The 4 Marketing Channels You Actually Control | 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 5

The 4 Marketing Channels You Actually Control | 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 5 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

If your biggest marketing channel disappeared tomorrow, how long before your pipeline dried up? For most small business owners John talks to, the honest answer is 30 days or less. That fragility is the hidden cost of renting your pipeline instead of owning it, and it’s the focus of Step 5 in the Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success series.

In this solo episode, John draws the line between rented channels (paid ads, search traffic, social reach) and the assets you actually control. Rented channels can produce results fast, but the rules change, costs climb, and a single algorithm shift can erase a healthy-looking business overnight. Owned channels work differently. You decide who’s on your list and what reaches them.

John walks through the four channels every small business can own: email, referrals, strategic partnerships, and direct human relationships. He shares a simple owned-versus-rented audit you can run this week, plus why the human element only grows more valuable as AI takes over the routine work. This one is for small business owners, marketers, and consultants who want a pipeline that holds up when the platforms shift.

Host Bio

John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and host of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. He is the author of several books on small business marketing strategy, including Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. He helps small businesses build practical marketing systems that produce predictable growth.

Key Takeaways

• Test your risk fast: if your biggest channel vanished tomorrow, count how many days before your pipeline dried up. For many owners, it’s 30 days or less.
• Rented channels (paid and most earned media) can scale instantly, but costs rise, rules change, and you never control them.
• Owned means control. You decide who’s on the list and what reaches them, with no platform getting a vote.
• Run the audit: list every lead source that produced revenue in the last 12 months, then mark each one owned or rented. If rented tops half, that’s your next area of work.
• Email is your most direct owned channel, but only when the list is qualified, nurtured, and built with permission. It’s a content channel first, a sales channel second.
• Write every email as if it’s going to one person, not 20,000. Personal beats broadcast.
• A real referral system has three parts: a specific ask, a specific moment, and an easy path. Most businesses only do the ask.
• Strategic partnerships with non-competing businesses serving your same ideal client are the most underused lead source for small businesses.
• As AI handles more routine work, double down on the human channels: networking, speaking, associations, and in-person participation.

Great Moments

• [00:01] John opens Step 5 and poses the test: if your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, how fast would your pipeline dry up?
• [02:07] Renting versus owning explained, why the rental model is fragile, and the owned-versus-rented audit.
• [04:30] Channel one: email, and why it still works after years of people declaring it dead.
• [06:52] Email as your first layer of content, not just a sales tool.
• [07:12] The mindset shift: write to one person, not a crowd.
• [09:33] The three parts of a referral system, then why strategic partnerships are so underused.
• [11:49] Channel four: direct relationships, and why the human element matters more in the AI era.

Memorable Quotes

• “If your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, how long before your pipeline would dry up? For most folks I meet, it’s 30 days or less.”
• “If you own it, you control it. You decide who’s on it and what reaches them.”
• “Referrals arrive pre-trusted. They close faster and they’re less price sensitive.”
• “Non-competing businesses serving the same ideal client are the most underused lead source a small business can have.”
• “The more AI becomes part of our lives and businesses, the more the human element matters.”

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:01.708)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, no guest. I'm doing this series of seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number five. So go to the show notes. You can find all the other episodes if you are behind on this. but I'm gonna dive into episode or step number five. and this one really talks about pipelines. Having a great, healthy pipeline is awesome, isn't it? Unfortunately,

many people don't own their pipeline. And this is going to be easy to test. I'm gonna really talk that's what I'm gonna talk about today. But if if let me ask you this. If your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, the platform shuts down, alg algorithms change, cost doubles. how long before your pipeline would dry up? be honest. most of the folks that I encounter 30 days or less. and that's really risky, and that is the cost of

Renting versus owning your pipeline. And I I want to talk about a little bit about those terms. If you own it, that means you control it. you decide who's on it, what reaches them. no platform's really going to change that is going to to to really make that go away. That's that's the true idea of owning. So I mean, you own your website, you own your email list, you own your social media.

To some degree, although those are really controlled as well. So I want to get into some of the things that I believe if you want to truly own your pipeline, you have to actually own all the assets that drive your pipeline to the extent that you can. Now, when you hear marketers talk about owned media, earned media, paid media.

When I'm talking about renting, really that's what paid media is. And to some degree earned media, which is great, the publication writes about you. some

John Jantsch (02:07.638)

search platform sends traffic to you. Yeah the social media platforms, you know, people follow you and you know on YouTube or something and and then click over to your website. Those are all things that you you kind of earn mentions. But again, those are really not under your control. I mean those are things that could theoretically go away tomorrow. YouTube changes their algorithm and you no longer get any traffic from it. so that's why I want to focus on this idea of own. you know someone else

on in on most pipeline, rented pipeline, somebody else owns it, you pay for access to it, you play basically by their rules. and and the the beauty of that, of course, is that that can happen instantly. If you're a new business and you go to Google AdWords and you open an account and you start advertising, I mean you can actually generate pipeline, you know, immediately. But as many people have experienced, that pipeline

Can get more and more expensive every single year, less and less profitable every single year. they change the rules, and all of a sudden you can't talk about your product or service in the way that you want to in your ads. I mean, there are all kinds of things that that are there. and a business and and the challenge is this rental model is very fragile, but it can be invisible too, right? A business can look very healthy.

Be chugging along, but it's 70% of their pipeline, 70% of their customer growth comes from rented channels. And all of a sudden, you know, they disappear overnight because something changed. So here's a here's an audit that I would tell you to do. You can do this live. lift up list every lead source that's produced revenue for you in the last 12 months. And I know sometimes that's hard to attribute where the revenue came from, but

Spend some time thinking about where your revenue comes from, what lead source, and start marking: is this owned? Is this rented? or you know, rented is the same as paid. you know, and and really kind of look at what's the ratio. All right. So I want to talk now. Now that you've done that, I'm gonna talk about the the the four owned channels and why you need to really put more emphasis, probably.

John Jantsch (04:30.828)

need to put more emphasis on those and less on the rented ones. So the first one is email. I've been around for a very, very long time. We started, we started, I think, heavily using email right at the end of like in the 90s, 97, 98, 99, all of a sudden email became a thing. everybody was, you know, really adopting it. And I swear, you know, once people, once people learned the marketing

value of having an email connection with somebody. Of course they started abusing it. And that's why a lot of people have then declared almost every year from about 2000 and well, let's say 2004 or so when social media started cropping up that the email was dead. How many times have you heard that one, right? At least for 15 years. But it still works. It's still one of the most valuable channels. and I

contend that it probably will remain. Now it it it has gotten harder to make effective. and that's really more because people have abused it and because people have other options that that they've spent on. And you know, there's so much spam and cold, you know, outreach that comes through those that have have actually made people, you know, not like email, if you will, but but a qualified email list that you have built over five years, direct, reliable,

owned is really one of the most efficient channels that you can have. But again, qualified, nurtured, not abused, members of that list can can be really one of the most valuable marketing assets that that a business has. key word again, qualified. people asked to be on it. It was not scraped, it was not bought, it was not added. this is

This is actually your first layer of content, if you think about it. The principles that make content work apply. Genuine point of view, useful, specific. So when you're sending email out, that is part of your content plan, right? So genuine point of view, built on one of your core principles, built on one of your hub page, one of your

John Jantsch (06:52.0)

elements that you're using in all of your marketing, all of your content. Ca email in a lot of ways is a content channel. It's not necessarily a sales channel. It certainly can be. You can earn the right to sell very directly in email, but it is first and foremost, it is a content channel.

John Jantsch (07:12.278)

And again, you know, a lot of I think a lot of people, partly because of spam and things that have gone on, you know, feel like, you know, email doesn't feel that exciting anymore, right? And I think that that's a lot of times the edge. you know, the the the real and and again, I'm not talking about necessarily all the ways that people are using it and abusing it. I'm talking about the ways that you have the ability to have a direct conversation. And that and that's you know, that's probably one of

It's one of things I forget all the time, but it's probably one of the core principles of email is we feel like, okay, this email is going out to 20,000 people. So we're writing it like it's going out to 20,000 people. What if you wrote it like it was going out to one person? That you told a personal story, that you were vulnerable, that you shared a a a point of view that might not be accepted by everyone. That's how you have to think about all of your writing.

You're writing it to one person. Whether it's a YouTube video, an email, a social media post, it's not, hey guys, hey everyone listening. It's hey, you one person, I wrote this directly for you, or at least you're gonna feel like I wrote this directly for you. That's how you make email, certainly a potent channel. I wrote an entire book about this second channel called the Referral Engine. and I'm

Happy to say that that book has remained evergreen because the referrals are not some hack that come about because of the next platform. They are genuinely earned if you actually focus intention on them. Obviously, you've got to do good work to get referrals. But after that, if you are intentional about how they are are created, referrals are they're probably for most of us, they are the best leads. they already

arrive kind of pre-trusted. they close faster, they're less price sensitive. They're more likely to refer other people because that's how they came to you. most small businesses, I think most small businesses, hopefully you do, receive some referrals, but they happen accidentally. that's hope. That's not a system. there are three parts to a an effective referral system. There is a specific ask, there is a specific moment.

John Jantsch (09:33.738)

And there is an easy path. So here's what I would here is who I serve and I would like what I would like you to do. you do that at a moment when the client or the yes, the the client or the you know, the person, it's the right time to ask them. It's it's the moment of truth, as I've called it before. And then you make it very easy for them. Most businesses are missing two and three. I mean, they think about like, yeah, okay, I I'm

Gonna go out and ask people for referrals, but I'm not gonna do it, I'm not gonna have it as a planned moment. I'm not gonna have it make sense, I'm not gonna actually make it really easy for them to do. You add those two pieces of it, and you know, right after the customer experiences something good, you make you make that ask land right then and you make it easy for them to do. Now, the the third channel is that you can own.

Is one that is a branch of referrals to some degree. not exactly. and that's partnerships, strategic partnerships. I don't know why more people don't spend more time on this particular channel. non-competing businesses serving the same ideal client are are probably the most underutilized, underused lead source that any small business can have. And it's it's not even close. I built in the early days my entire following, my entire business.

My entire platform around these strategic partnerships because it was so easy for me to take the fact that I was early on producing content and others, people started realizing we need content, we need to educate, we need to bring our communities together. And all of a sudden I was a ready-to-tap source. And so they put me in front of their audiences. So the ideal client.

Every one of your ideal clients needs other professionals. every one of your ideal clients has other needs. If you're in the home services business and you are an electrician, they also need a painter and a plumber and a roofer and a person to do landscaping. so if you could start to develop relationships with all the people that also serve your ideal client, and you can activate those relationships.

John Jantsch (11:49.54)

have them if if you have a podcast, have them on your podcast, you be on their podcast, write content for each other. There's lots of ways that you can actually start developing these relationships so that these strategic partners then have a have a a real reason, but also your top of mind when it comes to referring you. And then the fourth one is is still just direct relationships. The more AI becomes invasive.

Is that the right word? In our lives and our businesses, the more human element is going to become important. So if you're using AI to actually become more efficient and to free up time, take that extra time, take your team's extra time and start doubling down on networking, on speaking, on associations, on in industry, in person industry participation. Spend more time doing those kinds of things because.

those still pay off and they they're gonna pay off I think even more as people try to automate and and have you know robots theoretically doing their content. I I still don't know that we're ever gonna actually get to that point. But I think the real opportunity right now is to double down on the human content. So do that owned versus rented audit. Do it this week. if rented is more than half then really

The owned growth engine is really the work that you need to focus on. So this is step number five of the seven steps to small business marketing success. Hopefully you're enjoying this series. You can go to our website at Duct Tape Marketing to find the rest of the episodes or the rest of the steps in this. and and obviously six steps six and seven are coming. These are all if you just want to get the ebook all in one shot.

It is dtm.world slash seven steps. you can get it for five bucks. if you want to actually talk to one of our consultants, it is duct tapemarketing.com consultation. So if these are making sense, that actually next step might make sense for you. Go grab the ebook or go grab a a strategy call with one of our advisors. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and hopefully we'll see you one of these days out there on the road.

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Your Marketing Probably Has All the Pieces. Here’s Why That’s Not Enough

Your Marketing Probably Has All the Pieces. Here’s Why That’s Not Enough written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Most founders who’ve been at this for a few years have pieces.

Some strategic clarity. A decent presence. Content running, mostly. Owned channels being built. Customer work happening somewhere.

The pieces are disconnected. Nobody owns the full picture. Different parts run on different rhythms. Reporting covers what each piece did in isolation, not whether the whole thing is moving.

That’s an assemblage. Assemblages are fragile in a specific way.

What makes an assemblage fragile

The founder gets pulled into client work for a month and it frays. A key person leaves and part of the picture walks out with them. A new tool shows up, gets bolted onto the existing structure, and the whole thing gets more complicated without getting more effective.

I use a simple test for this: if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, could anyone in your business run the marketing for 6 months? If the answer is no, the system isn’t installed. The assemblage is being held together by you.

A Marketing Operating System is the opposite. Integrated, documented, connected, running on a rhythm the business can maintain with or without the founder’s constant attention.

The four components

Integration

Strategy, messaging, the engines, and the Hourglass diagnostic all connect to each other. Nothing sits in isolation.

When the strategy updates, the messaging updates with it. When the Hourglass surfaces a gap at Trust, the Brand Engine responds with specific work. When the Growth Engine tests a new offer, the Customer Engine updates onboarding.

In practice: one source of truth for strategy and messaging, engines that are explicitly defined and visibly connected to that strategy, and a shared vocabulary the whole team uses. When any of those are missing, changing one thing doesn’t change the things connected to it. The system drifts.

Cadence

Most small businesses have emergencies and campaigns. Cadence is different.

What it looks like in practice: a 30-minute weekly review covering what shipped, what moved, what’s blocking. A 60 to 90-minute monthly performance review against the 3 engines. A half-day quarterly planning cycle. A full-day annual strategy refresh.

Cadence is unglamorous. It’s also the most reliable predictor of whether a Marketing Operating System survives or decays over time.

Measurement

Five to seven metrics connected to business outcomes. Brand Engine: presence health, content engagement, list growth. Growth Engine: inbound volume by channel, conversion by channel, owned vs paid ratio. Customer Engine: repeat rate, referral rate, customer lifetime value.

Reported consistently, in context, against a goal. A report that tells a story: what happened, why it matters, what we’re doing about it. Not 16 numbers in a spreadsheet that nobody changes a decision based on.

AI as a leverage layer

This is where AI actually belongs, and most advice on this is either too enthusiastic or too dismissive to be useful.

AI can’t make strategic judgments about your market, your customer, or your business. It can’t produce your point of view. The thinking is still your job.

Where it does belong: research, production, reformatting, analysis, and the communication mechanics layer (follow-up, scheduling, first drafts). Installed on top of a working system, AI compounds advantage. Installed in the absence of one, AI amplifies the confusion that’s already there.

That distinction is the one most founders aren’t being given clearly right now.

What it looks like when it’s working

A professional services firm I worked with did the Founder Portrait work, rebuilt around a single service line, installed Strategy First, built out presence, content, owned channels, and a Customer Engine, then ran the full system for 2 years.

Revenue up 60% on lower marketing spend than before. Paid acquisition dependence cut significantly. Meaningful recurring revenue from the Customer Engine. And the founder can step away for 2 weeks without the system breaking.

Because it’s no longer being held together by his attention.

That’s a Marketing Operating System.

One thing to do this week

Do the bus test honestly. Write down everything about your marketing that only you know. Who the real ICP is, because the document is out of date. What the actual priorities are, because the quarterly plan never got finalized. Which conversations are in progress.

Whatever ends up on that page is the gap between the assemblage and the system. That page is the first draft of the Marketing Operating System document.

---

The Marketing Operating System is the final step of a seven-step framework I’ve been refining for over 20 years. The full system, from the Founder Portrait through the MOS, is in my new ebook, “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” Get it at dtm.world/7steps.

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7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 4

7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 4 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode

Overview

Every founder I talk to is excited about AI content tools. Most of them should be a little nervous. The market is being flooded with content that reads fine and means nothing, and when you add to that pile, you do not rise above it. You disappear into it. In this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch makes the case that more content is the fastest way to become less visible, and that the fix is not volume. It is content built to do a specific job.

The episode lays out a practical content strategy for small business owners who are tired of publishing for the sake of publishing. John walks through three principles: picking content pillars anchored on your ideal client’s problems, organizing everything under hub pages that signal authority to both buyers and AI, and repurposing authoritative founder content rather than mass-producing generic posts. He also names the ingredient most businesses skip entirely: a point of view.

This one is for small business owners, marketers, agencies, and consultants who want their content to compound over years instead of evaporating in a week. If you have ever written a blog post because the topic seemed interesting that week, this episode will change how you plan everything that comes next.

Guest Bio

John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and the host of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. He is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author known for turning marketing strategy into a practical system small businesses can actually run. His books include Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, Duct Tape Selling, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine, the source of the Seven Steps framework featured in this series. Through Strategy First and the Marketing Operating System, John and his network of certified consultants help founders install strategy before tactics and build marketing that compounds over time. He works with business owners through fractional CMO engagements and shares field-tested, no-hype advice with the podcast audience each week.

Key Takeaways

• More content is not the answer. AI has flooded the market with readable but forgettable material, and adding to it buries your brand instead of building it.
• Content should do a job. If a piece cannot tie back to a clear pillar, you should not be producing it.
• Pick three content pillars at most, anchored on your ideal client’s problems or buyer segments. Three gives you range without dilution.
• Use the three-year test: if you would be bored with a topic in six months, it is a theme, not a pillar. Pillars are what you intend to own years from now.
• Organize content under hub pages. One page per pillar where your proof, case studies, and expertise live together, so both search engines and buyers see real authority.
• Hub pages serve your sales team too. They give you a credible place to send prospects who need the full picture on a topic.
• Repurpose authoritative content. An hour of focused founder conversation can become 50 to 100 pieces of content in the founder’s real voice.
• This is the best use of AI for content. Not to write the generic stuff, but to stretch the good stuff once you have captured it.
• The missing ingredient is a point of view. AI returns the opinion of the collective mass. It cannot give you the thing only you believe.
• A point of view does not have to be controversial. It just has to be different, and most founders already hold one they are simply not surfacing.

Great Moments

• [00:01] John kicks off episode four of the seven-part solo series and frames the core idea: why more content is making you less visible.
• [02:26] The first principle, picking pillars, and why your content needs to compound around your ideal client’s problems.
• [04:49] The three-year test for separating a real pillar from a passing theme, plus how hub pages organize it all.
• [07:12] The repurposing principle, including how an hour with a founder becomes 50 to 100 pieces of authoritative content.
• [09:24] The missing ingredient most businesses skip: developing a genuine point of view in a sea of AI sameness.
• [11:44] Your next steps and where to get the full Seven Steps ebook.

Memorable Quotes

• “Adding to that pile doesn’t help you. It buries you.”
• “If you’re bored with a topic in six months, it’s not a pillar. It’s a theme.”
• “Every piece of content should point to one of those pillars. If you can’t tie it to one, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
• “AI doesn’t develop points of view. It develops the point of view of the collective mass.”
• “It doesn’t have to be controversial. It just has to be different.”

Resources

• The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success ebook (under five dollars): dtm.world/sevensteps
• Talk to a Duct Tape Marketing advisor: ducttapemarketing.com/consultation

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:01.838)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, another solo show. No guest today. I'm doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. So if you haven't caught the past, I think I'm on episode four here. If you haven't caught the past three, go check them out at Duct Tape Marketing. but this is a series of seven podcasts. This is number four. Why more content is making you less visible? How's that for a topic?

So here's the AI content trap. most founders I talk to are really excited about AI content tools and frankly they should be nervous. and that is because the market is being flooded with generic, readable but forgettable content like crazy. and I think adding that pile doesn't help you, it kind of buries you. So

He here's the problem, and this and this has been the problem all along. Content or I'm AI didn't necessarily change this, it just made it worse in a lot of ways. most content that small business owners have produced, somebody convinced them to write a blog post every week. but it it's just kind of the idea of the week. It has no spine, there's no thought behind it. maybe the topic seemed interesting that week, but two years down the road later, it actually serves zero purpose. So

The thing about AI is it makes it easier to publish a lot of content, but that doesn't really fix this problem. It just amplifies the problem that the content was not that valuable or useful anyway. and I think that customers, prospects are definitely going to, they already are, recognizing AI content and and ignoring it, tuning it out completely. and and in s to some degree, that's actually hurting.

the brand when they see that that's what you're producing, that's all you're producing. So there are three principles when it comes to really content. less is more content, or at least the right content, I guess is probably a better way. I'm not necessarily saying you don't need content. I'm saying you need content to do a job and a very specific job. and that requires a couple principles. number one is picking pillars. So you want your content to actually

John Jantsch (02:26.158)

compound. and you want it to be around some things that make total sense to you. If you if you're an architect and you do residential work, you do hospitality work and you do commercial work, you want to actually start thinking in terms of what would what would be pillars of kind those three types of work that you do, those three types of use cases, those three types of probably buyers.

what would be the pillars that would actually drive those folks or or at least let those folks to understand you better? and and start developing topics around a collection of pillars as opposed to as opposed to just, hey, I'll write about this this week because it seems interesting, or because I can get a lot of engagement in social media over it because it's a hot topic. I I think.

again, there may be a case for that if you've got lots and lots of extra time, but you really want your content to do a job. So you want to pick three pillars at most, that that are really going to be anchored on your ideal client, or at least I should say your ideal client's problems. and every single one, every single piece of content should point to one of those. If you can't make it, if you can't tie it or have an angle that ties it to one of those, you shouldn't be doing it.

This is a discipline, quite frankly, because especially a lot of organizations that just tell junior marketers to create content without giving them those pillars. That's one of the best things you can do. If you have people in your organization producing content or an agency producing content for you, you should develop strategically as the founder, as the owner, you should develop what those three pillars are. and and again, that's a discipline that maybe starts with the founder sometimes, because

Sometimes the founder wants to write about the cool topic or the thing that hit them that that that week. if you're bored with a topic, you can use this as a three-year test, I'll call this. If you're bored with a topic in six months, it's not a pillar. It's a theme. Pillars are really what you're still the authority on, or what you're driving to be the authority on two, three, four years from now. Now you won't always get that right.

John Jantsch (04:49.748)

but it's sure it certainly should make sense to say, yeah, long term, this is going to be important for my ideal client and the problems they're trying to solve. And I think I think three is the sweet spot because it allows you to have a lot of range. it allows you to be seen as an authority, but it's a it doesn't get diluted. I mean, it forces you to make decisions about your content. All right, so that's the starting point, having that frame, those three pillars. next is.

And I've I've talked, I've written about this for years, but I talked about it in the last episode as well. You then want to organize that content under hub pages. so every one of your pillars gets a page that you're going to then start building more and more content on. So as you as you pick a theme or you pick a topic that goes or a subtopic that goes under one of those pillars, you start organizing them as pages. hub pages

Have so many uses. First off, it's the way to organize your content so that the search engines, AI understands that this is a broad topic, that you have with lots of authority, that there's lots of information here, that your expertise, that you have actually put your client case studies and real proof into this entire topic, which has a ton of value just from being foundable. Foundable? Findable. There we go.

but it also don't forget, human beings want to consume this content as well. Think about your sales team if you have one. These hub pages, excuse me, these hub pages really allow your sales team to be able to say, if you are, you know, thinking about buying a business and you need to understand what the tax implications of buying that business are, here's the entire topic around that that we have written on. So it allows

folks to to actually allows you to share and and you know have really a useful tool or or home that you can send people to that that demonstrates that you're a real expert. And here's the real beauty of and this is really kind of third third principle, which is repurposing. Once you have these pillars, once you build these pages,

John Jantsch (07:12.182)

Or once you start to build these hub pages, quite frankly, you don't have to wait till they're done. Once you start producing content that is focused and and and has a purpose around these pillars, then you can actually start leveraging every piece of that. in fact, we we actually what we will often do is we will work with a founder and we will just sit with them for an hour, maybe a couple of times.

and just ask them questions, let them talk about their products, their services, the problems, actual customer case studies, really develop a point of view about and a voice about what they do. and we're actually to able to take that video transcript and turn it into 50 to 100 pieces of content, including social media posts, over a period of time. And and it's really the easiest way today to leverage.

authoritative expertise, human content in the voice of the founder or the voice of of the technical expert that's going to talk about something that your business does. And and frankly, AI can't do that. and that that's really the beauty of then using these AI tools is once we have that authoritative content, we can actually easily use the AI tools then to repurpose that content. And I think that that's really the

that's really one of the best uses, quite frankly, of AI when it comes to content. So the the the next thing I want to talk about is that's really the foundation structure, right? You've got the the pillar pages or the pillar topics, I'm sorry, the hub pages for each of those pillar topics.

and then the the mechanism to repurpose a lot of that content. That's what we have to do today to make sure that we're putting it in places like LinkedIn and Reddit and all the places that that are that that are gonna send authority signals, you know, back about our content and about our business to the AI tools. But the missing ingredient for most businesses is a point of view.

John Jantsch (09:24.566)

So we're thinking in terms of this content that is certainly AI driven in a lot of cases, it's very generic, it's very balanced, it's very readable, it's a collection of what everybody else wrote. And frankly, it's forgettable because there's nothing that makes somebody stand up and say, Yeah, that's different. Why isn't anybody else in our industry saying that? Everybody else is saying the same thing. Or why are we actually doing this the same way that we've always done it?

How can we develop a point of view in our writing that that actually demonstrates that that we have some unique thinking? AI doesn't develop points of view very often. It develop, well, it develops the point of view of the collective mass, right? And so if you can actually think in terms of of you know, think in think in terms of of those people that, and I'm not suggesting this, but think in terms of those people that write very polarizing stuff. I mean, I

You know, a lot of the stuff that's gone on in politics of late, you know, is really people recognizing that writing something very polarizing repels a lot of people, but it also attracts a certain people who re are very attracted to that point of view. And I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying use that as an example. That if you can develop a point of view about a position, something the customer hasn't heard before, something that no one else in the industry is saying, it doesn't have to be that controversial.

It just has to be different. And I will say that that asking the right questions of AI can actually help you start to develop some of that point of view. you don't necessarily have to lock yourself in a room and think, how can I, you know, what what's different? Looking at the average, having a conversation with an AI tool about what everybody in your industry is typically doing. I mean, literally asking you questions like, you know, what is a

what is a generally accepted best practice in our industry that no one is actually pushing back on? things like that can actually then start surface some of the ideas or at least surface some of your thinking about actually putting a point of view into your writing. So here's your here here are your next steps. I want you today to think about three content pillars.

John Jantsch (11:44.13)

That would make total sense for your ideal client that would address either segments or problems that your ideal clients are actually having. and then think in terms of and again, you can use it, AI tools are great for research to get your thinking going. But you know, plug those thoughts, those themes in or those pillars in and start asking and about questions about what would be all the subtopics, what would be a way to write the ultimate guide to this

particular pillar topic and you'll start to get some ideas. Hopefully you'll dismiss some of them. Hopefully you'll add to them. Hopefully you'll think about this idea of a point of view that you can bring to each of those topics that others aren't saying. And and a lot of times that point of view exists. You just believe it and believe that your customers will appreciate it and understand it and know it when they see it. and you're not actually surfacing it. And that's a real key difference. So

this today's podcast was really built on this new ebook that I produced called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. You can pick it up for less than five dollars at dtm.world slash seven steps. If any of this is resonating, go get the whole thing. If you actually want to talk to one of our advisors about how we do some of the things I'm talking about today and we could do for a business like yours, it's just duct tapemarketing.com/slash consultation. So

Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 3

7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 3 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode

Overview

For 20 years, small business marketing came down to one question: can Google find you? That still matters. It is no longer the whole answer. Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude very specific questions, get a short list of names back, and trust what they read. If your business is not on that list, you are invisible at the exact moment someone is ready to buy.

In this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast (Step 3 of the Seven Steps of Small Business Marketing Success), John Jantsch walks through the new reality of AI search visibility and why it is a current problem, not a future one. He breaks it into three things every business has to get right: findable, credible, and retrievable. That means building real topic authority instead of stuffing keywords, turning your website into a selling tool instead of a brochure, using hub pages to own a topic, and treating your third-party presence as infrastructure rather than housekeeping.

This one is for small business owners, marketers, and consultants who suspect their website is stuck in 2019 and want a strategic, non-technical way to get found first. John also shares a simple test you can run in 60 seconds to see exactly where you stand against your competitors.

Guest Bio

John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and the host of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. He is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author known for turning marketing strategy into a practical system small businesses can actually run. His books include Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, Duct Tape Selling, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine, the source of the Seven Steps framework featured in this series. Through Strategy First and the Marketing Operating System, John and his network of certified consultants help founders install strategy before tactics and build marketing that compounds over time. He works with business owners through fractional CMO engagements and shares field-tested, no-hype advice with the podcast audience each week.

Key Takeaways

• Run the test: open an AI tool and ask the three questions your best customers ask before they hire someone like you. See if you show up, your competitors show up, or nobody does.
• AI search is a current reality, not a future one. Many businesses are still optimized for 2019, when ranking in Google Maps or search was the whole game.
• Three things matter now: be findable, be credible, be retrievable.
• Findable means topic authority you can prove with case studies, reviews, and real results, not a page built around three or four keywords.
• Credible means a homepage that makes the right buyer feel understood in seconds. Most founders have not read their own homepage in years.
• Retrievable means AI can actually read and describe you, which depends on real content, structured data, reviews, citations, and mentions across the web.
• Your website should be a selling tool, not a brochure. A brochure describes. A selling tool converts.
• Lead with a core message above the fold: who you serve and how you solve their problem better than anyone, not a description of your industry.
• Hub pages are your topic authority unit. Build one deep, organized guide on a core topic, linked to subtopic posts, and both AI and search engines reward it.
• Treat directories, reviews, and third-party mentions as infrastructure you build over time, not one-time housekeeping.

Great Moments

• [00:43] The 60-second test: ask an AI tool the three questions your customers ask, then describe what you find.
• [01:16] Why this is a current problem and a real opportunity for founders who act now.
• [03:39] The framework: findable, credible, and retrievable, and why it is strategic rather than technical.
• [05:42] Credible: does your site confirm the visitor is in the right place?
• [06:04] When did you last actually read your homepage?
• [08:25] Mining your reviews for the real problems you solve and the fears buyers carry.
• [10:45] Your core message above the fold and naming your ideal client.
• [12:34] Hub pages explained, using the kitchen remodel example.
• [14:48] Organizing reviews around topics as real proof only you can offer.
• [17:05] Run the test, screenshot your baseline, and where to go next.

Memorable Quotes

• “We are not reacting to the new realities of AI or Google. We are reacting to how people choose to buy today.”
• “A brochure describes. A selling tool converts.”
• “When is the last time you actually read your homepage?”
• “This is strategic. It is not technical. A lot of SEO folks love technical because technical is hard to confuse people with.”
• “A lot of people look at directories as housekeeping. Today it is more like infrastructure.”

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:03.01)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and no guest today. Again, some of you that have been following along may recall I am doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number three, step number three. So you can check out in the show notes the past sessions as well if you're just trying to catch up. But today I want to talk about this re new reality. our businesses have

possibly become invisible to AI search. In fact, I want you to do this test.

John Jantsch (00:43.394)

Go to Chat CPT Perplexity Claude, take your pick, right? Type in three questions that your best customers look for or ask when they are looking for a business like yours. Not anything about your particular business, but the the problems they're trying to solve, the the issues that they have. something that they would ask before hiring somebody you. Now, we you can stop the episode right now and do that. I'll wait. but.

John Jantsch (01:16.44)

Describe what mu what you find. think about what you find. Is it nothing? Is it you? are you dominating? That would be awesome, of course. that's a new reality. and this isn't a future problem. This isn't coming. this is a current one. Now, a lot of local businesses are still showing up in in Google and Google Maps, and that's still important, but it's it's fading a bit, right? people, I don't know if it's right or not, but people go today and when they see those like.

Best remodeling contractor in SoSo City, and AI tells them three companies, they believe it. because they've ty typically typed in who do kitchens in older home homes who blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's a very specific type of search now. And the results that come up there are the ones that are winning. so are you coming up there or are your competitors coming up there? I mean, this is this is how research is being done today. and and I think

A lot of small businesses are still optimized for, I don't know, 2019. when all you needed to do, boy, if you showed up on that Google Maps or you showed up in in Google search, then that, you know, that was really all it took. I think this is an opportunity. I mean, I think the founders who act now still absolutely have the the opportunity. It's kind of like when we first went online, we first started blogging, all those kinds of things.

The opportunity now is to actually be first in AI search. So what's changed? for 20 years, as I said, you know, Google, can Google find you? I mean, in a lot of ways, we got lazy because that was the only question you really had to answer. it it still applies. It's just not the whole answer anymore. so what we have to do or or we have to think in terms of is not just

search results, keyword phrases, all the things that were thrown around by SEO folks so much. We have to be findable, we have to be credible, and we have to be retrievable. Those are three things I really want to talk about. And and it's not I I'm not here to talk about how to hack SEO or how to hack, you know, GEO or whatever new term they're gonna come up w with, you know, for for these various engines. It's really just more a matter of how

John Jantsch (03:39.276)

We have to get our story out the same way we always have. It's just sometimes you have to adapt to the new realities of of the buyer. I mean, and I think that's something that doesn't get said enough, is that we're not reacting to the new realities of AI or of Google. We're reacting to how people choose to buy today. And that's really if you keep that in mind, and you keep in mind what they have available to them, that's what we need to really respond to and not just.

Some new platform or some new tool or some new trend or some new hype. All right. So findable. there really is traditional search, social search, and now AI mediated. I don't know what we would call it, search. Those are the three kinds of search that we have to to respond to today. And again, most people have really just thought about one of those. So topic authority.

Think about that. It used to be keywords, right? We we wanted to have a page that that we optimized for you know three or four keywords that people would search and that the search engines would would actually be keyed on. and today it's really more about topic authority, a deep, rich topic authority.

That you can actually prove that you were an expert in, not that you can write about, but that you can actually prove you have the results, you have the case studies, you have the reviews, you have all the things that would human, real human beings would be saying about your business.

This is strategic. It's not technical. And I think a lot of times that's what we've done. We've kind of defaulted to the technical aspects. And frankly, a lot of SEO folks love that because technical is hard. Technical is easy to confuse. strategic is not so much, frankly. And I think that that's the the the part, while it's a mindset shift, I think that's the part that's the real opportunity for folks. So credible.

John Jantsch (05:42.23)

Is the second part. So findable, topic authority, credible. Does your site confirm that they're in the right place? And a lot of times again, I I could talk to I'm blue in the face about websites and and the brochure aspect of them as opposed to the practical aspect of them, but

John Jantsch (06:04.588)

Here's a here's a question I love to ask people. When's the last time you read actually read your homepage? that's what I find is quite often the case. We we'll start working for somebody and we'll have lots of suggestions about ways to improve their homepage. And they actually are like, I didn't even realize we said that, or we don't even offer that service anymore. so you most founders haven't done it in years. And I and I think that quite often we run across sites that reflect the reality of a business three years ago.

I I actually ran into somebody said they haven't updated, they haven't changed one thing on their website since 2019. We are in 2026 today. you know, that that I don't even want to start with how much has changed since 2019. but but clearly that site is not going to perform. and and the thing is, a lot of people get very focused on design. Design's really not going to solve the problem. Yes, the site has to look like somebody.

thinks it's going to look, or that they're used to how to navigate, you know, how it looks. But it's really more about deep proof of real work and and a connection so that when the buyer or potential buyer shows up, says, you get me, or I I feel heard, or you understand the problems that I'm trying to solve. All right. So then the last one is retrievable. So we've got findable, credible,

And retrievable. So this is probably kind of a new one for many people. AI builds its answers from whatever is publicly available on a website, like your website content, structured data, third-party presence, reviews, citations, right? And so all of those things have to be there if if your content is

Very thin, if it is missing structured data, if it's if there's weak external presence, meaning that that people aren't linking back to it, people aren't talking about it. AI can can either find you or really can't describe you with accuracy. And that's why we really want to start talking about, you know, real FAQs. Go read every one of those reviews that you have gotten. plug them into an AI tool and ask that to to analyze and summarize the reviews that you've gotten.

John Jantsch (08:25.382)

many times you that that will be the the absolute gold mine of the problems that you really solve. And then the flip side of that, the fears that a client or your your clients at least were really worried about in in in engaging a company like yours or or your competitors. And I think that that's where we have to start thinking about real content.

That addresses those things because that's what people are searching. They're going out there and saying, I want to find a contractor that won't destroy my home, that won't let my dog out. I mean, they're asking very specific things like that. And that's what AI is trying to surface. And all it does is goes out there and and reads a whole bunch of stuff. and and in fact, we're seeing that businesses that that write that real stuff, the voice of customer, really putting their reviews

Out there as like, here's the problems we solve. Maybe didn't even have a great search presence before because search was dominated by companies that knew how to hack the algorithm. But AI doesn't care about the what Google used to care about. it really cares about retrieving the data to very specific searches that people are making today. So, all right, here are three things that you need to build.

Your website has to be a selling tool, not a brochure. Hub pages, something I've talked about for many years. And the beauty is they become more important than ever. So I'm going to review review that. And then the last one is third party presence. And that's a part that many business owners, I won't say they neglect, but it's just the hard part in a lot of cases. It's the part that you don't control, that you don't own. And so you have to be very intentional about making it happen.

All right. So the website, a brochure describes a selling tool converts. That's the difference, right? And so there are really four things that I think have to be there. They are a priority. there is an order to them. your core message above the fold. Here's who we serve, here's how we solve their problem better than anyone ever thought about. Not here's what we do. your ideal client needs to be named. It's like we serve and we are the best.

John Jantsch (10:45.848)

Better than anyone at serving XYZ. Very specific. Identify segments, whatever it is, identify them so that when somebody arrives there, they're like, Okay, you you work with people like me.

Heart stop on what's next, right? Not a menu, not contact us. One frictionless action for the person who's ready. Schedule a consultation. Download this free assessment. get a quote. don't have a dozen ways that people can think about contacting you. Have very active, not passive, very active. Here is why you should contact us. Here's what you'll get when you schedule. Here is the the

you know, tool that you can use to download to solve your problem. Have a very specific call to action.

Probably what I see more than anything is that first one. The core message is is either buried, generic, or missing entirely. I can't tell you how many sites I still run across that above the fold, first thing somebody reads is a description of what your profession is, what your industry is. We are accountants in XYZ City. and that was a old SEO holdover. but what somebody wants to know is who you serve.

How you solve their problem, how you how you solve their problem like nobody else ever dreamed of doing. That's what they need to understand first. All right, hub pages. So this is, I mentioned already, topic authority. This is your topic authority unit, is a hub page. And so the idea is if you think about a book, you've got a large body of work that is organized around chapters. And that's really what a hub page is. So if you have a topic,

John Jantsch (12:34.478)

Home remodeling kitchens, for example. that's a topic that somebody who wants to remodel a kitchen is going out there and looking for information about. So if you had the page that says everything you need to know about remodeling, but again, that's gonna be broken up into getting ready to remodel. Should you remodel?

Design considerations, appliances, pre-construction, construction, after finishes. I mean, a whole category of subtopics. And so the idea behind a hub page is somebody arrives at that page, maybe they just want to know about wallpaper today. but they are remodeling a kitchen. So they find that page, and then there's a subtopic on you know wall finishes. And so they jump over to that, but then they jump back to the hub page.

So, if when they want to talk about appliances or kitchen countertops, for example. And so this is like the entire guide, the ultimate guide to remodeling your kitchen, has all these subtopics that are essentially blog posts that you link out to. So this, but this page becomes the collection or the structure of all of that topic. And so what that certainly tells the AIs, sells the search engines has for years.

That this is an authoritative page on this topic that then has may it might have 10, 20, 30,000 words ultimately collected in a number of blog posts that are on subtopics. So it's it's probably more about it's not the it's not the content. Well, the content's important, but a huge part of it is the structure of the content. this is like a jumping off point for anybody who wants to know about that topic. And the AI tools as well as the search engines absolutely love that.

And the beauty from a practical small business owner standpoint is that's something you can structure, plan, take a year to build. It's like writing a book, as I said. it just has all of the topics organized on this one page. and you could start having case studies, you can start having look through all of your reviews, and somebody said about how clean you are, somebody said.

John Jantsch (14:48.154)

about your pricing. somebody said about your design. So you you all of a sudden can start organizing your reviews even around some of these topics. And that's that's what the AI tools want to see. That's what they they want to see, topic authority, topic expertise with real proof, not just 700 words that AI spun up, real proof that only you, you're the only ones who can actually talk about what that client got as a result. and so hub pages are

to me, really your secret weapon to dominate. We've done it for we've done them for many, many clients. And they rank have always ranked in SEO and they are always ranking now in AI searches because of the nature the the the real focus nature on a core topic. third party so AI doesn't just use your website.

I mean, really the search engines never did too. That's why p you hear people talk about backlinks and reviews and and getting other people in social media to talk about your products and services. That's always been important. So things like your Google Business profile, industry directories, reviews, mentions, citations across the web, those are all things that you do actually have a way to actively participate in. You don't control them necessarily, people write what they

want to write or going to write, say in reviews and mentions. But you do have the ability to optimize, to, to make sure that your information is correct in those directories. That you are your you you if you do searches in AI, you'll see there are certain directories and certain websites like Reddit and things that that some of the of of the AI tools actually rely on pretty heavily. And and those will change, evolve. They all, you know, they constantly are.

But you get a sense of some places maybe that you're not mentioned. Say how's, you know, again, going back to where I'm remodeling contractor, is a source that a lot of the AI tools depend on. It's an authoritative source. are you playing there? that that just gives you some some ideas on some third-party places. in a lot of ways, think about it as I think we've always thought about it as housekeeping.

John Jantsch (17:05.848)

To to be in those directories, to make sure that they were correct, that you didn't have the wrong phone number. A lot of people look at that as housekeeping. And I think today, in today's environment, it's it's more infrastructure. you know, it's something that you actually have to build, it's behind the scenes, it you know, it's not gonna pay off today. Long term thing that you need to to build as part of the infrastructure of your business. So if you didn't run that test, pause now and run that test.

Screenshot the baseline. Are your your competitors showing up at when you do a search that your customers were are likely asking? are you showing up? it just kind of gives you the picture of, you know, if you've ignored this, it gives you the picture of what you have to do. so that's really it today. I I will tell you that if if some of the things I talked about today, again, go get the free ebook. it's dtm.

world slash seven steps. I misspoke. We I think we're charging $4.99 for it tremendous amount of value. It's more of a workbook than an ebook. it'll give you lots of things to think about, lots of things to work on as well. So it's DTM.world seven steps. And if you just want to skip all of that and find out how working with us and and having us install strategy first in your business and then build a marketing operating system.

with you that you own that that can address the each of these seven steps, that is just duct tapemarketing.com slash consultation. So thanks for tuning in. next episode, episode step number five of seven is coming up. So thanks for tuning in. Hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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