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Start Marketing - DIY Marketing Guide book cover

Start Marketing - DIY Marketing Guide

A DIY guide to finding audiences, offering value, and noticing what works.

Hey - some people just want to look things up, so I've made the book totally discoverable with AI tooling and my friends at Notion. Hope you enjoy it and learn something from it.

- Marshy

Foundations

  1. 1 Introduction Thanks for getting this book.
  2. 2 A reality check You’re not going to learn everything in here.
  3. 3 It doesn't matter Here’s a dirty little secret.
  4. 4 This is where you start Alright! I’m ready to learn marketing!
  5. 5 Drinking from a firehose This is how most people start marketing:
  6. 6 The 1-10-100 rule Let’s pretend you want to learn archery.
  7. 7 Always be pitching Pitching doesn’t come naturally.
  8. 8 Do it the hard way The Internet and technology makes all sorts of wonderful tricks and shiny tactics available.
  9. 9 Take action every time Taking action is better than searching.
  10. 10 Find-Offer-Notice Find-Offer-Notice is a set of steps to help you focus your early marketing and learn.

Find

  1. 11 Find Find
  2. 12 Take a guess Most of the world is connected to the Internet.
  3. 13 Hang out in the same spots Imagine my friend Derek.
  4. 14 The reality of demographics I used to work with big advertisers like BMW, L’Oreal, and even Lynx Body Spray.
  5. 15 Look them in the eye Here’s the inside scoop: the way you find customers is by asking them what they’re interested in.
  6. 16 Man bites dog I studied journalism.
  7. 17 The 5 why technique A kid learning to speak is a joy to witness.
  8. 18 Beware of surveys We are well into this book and I haven’t mentioned a survey, poll, form, or questionnaire yet.
  9. 19 Collect customer stories A common question from selling into a business is “have you got any case studies?”
  10. 20 Stretching your understanding Once your head is in the game (and not before cycling through some repetitions of FON Times) you will be building out your understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
  11. 21 Always serve Be where your buyers are.
  12. 22 Channels and flow A channel is where customers flow.
  13. 23 Who sent you?! Imagine you’re in a niche specialist shop.
  14. 24 Be a creep I love it when I hear a recommendation like this:
  15. 25 A crash-course on desktop research I was at the end of my stint at Google Singapore and one of the newer colleagues asked me how my Google-Fu was.
  16. 26 The best channels Let’s talk more about adjacent and shoulder businesses.
  17. 27 Channel partners Channels come in all sizes.
  18. 28 Stretching your finding Your list of channels will accrue over time.
  19. 29 Knock on the door with value From reading the last section, you should have gathered a list of channels, whether they’re a fit for your business, an idea of their size, and who you can contact.
  20. 30 Don't be a dick Be easy to work with.
  21. 31 Create a goodie bag Who doesn’t like receiving goodies?
  22. 32 Teaching is low-cost and high-value Teaching is an easy way to show how to gain something, solve a problem, or save time, energy, and money.
  23. 33 What’s the hook? There’s an online writer who talks a lot about finances and personal development.
  24. 34 Fishing with hooks Like Bert and Ernie show, there’s more than one way to catch fish.
  25. 35 Partnering your way to success I was standing outside one of the most exclusive yacht clubs in the Gold Coast.
  26. 36 Delivering value - no matter what I was pitched a $10k+ coaching package.
  27. 37 Stretching your collaborations Over time you’re going to collaborate with people who you enjoy working with and see success for both of you, and others where they’re nice enough but it just doesn’t work.

Offer

  1. 38 Offer
  2. 39 Creating your offer You’ve found an audience with potential customers. You have partnered with someone to access that audience and teach them something with value.
  3. 40 Sell with clarity The worst answer you can get while marketing and selling is no answer.
  4. 41 And so what? And so what then? I used to work at a big tech company across Asia-Pacific pitching creative ideas to the world’s biggest brands.
  5. 42 Teasing out features and benefits Most people sell with features, yet people buy for benefits.
  6. 43 Pressure testing By now you should have clarified what you’re offering, listed out all of the features, put yourself in the shoes of your customer and thought about the benefits for them.
  7. 44 Help your partners The first few times you partner with a channel and get in front of a new audience, you need to over-focus on being easy to work with. Doing so makes it easy to work with the same partner (and further partners) again.
  8. 45 Spell out what your customers get When I started consulting full-time, I came with over a decade of experience, and was confident in my own abilities to diagnose, strategise, and problem solve digital marketing and team challenges many organisations face…
  9. 46 Reversing risk and social proof Do you remember those house parties as an adolescent?
  10. 47 Stretching your assembly Over time you’ll want to make better offers and more often.
  11. 48 Word power Finding the right words to say is hard.
  12. 49 How to send pitches I met a founder with an AI product, who wanted to get in touch with a key influencer in his industry who would publicise his work beyond his wildest expectations.
  13. 50 Benefits-led language My lecturer for Professional Writing was a gun.
  14. 51 The phone check We do most of our writing from our computers.
  15. 52 Kill jargon At the start of most workshops I run there’s a lot of jargon and garbage to get out of the way. I do this by asking:
  16. 53 The rule of 3 Everything becomes easier when you explain it with three steps.
  17. 54 Try describing it to your aunty I’m a huge electronic music snob and unapologetic about it.
  18. 55 TEEL and CLEAR I’m going to give you two formulas for self-contained paragraphs.
  19. 56 Attention, Interest, Decision, Action "AIDA. Attention. Interest. Decision. Action. Attention. Do I have your attention? Interest. Are you interested? I know you are 'cause it's f*ck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks. Decision.
  20. 57 As terrible as you’ll ever be No matter how well you write you’re going to cringe, think it’s crap, and hate what you’re putting out there.
  21. 58 Stretching your craft It will help you find your voice.
  22. 59 Make it look not sh*t Designers are a breed.
  23. 60 Table stakes There’s some hard and fast rules of thumb to get a base level of design skill.
  24. 61 Create a mini-brand book A mini-brand book is a collection of all your key elements in one easy to access document for creating things.
  25. 62 A quick word on logos In the world of startups, there’s a concept called MVP.
  26. 63 Visual hierarchy Every offer you make has a certain order.
  27. 64 Remember CRAP Through out this book, you’re being equipped with shortcuts for understanding concepts you could spend an entire career on.
  28. 65 Grab a snappy friend I’ve got a confession to make.
  29. 66 Keep a swipe file I’ve worked in a number of advertising agencies.
  30. 67 No-code tools Not that long ago, it was hard to put up a website as a mere mortal.
  31. 68 Don’t let tech get in the way from selling your product I taught a cohort in Gippsland where the average age was older than me (I was late 30s at the time).
  32. 69 Stretching your design There’s a magical feeling that arises when you put something online and payment notifications appear in your inbox.

Notice

  1. 70 Notice
  2. 71 Curiosity first I’ve interviewed a lot of marketing talent.
  3. 72 The priority ladder The goal of your marketing is simple. It’s to make sales.
  4. 73 Trends over precision If you’re looking at a number, and it’s at a single point in time, it doesn’t indicate how well you’re doing in any meaningful way.
  5. 74 Money talks There’s a lot of noise out there.
  6. 75 Track what you do Most what I do today is strategy.
  7. 76 Measurement tools Earlier drafts of this book used the term Measure instead of Notice for the part 3 of this framework.
  8. 77 Traffic - a major milestone • There’s choosing a profitable topic that provides you with purpose.
  9. 78 Pattern recognition Experience tells me that when someone in service tells me “we can definitely do that for you” - it usually means the opposite.
  10. 79 Pick one thing at a time “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
  11. 80 Not everything is predictable It’s human nature to want to create order from chaos. Accountants like to see money go in, and more money come out. Bosses like their team to show up, and do productive work.
  12. 81 Stretching what you notice Noticing is a deep rabbit hole and becomes analytical quickly. The way you can improve it is becoming curious about the marketing we’re exposed to every single day.

Wrap-up

  1. 82 Conclusion Well done on persevering with your curiosity for this long. Completion rates of books overall is on the decline globally - so I appreciate you staying with me to the end.
  2. 83 1. Find For understanding your customer:
  3. 84 2. Offer $100m Offers: How to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no, Alex Hormozi
  4. 85 3. Notice Measure what matters, John Doerr
  5. 86 Additional learning resources Marketing Examples - https://marketingexamples.com/ - Harry’s newsletter is one of the best in the business
  6. 87 Tools Easy Mode -Apps that exist to be a joy to use with a low learning curve. Like Canva but for building things.
  7. 88 Acknowledgements A lot of work goes into writing a book as an individual, yet the author benefits from a lot of invisible people who provide sage wisdom, support, or kind words along the way.
  8. 89 About the Author Luke ”Marshy” Marshall is a writer, consultant, marketer, and newly minted Dad to twin boys. He’s currently lives on the fringe of Melbourne surrounded by nature, running paths, and is lovely partner Georgie.

Browse by topic

Beginner (71) Tactic (62) Intermediate (18) Mindset & fundamentals (14) Concept (13) Analytics & measurement (11) Copywriting (11) Crafting your offer (11) Design & branding (11) Designing your offer (11) Noticing what works (11) Assembling your offer (9) Collaborating for customers (9) Customer research (9) Offer & positioning (9) Partnerships (9) Understanding your customers (9) Channels & distribution (8) Find your customers (8) Exercise (7) Resources (7) Tool (7)

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