Historical article: The original course trial link is no longer available. The marketing lessons below are retained without that offer.

In my last post for Process Street (and the first after being hired as a full-time content writer!) I took a look at the Duct Tape Marketing System and published the Duct Tape Marketing System review previously, but today I’m bringing you the top five hacks from this innovative course by small business expert John Jantsch. These are points John made that resonated with me as a unique take on something that seems obsolete or a new angle on something too well-established to be changed.

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There are many things that Process Street, our process management platform, can be used for including onboarding new clients or launching a website. But an interesting use case that has cropped up recently is using Process Street for managing podcast releases.

Many podcast publishers run a checklist to help them manage the recording, publishing and promoting of each podcast episode. Checklists are a great tool to make sure things get done right, and since Process Street is the ultimate recurring checklist software, it only makes sense that podcasters would gravitate towards our platform.

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The Currency of the Internet

Pretty much everything is free on the internet.

One of the reasons you like it so much is because you can get a ton of value for just the price of your monthly contract. With millions of books, videos, podcasts, services and apps around for free, it’s no wonder people are hesitant to part with their money without trust and priming first.

So how can people built sustainable businesses by giving away so much good stuff for free?

Well, there are generally two ways.

1. They sell ads, you probably know this model well if you have ever used Google or Facebook.
2. They capture leads with the hope to sell you something in the future.

In this post, we will be focusing on the latter: Lead generation.

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Historical review: The original course trial and Process Street bonus links are no longer available. This review is retained for historical reference, not current offers or pricing.

Note: This is a review of the Duct Tape Marketing System course and coaching program. If you are interested in a review of the book, check out the Amazon reviews here.

Why I’m writing this review

Recently I was hired by Vinay as the new content creator for Process Street. With a history of ghost-writing product descriptions and other mundane copy I was excited to get underway with something more personal and varied. Unlike in the past, this job needs me to research topics I don’t know much about. I hadn’t heard of more than two big marketing blogs and was lost for words when asked my opinions about them.

It’s scary having to talk about business and marketing when you’re a music technology graduate, but my first checklist was, coincidentally, relevant to my skills! Intentionally or not, my next project involved writing about a marketing course that is applicable to plenty of different people, teaching the basic theory of what seems to be a science of holding attention spans that have shrunk down massively since the introduction of all this easy-to-read content on the internet. Writing this review (and another upcoming post) gave me my first freedom to write as myself and expanded my marketing knowledge hugely.

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Organizations, including businesses, do not exist in a vacuum. Every organization is embedded in a wider web of societal, political, and environmental systems, that spans from smaller local networks to expansive and complex global systems.

As IAG puts it:

“Sustainability is neither a program nor an initiative, it’s considered simply good management.”

This statement recognizes the link between an organization and the social, environmental and economic wellbeing of the communities in which they operate.

An organization’s relationship to the society and wider environment in which they exist and operate is a key factor in their ability to succeed and thrive. It can also be an insight into their general performance.

ISO 26000 is a set of guiding principles for businesses and organizations to use to steer them in a more socially responsible direction.

In order to better contribute to the health and welfare of their supporting societies and environments, businesses must enforce principles of ethical and transparent behaviour.

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It’s no secret that documenting and analyzing your business processes is vital to creating a healthy business.

Yet, despite the benefits of bpm software and business process mapping being readily talked about, value stream mapping doesn’t get the same share of attention.

This is a mistake.

Value stream mapping is just as, if not more, important to reducing waste and increasing your business’ efficiency than standard process mapping.

That’s why I’ll be showing you how to make a value stream map from start to finish, with no wasted time and no needlessly confusing terms.

Let’s go.

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SWOT: Whether or not the acronym conjures images of riot gear and armored vehicles for you, we are of course talking about a business methodology for evaluating the internal and external factors governing the performance of your business.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. A SWOT analysis is a way of evaluating a part of (or even a whole) business, based on the criteria of each of the words in the acronym.

If you just want to dive right in and skip the details, here’s the template, as promised:

When you actually run it, conditional logic will show only the tasks relevant to you, to save you a whole lot of manual work and messing around in the long run.

If you’re interested in learning how to use the template, plus some best practice SWOT principles, real-world use cases and some post-SWOT advice, read on.

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If you have a problem, it’s in your best interest to ensure that trying to solve that problem doesn’t end up causing more problems. This is a good way to think about low-code development platforms.

Each business has its own set of tools for solving problems and getting things done, and for the most part, these problems can be solved by existing commercial apps.

But of course, there are certain needs that off-the-shelf solutions cannot meet, and for these needs a business could approach the problem a few different ways.

If a proprietary tool doesn’t exist, then the best option may be for the business to try and build a solution themselves. This is often done from scratch, and it’s called software development.

That’s fine, except it costs a lot of money, takes a long time, and is difficult to make changes once things are in motion. It also means everything gets more complex, because it’s not just the development team you’re bringing onboard, but designers, testers, data analysts and many others as well.

The simple truth is that it takes a small village to develop good software with conventional methods.

However, there are tools that are designed to give businesses the freedom to build their own solutions, without all of the excess baggage.

These tools are known as low-code development platforms.

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We’ve all felt overwhelmed by advertisements and burned out by peer pressure. Most of us also want to influence people’s decisions to try and get a certain outcome.

That’s where nudge theory comes in.

Less intrusive than advertising and so widely applicable that it’s seen implementation in everything from architecture to politics and charity drives, nudge theory is a great way to present choices to your audience in a way that subtly promotes the one you want them to make.

So, stick around to learn what nudge theory is all about and see how you can use it to influence decisions without making your audience feel like they’re being forced into it.

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“We’re here for YOU“, the sign in front of me mocked as I waited my 22nd minute in line at the local store. We could all hear the staff chatting in a back room (a team-wide “lunch break”), discussing the weather while the rest of us silently fumed.

It’s horrible when a business doesn’t put their customers first.

That’s the problem that an omnichannel approach is designed to solve.

Following up from Whitney Blankenship‘s post about omnichannel marketing in e-commerce, we here at Process Street decided to tackle the subject as a whole and show what it means to be an omnichannel business in action.

From theme parks to banks, we’ve got a little of everything. Before all that though, there’s something we need to get straight…

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