B (6:22)

Hey, it's John, Janice, and I got

A (6:24)

a quick question for you.

B (6:25)

Does your marketing ever feel like a jumble of tactics without a real plan? Well, you're not alone. That's why we just released a free on demand workshop called the Clarity Engine. How Small Businesses Can Random Acts of Marketing into a Scalable Growth System. Where our CEO Sarah Nay walks you through building a marketing system that actually scales. And you'll get our exclusive marketing strategy Pyramid worksheet to map out your own path for the year ahead. Just head on over to DTM World Clarity. Again, that's DTM World Clarity. Let's make next year the year you finally own your marketing for good.

A (7:04)

What are the seven stages? I like seven as a number. Seems like I've used it a lot in the things that we've created. So the first one is the strategy first core. This is something we've been doing for 25 years and it's still a crucial element. I don't care what we're developing. It's a crucial element, always will be. Tools come, platforms come and go. AI is here this week. Who knows what's here next week? Strategy. The strategy core. And fundamentally what we're here to do as marketers I don't think will ever change. So we have to build that, we have to diagnose the gaps, we have to clarify the message, we have to define the client journey and we have to tie those back. And really part of the first part before we'd ever get started is we would have an in depth analysis, with your help of course, as the business owner, on what the business strategy is. And quite frankly that may be a discussion that we have to start because you've never really looked at a long term approach to your overall business strategy. So we may start there before we actually start or maybe as the discovery phase of the strategy first core. The second component then is what we call the campaign builder system. So I mean this is where we're going to plan, you know, what 90 day campaigns would look like. But we're going to start here with building your brand engine and your growth engine and your customer experience engine because those are going to be the things that we're going to launch really out there. We have to have those built in order to build campaigns. Stage number three, the third component is what we are calling the work stream engine. So this is where we're going to assign roles, SOPs, rhythms for execution, probably build OKRs, which is a objective key result tool that I think Google was or people at Google were most noted for developing. That it's a great tool for actually breaking things down into small chunks so you can get to it. Then the next stage we're going to go to really is the AI powered marketing hub. I believe that, you know, a lot of people are still looking at AI as a tool or they're looking at it as a platform or as a way to do automation or as a way to do things faster and more efficiently. I ultimately believe that it's going to be just baked into how we work as a company. So let's say you have Google Workspace or you have Microsoft Teams today, a lot of the communication across organizations, even outward communication, say via Gmail, things of that nature, is all just baked into those kind of tools. I mean they basically are workplace tools that everybody uses in the organization. They all communicate with each other, they all collaborate. We. Well, AI is going to be baked in. Increasingly it is being baked into those tools. But what we're going to build is the AI marketing hub. So you'll have Playbooks now for how's the newsletter going to be written, what are our blog posts going to be, how are we going to do social, what are our ads going to look like? I believe we can use the AI tools to build a framework inside of an organization so that no matter who's operating the system inside the organization, they will actually have the playbooks to do it correctly and to use AI in a way that's branded and in your voice trained, but can also produce a lot of output. That is part of the marketing plan. Now the fifth stage is actually what we're calling scorecards and signals. So this is going to be your dashboard. It's going to be how you track performance without really getting into the vanity metrics. It's going to be we're going to measure what matters right now. This comes in the fifth stage. But frankly we are using data throughout. I mean when we are looking at an icp, we're looking at data. When we're looking at core messaging, we're looking at data. So data is becomes this fifth stage where we're going to build the ultimate output tool. But we're going to be baking data into the culture and the DNA of the organization. I think that's a real gap for a lot of organizations. They don't know what to measure. They aren't measuring anything or they're measuring stuff that's so complex it doesn't really give any insight. And so we're going to bake it into every stage. But then you're going to have actually the dashboard as part of that. Now one of the things that's really important is no system is set up, forget it, we've got to tune it, we've got to maintain it, we've got to give it oil all the metaphors you want to use there. And so we're going to actually have what we call the momentum meeting. So it would be a very structured monthly check in that's going to drive accountability and alignment and reassign ownership, reassign responsibility on what's going on, assess where you are on meeting, meeting your, the system output and then the last piece. I think any good system, you're basically building the thing and hoping you got it right. And so constant optimization. It's probably many of you probably experienced that in your own business. I mean we're every 90 days tweaking something or maybe changing direction almost in a large, a large way or to some degree or in a new product offering or something. So there's this constant feedback and review to refine and improve what's working that we call the optimization loop. So once we build that, what happens after that? It's our belief that clear strategy is, is something that doesn't change every month, but your marketing systems run consistently. Campaigns generate results, not noise. And the key is inside the organization. I think everybody knows what their role is. Everybody knows what their objectives are. Everybody has, has visibility into what's working, what's not working. And I think, I think that confidence across the team should really soar. Even if the team includes outside folks that are, you know, third party suppliers, partners, vendors, it really gives them confidence to know that, that there is a plan, that they're not just doing their one little part out there. So what's next? This is something that we are building now for clients and it's something that if, if it makes sense for you, we would love to show you this system and have a strategy call with you to really hear how it might fit in your world. I'm going to suggest that you book a strategy call at DTM World Chat. That's DTM World Chat.

B (13:50)

If you're marketing in 2025, felt more like a scramble than a system. Well, I've got something for you. If you're a small business owner running a service based business and you've been busy all year, but still aren't sure what's actually driving results, our CEO at Duct Tape Marketing, Sarah Nay is opening a limited number of year end strategy sessions. These one on one conversations specifically for owners who already have clients but know their marketing isn't as clear, consistent or aligned to the goals as it needs to be heading into 2026, well, you'll look at where things are breaking down and the simplest way to create a system you and your team can actually follow when you book with Sarah. So spots on Sarah's calendar are limited. This sounds like you head on over to DTM World yearend. That's right, DTM World Year End to grab a time.