The more support
you have the easier it is to go through that heal-
ing process. I believe that the more support that
you can add, the more it helps that student.
Similarly, Participant 5 encouraged referrals to
outside sources, stating,
I always let parents know that there are some
other resources out there, because my part
with the child is only 30 minutes, say once a
week for 6 weeks' time, and kids usually need
more than that.
LIMITATIONS
There were several limitations to this study. First,
the transferabüity of the findings in this study is lim-
ited because the participants all came from a specific
geographical area in a specific state. Minnesota's
requirements regarding who can become a school
social worker may be different. It is possible that,
in some states, a prospective school social worker
may need to have formal grief training; however.
in Minnesota there is no such requirement. Hence,
the barriers that these participants face in the execu-
tion of their jobs may not be the same barriers faced
by school social workers in other areas of the
United States.
Second, only those school social workers who be-
long to the MSSWA were included in the study, and

therefore, results wül be limited only to those mem-
ben. Not au school social workers in Minneapolis-
St. Paul belong to the MSSWA.
A third limitation of the study is the small sample
size. Although 59 school social workers completed
the online survey, only 22 participants were inter-
viewed. This is only a smaü number compared with
the overall number of people (1,774) who are
licensed in Minnesota as school social workers.
For this reason, these findings cannot be generalized
to a larger population.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
This study generates knowledge and better under-
standing not only of school social work in general,
but also of the particular nature of school social
work with grieving chüdren. This study will serve
to help school social workers and other school staff
to recognize a forgotten population—grieving stu-
dents—and inform schools about how social work-
ers can help these chüdren. It brings awareness to
the issue of school social work with grieving stu-
dents, which has been ignored in the past. Perhaps
schools, social workers, and parents will be inspired
to advocate for increased services. This study could
assist parents and guardians of grieving children in
deciding whether they want to obtain additional
support for their children when they experience a
loss. The findings could encourage school adminis-
trators, school social workers, teachers, and other
school staff to discuss barriers to helping grieving
chüdren. This, in tum, may assist them in finding
ways to overcome these barriers so that they may
help these chüdren maintain both emotional health

and school performance.
The findings from this study generated a number
of ideas for school administrators, social workers,
teachers, staff, parents, and chüdren in dealing
•with grief and loss issues.
• Increase services for grieving children.
School social workers should be encouraged to
ask their supervisors if they can identify, assess,
and provide these services. If, subsequently.
Q U I N N - L E E / Schoo/ Socia/ Work with Grieving Children
101
services do not increase, more social workers
may recognize the need to refer grieving chil-
dren to other resources.
• Educate parents and teachers about child-
ren's grief.. Infomiation can be sent via letters,
teacher in-services, one-on-one discussions,
books, and videos. When informed, these
individuals may be more inclined to seek
out the services of a school social worker or
obtain additional support for their grieving
children.
• Facilitate communication hetween com-
munity and school social workers. Better
communication can decrease the duplication
of services and allow a more efficient way of
organizing and utilizing resources and services.

• Collaborate with families. Families should be
seen as part of the solution and part of the team.
• Inform social 'work degree programs
about the preparedness of their graduates.
Programs can evaluate whether grief and loss
should be covered in greater depth and length
in bachelor's and master's degree curricula.
• Use the skills of listening, encouraging,
and problem solving e to help grieving
students. Because working with grie'ving stu-
dents does not require different knowledge or
skills, school social workers should use the
knowledge of grief and loss that they gained
throughout their social work education (per-
haps in areas of child welfare, gerontology, dis-
abihties) as a parallel to grief around death.
• Provide ideas to support the research that
states intervention is necessary for griev-
ing children. The themes and subthemes in
this study reveal areas where interventions
can be provided and where further research is
needed.
• View parents and teachers as part of the
service delivery system. School social work-
ers need to help parents and teachers make the
link between the social workers' efforts with
students and parents' and teachers' goals for
these students. It is important for social work-
ers to show how their services can complement
and support rather than threaten the roles of
teachers and parents (Bronstein & Abramson,
2003).

• Collaborate with teachers. "Collaboration
between social workers and teachers is critical
in order to maximize students' achievement in
school" (Bronstein & Abramson, 2003, p. 323).
School social workers can help teachers under-
stand the connection between psychosocial
intervention and improved academic perfor-
mance, shew teachers that their emphasis on
academics is valued, and enhance teachers'
roles and ability to teach (Bronstein & Abram-
son, 2003).
• Address the issue of time as a barrier. This
study introduced the idea of the community-
school partnership and after-school program-
ming as ways to attend to children's psychosocial
issues that impact their class performance.
• Find creative ways to address spirituality.
Students may raise this issue with social work-
ers. Spirituality is often a part of grief, and it is
natural for children to want to discuss it. How-
ever, some school social workers are anxious
about discussing spiritual issues in school. It
would be helpful for school social workers to
have some training on how to talk to students
about this issue so they are more comfortable.
Also, social workers should take a holistic view
and collaborate with spiritual leaders in the stu-
dents' lives, so students receive all the spiritual
support they want or need.
This study revealed areas in which improvement
or further study is needed. Based on the literature,

most grieving children simply want someone to lis-
ten to them. Social workers should be reminded
that it is acceptable to not have the answers and
that, in fact, they should not have the answers.
Instead, they should listen and ask students ques-
tions, support them, and keep the dialogue open.
They should encourage students to continue talk-
ing about spiritual issues and to talk with their fam-
ily. School social workers can take on roles that best
address the needs of bereaved students in the
schools. CS
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Lisa Quinn-Lee, PhD, MSSW, LICSW, is assistant pro-
fessor. Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 105
Gaifield Avenue, Eau Claire, WI54702; e-mail:
[email protected]
uwec.edu.
Original manuscript received March 13, 2012
Final revision received August 27, 2012
Accepted September 14, 2012
Advance Access Publication April 22, 2014
SOCIAL WORK
REFLECTIONS ON PRACTICE AND THEORY
CHRISTOPHER RHOADES DYKEMA
Forty Years in Social Work is a personal mem-
oir that blends a recounting of Christopher
Rhoades Dykema's experience with the
search for a theory of social work that helps
to explain the social and psychological con-
texts of his practice. This professional work
reveals many facets of Dykema's life as a

social worker from the 1960s into the first
decade of the 21st century. It is a testament
to his commitment to the profession's need
for theory building; it presents a history of
social welfare over 40 years; and it links
accounts of his interactions with clients to
an effort to place his practice experience in
the broadest possible context. The stories
are sometimes funny, sometimes tragic,
and sometimes poignant, but they are
always distinguished by Dykema's pursuit
of the theory or theories that would best
explain what he experienced.
ISBN: 978-0-87101-443-6. 2013.
Item #4436. 192 pages. $29.99.
1-800-227-3590 • www.naswpress.org
#NASW
NASW PRESS
CODE PAFY13

QUINN-LEE / School Social Work with Grieving Children 103
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articles for individual use.
RESOURCES FOR PRACTICE
Collaboration as an Essential School
Social Work Skill
Clara D’Agostino
Essential collaboration skills are introducedin the formal
academic training that MSWstudents receive and are a
cornerstone of
social work practice (Graham & Barter, 1999). For
the purposes of this article, collaboration is defined as
“a relational system in which two or more stake-
holders pool together resources in order to meet
objectives that neither could meet individually”
(Graham & Barter, 1999, p. 7). As a way to high-
light joint decision making, interprofessional col-
laboration emphasizes the collective value of
coordinated student support services as it relates to
student outcomes, teacher support, and commu-
nity engagement that reduces barriers to learning.

Collaboration is essential to identifying and priori-
tizing unmet needs and determining evidence-
based strategies to implement. Although collaboration
has been a common word in school-based and
other types of social work, changing realities in
funding, legislation, and conceptual frameworks
for optimal educational learning environments
have created a new emphasis on this skill.
Collaboration involves all key stakeholders in the
school community, including, but not limited to,
students, parents, teachers, administrators, commu-
nity members, and community organizations. Cross-
system collaboration requires effectively engaging
parents and community members as well as estab-
lishing partnerships with local service providers,
including community mental health agencies.
“Arguably, social workers are uniquely prepared to
augment their important clinical roles and responsi-
bilities with macro-level practice involving other
school-serving agencies, families, and communities”
(Anderson-Butcher et al., 2010, p. 161).
Collaboration emphasizes the collective effective-
ness of professionals from different training pro-
grams, creates a mutual respect for fellow professions
and professionals, and recognizes the worth of each
member of the intervention team. Building collabo-
ration skills with individuals can be generalized to
collaboration with larger groups (Bronstein, 2003)
such as school board members and other educa-
tional administrators.
School social workers practicing from a collabo-
rative and culturally competent perspective actively

seek parent involvement and teacher assistance
(Teasley, Canifield, Archuleta, Crutchfield, &
Chavis, 2012). They also create stronger collabora-
tive relationships with teachers, training them to
detect the early warning signs of depression and
suicide risk, and codevelop protocols and strategies
to address crises and mental health concerns.
Partnering locally with school social work peers,
statewide with school social work associations, and
nationally through professional social work organi-
zations helps school social workers create a collabo-
rative network of support and information that can
potentially lead to broadened knowledge of fund-
ing sources to sustain or enhance their services.
Those who are practicing in remote areas with lit-
tle opportunity to have face-to-face contact with a
school social work community can benefit from
new methods of collaboration through technol-
ogy. They can seek consultation assistance via vir-
tual conferencing, engage in distance learning, and
access online resources.
FUNDING REALITIES
Increased social problems combined with decreased
resources make collaboration essential for efficient
practice (Bronstein, 2003). Recent trends in reduc-
tions of school funding magnify the need for
improved student support. In 2008, school districts
began receiving less public funding than they had
received in previous years. According to the Cen-
ter on Budget and Policy Priorities (Oliff, Mai, &
Leachman, 2012), elementary and high schools in
doi: 10.1093/cs/cdt021 © 2013 National Association of Social
Workers 248

26 U.S. states received less funding in the 2012–
2013 school year than they did in the previous
year, and 35 states’ school funding is currently
below 2008 levels. Economic changes resulted in
funding cuts to schools and heavier demands on
school social workers who retained their positions
(Issurdatt, 2009).
Funding sources largely define how the
day-to-day practice of any school social worker is
carried out. In the past, school social workers were
funded in very generic ways; currently, many social
workers are funded by specific “siloed” categorical
funding, which generally restricts the practice of
the school social worker (personal communication
with M. Pennekamp, retired adjunct professor,
Humboldt State University, August 23, 2013). Soft
monies such as grant funding can complement
existing programs but often cannot be relied on as
a long-term funding source. Therefore, school
social workers should leverage their collaborative
partnerships to educate themselves on various
funding streams that could be used to create a
broad base of support. School social workers
should use their skills as collaborators and organize
teams at their schools to seek federal funding
opportunities (Dube & Orpinas, 2009; personal
communication with M. Mandlawitz, government
relations director, School Social Work Association
of America [SSWAA], July 19, 2013).
PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION
“Collaboration among individual professionals is a

first step in developing collaborative relationships
among community constituents, agencies, and
professional groups” (Bronstein, 2003, p. 298).
School social workers benefit by their affiliation
with national associations such as the School Social
Work Association of America, the American
Council for School Social Work, the International
School Social Work Association, and the National
Association of Social Workers. Membership in
these organizations represents an opportunity to
strengthen networking, enhance knowledge of
evidence-based practices, heighten awareness of
funding trends, and promote advocacy for essential
student support services.
Collaboration with other social work profes-
sionals through local, state, and national affiliations
should lead school social workers to engage more
with legislators on new legislation that improves
the lives of families and school children. It also
emphasizes the importance of the school social
work role in the education environment.
School social workers need to be establishing
and maintaining relationships with their mem-
bers of Congress, . . . and inviting members of
Congress and staff to their schools to see the suc-
cesses they are having, as well as the challenges
they face as staff is cut and school social workers
are responsible for more and more students.
(personal communication with M. Mandlawitz,
government relations director, SSWAA, July 19,
2013)
It is imperative to stay engaged in advocacy efforts

that promote both funding and access to needed
comprehensive student support services.
COLLABORATING WITH HIGHER EDUCATION
There are several tangible benefits to the local edu-
cational agency that partners with universities.
One such mutually beneficial partnership is the
creation of intern training programs. Establishing a
social work intern training program can potentially
lead to increased direct and indirect services to stu-
dents. Social work interns are often infused with
new ideas that energize a work environment, pro-
vide much-needed prevention and early interven-
tion services to students in need, and assist with
longer term projects such as grant writing, estab-
lishing collaborations with community partners,
and engaging families. Through micro, mezzo, and
macro interactions offered in school settings, social
work interns will develop stronger collaboration
skills as they work side by side with teachers,
administrators, students, community members, and
parents (Bronstein, 2003). Interns should also ben-
efit from this partnership through personal and
professional development, résumé building, and
professional contacts (Handy & Mook, 2011).
Due to an increase in Web-based graduate social
work programs, establishing an intern training pro-
gram is increasingly more viable now that there is
no need to be in close geographic proximity to an
MSW program. Schools and agencies across the
nation can partner with an accredited MSW pro-
gram to place social work interns directly at school
sites. These programs that “promote positive
collaborative experiences in field placements”
(Bronstein, 2003, p. 304) can also lead to additional

partnerships with higher education, including joint
D’Agostino / Collaboration as an Essential School Social Work
Skill 249
research initiatives, consultation opportunities,
establishment of pathways to college for K–12 stu-
dents, support of community-based programming,
and other creative collaborations.
STUDENT, FAMILY, AND SCHOOL
COLLABORATION
Research has shown that multilevel collaboration
addressing student behavior through positive behav-
ior intervention supports (PBIS) and youth develop-
ment has positive outcomes for students (Greenberg
et al., 2003; Minke & Anderson, 2005). Multitiered
systems of support, often referred to as response to
intervention, have heightened the importance of
interprofessional collaboration by emphasizing the
contributions of all support team members. This
collaborative prevention and early intervention
approach from all school personnel can improve
school climate and reduce barriers to learning; it is
also enhanced when families are included as collabo-
rative partners (Dimmitt, Carey, & Hatch, 2007).
School social workers are skilled at recognizing
the family as expert, “developing solid patterns of
collaboration [while] keeping the whole child and
family at the core of all . . . activities” (Pennekamp,
1992, p. 129). Including the student and the family
in the student success team is a prime example of
using families as collaborative partners in the

solution-focused approach to addressing student
needs. “Family-based interventions are an effective
way to support student learning, and there is con-
siderable research that family involvement in
schools promotes student achievement” (Dimmitt
et al., 2007, p. 64).
School social workers, their interns, other support
professionals, and contracted agency professionals
can play a strong role in ensuring that students feel
connected to school through direct student contact,
educating teachers to provide trauma-informed
classroom interactions, and emphasizing the impor-
tant role teachers play when they engage in caring
relationships with students (Search Institute, n.d.-a).
School social workers can also provide in-service
trainings to teachers on the importance of their con-
nections with families of students and how those
connections contribute to schoolwide efforts to
improve school climate and academic achievement.
It is within this safe, positive school environment
that students can begin to grow emotionally, estab-
lish bonds within the school community and, subse-
quently, excel academically.
COMMUNICATING RESULTS
Clearly communicating to stakeholders the efficacy
of school social work services is vital for sustainabil-
ity. School social workers should consider reporting
data publicly through school newsletters, during
presentations at school events, or at school board
meetings. These communications are intended “to
paint a picture that demonstrates the many ways
[they] are supporting student success” (Dimmitt
et al., p. 164). M. Mandlawitz, government relations
director for SSWAA, has suggested that school social

workers provide outcome data to local legislators
and invite them to visit and support a program with
proven positive outcomes (personal communica-
tion, July 19, 2013).
Systematic evaluation of school social work
services . . . can be a way to help modify and
improve social work services and programs and
can help provide evidence to stakeholders of
the value of the services [social workers] per-
form.” (Allen-Meares, 2010, p. 358)
RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION
Declining resources during times of heightened
social problems make collaboration essential for
efficient school social work practice and require
school social workers to take a proactive approach
to coordinated student support services. Children
and their families will benefit from interprofes-
sional collaboration that leads to improved treat-
ment planning, intervention fidelity, and team
decision making. Cross-system collaboration with
community partners is essential for accessing a
wide range of services for students.
Connecting with other school social workers
through professional organization affiliation will
help practitioners obtain both leadership and advo-
cacy skills. School social workers should expand
their collaborations to involve legislators, broaden
their knowledge of current legislation, and ulti-
mately parlay those partnerships into authoring new
legislation and advocating for increased student sup-
port services.
Establishing and maintaining professional and

collaborative relationships will help create an envi-
ronment of mutuality in which the integrated stu-
dent support team works together to meet the
needs of all students. Intern programs should also
be fully explored to advance interagency collabora-
tion with university partners, thus creating a
250 Children & Schools Volume 35, Number 4 October 2013
training environment in which collaboration skills
can be developed and modeled for another genera-
tion of school social workers.
Collaboration is one important skill for school
social workers to ensure that students are receiving
appropriate, comprehensive, and coordinated ser-
vices. Collaboration and communication should
occur at all levels with key stakeholders, including
student, family, school staff, district personnel,
community agencies, and state and national policy-
makers. These partnerships have the collective
potential to decrease barriers to learning, improve
school climate, achieve higher graduation rates,
increase academic achievement, and help moti-
vated youths realize their future as successful, con-
tributing adult members of society (Blonsky, Cox,
& Pennekamp, 2007; Search Institute, n.d.-b.)
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Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Anderson-Butcher, D. D., Lawson, H. A., Iachini, A. A.,

Flaspohler, P. P., Bean, J. J., & Wade, R. R. (2010).
Emergent evidence in support of a community collab-
oration model for school improvement. Children &
Schools, 32, 160–171.
Blonsky, H. M., Cox, T., & Pennekamp, M. (2007). Com-
prehensive student learning support services: A Cali-
fornia educator’s toolkit. Los Angeles: California
Association of School Social Workers.
Bronstein, L. R. (2003). A model for interdisciplinary col-
laboration. Social Work, 48, 297–306. Retrieved from
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accountid=14749
Dimmitt, C., Carey, J. C., & Hatch, T. (Eds.). (2007).
Evidence-based school counseling: Making a difference with
data-driven practices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Press.
Dube, S., & Orpinas, P. (2009). Understanding excessive
school absenteeism as school refusal behavior. Children
& Schools, 31, 87–95. doi:10.1093/cs/31.2.87
Graham, J., & Barter, K. (1999). Collaboration: A social
work practice method. Families in Society 80(1), 6–13.
doi:10.1606/1044-3894.634
Greenberg, M., Weissberg, R., Utne Obrien, M., Zins, J.,
Fredericks, L., Resnick, H., & Elias, M. (2003).
Enhancing school-based prevention and youth devel-
opment through coordinated social emotional and
academic learning. American Psychologist, 58, 466–474.
Handy, F. F., & Mook, L. L. (2011). Volunteering and vol-
unteers: Benefit–cost analyses. Research on Social Work

Practice, 21, 412–420.
Issurdatt, S. (2009, December). The economic downturn: Impli-
cations for school social work. Retrieved from https://
www.socialworkers.org/login.asp?ms=restr&ref=/
assets/secured/documents/practice/ssw/Practice%
20Update%20Jan%202010%20School%20SW.pdf
Minke, K., & Anderson, K. (2005). Family–school collabo-
ration and positive behavior support. Journal of Positive
Behavior Interventions, 7(3), 181–185.
Oliff, P., Mai, C., & Leachman, M. (2012). New school
brings more cuts in state funding for schools.
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fa=view&id=3825
Pennekamp, M. (1992). Toward school-linked and school-
based human services for children and families. Social
Work in Education, 14, 125–130.
Search Institute. (n.d.-a). Developmental relationships.
Retrieved from http://www.search-institute.org/
research/developmental-relationships
Search Institute. (n.d.-b). The 40 developmental assets.
Retrieved from www.search-institute.org/
developmental-assets
Teasley, M., Canifield, J. P., Archuleta, A. J., Crutchfield, J.,
& Chavis, A. M. (2012). Perceived barriers and facilita-
tors to school social work practice: A mixed-methods
study. Children & Schools, 34, 145–153.
Clara D’Agostino, MSW, LCSW, is adjunct field faculty
member, School of Social Work, University of Southern

Califor-
nia, Los Angeles; e-mail: [email protected]
Original manuscript received September 19, 2013
Accepted September 23, 2013
Advance Access Publication October 9, 2013
D’Agostino / Collaboration as an Essential School Social Work
Skill 251
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9
9
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cs/31.2.87
http://dx.doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.634
http://dx.doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.634
https://www.socialworkers.org/login.asp?ms=restr&ref=/assets/s
ecured/documents/practice/ssw/Practice%20Update%20Jan%202
010%20School%20SW.pdf
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3825

http://www.search-institute.org/research/developmental-
relationships
relationships
relationships
relationships
relationships
http://www.search-institute.org/developmental-assets
http://www.search-institute.org/developmental-assets
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Act I: The “Before” Phase

Chapter 1: Selecting Your Target Market
Chapter 2: Crafting Your Message
Chapter 3: Reaching Prospects with Advertising Media
Act II: The “During” Phase
Chapter 4: Capturing Leads
Chapter 5: Nurturing Leads
Chapter 6: Sales Conversion
Act III: The “After” Phase
Chapter 7: Delivering a World-Class Experience
Chapter 8: Increasing Customer Lifetime Value
Chapter 9: Orchestrating and Stimulating Referrals
Conclusion
About the Author
5
6
kindle:embed:0002?mime=image/jpg
I
Acknowledgments
“If I have seen further than others, it is
by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
ISAAC NEWTON
wish I could tell you all the ideas in this book were my
inventions and that

I’m some kind of marketing and business genius. The truth is,
though I’m a
collector of elegant ideas, I rarely invent anything, and when I
do, it’s rarely
worth writing about.
An early business mentor of mine, Mal Emery, would often say,
“I’ve never
had an original idea in my life—it’s just too bloody dangerous.”
Yet he was
and continues to be an extremely successful businessman and
marketer. The
secret of his success, and subsequently mine, was to just model
things that
were known to reliably work rather than trying to reinvent the
wheel.
Reinventing the wheel requires you to be a genius, and even
then, it carries
with it a high probability of failure. I’m no genius and I hate
failing, so I prefer
to just closely copy the things that made others successful—at
least until I’ve
got a very good handle on the basics. This tilts the odds in my
favor and gives
me a high probability of success.
While I did create the system that has become the 1-Page
Marketing Plan
(1PMP), many of the direct response marketing concepts that
make it work are
the inventions and ideas of other great business leaders and
marketers.
Perhaps I flatter myself but the aphorism “Good artists copy;

great artists
steal,” repeated by Steve Jobs and attributed to Pablo Picasso, is
certainly a
philosophy I’ve held in mind when collecting these elegant
ideas over the
years and writing this book. Regardless of whether you consider
me a “great
7
artist” or a thief, I want you to benefit from the treasure trove
of the proven
business-building ideas that follow.
Certainly, there’s a place for creativity and invention but in my
opinion, this
should come after you’ve first mastered the basics. This book
contains many of
those basics. Some come from my own experiences but most
come from people
who’ve been “giants” in my business life and on whose
shoulders I’ve stood.
In no particular order, I’d like to acknowledge:
Mal Emery
Dean Jackson
Joe Polish
Pete Godfrey
Dan Kennedy
James Schramko
Jim Rohn
Frank Kern
Seth Godin

Some have been personal mentors to me, while others have been
mentors to me
through publications and other works they’ve produced. I try to
credit them in
footnotes throughout this book when, as far as I know, an idea
I’m presenting
has originated from one of them. However, I’m certain that I’ve
left other
people out or not acknowledged enough of the ideas of the
people above.
When you collect ideas over a period of many years it can
sometimes become
a blur when trying to recall where one originated. For that I
apologize in
advance.
The 1-Page Marketing Plan is an implementation breakthrough
rather than a
new marketing innovation or concept. It’s by far the easiest way
for a small
business to go from knowing nothing about marketing to
creating and
implementing a sophisticated direct response marketing plan for
their business.
The plan is literally reduced to a single page.
8
Please enjoy the ideas in this book and, more importantly,
implement them
in your business. Remember, knowing and not doing is the same
as not
knowing.

IMPORTANT:
This book is designed to be interactive. For this reason, you’ll
find signposts along the way in this
book that will lead you to a special resources section of The 1-
Page Mark eting Plan website.
These resources are exclusively available to readers of this book
and are designed to go hand-in-
hand with it. They include the 1-Page Marketing Plan canvas
and examples, as well as links, videos,
and articles referenced throughout this book.
Acce s s the s e re s ource s at 1pmp.com
9
http://1pmp.com
I
Introduction
What’s This All About?
f I had to summarize the essence of this book in one sentence it
would be,
“the fastest path to the money.” I’ve purposely put this as early
as
humanly possible in the book because I don’t want to waste
your time.
I know for a certainty that this opening sentence will be off-
putting to a
large number of people and frankly I’d much prefer they read

someone else’s
business book full of ear-tickling clichés like “follow your
passion,” “work
hard,” “hire the right people,” blah blah blah.
If that’s what you’re after, then search Amazon. There’ll be a
gazillion
business books there for you on all these airy-fairy concepts and
much more,
mostly written by professional authors and researchers who’ve
never actually
built a high-growth business.
This book is blatantly and unashamedly about growing your
business fast
and reaping the rewards of that kind of success.
10
Running Out of Oxygen Really Sucks
As Zig Ziglar famously said, “Money isn’t everything... but it
ranks right up
there with oxygen.”
Yup, nothing—NOTHING—kills a business faster than a lack of
“oxygen”
(AKA money).
Why am I so unashamedly focused on the money getting? There
are a few
good reasons.
Firstly, there’s almost no business problem that can’t be solved

with more
money. Which is handy because almost every business I know
of is full of
problems. Money helps you solve the vast majority of things
that make
business a pain in the backside.
Secondly, when you’ve taken care of yourself, you have a
chance to help
others.
If you didn’t go into business to make money then you’re either
lying or you
have a hobby, not a business. And yes, I know all about
delivering value,
changing the world and so on, but how much of that are you
going to do if
you’re broke? How many people can you help?
When you board an airplane and they’re going through all the
safety
procedures, the airline attendant will inevitably get to a point
that goes
something like this:
Should the cabin experience sudden pressure loss, oxygen
masks will
drop down from above your seat. Place the mask over your
mouth and
nose and pull the strap to tighten. If you are traveling with
children
or someone who requires assistance, make sure that your own
mask is
on first before helping others.
Why fit your own mask before helping others? Because if

you’re slumped
over your seat suffering from a lack of oxygen:
11
1. you can’t help anyone else, and even worse;
2. we now have to deploy scarce resources to come and help
you, otherwise
you’ll soon be dead.
12
Knowing What to Do
In his book titled The Book of Survival, Anthony Greenbank
wrote:
To live through an impossible situation, you don’t need to have
the
reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the
mind of
an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.
The statistics vary on exactly what percentage of businesses fail
within the
first five years. Some estimates put it as high as 90%. However,
I’ve never
seen this statistic being quoted as anything less than 50%. That
means that if
we’re being super-optimistic you have a 50 /50 chance of still
having your

doors open after five years.
However, here’s where it really gets worse. The statistics take
into account
only businesses that completely cease trading. They don’t take
into account the
businesses that plateau at a low level and slowly kill or make
the lives of their
owners miserable.
Have you ever wondered why most small businesses plateau at a
mediocre
level?
At one end of the spectrum there’s Pete the plumber who works
sixteen-
hour days, weekends and never takes holidays while barely
making enough to
keep his head above water. On the other end of the spectrum
there’s Joe who
runs a plumbing company with twenty plumbers working for
him. It seems like
his primary business activity is counting the huge sums of
money that keep
rolling in.
It’s very common for small businesses never to grow past the
point at
which they generate just enough profit for the owner(s) to make
a modest
living. It seems that no matter how hard the owner(s) try, their
efforts to get to
the next level just lead to frustration. At this point, one of two
things happens.
13

Either they get disillusioned or they just accept their fate—that
their business is
nothing more than a low-paid, self-created job.
In fact, the reality is that many business owners would probably
be better
off just finding a job in their industry. They would likely work
fewer hours,
have less stress, enjoy more benefits and have more holiday
time than in the
prison they have created for themselves. On the flip side, there
are a few
business owners that just seem to have it all. They work
reasonable hours,
have a fantastic cash flow from their enterprise and enjoy
continuous growth.
Many business owners who are struggling blame their industry.
It’s true
some industries are in decline—examples such as book stores or
video rental
stores immediately come to mind. If you are in one of these
dead or dying
industries, it may be time to cut your losses and move on rather
than torture
yourself to death financially. This may be particularly difficult
if you have been
in the industry for a long time.
However, for the most part, when people blame their industry
they are just
playing the blame game. Some of the most common industry
complaints I hear

are:
It’s too competitive.
The margins are too low.
Online discounters are taking customers away.
Advertising no longer works.
However, it’s rarely the industry that is truly to blame; after all
there are
others in that same industry that are doing very well. So, the
obvious question
is, what are they doing differently?
Many small business owners fall into the trap described in
Michael
Gerber’s classic book, The E-Myth Revisited. That is, they are a
technician,
for example, a plumber, hairdresser, dentist and so on, and they
are good at
what they do. They have what Gerber describes as an
“entrepreneurial
seizure” and they start to think to themselves, “Why should I
work for this idiot
boss of mine? I’m good at what I do—I’ll start my own
business.”
14
This is one of THE major mistakes made by most small business
ow ners. They go from working for an idiot boss to becoming an
idiot boss!
Here is the key point—just because you’re good at the technical
thing you do
doesn’t mean that you are good at the business of what you do.

So going back to our example, a good plumber is not necessarily
the best
person to run a plumbing business. This is a vitally important
distinction to
note and is a key reason that most small businesses fail. The
owner of the
business may have excellent technical skills but it’s his lack of
business skills
that causes his business to fail.
This is not meant to discourage people from starting their own
businesses.
However, you must resolve to become good at the business of
what you do—
not just the technical thing you do. A business can be an
amazing vehicle for
achieving financial freedom and personal fulfillment—but only
for those who
understand and master this vital distinction and figure out what
they need to do
to run a successful business.
If you’re good at the technical thing of what you do but feel like
you could
benefit from some help on the business side, then you’re in the
right place at
the right time. The whole point of this book is to take you from
confusion to
clarity—so you know exactly what to do to have business
success.
15

Professionals Have Plans
As a kid my favorite TV show was The A-Team. In case you’ve
never watched
it, I’ll give you the executive summary of 99% of the episodes:
1. Bad guys harass and threaten an innocent person or group.
2. The innocent person or group begs and pleads with the A-
Team to help
them.
3. The A-Team (a motley bunch of ex-soldiers) fight, humiliate
and drive
away the bad guys.
Episodes would invariably end with Hannibal (the brains of the
A-Team)
chomping down on his cigar and triumphantly mumbling, “I
love it when a plan
comes together.”
16
Look at any profession where the stakes are high and you’ll see
a well-
thought-out plan being followed. Professionals never just w ing
it.
Doctors follow a treatment plan.
Airline pilots follow a flight plan.
Soldiers follow a military operation plan.
How would you feel about engaging the services of any of the

above
professions if the practitioner were to say to you, “Screw the
plan. I’ll just
wing it.” Yet, this is exactly what most business owners do.
Invariably, when someone makes a mess of something it often
becomes
clear in the aftermath that they didn’t have a plan. Don’t let that
be you and
your business. While no one can guarantee your success, having
a plan
dramatically increases your probability of success.
Just like you wouldn’t want to be on a plane where the pilot
hadn’t
bothered with a flight plan, you don’t want you and your family
relying on a
business for which you haven’t bothered with a business plan.
Often the stakes
are almost as high. Marriages, partnerships, jobs and more are
often the
casualties of failed businesses.
It’s more than just your ego on the line so it’s time to “go pro”
and create a
plan.
17
The Wrong Kind of Plan
Early into my first business, I was smart enough to identify that
a business plan
was going to be important to my success. Unfortunately, that’s

where my smarts
ended.
With the help of a business consultant (who’d never actually
run a
successful business of his own), I ended up many thousands of
dollars poorer
but had a document that most business owners never bother
with—a business
plan.
My business plan was many hundreds of pages long. It had
graphs, charts,
projections and much, much more. It was an awesome-looking
document but
essentially was a bunch of nonsense.
After it was written, I shoved it in the top drawer of my desk
and never
saw it again until the day we were moving offices and I had to
clean out my
desk.
I dusted it off, flicked through it and tossed it in the trash,
angry at myself
about the money I’d wasted on that phony baloney consultant.
However, later when I thought about it more carefully, I
realized that while
the document itself was a bunch of nonsense, the process I went
through with
the consultant was valuable in clarifying some of the key
elements in my
business, particularly one key section of it called “the
marketing plan.”

In fact, a lot of what we did to create the marketing plan shaped
the
business and created much of our future success.
More on this in a moment but for now let me introduce a man
and his
concept that’s going to be the key to your business success.
18
My Friend Vilfredo Pareto and the 80/20 Rule
I never had the privilege of meeting Vilfredo Pareto, mostly
because he died
over half a century before I was born, but I’m sure we would
have been best
buds.
Pareto was an Italian economist who noticed that 80% of the
land in Italy
was owned by 20% of the population. Hence the Pareto
Principle, commonly
known as the 80 /20 rule, was born.
It turns out, the 80 /20 rule holds true for more than just land
ownership in
Italy. It holds true for almost anything you care to think of.
Some examples:
80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers.
80% of road traffic accidents are caused by 20% of drivers.
80% of software usage is by 20% of users.
80% of a company’s complaints come from 20% of its
customers.

80% of wealth is owned by 20% of people.
Woody Allen even noted that 80% of success is showing up.
In other words, the Pareto Principle predicts that 80% of effects
come from 20% of causes.
Maybe it’s just my laziness talking but this gets me seriously
excited.
It’s often said that necessity is the mother of invention but I’d
argue that
laziness is, and my friend Vilfredo is my mentor in that pursuit.
So essentially, you can cut out 80% of the stuff you’re doing,
sit on the
couch eating nachos instead and you’ll still get most of the
results you’re
getting.
If you don’t want to sit on the couch chowing down on nachos
80% of the
time, then doing more of the 20% stuff is your fast track to
success. And in this
context, success = more money while doing less work.
19
20
The 64/4 Rule
If you think the 80 /20 rule is exciting, the 64 /4 rule will blow

your mind.
You see we can apply the 80 /20 rule to the rule itself. So we
take 80% of 80
and 20% of 20 and end up with the 64 /4 rule.
So 64% of effects come from 4% of causes.
Put another way, the majority of your success comes from the
top 4% of
your actions. Or put yet another way, 96% of the stuff you do is
a w aste of
time (comparatively).
The most surprising thing is that the 80 /20 rule and 64 /4 rule
still hold up
in a remarkably accurate way. If you look at wealth distribution
statistics from
the last century, you’ll notice that the top 4% own about 64% of
the wealth, and
the top 20% own about 80% of the wealth. This is despite this
being the
“information age.” You’d imagine that a hundred years ago only
the wealthy
had good access to information, hence it’s understandable why
they held 80%
of the wealth. Yet this wealth distribution statistic still holds up
today, an age
where information has been democratized and where even the
poorest people
have pretty much the same access to information as the
wealthiest people.
This proves that lack of information isn’t the issue holding back
the bottom
80% of business owners—it’s human behavior and mindset.
That certainly

hasn’t changed in the last 100 years.
1
21
The Best Kept Secret of the Rich
In my observation of and work with numerous business owners
around the
world, there’s one thing that differentiates the wildly successful
and wealthy
ones from the struggling and broke.
Struggling business owners will spend time to save money,
whereas
successful business owners will spend money to save time. Why
is that an
important distinction? Because you can always get more money,
but you can
never get more time. So you need to ensure the stuff you spend
your time on
makes the biggest impact.
This is called leverage and leverage is the best kept secret of
the rich.
These big impacting, leveraged activities are the things that
make up the
key 20% of the 80 /20 rule and the 4% of the 64 /4 rule.
If you want more success, you need to start paying attention to
and expand
the things that give you the most leverage.

There are various areas of your business where you could start
looking for
leverage points. You may look at getting 50% better at your
negotiation skills.
This, in turn, may help you renegotiate with key suppliers and
get an
incremental improvement in your buy price. While this is great,
at the end of
the day after all that time and effort you’ve still just improved
your bottom line
incrementally. This is not what I’d call massive leverage. We
want exponential
improvement, not incremental.
By far the biggest leverage point in any business is marketing.
If
you get 10% better at marketing, this can have an exponential or
multiplying
effect on your bottom line.
Willie Sutton was a prolific American bank robber. During his
forty-year
criminal career he stole millions of dollars and eventually spent
more than half
of his adult life in prison—and also managed to escape three
times. Sutton was
asked by reporter Mitch Ohnstad why he robbed banks.
According to Ohnstad,
he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” When it comes
to business the
22

reason we want to focus so heavily on marketing is the same—
because that’s
w here the money is.
23
Applying the 80/20 and 64/4 Rules—
Your Marketing Plan
Back to my earlier story about the wrong type of business plan.
While my
business plan document ended up being a useless mess of
management speak
and nonsense, the part of the business planning process that
proved hugely
valuable to me was creating the marketing plan.
The marketing plan ended up being the 20% part of the business
planning
process that produced 80% of the result.
This has been the case in every business I’ve started and run
since then.
With this in mind when I started coaching small business
owners, a large
part of my focus was getting them to create a marketing plan.
Guess what? Very few of them ever carried through with it.
Why? Because
creating a marketing plan was a complex, laborious process that
most small
business owners simply won’t do.

So, again, laziness becomes the mother of invention. I needed a
way to take
the core essence of the marketing planning process and make it
simple,
practical and useful to small business owners. The 1-Page
Marketing Plan was
born.
The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the 4% of effort that generates
64% (or
more) of the result in your business. It’s the 64 /4 rule applied
to business
planning. Using this process, we can boil down hundreds of
pages and
thousands of hours of traditional business planning into a single
page that can
take as little as 30 minutes to think about and fill in.
Even more exciting is that it becomes a living document in your
business.
One that you can stick on the wall of your office and refer to
and refine over
time. Most of all, it’s practical. There’s no management speak
or jargon to
understand. You don’t need an MBA to create it or understand
it.
The 1-Page Marketing Plan has been a marketing
implementation
breakthrough. I’ve seen compliance rates among coaching
clients significantly
24

improve. Small business owners who would have never had the
time, money
or know-how to create a traditional marketing plan now have
one. As a result,
they’ve reaped the massive benefits that come from having
clarity around their
marketing.
I’ll introduce the 1-Page Marketing Plan shortly, but first I
think it would be
valuable to start at the beginning and not assume anything.
Marketing itself is a
vague term that is poorly understood even by so-called
professionals and
experts in the industry.
So let’s quickly get a quick and simple understanding of what
marketing
actually is.
25
What Is Marketing?
Some people think marketing is advertising or branding or some
other vague
concept. While all these are associated with marketing, they are
not one and
the same.
Here’s the simplest, most jargon-free definition of marketing
you’re ever
likely to come across:

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying
“Circus Coming
to the Showground Saturday,” that’s advertising.
If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into
town, that’s
promotion.
If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the
local
newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity.
And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public
relations.
If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many
entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have
spending money at the
booths, answer their questions and, ultimately, they spend a lot
at the circus,
that’s sales.
And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.
Yup, it’s as simple as that—marketing is the strategy you use
for getting
your ideal target market to know you, like you and trust you
enough to become
a customer. All the stuff you usually associate with marketing
are tactics.
We’ll talk more about strategy vs. tactics in a moment.
However, before we do that you need to understand that a
fundamental shift
has occurred in the last decade and things will never be the
same.

26
The Answers Have Changed
Albert Einstein was once giving an exam paper to his graduating
class. It
turned out that it was the exact same exam paper he had given
them the
previous year. His teaching assistant, alarmed at what he saw
and thinking it to
be the result of the professor’s absentmindedness, alerted
Einstein.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the shy assistant, not quite sure how to
tell
the great man about his blunder.
“Yes?” said Einstein.
“Um, eh, it’s about the test you just handed out.”
Einstein waited patiently.
“I’m not sure if you realize it, but this is the same test you gave
out last year. In fact, it’s identical.”
Einstein paused to think for a moment, then said, “Yes, it is the
same test but the answers have changed.”
Just as the answers in physics change as new discoveries are
made, so too
do the answers in business and in marketing.
Once upon a time, you placed an ad in the Yellow Pages, paid
them a

truckload of money and your marketing for the year was done.
Now you have
Google, social media, blogs, websites and a myriad of other
things to think
about.
The Internet has literally opened up a world of competitors.
Whereas
previously your competitors may have been across the road,
now they can be
on the other side of the globe.
As a result of this, many who are trying to market their business
become
paralyzed by the “bright shiny object syndrome.” This is where
they get caught
up in whatever the currently “hot” marketing tactics are like
SEO, video,
podcasting, pay per click advertising, and so on.
27
They get caught up with tools and tactics and never figure out
the big
picture of what they’re actually trying to do and why.
Let me show you why this will lead to a world of pain.
28
Strategy vs. Tactics

Understanding the difference between strategy and tactics is
absolutely key to
marketing success.
Strategy is the big-picture planning you do prior to the tactics.
Imagine
you’ve bought an empty block of land and want to build a
house. Would you
just order a pile of bricks and then just start laying them? Of
course not. You’d
end up with a big old mess that likely wasn’t safe.
So what do you do instead? You hire a builder and an architect
first and
they plan everything out from the major stuff like getting
building permits,
down to what kind of tap fittings you’d like. All of this is
planned prior to a
single shovel of dirt being moved. That’s strategy.
Then, once you have your strategy, you know how many bricks
you need,
where the foundation goes and what kind of roof you’re going
to have. Now
you can hire a bricklayer, carpenter, plumber, electrician and so
on. That’s
tactics.
You can’t do anything worthwhile successfully without both
strategy and
tactics.
Strategy without tactics leads to paralysis by analysis. No
matter how good
the builder and the architect are, the house isn’t going to get
built until someone

starts laying bricks. At some stage they’re going to need to say,
“Okay, the
blueprint is now good. We’ve got all the necessary approvals to
build so let’s
get started.”
Tactics without strategy leads to the “bright shiny object
syndrome.”
Imagine you started building a wall without any plans and then
later found out
that it was in the wrong place, so you start pouring the
foundation and then you
find out it’s not right for this type of house, so you start
excavating the area
where you want the pool but that isn’t right either. This clearly
isn’t going to
work. Yet this is exactly how many business owners do
marketing. They string
together a bunch of random tactics in the hope that what they’re
doing will lead
29
to a customer. They whack up a website without much thought
and it ends up
being an online version of their brochure or they start
promoting on social
media because they heard that’s the latest thing and so on.
You need both strategy and tactics to be successful but strategy
must come
first and it dictates the tactics you use. This is where your
marketing plan
comes in. Think of your marketing plan as the architect’s

blueprint for getting
and retaining customers.
30
I Have a Great Product/Service,
Do I Really Need Marketing?
Many business owners fool themselves into thinking that if their
product is
excellent, the market will buy. While the concept “if you build
it, they will
come” makes a great movie plot, it’s a terrible business
strategy. It’s a strategy
that’s expensive and comes with a high rate of failure. History
is littered with
technically superior products that commercially failed. A few
examples
include Betamax, The Newton and LaserDisc, to name just a
few.
Good, even great products are simply not enough. Marketing
must be one of
your major activities if you’re to have business success.
Ask yourself, when does a prospect find out how good your
product or
service is? The answer of course is—when they buy. If they
don’t buy, they’ll
never know how good your products or services are. As Thomas
Watson from
IBM famously said: “Nothing happens until a sale is made.”
Therefore we need to clearly understand an important concept: a

good
product or service is a customer-retention tool. If we give our
customers
a great product or service experience, they’ll buy more from us,
they’ll refer
other people to us and they’ll build up the brand through
positive word of
mouth. However, before customer retention, we need to think
about customer
acquisition (AKA marketing). The most successful
entrepreneurs always start
with marketing.
31
How to Kill Your Business
I’m about to reveal to you one of the easiest and most common
ways to kill
your business—in the earnest hope that you w on’t do it. It’s
absolutely the
biggest mistake made by small business owners when it comes
to marketing.
It’s a widespread problem, and it’s at the heart of why most
small business
marketing fails.
If you’re a small business owner, you’ve no doubt given some
thought to
marketing and advertising. What approach are you going to
take? What are you
going to say in your advertising?

The most common way small business owners decide on this is
by looking
at large, successful competitors in their industry and mimicking
what they’re
doing. This seems logical—do what other successful businesses
are doing and
you will also become successful. Right?
In reality this is the fastest way to fail and I’m certain it’s
responsible for
the bulk of small business failures. Here are the two major
reasons why.
#1 Large Companie s Have a Diffe re nt Age nda
Large companies have a very different agenda when it comes to
marketing than
small businesses do. Their strategies and priorities differ from
yours
significantly.
The marketing priorities of a large company look something like
this:
1. Pleasing the board of directors
2. Appeasing shareholders
3. Satisfying superiors’ biases
4. Satisfying existing clients’ preconceptions
5. Winning advertising and creative awards
6. Getting “buy in” from various committees and stakeholders
7. Making a profit
The marketing priorities of a small business owner look
something like this:
32

1. Making a profit
As you can see, there is a world of difference in the marketing
priorities of
small and large companies. So naturally there would have to be
a world of
difference in strategy and execution.
#2 Large Companie s Have a VERY Diffe re nt Budge t
Strategy changes with scale. This is very important to
understand. Do you think
someone investing in and building skyscrapers has a different
property
investment strategy than the average small property investor?
Of course.
Using the same strategy simply won’t work on a small scale.
You can’t just
build one floor of a skyscraper and have a success. You need all
100 stories.
If you have an advertising budget of $10 million and three years
to get a
profitable result, then you’re going to use a very different
strategy compared
with someone needing to make a profit immediately with a
$10,000 budget.
Using a large company marketing strategy, your $10,000 is
going to be a
drop in the ocean. It will be totally wasted and ineffective
because you’re

using the wrong strategy for the scale that you’re operating at.
33
Large Company Marketing
Large company marketing is also sometimes known as mass
marketing or
“branding.” The goal of this type of advertising is to remind
customers and
prospects about your brand as well as the products and services
you offer.
The idea is that the more times you run ads from your brand, the
more likely
people are to have this brand at the top of their consciousness
when they go to
make a purchasing decision.
The vast majority of large company marketing falls into this
category. If
you’ve seen the ads from major brands such as Coca-Cola, Nike
and Apple
you’ll have experienced mass marketing.
This type of marketing is effective; however, it is very
expensive to
successfully pull off and takes a lot of time. It requires you to
saturate various
types of advertising media, for example, TV, print, radio and
Internet, on a
very regular basis and over an extended period of time.
The expense and time involved are not a problem for the major

brands as
they have massive advertising budgets and teams of marketing
people, and
product lines are planned years in advance.
However, a major problem arises when small businesses try to
imitate the
big brands with this type of marketing.
The few times they run their ads is like a drop in the ocean. It’s
nowhere
near enough to reach the consciousness of their target market,
which is
bombarded with thousands of marketing messages each day. So
they get
drowned out and see little or no return for their investment.
Another
advertising victim bites the dust.
It’s not that the small businesses aren’t good at “branding” or
mass media
ads. It’s that they simply don’t have the budget to run their ads
in sufficient
volume to make them effective.
Unless you have millions of dollars in your marketing budget,
you have a
very high probability of failure with this type of marketing.
34
Branding, mass marketing and ego-based marketing is the
domain of large
companies. To achieve any kind of cut through requires an

enormous budget
and the use of expensive mass media.
Following the path of other successful businesses is smart, but
it’s vital that
you understand the full strategy you’re following and that
you’re able to
execute it.
Strategy from an outside observer’s perspective can be very
different to the
reality. If you’re following a strategy that has different
priorities than you, or
has a vastly different budget, then it’s highly unlikely it will
generate the kind
of result you’re hoping for.
Now let’s look at what successful small to medium business
marketing
looks like.
35
Small and Medium Business Marketing
Direct response marketing is a particular branch of marketing
that gives small
businesses cut through and a competitive edge on a small
budget. It’s designed
to ensure you get a return on investment that is measurable.
If $10 bills were being sold for $2 each, how many would you
buy? As
many as you could get hands on, naturally! The name of the

game with direct
response marketing is “money at a discount.” For example, for
every $2 spent
on advertising, you get $10 out in the way of profits from sales.
It’s also a highly ethical way of selling. It’s focused on the
specific
problems of the prospect and aims to solve these problems with
education and
specific solutions. It is also the only real way for a small
business to
affordably reach the consciousness of a prospect.
When you turn your ads into direct response ads, they become
lead
generating tools rather than just name recognition tools.
Direct response marketing is designed to evoke an immediate
response and
compel prospects to take some specific action, such as opting in
to your email
list, picking up the phone and calling for more information,
placing an order or
being directed to a web page. So what makes a direct response
ad? Here are
some of the main characteristics:
It’s trackable. That is, when someone responds, you know which
ad and
which media was responsible for generating the response. This
is in direct
contrast to mass media or “brand” marketing—no one will ever
know what ad
compelled you to buy that can of Coke; heck you may not even
know yourself.

It’s measurable. Since you know which ads are being responded
to and
how many sales you’ve received from each one, you can
measure exactly how
effective each ad is. You then drop or change ads that are not
giving you a
return on investment.
It uses compelling headlines and sales copy. Direct response
marketing has a compelling message of strong interest to your
chosen
36
prospects. It uses attention-grabbing headlines with strong sales
copy that is
“salesmanship in print.” Often the ad looks more like an
editorial than an ad
(hence making it at least three times more likely to get read).
It targets a specific audience or niche. Prospects within specific
verticals, geographic zones or niche markets are targeted. The
ad aims to
appeal to a narrow target market.
It makes a specific offer. Usually, the ad makes a specific
value-packed
offer. Often the aim is not necessarily to sell anything from the
ad but to simply
get the prospect to take the next action, such as requesting a
free report. The
offer focuses on the prospect rather than on the advertiser and
talks about the
prospect’s interests, desires, fears, and frustrations. By contrast,

mass media or
“brand” marketing has a broad, one-size-fits-all marketing
message and is
focused on the advertiser.
It demands a response. Direct response advertising has a “call to
action,” compelling the prospect to do something specific. It
also includes a
means of response and “capture” of these responses. Interested,
high-
probability prospects have easy ways to respond, such as a
regular phone
number, a free recorded message line, a website, a fax back
form, a reply card
or coupons. When the prospect responds, as much of the
person’s contact
information as possible is captured so that they can be contacted
beyond the
initial response.
It includes multi-step, short-term follow -up. In exchange for
capturing
the prospect’s details, valuable education and information on
the prospect’s
problem is offered. The information should carry with it a
second “irresistible
offer”—tied to whatever next step you want the prospect to
take, such as
calling to schedule an appointment or coming into the
showroom or store. Then
a series of follow-up “touches” via different media such as mail,
email, fax
and phone are made. Often there is a time or quantity limit on
the offer.
It incorporates maintenance follow -up of unconverted leads.

People
who do not respond within the short-term follow-up period may
have many
37
reasons for not “maturing” into buyers immediately. There is
value in this bank
of slow-to-mature prospects. They should be nurtured and
continue hearing
from you regularly.
Direct response marketing is a very deep topic with many
facets. The 1-
Page Marketing Plan is a tool that helps you implement direct
response
marketing in your business without needing to spend years
studying to become
an expert.
It’s a guided process that helps you quickly and easily create
the key
elements of a direct response campaign for your business.
38
The 1-Page Marketing Plan
The 1-Page Marketing Plan (1PMP) canvas is designed so that
you can fill it in
in point form as you read this book and end up with a
personalized marketing

plan for your business. Here’s what a blank 1PMP canvas looks
like:
39
40
There are nine squares split up into the three major phases of
the marketing
process. Most great plays, movies and books are split up into a
three-act
structure and so too is good marketing. Let’s take a look into
these three “acts.”
Download your copy of the 1-Page Marketing Plan canvas at
1pmp.com
41
The Three Phases of the Marketing Journey
The marketing process is a journey we want to guide our ideal
target market
through. We want to guide them from not knowing we exist
right through to
being a raving fan customer.
Through this journey there are three distinct phases that we
guide them

through. These phases are the Before, During and After phases
of your
marketing process. The following is a brief overview of each of
these phases.
Be fore
We label people going through the before phase as prospects. At
the beginning
of the “before” phase, prospects typically don’t even know you
exist. The
successful completion of this phase results in the prospect
knowing who you
are and indicating interest.
Example: Tom is a busy business owner and is frustrated that he
can’t
keep his contacts in sync between his laptop and smartphone.
He searches
online for a solution and comes across an ad with the headline
“Five Little-
Known Strategies That Unlock the Power of Your Business IT
System.” Tom
clicks on the ad and is taken to an online form where he must
enter his email
address in order to download a free report. Tom sees value in
what the report
has to offer, so he enters his email address.
During
We label people going through the during phase as leads. At the
beginning of
the “during” phase, leads have indicated some interest in your
offer. The
successful completion of this phase results in the prospect

buying from you for
the first time.
Example: Tom gets a lot of value from the report he
downloaded. It has
some genuinely good tips that he didn’t previously know and
implementing
them has saved him a lot of time. In addition, the IT company
that wrote the
report has been emailing him additional valuable tips and
information and
2
42
offers Tom a free twenty-one-point IT audit for his business.
Tom takes them up
on this offer. The audit is thorough and professional and reveals
to Tom that his
IT systems are vulnerable because a lot of the software on his
computers is out
of date. Also, the backups he thought were happening actually
stopped working
six months ago. They offer to send a technician to fix all the
problems
identified during the audit, at a heavily discounted rate. Tom
takes them up on
this offer.
Afte r
We label people in this phase as customers. At the beginning of
the “after”

phase, customers have already given you money. The after
phase never ends
and, when executed correctly, results in a virtuous cycle where
the customer
buys from you repeatedly and is such a fan of your products or
services that
they consistently recommend you and introduce you to new
prospects.
Example: Tom is extremely impressed with the professionalism
of the
technician that came in and fixed his IT problems. The
technician was on time,
courteous and explained everything to Tom in plain English.
Importantly, he
follows through on his company’s promise of “Fixed First Time
or It’s Free.”
Someone from headquarters follows up with Tom the next day
to ensure he’s
satisfied with the service he received. Tom indicates that he is
very satisfied.
During this follow-up call, Tom is offered a maintenance
package where a
qualified technician will look after his IT systems for a fixed
monthly fee. It
also includes unlimited technical support so if Tom is stuck at
any time, he can
call a toll free number and get immediate help. Tom takes up
this offer. The
support line alone is of huge value to him as he frequently gets
frustrated with
his IT system and loses productive time trying to figure out a
fix. Tom even
refers three of his business friends from his golf club to this
company because
of the great service he’s experienced.

In summary if we were to describe the three phases in table
form, it would
look like this:
3
43
PHASE STATUS GOAL OF THIS PHASE
Before Prospect Get them to know you and indicate interest
During Lead Get them to like you and buy from you for the
first time
After Customer Get them to trus t you, buy from you regularly
and refer new business to
you
Now that we’ve got a good bird’s eye view of the overall
structure, it’s
time to dive in and look in depth at each of the nine squares that
make up your
1-Page Marketing Plan.
Important:
Download your copy of the 1-Page Marketing Plan canvas at
1pmp.com
1 I first heard of the 64 /4 rule from James Schramko at his
SuperFastBusiness Live event.

2 Dean Jackson is a direct response marketing legend who
developed the “before, during and after”
concept.
3 We use the label “customer” as a generic term for people that
pay you money. Depending on what
type of business you’re in, this label could be customer, client
or patient.
44
45
46
The “Before” Phase Section Summary
In the “before” phase, you’re dealing with prospects. Prospects
are people who may not even yet know
you exist. In this phase, you’ll identify a target market, craft a
compelling message for this target market
and deliver your message to them through advertising media.
The goal of this phase is to get your prospect to know you and
respond to your message. Once they’ve
indicated interest by responding, they become a lead and enter
the second phase of your marketing
process.

47
48
49
Chapter 1 Summary
Selecting your target market is a crucial first step in the
marketing process. Doing so will ensure your
marketing message resonates better, which in turn will make
your marketing far more effective. By
focusing on the right target market for your business, you’ll be
able to get a better return on the time,
money and energy you invest.
Highlights covered in this chapter include:
Why targeting everyone with your product or service is a
terrible idea
Why mass marketing can be harmful to your business and cost
you far more than it makes you
How to use the “PVP index” to select your perfect target market
Why you should focus on a niche and become a big fish in a
small pond
How to make price irrelevant

Why you should stop advertising a long list of products and
services
How to go deep into the mind of your prospect so you can
understand exactly what they want
50
W
Selecting Your Target Market
It’s Not Everyone
hen I ask business owners who their target market is, many tend
to
respond with “everyone.” In reality this means no one. In their
zeal to
acquire as many customers as possible, many business owners
try to
serve the widest market possible.
On the face of it this seems logical. However, this is a huge
mistake. Many
business owners worry about narrowing down their target
market because they
don’t want to exclude any potential customers.
This is a typical newbie marketing mistake. In this chapter
we’re going to
examine why excluding customers is actually a good thing.

As discussed in the Introduction, most large company
advertising falls into
a category called mass marketing, sometimes also referred to as
“branding.”
With this type of marketing, business owners are like an archer
in the middle of
a dense fog, shooting arrows in every direction in the hope that
one or more of
them will hit the intended target.
The theory behind mass marketing is that you want to “get your
name out
there.” I’m not really sure exactly where “there” is or what’s
supposed to
happen when your name arrives “there.” Regardless, the theory
is that if you
broadcast your message enough times, you’ll by chance get an
audience with
your prospects and some percentage of them will buy from you.
If that sounds a lot like our disoriented archer, flailing about in
the fog,
shooting his arrows in random directions and hoping for the
best, then you’d be
right. However, you might be thinking—if he just shoots enough
arrows in all
51
directions, surely he’s bound to hit his target. Right? Maybe,
but for small- to
medium-sized businesses at least, that’s the stupid way of
marketing because
they’ll never have enough arrows (in other words, money) to hit

their target
enough times to get a good return on their investment.
To be a successful small business marketer you need laser-like
focus on a
narrow target market, sometimes called a niche.
52
Niching—Harnessing the Power of Focus
Before going any further, let’s define what a business niche is.
A niche is a tightly defined portion of a subcategory. For
example, think of
the health and beauty category. This is a very wide category. A
beauty salon
can offer a wide variety of services, including tanning, waxing,
facials,
massage, cellulite treatment and much more. If, for example, we
take one of
these subcategories—let’s say cellulite treatment—this could be
our niche.
However, we could tighten it up even further by focusing on
cellulite treatment
for women who’ve just had a baby. This is a tightly defined
niche. Now you
may be thinking why on earth would we want to limit our
market so much?
Here’s why:
1. You have a limited amount of money. If you focus too
broadly, your
marketing message will become diluted and weak.

2. The other critical factor is relevance. The goal of your ad is
for your
prospects to say, “Hey that’s for me.”
If you’re a woman who’s just had a baby and are concerned
about cellulite,
would an ad targeting this specific problem grab your interest?
Most certainly.
How about if the ad was a general ad for a beauty salon which
reeled off a
long list of services, one of which was cellulite treatment?
Likely it would get
missed in the clutter.
A 100 watt light bulb, like the kind of light bulb we normally
have in our
homes, lights up a room. By contrast, a 100 watt laser can cut
through steel.
Same energy, dramatically different result. The difference being
how the
energy is focused. The exact same thing is true of your
marketing.
Take another example of a photographer. If you look at ads
from most
photographers, you’ll often see a laundry list of services like:
Portraits
53
Weddings
Family photography

Commercial photography
Fashion photography
The technical way photography is done may not change very
much from
situation to situation, but let me ask you a question. Do you
think someone
looking for wedding photography would respond to a different
ad than
someone who’s after commercial photography?
Do you think a bride-to-be looking for a photographer for her
special day
might be looking for something radically different than a
purchasing manager
from a heavy machinery distributor looking to photograph a
truck for a product
brochure? Of course.
However, if the ad just rolls out a broad laundry list of services,
then it’s
not speaking to either prospect, therefore it’s not relevant, and
it will likely be
ignored by both market segments.
That’s why you need to choose a narrow target market for your
marketing
campaign.
Being all things to all people leads to marketing failure. This
doesn’t mean
you can’t offer a broad range of services, but understand that
each category of
service is a separate campaign.
Targeting a tight niche allows you to become a big fish in a

small pond. It
allows you to dominate a category or geography in a way that is
impossible by
being general.
The type of niches that you want to go after are “an inch wide
and a mile
deep.” An inch wide meaning it is a very highly targeted
subsection of a
category. A mile deep meaning there’s a lot of people looking
for a solution to
that specific problem. Once you dominate one niche, you can
expand your
business by finding another profitable and highly targeted
niche, then dominate
that one also.
54
Now you can have all the advantages of being highly targeted
without
limiting the potential size of your business.
55
Niching Makes Price Irrelevant
If you had just suffered a heart attack, would you prefer to be
treated by a
general doctor or a heart specialist? Of course you’d choose the
specialist.
Now if you had a consultation with the heart specialist, would

you expect them
to charge you more than a general doctor? Of course.
Your bill with the specialist would likely be much higher than
with your
general practitioner, yet you’re not shopping on price.
How did price suddenly become irrelevant? That is the beauty
of serving a
niche. Whether you do heart surgery or offer cellulite treatment,
you can now
charge far more for your services than by being a generalist.
You’re perceived
differently by your prospects and customers. A specialist is
sought after rather
than shopped on price. A specialist is much more highly
respected than a jack-
of-all-trades. A specialist is paid handsomely to solve a specific
problem for
their target market.
So figure out the one thing your market wants a solution to,
something that
they’ll pay you handsomely for. Then enter the conversation
they’re having in
their mind, preferably something they go to bed worrying about
and wake up
thinking about. Do this and your results will dramatically
improve.
Trying to target everyone really means that you’re targeting no
one. By
going too broad you kill your “specialness” and become a
commodity bought
on price. By narrowly defining a target market that you can
wow and deliver

huge results for, you become a specialist.
When you narrow down your target market, you naturally decide
who
you’re going to exclude. Don’t underestimate the importance of
this. Excluding
potential customers scares many small business owners. They
mistakenly
believe that a wider net is more likely to capture more
customers. This is a
huge mistake. Dominate a niche, then once you own it, do the
same with
another and then another. But never do so all at once. Doing so
dilutes your
message and your marketing power.
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57
How to Identify Your Ideal Customer
Given that you’ve now seen the power of choosing a narrow
target market, it’s
time to select yours. As with most businesses, you may
currently serve multiple
market segments. For example, back to our photographer friend,
he might do:
Weddings
Corporate photography
Photojournalism

Family portraits
These are vastly different market segments. A great way of
figuring out your
ideal target market is to use the PVP index (Personal
fulfillment, Value to the
marketplace and Profitability) and give each market segment
you serve a rating
out of 10.
P—Personal fulfillment: how much do you enjoy dealing with
this type
of customer? Sometimes we work with “pain in the butt” type
customers just
because of the money. Here you rate how much you enjoy
working with this
market segment.
V—Value to the marketplace: how much does this market
segment value
your work? Are they willing to pay you a lot for your work?
P—Profitability: how profitable is the work you do for this
market
segment? Sometimes, even when you are charging high fees for
your work,
when you look at the numbers it may be barely profitable or
even loss-making.
Remember it’s not about the “turnover,” it’s all about the “left
over.”
For our photographer example, his PVP index may look as
follows:
Weddings Photojournalism

Personal fulfillment = 5 Personal fulfillment = 9
Value to the marketplace = 7 Value to the marketplace = 7
Profits = 9 Profits = 2
Total score: 21 Total score: 18
4
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Corporate photography Family portraits
Personal fulfillment = 3 Personal fulfillment = 9
Value to the marketplace = 6 Value to the marketplace = 8
Profits = 9 Profits = 9
Total score: 18 Total score: 26
The ideal customer for the photographer is people wanting
family
portraits. They are the most fun and profitable, highest-value
and best-paying
types of customers. There’s likely to be a standout market
segment for you too.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t take on work outside your
ideal target
market; however, for now, our marketing efforts will be
directed at one ideal
market segment. We want to be laser focused. Once we
dominate this market
segment, we can go on and add others. If we are too broad
initially and target a
laundry list of market segments, then our marketing efforts will

be ineffective.
Who is your ideal target market? Be as specific as possible
about all the
attributes that may be relevant. What is their gender, age,
geography?
Do you have a picture of them? If so, cut out or print a picture
of them when
you think about and answer the following questions:
What keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up in their
esophagus,
eyes open, staring at the ceiling?
What are they afraid of?
What are they angry about?
Who are they angry at?
What are their top daily frustrations?
What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or
lives?
What do they secretly, ardently desire most?
Is there a built-in bias in the way they make decisions? For
example,
engineers are exceptionally analytical.
Do they have their language or jargon they use?
What magazines do they read?
59
What websites do they visit?
What’s this person’s day like?
What’s the main dominant emotion this market feels?
What is the ONE thing they crave above all else?

These questions are not theoretical, pie-in-the-sky questions.
They are key
to your marketing success. Unless you can get into the mind of
your prospect,
all your other marketing efforts will be wasted—no matter how
well you
execute them.
Unless you belong to your target market, then a large part of
your initial
marketing efforts should be directed at in-depth research,
interviews and
careful study of your target market.
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Create an Avatar
One of the best tools for getting into the mind of your prospect
is to temporarily
become them by creating an avatar. Don’t worry, I’m not going
to get all woo
woo on you here.
An avatar is a detailed exploration and description of your
target customer
and their life. Like a police sketch artist, you piece together a
composite that
creates a vivid picture of them in your mind. It helps tell their
story so that you
can visualize life from their perspective.
It’s also important to create avatars for each type of decision
maker or

influencer you might encounter in your target market. For
example, if you’re
selling IT services to small companies in the financial services
industry, you
might be dealing with both the business owners and their
assistants.
Here’s an example of avatars for Max Cash, the owner of a
successful
financial planning firm, and his personal assistant, Angela
Assistant.
Max Cash:
Max is 51 years old.
He owns a successful financial planning business that has grown
steadily
over the past ten years. Previously, he had a career working for
KPMG and
some other large corporates before he went out on his own.
He has a bachelor’s degree and an MBA.
He’s married and has two teenage daughters and a younger son.
He lives in an upper-middle-class suburb in a five-bedroom
house that he’s
been in for about four years. He drives a two-year-old Mercedes
S-Class.
He has eighteen staff members and operates from an office
building that he
owns. His office is a 15-minute drive from home.
The business has an annual turnover of $4.5 million, which is
predominantly service-based revenue.
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He has no IT support person on staff and delegates most of the
IT and tech
responsibilities to his PA, Angela Assistant.
He spends about $4,000 per month on the various pieces of
software that
are used in his industry and give him access to the most current
financial
data. He knows the software helps him and his clients, but he
also knows
that there are many features that are going underutilized.
His office server and systems are a hodgepodge of various
computers
mostly installed by his software vendors and that have had very
little
maintenance since installation. The backup systems are archaic
and have
never actually been tested.
He’s a golf nut. His office is decorated with golf memorabilia.
There are
photos of him playing golf throughout. The desktop background
on his
computer is a beautiful panoramic photo of Pebble Beach Golf
Links.
In his spare time, unsurprisingly, he likes to play golf with his
friends and
business associates.
He reads The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek,
and his local
newspaper.
He uses an iPhone but it’s mostly used for phone calls and a
little bit of
email.
See how this can give us a valuable insight into what the life of
our
prospect looks like? Now let’s look at the avatar for another

influencer within
our target market:
Angela Assistant:
Angela is 29 years old.
She’s single and lives in a two-bedroom rented apartment with
her cat,
Sprinkles. She takes public transport to work and commutes
daily for about
30 minutes.
Angela is organized, always smartly dressed and very
enthusiastic.
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Angela has been Max’s PA for the last three years when the
growth of the
company has really started to accelerate. She’s his right hand
and he’d be
totally lost without her.
She organizes Max’s calendar, sets up his laptop and phone,
makes and
takes calls on his behalf and much, much more. She’s the glue
that holds
Max’s business together and she does a bit of everything from
ordering
stationery to IT to HR.
Although her title says PA, she’s more than that. She’s really
the office
manager and probably even to some extent the general manager.
She’s the
one that staff go to when something needs to be fixed, ordered
or

organized.
She’s tech-savvy but really out of her depth when it comes to
the more
technical and strategic aspects of IT systems.
After work, she usually hits the gym for a workout and loves to
watch new
shows on Netflix. On weekends she catches up with friends and
loves the
nightlife.
She spends a lot of time online reading beauty, fashion and
celebrity gossip
blogs.
Angela spends most of her discretionary income on going out,
entertainment and online shopping, which is like an addiction
for her. Even
though Angela is quite well paid, she always runs short of
money, which
has resulted in her having about $10,000 worth of credit card
debt. She
knows she needs to be better with money but there always just
seems to be
too many temptations for her to resist.
She’s always glued to her phone, constantly texting and using
social media
apps.
To take a step further, find an actual image to visually represent
your avatar
and have it in front of you whenever you’re creating marketing
material for
them.
63

Hopefully, by now, you can see how powerful avatars are. They
are the
marketing equivalent of method acting. They get you right into
the mind of your
prospect, a perspective that is going to be absolutely crucial
when it comes to
crafting your message to your target market.
Chapter 1 Action Item:
Who Is Your Target Market?
Fill in square #1 of your 1-Page Marketing Plan canvas.
4 The PVP concept is one I shamelessly stole from Frank Kern.
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65
66
Chapter 2 Summary
Most marketing messages are boring, timid and ineffective. To
stand out from the crowd, you need to craft
a compelling message that grabs the attention of your target
market. Once you have their attention, the
goal of your message is to compel them to respond.
Highlights covered in this chapter include:

Why most advertising is totally useless and what to do instead
How to stand out from the crowd even when you’re selling a
commodity
Why you should never compete solely on price
How to craft a compelling offer for your target market
Examples of some of the most successful advertising headlines
in history
How to enter the mind of your prospect and join the
conversation going on in there
How to effectively name your business, product or service
67
I
Crafting Your Message
An Accident Waiting to Happen
spend a lot of time looking through various forms of local and
national
media—not for articles but for advertisements. Having done this
for several
years, with very few exceptions, I’m absolutely amazed how
boring, similar
and useless most advertising is. The waste going on is
staggering. Wasted
money and wasted opportunity.
You could summarize the structure of most ads from small
businesses as
follows:

Company name
Company logo
A laundry list of services offered
Claims of best quality, best service or best prices
Offer of a “free quote”
Contact details
It’s basically name, rank, and serial number. Then they hope
and pray that
on the very day their ad runs, a prospect in immediate need of
their product or
service stumbles across it and takes action. This is what I call
“marketing by
accident.” A qualified prospect happening upon the right ad at
the right time
sometimes results in the happy accident of a sale taking place.
If these “accidents” never happened then no one would ever
advertise. But
as it happens the occasional random sale or lead will come from
this type of
advertising. It tortures business owners to death because while
the ad generally
68
loses them money, they fear not running it because some dribs
and drabs of
new business have come out of it—and who knows, next week it
may bring in
that big sale they’ve been hoping for.
It’s like these businesses are visiting a slot machine in a casino.

They put
their money in, pull the handle and hope for a jackpot—but
most of the time the
house just takes their money. Occasionally they’ll get a few
cents on the dollar
back, which raises their hopes and emboldens them to continue.
It’s time to start marketing on purpose—treating advertising
like a vending
machine where the results and value generated are predictable,
rather than like
a slot machine where the results are random, and the odds are
stacked against
you.
To start marketing on purpose, we need to look at two vital
elements:
1. What is the purpose of your ad?
2. What does your ad focus on?
When I ask business owners what the purpose of their ad is, I
usually get a
list like:
Branding
Getting my name out there
Letting people know about my products and services
Making sales
Getting people to call in for a quote
These are all very different, and you cannot possibly do all of
these with
one ad. In typical small business style, they’re trying to get
maximum bang for
their buck. But by trying to do too much, they end up achieving

none of their
objectives.
My rule of thumb is one ad, one objective. If something in the
ad isn’t
helping you achieve that objective, then it’s detracting from it,
and you should
get rid of it. That includes sacred cows like your company name
and company
69
logo. Advertising space is valuable and these things taking up
the prime real
estate in your ad space often detract from your message rather
than enhance it.
Rather than trying to sell directly from your ad, simply invite
prospects to
put their hand up and indicate interest. This lowers resistance
and helps you
build a marketing database—one of the most valuable assets in
your business.
Once your objective is clear, you need to communicate it to
your reader.
What exactly do you want them to do next? Do they call your
toll free number
to order? Do they call you or visit your website to request a free
sample? Do
they request a free report? You need a very clear call to
action—not something
wimpy and vague like “don’t hesitate to call us.”

You need to be clear about what they should do next and what
they will get
in return. Also, give them multiple ways to take that action. For
example, if the
call to action is to order your product, give them the ability to
do it online,
over the phone or even via a mail-in coupon. Different people
have different
preferences when it comes to the modality of communication.
Give them
multiple means of response so they can choose the one they are
most
comfortable with.
Have you ever been to a party or gathering and been seated next
to someone
who just spends the whole night talking about themselves? It
gets old pretty
fast. You keep giving half-hearted smiles and polite nods but
your mind is
elsewhere, and that exit sign is calling your name.
Similarly, most advertising by small businesses is inwardly
focused.
Instead of speaking to the needs and problems of the prospect, it
is focused on
self-aggrandizement. The prominent logo and company name,
the laundry list of
services, the claims of being the leading provider of that
product or service.
All of these things are shouting, “Look at me!”
Unfortunately, you’re in a crowded market, and with everyone
shouting
“look at me!” at the same time, it just becomes background
noise. By contrast,

direct response marketing focuses heavily on the needs,
thoughts, and emotions
of the target market. By doing this, you enter the conversation
already going on
70
in the mind of your ideal prospect. You will resonate at a deeper
level with
your prospect, and your ad will stand out from 99% of other ads
that are just
shouting and talking about themselves.
Don’t be the advertising equivalent of that guy at the party
obliviously
talking about himself the whole night while his uninterested
audience looks for
the exit. Also, don’t leave anything to chance. Know exactly
what you want
your ad to achieve and the exact action you want your prospect
to take.
71
Developing a Unique Selling Proposition
Many small businesses don’t have a reason to exist. Take away
their name and
logo from their website or other marketing material, and you’d
never know
who they are. They could be any of the other businesses in their
category. Their

reason for existence is to survive and pay the bills of the owner
who is usually
only just getting by or possibly not even.
From a customer’s perspective, there is no compelling reason to
buy from
them and they make sales just because they happen to be there.
You see a lot of
these businesses in retail. The only sales they get are through
random walk-in
traffic. No one is seeking them out. No one actively desires
what they have to
offer and if they weren’t there no one would miss them. Harsh
but true.
The problem is that these businesses are just another “me too”
business.
How did they decide on the price? How did they decide on the
product? How
did they decide on marketing? Usually, the answer is they just
had a look at
what their nearest competitor was doing and did the same thing
or slightly
changed something. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong
in modeling
something that’s already working. In fact, that’s a very smart
thing to do.
However, it’s likely the competitors they are modeling are in
the same boat
they are in—struggling to win business with no compelling
reason why you
should buy from them. They based their most important
business decisions on
guesses and on what their mediocre competitors are doing. It’s
the blind
leading the blind.

After some time of torturing themselves to death—making just
enough
money to survive but not enough money to do well—many of
these businesses
finally decide to “try marketing.” So they start marketing their
“me too”
business with an equally boring “me too” message. As expected,
it doesn’t
work. Any profit from additional sales they do bring in often
don’t even cover
their market-ing costs.
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Here’s the thing: the chance of you getting your marketing
perfectly right—
message to market and media match—on the first go is
impossibly small. Even
the most experienced marketer will tell you they hardly ever hit
a home run on
their first go. It takes several iterations. It takes testing and
measuring to finally
get your message to market and media match right.
Yet these guys can’t afford the time, money and effort needed
to get it right.
Worse still, with a “me too” style of offer, they don’t have a
hope.
Think of marketing as an amplifier. Here’s an example. You tell
one person
about what you do, and they don’t get excited. You then try
telling ten people

about what you do, and they don’t get excited either. If you
amplify this
message through marketing and tell 10,000 people, what makes
you think that
the result will be any different?
If you haven’t first clarified in your mind why your business
exists and why
people should buy from you rather than your nearest competitor,
marketing will
be an uphill battle.
You need to develop your unique selling proposition (USP).
This is
where a lot of people get stuck. They say something like “I sell
coffee. There’s
nothing unique about that.”
Really? Then why aren’t we all just getting our $1 coffee from
7-Eleven?
Why do we queue up to spend $4 to $5 to buy our coffee from
some hipster that
looks like he’s in urgent need of a bath? Think about it. You
regularly pay
400% to 500% more for the same commodity.
Think about water—one of the most abundant commodities on
earth. When
you buy this commodity, in bottled form at either a convenience
store or from a
vending machine, you happily pay 2,000 times the price
compared with getting
it from your tap at home.
See how the commodity in both examples hasn’t changed, but
the

circumstances and things around the commodity have changed,
or the way they
are packaged and delivered has changed?
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The entire goal of your USP is to answer this question: Why
should I buy
from you rather than from your nearest competitor?
Another good test is this: if I removed the company name and
logo from
your website, would people still know that it’s you or could it
be any other
company in your industry?
The common place that people go wrong with developing their
USP is they
say “quality” or “great service” is their USP. There are two
things wrong with
that:
1. Quality and great service are expectations; they are just part
of good
business practice—not something unique.
2. People only find out about your quality and great service
after they’ve
bought. A good USP is designed to attract prospects before
they’ve made a
purchasing decision.
You know you’re marketing your business as a commodity when
prospects

start the conversation by asking you about price.
Positioning yourself as a commodity and hence being shopped
on price
alone is a terrible position for a small business owner to be in.
It’s soul
crushing, and this race to the bottom is bound to end in tears.
The answer is to develop a unique selling proposition.
Something that
positions you differently, so that prospects are forced to make
an apples-to-
oranges comparison when comparing you with your competitor.
If they can do an apples-to-apples comparison of you and your
competitors,
then it comes down to price, and you’re toast. There’s always
someone willing
to sell cheaper than you.
74
There’s Nothing New Under the Sun
Very few if any businesses or products are truly unique, so the
common
question is, “If there’s nothing unique about my business, how
do I develop a
USP?”
There are two questions I ask my clients when helping them
develop their
USP. Answering these two questions is the path towards
marketing and

financial success in your business.
So the two questions you must ask yourself and answer are:
1. Why should they buy?
2. Why should they buy from me?
These are questions that should have clear, concise and
quantifiable
answers. Not wishy-washy nonsense like “we are the best” or
“we have the
highest quality.”
What is the unique advantage you are offering? Now, the
uniqueness
doesn’t have to be in the product itself. In fact, it’s fair to say
that there are
very few truly unique products. The uniqueness may be in the
way it is
packaged, delivered, supported or even sold.
You need to position what you do in such a way that even if
your
competitor was operating directly opposite you, customers
would cross the
road to do business with you instead of your competitor.
Do it really well, and they may even stand in line overnight to
do business
with you instead of your competitor like they do with Apple
products.
75

76
Getting into the Mind of Your Prospect
We want to get into the mind of our prospect. What do they
really want? It’s
rarely the thing you are selling; it’s usually the result of the
thing you are
selling. The difference may seem subtle, but it’s huge.
For example, someone buying a $50 watch is purchasing
something very
different than a person buying a $50,000 watch. In the latter
case, they are
likely buying status, luxury, and exclusivity. Sure, they want it
to tell the time,
just like the buyer of the $50 watch does, but that’s unlikely to
be their core
motivation.
So, to get into the mind of the prospect, we need to discover
what result
they are actually buying. Once you understand this, you then
need to craft your
unique selling proposition based on the result your prospects
want to achieve.
For example, if you’re a printer, you’re in a commodity
business. You want
to get out of the commodity business as quickly as possible. I
don’t mean get
out of the industry, but you do need to change how you position
yourself.

Stop selling business cards, brochures, and printing and start
asking open-
ended questions, such as, “Why are you coming to a printer?
What is it that you
want to achieve?” The prospect doesn’t want business cards and
brochures.
They want what they think business cards and brochures are
going to do for
their business.
So, you could sit down with them and say, “What are you trying
to
accomplish? Let’s do a printing audit and evaluate all of the
things you’re
trying to use printing for.” By taking them through the process,
you can charge
them to do a printing audit. Then, if they end up hiring you to
do their printing,
you can apply that consulting fee towards printing. This way
you’re no longer
viewed as a printer anymore. You’re now viewed as a trusted
advisor that’s
serving their needs.
77
78
If You Confuse Them You Lose Them
Understand that your prospect has essentially three options:

1. Buy from you
2. Buy from your competitor
3. Do nothing
You may think your competitors are your biggest problem, but
in reality, it’s
more likely to be a fight against inertia. Therefore, you need to
first answer the
question of why they should buy. Then, you need to answer the
question of why
they should buy from you.
We live in a sound-bite, MTV generation that has to deal with
thousands of
messages each day. The importance of crafting your message in
an immediately
understandable and impactful way has never been more
important.
Can you explain your product and the unique benefit it offers in
a single
short sentence?
You must understand a very important concept: confusion leads
to lost
sales. This is especially so when you have a complex product.
Many business
owners erroneously think that a confused customer will seek
clarification or
contact you for more information. Nothing could be further
from the truth.
When you confuse them, you lose them.
People have too many options and too much information coming
at them
constantly, and they’re rarely motivated enough to wade

through a confused
message.
79
How to Be Remarkable When You
Are Selling a Commodity
How do you charge high prices for your products and services
while having
your customers thank you for it? In short, by being remarkable.
When given this answer, the first thing many business owners
do is mutter
under their breath something like “easier said than done.”
Perhaps this is
because being remarkable evokes visions of being unattainably
unique or
creative—something that others far more talented do.
The café owner says, “Dude, I just sell coffee. How am I
supposed to be
remarkable?” That raises a common question: how can you be
remarkable
when you sell a commodity?
Let’s look at a few examples.
When I talk about being remarkable, I don’t necessarily mean
that the
product or service you sell is unique. Far from it. In fact, being
unique is a
dangerous, difficult and expensive place to be. However, you
must be

different. How can our café owner be different? Check this out:
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How much extra did it cost the café to serve art with its coffee?
Pretty
close to zero, I would expect. Maybe some extra training for the
barista and a
few extra seconds of time per cup.
But how many people will each customer tell or, better still,
bring in to
show? Could this café owner charge 50¢ more per cup than the
café down the
road? For sure. That’s 50¢ of pure profit multiplied by hundreds
of thousands
of cups per year straight to the bottom line.
Yet, is the product unique? Not by a long shot! It’s just slightly
different—
different enough to be remarkable.
Here’s another example. Most e-commerce sites send the same
boring
confirmation email when you buy from them. Something along
the lines of,
“Your order has been shipped. Please let us know if it doesn’t
arrive. Thank
you for your business.”
But have a look at how CD Baby creates a remarkable
experience for the
customer and a viral marketing opportunity for themselves
instead of a normal

boring confirmation email:
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Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized, contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin
pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to
make
sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle, and a hush fell
over
the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that
money
can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards, and the whole
party
marched down the street to the post office, where the entire
town of
Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to
you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure
did.
Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re
all
exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to
CDBABY.COM!!
This order confirmation email has been forwarded thousands of

times and
posted on countless blogs and websites. Derek Sivers, the
founder of CD
Baby, credits this remarkable order confirmation message for
creating
thousands of new customers.
Again, nothing unique about the product, but the transformation
of
something ordinary and boring gives the customer a smile and
creates free
viral marketing for the business.
Here’s one more example from another highly competitive,
commodity
industry—consumer electronics:
When Apple first launched their legendary music player, the
iPod, they
could have talked about the five-gigabyte storage capacity or
other technical
features like all the other manufacturers of music players of the
day did. But
instead, how did they promote it?
“1000 songs in your pocket”
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Genius! Five gigabytes doesn’t mean a thing to most consumers.
Neither
does a bunch of technical jargon, but “1000 songs in your
pocket”—anyone can
instantly understand that and the benefits it will offer.

The iPod was by no means the first portable music player on the
market or
even the best, but they were by far the most successful because
of their ability
to quickly and easily convey the reasons why you should buy.
Notice, in all three of these examples, the actual product being
sold is a
commodity and what makes it remarkable is something totally
peripheral to
what you are buying.
Yet, the seller can and does command premium pricing because
they are
selling a remarkable experience. Not only is the customer happy
to pay the
premium but also rewards the seller by spreading the message
about their
product or service. Why? Because we all want to share things
and experiences
that are remarkable.
What can you do in your business that’s remarkable? Your
clarity around
this will have a huge impact on the success of your business.
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Lowest Price
I’m sometimes asked, “Can’t lowest price be my USP?” Sure it
can, but can
you absolutely guarantee that everything you sell will be priced

lower than all
your competitors, including the behemoths like Costco and
Walmart? Unlikely.
There’ll always be someone willing to go out of business faster
than you. I
suggest you not play that game.
A USP that promises the lowest prices on some things, some of
the time is
not quite so compelling.
The fact is, if you’re a small or medium business, you’re
unlikely to beat
the big discounters at the lowest price game.
Truth be told, you probably don’t want to. By charging higher
prices, you
attract a better quality client. As counterintuitive as it may
seem, you get far
less grief from high-end customers than you do from low-end
ones. I’ve seen
and experienced this in multiple businesses across multiple
industries.
A better option than discounting is to increase the value of your
offering.
Bundling in bonuses, adding services, customizing the solution
can all be of
genuine value to your customer but can cost you very little to
do.
This also helps you create that valuable apples-to-oranges
comparison that
gets you out of the commodity game.

Don’t hate the player; hate the game. So, as hard as it may be to
resist,
don’t play the commodity/price game. Develop your USP,
deliver on it and
make those you deal with play your game, on your terms.
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Create Your Elevator Pitch
As a business owner, being able to succinctly convey what
problem you solve
is a real art, especially if you’re in a complex business.
A great way of distilling your USP is by crafting an “elevator
pitch.” An
elevator pitch is a concise, well-rehearsed summary of your
business and its
value proposition, which can be delivered in the time span of an
elevator ride,
in other words, 30 to 90 seconds.
Yes, it’s cheesy and you may not even really use it often as an
elevator
pitch, but it can really help you clarify your message and your
USP. This will
become extremely valuable when you get to crafting your offer,
which we’ll
cover shortly.
The 30 seconds that follow the question, “What do you do?” is
one of the
most commonly wasted marketing opportunities. The response
is almost

always self-focused, unclear and nonsensical.
This is where many people reply with the highest-sounding title
they can
get away with, as they feel the inquirer’s judgment of their
worth will depend
on the answer. “I’m a waste management technician,” says the
janitor.
I once asked a woman what she did for a living and she replied,
“I’m a
senior event builder.” None the wiser about what she did, I
continued probing
until I finally came to understand that she arranges seating for
concerts and
large events in stadiums.
While it’s true some shallow people judge a person’s worth by
their job
title or line of business, there’s a much better way to respond to
this question—
one that doesn’t require you to raid a thesaurus in order to
inflate or obfuscate
what you really do.
The next time someone asks what you do for a living, it’s your
cue to
deliver an elevator pitch. It’s a perfect opportunity to convey
your marketing
message on a regular basis in many different settings.
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Obviously, you don’t want to come across as a pushy,

obnoxious
salesperson, so it’s important to structure your elevator pitch
properly. Most
elevator pitches suffer from the same problem as overinflated
job titles. It
leaves the recipient confused or thinking “what a douchebag”
rather than the
intended effect of impressing them.
Bad marketing is highly product-focused and self-focused. Good
marketing, especially direct response marketing, is alw ays
customer
and problem/solution focused, and that’s exactly how we want
our elevator
pitch to be. We want to be remembered for what problem we
solve rather than
for some impressive but incomprehensible title or line of
business.
Good marketing takes the prospect through a journey that
covers the
problem, the solution and, finally, the proof. Your elevator
pitch should be no
different.
So how do you effectively communicate these three components
in the
space of about 30 seconds? The best formula I’ve seen is:
You know [problem]? Well, what we do is [solution]. In fact,
[proof].
Here are a few examples:
Insurance Sales: “You know how most people rarely review
their

insurance coverage when their circumstances change? Well,
what I do is help
people have peace of mind by making sure their insurance
coverage always
matches their current circumstances. In fact, just last week a
client of mine was
robbed, but he was able to recover the full cost of the items
he’d lost because
his insurance coverage was up to date.”
Electrical Engineering: “You know when there are power
outages that
bring down critical systems in large businesses? Well, what I do
is install
backup power systems for companies that rely on having a
continual supply of
power for their operations. In fact, I installed the system at
XYZ Bank, which
has resulted in them having 100% uptime since the system was
installed.”
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Website Development: “You know how most company websites
are out
of date? Well, what I do is install software that makes it easy
for people to
update their own websites, without the need to pay a web
designer each time.
In fact, I installed the software for one of my clients recently,
and they saved
$2,000 a year in web development costs.”
This gives you a reliable formula to craft your elevator pitch

while being
customer/problem focused rather than you/product focused.
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Crafting Your Offer
This part is absolutely crucial, and this is where a lot of people
get lazy by
offering something boring, price discounting or copying what
their nearest
competitor is doing.
Remember, if you don’t give your ideal target market a
compelling reason
why your offer is different, they will default to price as the
main criteria for
making their decision. After all, if vendor A is selling apples
for $1 and
vendor B is selling seemingly the same apples for $1.50, which
would you buy
based on the information you have at hand?
It’s your job to create an exciting and radically different offer
from that of
your competitors.
Two great questions to think about when you’re crafting your
offer are:
1. Of all the products and services you offer, which do you have
the most
confidence in delivering? For example, if you only got paid if
the client

achieved their desired result, what product or service would you
offer?
Phrasing it another way, what problem are you sure that you
could solve for
a member of your target market?
2. Of all the products and services you offer, which do you
enjoy delivering
the most?
Some supplemental questions that can help you craft your offer
include:
What is my target market really buying? For example, people
don’t really
buy insurance; they buy peace of mind.
What’s the biggest benefit to lead with?
What are the best emotionally charged words and phrases that
will capture
and hold the attention of this market?
What objections do my prospects have and how will I solve
them?
What outrageous offer (including a guarantee) can I make?
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Is there an intriguing story I can tell?
Who else is selling something similar to my product or service,
and how?
Who else has tried selling this target market something similar,
and how
has that effort failed?
One of the main reasons marketing campaigns fail is because

the offer is
lazy and poorly thought out. It’s something crappy and
unexciting like 10% or
20% off.
The offer is one of the most important parts of your marketing
campaign,
and you need to spend much of your time and energy on
structuring this
correctly.
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What Does My Target Market Want?
Putting the right stuff in front of the wrong people or the wrong
stuff in front of
the right people is one of the first marketing mistakes made by
business
owners.
That’s why the first, and arguably most important, square of the
1-Page
Marketing Plan is all about identifying a specific target market
for our
marketing efforts.
Now that we’ve laid that groundwork, we want to structure an
offer that
will excite this target market. One that will have them ready to
whip out their
wallet and one that will stand out from all the boring, lazy
offers from our
competitors.

One of the easiest methods of finding out what your prospects
want is
simply by asking them. You can do so through a survey or
through more formal
market research.
It should also be noted that most people don’t know what they
want until
they’ve actually been presented with it. Also, when people are
doing surveys
or responding to market research, they do so with logic;
however, purchasing
is done w ith emotions and justified w ith logic after the fact.
So you
need to supplement asking with observing.
If you asked those in the market for expensive luxury cars what
they
wanted, you’d typically get logical (and untrue or half true)
answers like
quality, reliability, comfort. In reality what they really want is
status.
A quote often attributed to Henry Ford puts it well: “If I had
asked people
what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
One of the ways I recommend doing market research is by
analyzing what
your target market is actually buying or looking for.
Look at products and categories that are trending on
marketplaces like
Amazon and eBay.

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Analyzing search engine queries using a tool like Google’s
AdWords
Keyword Planner can be another excellent method.
Lastly, see what topics are trending on social media and
industry news
sites. What are people commenting on and reacting to?
Using these tools is almost like tapping into the global
consciousness and
will give you a good idea of what is currently in demand and
being talked or
thought about.
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Create an Irresistible Offer
Now that you know what your market wants, you need to
package it up and
present it as an irresistible offer. Here are some of the essential
elements:
Value: first you need to think, what is the most valuable thing
you could do
for your customer? What is the result that takes them from point
A to point B
which you can take them through while making a good profit?
This really is the crux of your offer.

Language: if you’re not a member of your target market, you
need to learn
the language and jargon used within your target market. If
you’re selling BMX
bikes, you need talk about “endos,” “sick wheelies” and “bunny
hops,” not
features, benefits, and specifications. If you’re selling golf
clubs, you need to
talk about “hooks,” “slices” and “handicaps.”
Reason w hy: when you have a great offer, you need to justify
why you’re
doing this. People are so used to being shortchanged that when
someone makes
a strong, value-filled offer, they become skeptical and look for
the catch.
I’ve personally experienced this in one of my businesses when
we were
offering a much better service at a price that was about half that
of our
competitors. People kept ringing into the sales line to recap the
offer featured
on the website and to ask what the catch was.
I don’t suggest you fabricate reasons for your offer, but be
ready to have a
solid reason why you are offering a great deal; for example,
clearing old stock,
damaged inventory, overstock, moving your office or warehouse
and so on.
Value stacking: packing in many bonuses can make your offer
seem like a
no-brainer. This is a very smart move and can dramatically

increase
conversions. In fact, I advocate to make the bonuses more
valuable than the
main offer whenever possible. Infomercials do this very well.
“We’ll double
your offer”; “That’s not all...”; and so on.
Upsells: when your prospect is hot, and in the buying frame of
mind, it’s
the perfect time to offer a complementary product or service.
This is the
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perfect opportunity to tack on a high-margin item, even if the
primary product
you are selling is low margin. It’s the fries with the burger, the
extended
warranty, the car rustproofing. It gives the customer added
value and gives you
more profit per transaction.
Payment plan: this one is absolutely critical for high-ticket
items and can
mean the difference between the customer balking and walking
away or making
the sale.
If something costs $5,000, presenting it as 12 easy payments of
$497 makes
the price a much easier pill to swallow. People generally think
of their
expenses on a monthly basis and $497 per month feels much
easier than $5,000

in one lump sum.
Also, notice that 12 x $497 adds up to more than $5,000. In
fact, it makes it
almost $6,000. The first reason you want to do this is to cover
your finance
costs if you’re financing the sale.
Second, you want to incentivize the people who can pay in a
lump sum to
receive a “discount” by paying up front.
Guarantee: as discussed previously in this chapter, you need an
outrageous guarantee. One that totally reverses the risk of doing
business with
you. People have been disappointed so many times that they
don’t trust any of
the claims you make. It’s nothing personal. That’s just the way
it is. You need
to make dealing with you a risk-free transaction, one where the
risk is on you
should you fail to deliver on your promises. “Satisfaction
guaranteed” is weak
and ineffective.
Scarcity: your offer needs to have an element of scarcity, a
reason why
people need to respond immediately. People respond much more
to a fear of
loss than the prospect of gain. However, again, you need a good
“reason why”
the scarcity exists, as you don’t want to be disingenuous with
your scarcity
claims.
You have a limited supply, limited time, limited resources. Use

this to your
advantage in your marketing. If you can have a running
countdown of time or
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available stock, this can further turn up the heat on the fear-of-
loss emotion.
As you’ve seen, there are many components to crafting a
compelling offer.
Taking the lazy, ill-thought-out road of “10% off” or similar
crappy offers is
akin to throwing your marketing dollars in the trash.
Take the time to craft a compelling, well-thought-out offer.
Your conversion
rate will skyrocket and so will your bottom line.
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Target the Pain
You’ve got a splitting headache. You open your medicine
cabinet and start
rifling through your museum of half-used tablets, creams and
vitamins only to
realize you’re totally out of pain relief medication. So you rush
down to your
local pharmacy in the hope of getting the tablet that’s going to
give you the
relief you so desperately need.

Do you worry about the price? Does it even enter your mind to
shop around
and see if you can buy the same product cheaper at another
pharmacy?
Unlikely. You’re in pain, and you need immediate relief. Even
if the tablets
were priced at double or triple the normal cost, you’d probably
still buy.
The usual ways of shopping get thrown out the window when
we’re in
pain. The exact same is true for your customers and prospects.
So many times
businesses talk about features and benefits rather than speaking
to the pain that
the customer already has. How much selling does a pharmacist
need to do to
convince someone with a splitting headache to buy pain relief
medication?
Very little, I suspect.
The same is true whether you sell TVs, cars or consulting. You
have
prospects and customers who are in pain. They want pain relief,
not features
and benefits. If you’re selling me a TV, you could try to sell me
features and
benefits by telling me it’s got four HDMI ports and 4K
resolution. This will
mean very little to most people. Imagine instead you target my
pain point,
which is bringing it back home, unpacking it and spending an
infuriating
number of hours trying to get it working properly with all my
other devices.

Instead of price discounting and positioning yourself as a
commodity, why
not offer to deliver it to my house, mount it on the wall, ensure
the picture
quality is spectacular and ensure that it works perfectly with all
my
peripherals. Now you’re giving me pain relief, and price
becomes less
important than if you’re selling me a commodity with a list of
features and
benefits.
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In the above example, even though you might be selling the
exact same TV
as your competitor, if you package it up in a way that takes
away my pain, then
you’ve won my business. It’s also much more likely I’ll become
a raving fan
and refer others to you because you weren’t just the vendor of a
commodity.
You were a problem solver. Now it’s an apples-to-oranges
comparison. How
do you compare this with “it’s got four HDMI ports and 4K
resolution”?
Selling features and benefits is the best way to turn your
prospects into
price shoppers who view your product as a commodity bought
solely on price.
Your goal is to be a problem solver and pain reliever and to turn
any

comparison with your competition into an apples-to-oranges
comparison.
Remember, people are much more willing to pay for a cure than
for prevention.
Targeting existing pain rather than promising future pleasure
will result in
much higher conversion, much higher customer satisfaction and
lower price
resistance. Look for pain points in your industry and become the
source of
relief.
96
Copywriting for Sales:
You Can’t Bore People into Buying
Almost no other skill will reward you as richly as being able to
write
compelling words. Being able to clearly articulate why a
prospect should buy
from you rather than your competitors, in a way that creates
emotion and
motivates them to action, is the master skill of marketing.
Earlier in this book, we touched on the fact that direct response
marketing
uses very different copywriting techniques. In direct response
marketing, we
use copy that is designed to push the emotional hot buttons of
the target
audience.
Rather than using the conventional, boring, “professional”

sounding copy,
we use copy that is like a car accident—no matter how much
you don’t want
to, you can’t help but look.
Emotional direct response copywriting uses attention-grabbing
headlines,
strong sales copy and compelling calls to action. It’s what’s
known as
“salesmanship in print.”
Many businesses, especially those that sell products and
services to
professional or business customers, feel like this type of copy is
not
appropriate for their market. And while it’s true we should
tailor our approach
to this market (as we would for any target market), it would be
a major mistake
to discount emotional direct response copywriting.
Whether you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the
janitor, we’re all
big bags of emotion, and our buying decisions are made with
emotion and then
justified with logic later. “Hey honey, I bought that Porsche 911
because of
safety and German cars are really reliable too.” Yeah right.
So many times when I meet business owners in person, I find
their
personality is completely different from the personality
displayed in their
marketing. Truth be told, most display no personality at all in
their marketing
because they think they need to look “professional.” Their

marketing is often
97
bland and generic, and if you swapped out their logo and name
from their
marketing material, it could be anyone else in their industry.
It’s such a shame
because if only they communicated in their marketing the way
they do in
person, they’d have much more success.
When you meet them in person, these people are often highly
intelligent,
interesting to listen to and passionate about what they do, yet
when it comes to
their marketing material and sales copy it’s like they freeze up.
All of a sudden,
they try to sound “professional” and start using weasel words
and phrases they
would never normally use in conversation. You know the sort of
words and
phrases I mean: “best-of-breed products,” “synergistic,”
“strategic alignment”
and so on. Words they’d never use in a real conversation with
their friends or
colleagues.
The fact is, people buy from people, not from corporations.
Building
relationships and rapport is well understood in the world of one-
to-one sales;
however, for some reason when it comes to the one-to-many
position of being

a marketer, many business owners think they need to put their
personality aside
and behave like a faceless corporation. Copywriting is
salesmanship in print.
You need to write your sales copy as though you were talking
directly to a
single person.
Using monotone, boring, “professional” sales copy is the fastest
way of
losing the interest of your customers and prospects.
Meaningless clichés and
claims of being the leading provider in your category make you
look like a “me
too” business. “Me too” businesses attract the lowest-common-
denominator
clients who by necessity shop based on price, as they have
nothing else to
differentiate you by.
People love authenticity, personality, and opinion. Even if they
don’t agree
with you, they’ll respect you for being real and open. Being
yourself and
bringing out your personality will help you stand out in a sea of
sameness and
monotony. Just have a look at one of the most consistently
enduring TV formats
—the news talking head. Why waste such a large percentage of
airtime on
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showing the face of the presenter? Using just their voice-over

would mean that
a lot more content and visual footage of news stories could be
broadcast.
However, the reason so much time is allocated to just the
talking head is
that it adds personality to topics that are often bland. It also
lends authority and
feels like a one-on-one conversation with a trusted source.
People respond to
pictures and videos of other people. It’s no accident that
YouTube and
Facebook are two of the biggest online properties in the world.
We’re
extremely interested in what other people are doing and saying.
You can easily take advantage of this in your business. One
example is by
adding a video to your website. It can be as simple as a talking-
head video of
you describing your products and services, which you can shoot
and upload in
the space of five minutes using a handheld camera or even a
smartphone.
Another example is using social media as a two-way
communication medium
for engaging with customers and prospects. Doing just these two
things will
create deeper connections because you’ll be adding personality
to your
business.
Don’t use your marketing material as a screen to hide behind.
Use it to give
opinion, insight, advice, and commentary, and above all, be
yourself and be

authentic. This will instantly create rapport and differentiate
you from all the
other boring and bland marketing material around you.
People open their mail above a wastepaper basket and have their
index
finger hovering above the delete button when reading email.
They sort their
mail in two piles: the first gets opened and read and the second
goes into the
trash, often unopened. People are craving something new,
something
entertaining, something different. When you give that to them,
you get their
attention. When your copy is “professional,” it’s boring,
monotone and
ignored. The fact is that most businesses are too afraid to send
out copy that
will get them noticed. They fear what their friends, relatives,
industry peers
and others will think or say.
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So, they send out letters and ads that are timid and “me too.”
Swap the
company name and logo, and they are pretty much
interchangeable with every
one of their other competitors. There’s really only one opinion
you should be
worrying about—that of your customers and prospects. Frankly,
no one else’s
opinion, including yours, should figure in what you put in your
sales copy.

Testing and measuring response is the only true way of judging
the
effectiveness of your copy.
The masses are living lives of quiet desperation. They are
absolutely
craving something that grabs or entertains them, even if it’s just
for a moment.
Your job is to give it to them.
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Elements of Great Copy
It’s incredible how a change in a word or phrase can
dramatically change the
effectiveness of an ad. There are some words that are extremely
powerful and
trigger emotional hot buttons. For example, think about the
following three
words:
1. Animal
2. Fish
3. Shark
Which of these three triggers the most emotional response in
you? I suspect
it’s the last one, yet they could all be used to describe the same
creature. The
same is true of words you use when writing sales copy. Some
words trigger a
bigger emotional response than others. Here is just a small
sample of the most

common compelling words:
Free
You
Save
Results
Health
Love
Proven
Money
New
Easy
Safety
Guaranteed
Discovery
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A one-word change in your headline can dramatically alter the
results you
achieve. Always remember, people buy w ith emotions first and
then
justify w ith logic afterw ards. Trying to sell to their logical
brain with facts
and figures is a complete waste of time.
The five major motivators of human behavior, especially buying
behavior,
are:
1. Fear
2. Love
3. Greed
4. Guilt

5. Pride
If your sales copy isn’t pushing at least one of these emotional
hot buttons,
then it’s likely too timid and ineffective.
Headlines are one of the most important elements in your sales
copy. Their
job is to grab the attention of your target market and get them to
start reading
your body copy. The headline is basically the ad for the ad and
should
encompass the self-serving result your reader will get. You’ll
use headlines
extensively in your marketing when writing email subject lines,
sales letter
headlines or web page titles. Here’s a small sample of headlines
from some of
the most successful advertising campaigns throughout history:
They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano—But When I
Started to Play!
Who Else Wants a Screen Star Figure?
Amazing Secret Discovered by One-Legged Golfer Adds 50
Yards to Your
Drives, Eliminates Hooks and Slices and Can Slash up to 10
Strokes from
Your Game Almost Overnight!
Confessions of a Disbarred Lawyer
Have You Ever Seen a Grown Man Cry?
An Open Letter to Every Overweight Person in Portland
Is the Life of a Child Worth $1 to You?
102

How a Strange Accident Saved Me from Baldness
When the Government Freezes Your Bank Account—What
Then?
How a “Fool Stunt” Made a Star Salesman
Wife of Famous Movie Star Swears Under Oath Her New
Perfume Does
Not Contain an Illegal Sexual Stimulant!
Profits That Lie Hidden in Your Farm
Proof: Doctors Are More Dangerous than Guns!
Notice how all the successful, tested headlines above push one
or more of
the five major motivators of human behavior?
For a list of hundreds of the most successful headlines in
advertising history, visit 1pmp.com
Fear, especially the fear of loss, is one of the most powerful
emotional hot
buttons you can push in your sales copy. Understanding how
certain words link
to certain emotions is powerful.
Many worry that this is too manipulative. Like any powerful
tool, it can be
used for good or evil purposes and no doubt many people do
both.
A sharp knife in the hands of a surgeon can be used to save a
life or in the
hands of a criminal to take a life. Either way, we need to
understand how this
powerful tool works and likely we can’t go through life
avoiding its use.

The same thing is applied to emotional direct response
copywriting. It’s a
powerful selling tool, and you should never use it unethically.
If you sell something that is in the best interest of your prospect
or
customer, then you are actually doing them a great service by
using this
powerful selling tool. You are preventing them from buying
someone else’s
inferior product or service.
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Enter the Conversation Already Going on
in Your Prospect’s Mind
We all have a conversation going on in our mind, all the time.
Sometimes this
is referred to as “inner talk.”
That conversation is going to be very different for an expectant
mother than
it is for a retiree. Or for a fanatical fitness junkie and a couch
potato. This is
part of why it’s so important to understand your target market
well.
An emotional hot button for one type of target audience will fall
on deaf
ears to another audience. Emotional direct response copywriting
is no
substitute for understanding EXACTLY who your target

audience is and what
their emotional triggers are.
Before you ever write a single word of copy, you must
intimately
understand how your target market thinks and talks, the kind of
language they
use and respond to, what kind of day they have and the
conversation that goes
on in their minds. What are their fears and frustrations? What
gets them excited
and motivated?
Research is often the most neglected component of copywriting
and is the
major reason why even powerful copy can sometimes fail.
Emotional direct
response copywriting is a powerful tool in your marketing
arsenal. But
understand, it is part of a process. Research, write, then test and
measure, and
you’ll be far ahead of 99.9% of all your competitors.
Another way to enter the conversation going on in your
prospect’s mind is
to address the elephant in the room. It’s natural to always try to
present your
business in the most favorable light possible when marketing
yourself.
However, this often leads to one of the most common marketing
blunders—
discussing only the positive aspects of doing business with you.
Avoiding the
elephant in the room, in other words, the risks associated with
buying from
you, is a rookie mistake.

104
The amygdala is the fear part of our brain. It governs our
reactions to
events that are important for our survival, and it stimulates fear
to warn us of
imminent danger. If you’re being followed at night by a
suspicious-looking
individual and your heart is pounding, that’s your amygdala
doing its job.
That’s good. However, the amygdala in your prospect’s brain
can also stop
them from buying from you. That’s bad.
Whether you own a coffee shop or a hospital, when a
prospective customer
considers buying from you, their amygdala is making a
judgment call about the
potential risks involved. The risk being evaluated by the
amygdala may be as
trivial as a bad-tasting latte or as severe as an untimely death on
an operating
table. Either way, the risk evaluation is always going on in the
background. As
a business owner and marketer, you need to understand that. If
you skirt around
this issue in your marketing, you allow the amygdala in your
prospect’s brain
to run wild and potentially kill the sale. Given that this risk
evaluation will
happen whether you like it or not, why not participate in it and
give yourself
the best chance of addressing any potential deal breakers before

they get a
chance to damage your bottom line?
Traditional selling tells us to overcome objections; however, in
reality,
objections are rarely voiced. Instead, in our polite society, we
say nonsense
things like “Let me think about it,” while inside the amygdala is
screaming,
“Let’s get out of here.” Part of the job of good sales copy is to
tell potential
prospects who your product or service is NOT for. There are
three very good
reasons you should do this.
First, it filters out people who aren’t part of your target market
or those
who wouldn’t be a good fit for what you have to offer. This
ensures you don’t
waste your time on low-quality, low-probability prospects. It
also reduces the
number of refunds and complaints from customers who
misunderstood what
they bought.
Second, it immediately makes it more credible when you tell
them who this
product is for. It feels much more evenhanded when you cover
both angles by
105
telling them who it is for and who it isn’t for.
Last, the prospects who your product or service is for will more

strongly
feel it is tailored to their needs than if you had said it’s for
anyone and
everyone. It feels more targeted and exclusive.
Another excellent way to enter the mind of your prospect is to
find out what
they blame, and to use a device in your copy known as “the
enemy in
common.” If you ask most people why they haven’t achieved
success, some of
the most common responses include:
The economy
The government
Taxes are too high
Poor upbringing or parenting
Unsupportive family or friends
No time
No money
No opportunity
Lack of skills or education
Unfair boss
There’s just one thing wrong with this list—they aren’t on it!
Here are the results of a national survey that was conducted by
one of the
major newspapers on “cost-of-living pressure,” also known as
spending too
much and earning too little. You can see how few people blame
themselves for
their current circumstances.
106

According to the Journal of Safety Research, 74% of
Americans believe
they are above-average drivers. Yet only 1% believe they are
below average.
It’s the same with accepting blame. How many times have you
heard a child
say, “It’s not my fault”? As adults, people are much the same.
Most of us don’t
believe we are in the wrong. So, what can you do with this
knowledge? First,
in your sales copy, never blame your prospects for the position
they are in. If
1
107
we’re going to enter the conversation already going on in their
minds, our
marketing message needs to take into account these existing
thought processes
—no matter how foreign they are from our own.
“The enemy in common” is a great way of leveraging the “it’s
not my fault”
mentality. Take something relevant from your prospect’s blame
list, side with
them and tie it into a solution you have to offer. Here’s a
sample headline that
an accountant could use:

“Free Report Reveals How to Reclaim Your Hard Earned Cash
from the
Greedy Tax Man”
This is a great way of bonding with your prospect while
offering them a
solution. By using a common enemy, you connect with the
prospect, and you’re
seen as the savior against a foe—in this case, government taxes.
“The enemy in common” rattles their cage, enters the
conversation already
going on in their mind and stirs up the emotions that are already
there, just
below the surface.
It’s a great way to break through the clutter and get your
prospect’s
attention.
108
How to Name Your Product, Service or Business
I’ve had “the naming discussion” with entrepreneurs many
times. It usually
goes like this: I’m asked for my opinion on a new name or
several variations
thereof for a new product, service or business venture. Then
often follows an
explanation of the name or names that are being considered.
Here’s my take on
naming—if you need to explain the name, to me that’s an

automatic fail. The
title should equal content. In other words, if the name doesn’t
make it
automatically obvious what the product, service or business is,
then you’re
starting from behind. When I give people this advice, some
shake their heads in
disbelief. What about great brands with unusual names like
Nike, Apple,
Skype, Amazon and so on? Surely, I must be missing something
by giving such
simplistic advice? Here’s the thing. All of the big brands spend
hundreds of
millions of dollars in advertising to educate people about who
they are and
what they do. How much are you willing to spend to do the
same?
Here, we’re not even talking about advertising that sells or
generates leads.
We’re talking about advertising that merely tells people what
you do. I can’t
think of a bigger waste of money. By using a non-obvious name,
you’re starting
from behind and then have to make up for it by spending a lot
of money on
advertising to rectify the situation. All you had to do to avoid
this colossal
waste of money was call your business “Fast Plumbing
Repairs,” which
immediately explains what you do and what you stand for,
rather than “Aqua

Solution
s,” after which you have to explain that “aqua” means “water”
in Latin
and that you provide “complete plumbing solutions” (whatever
that means),
hence the name “Aqua

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