[social_warfare]
SHOW NOTES
What is the most important thing in marketing?
For me, it has to be MESSAGING.
You’ve got your targeting, strategy, and offer down… but none of that matters if you’re not able to nail your messaging.
I recently finished the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and the main takeaway I got is that people really only care about themselves.
So what does this have to do with messaging?
In your messaging, you must always keep in mind that people care the most about what you can do for them and how you can give them what they want.
I see this mistake all the time…
People market what they think their audience needs instead of marketing what they want.
You can give people what they need in your offer and in your service, but you have to think about what they want.
In this episode, I’m going deep into why messaging matters, plus…
- The process I go through with my team to make sure our messaging is on point
- Common messaging mistakes I see marketers make
- How you can fine tune your messaging to connect with your ideal audience
Listen in, and then SHARE with your best-business-friends! (Tag @emilyhirsh on Instagram for a quick shoutout in stories!)
Key Points:
[2:18] Messaging and Marketing to what your audience wants.
– Messaging is the most important thing in marketing
– You’ve got your targeting, strategy, and offer but none of that matters if you’re not able to nail your messaging
[4:43] In every opportunity … I consider the other person’s interest and their problems
– This will create that connection with them
[5:12] People market what they think their audience needs instead of marketing what they want
– Market what they want
– Give them what they need in your offer and your service
[15:45] If you’re asking for somebody’s time and their money, then what are you promising that they will get?
[18:57] The first step at the Hirsch process…
– Know your audience, know their current state, know what their dream come true is and then speak to what they want.
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Emily Hirsh:
Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing my friends, you guys doing well? I am having one of those days right now. Those moms and dads maybe out there, but mostly moms because of the nursing thing, will understand. I put my baby down and he wakes up in 10 minutes and I go to start to do something and he wakes up and I’m interrupted, put him down, wake up. This is probably one of the hardest things for me in having a newborn is that there’s no productivity when your baby’s having a day like that and you just have to let it go and be like, “Okay, I’m going to get nothing done today.” The whole week has been like that, so it’s rough and he also only wants me, so I give him to my husband for like 20 minutes and then he starts crying and he wants me. So I’m having one of those days and recording this podcast I was like, I got to go do this because it’s one of my commitments and I need to cross something off so that I can feel good about myself today and do something for myself. So that is currently what’s happening in the Hirsch household on lockdown over here with no help and three kids, craziness.
Today I am talking about messaging and marketing to what your audience wants. I’m actually super excited to talk about this because I think it’s so important. I think messaging is probably the most important thing in marketing. You’ve got targeting and strategy and your offer, but none of that matters if you’re not able to nail your messaging and to speak to your ideal audience in a way that connects with them, that moves them, that gets them to take action, that gets them to see you as an expert, that gets them to do whatever you’re asking them to do in your ads, in your emails, whatever it is.
Messaging is so, so important. I just finished the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It was pretty good. I had a little bit of a hard time with it because it’s so old and it’s very basic. The references in the books if you have ever read it are like, “When Abraham Lincoln did this…” and like, “…at the lumberyard in my business” and I’m like, Oh my God, it’s pretty old. But I listened to it on an audio book and the concepts in it are very simple and basic. You’d think you’re doing them, but you’re not. Basically the summary of it is, people really only care about themselves and what everything they’re doing is going to do for them. So when you’re talking to somebody, when you’re talking to a potential customer is to make sure you’re talking about what they want to talk about, what matters to them.
And, I mean there’s more things in the book, but that was a big concept of it is you have to consider the other person more than yourself to really stand out to connect, to be a leader, all of those things. Give praise, remember people’s names, position things so it’s to their benefit were a lot of the takeaways from that book. Which is really simple and so at first I was like, well this is stupid because I could have read a checklist and gotten all the takeaways from this book. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like this is so simple that I could do this way better and I’m not. But it’s so simple you think you’re doing it.
So this podcast is kind of inspired by that. But I’m going to spin it off because basically my takeaway from the podcast was in every opportunity, whether I’m on a webinar or speaking to a potential client, speaking on stage in a conversation with somebody. If I consider them and their interest and their problems and what they’re experiencing with my conversation and I make it about them and I listen to them, it will work really well and it will create that connection that you’re always trying to create in all those different instances.
So with marketing, here’s what I think is so important and I’m titling this market to what your audience wants. Because I see this mistake all the time where people market what they think their audience needs instead of market what they want. This is so important. You can give people what they need in your offer, in your service, but you have to market what they want. I hear a lot of times people say something like, well, I am the weight loss coach who doesn’t teach calorie counting and calorie restricting and all this stuff and like their weight doesn’t even matter. So actually what matters is that they eat healthy and they take out grains in their diet, blah blah blah. And so that’s what people really need and so I’m going to market that. And they don’t necessarily say it like that, but I hear a lot of people who are like, well I’m better than what’s out there, what’s being marketed out there.
So actually people don’t need that, they need this and so that’s what I’m marketing, is kind of how it works. And this is very true and I’ve seen this happen a lot with health because there are so many different opinions on the way people should be healthy. But the problem is if you’re getting that deep in the layers, you’re not marketing what people want, you’re marketing what they need. You know what they need because you’re an expert, but they are not. So you have to step back and think about where people are with their current state and market what they want. You have to bring them in on those desires and those problems that they have and then you can give them what they need with your delivery. But they’re never going to trust you to give them what they need if you don’t market what they want first.
So some examples of this are in the health industry. If you know that people need to eat healthy and they need to cut out grains and that the keto diet is terrible, but you know that because you’re an expert, you’ve studied it. I’m not saying that keto diet is terrible, I have mixed opinions about it. I’m just using an example. Some people really hate it, some people really love it, different experts think different things. But the reality is, the buzz out there is what people want is to lose weight if you’re in the health industry. I’m not saying every single one, sometimes they want to solve a different problem like get fit or whatever, but let’s say your ideal customer’s main goal is to lose weight, but you’re like, well you actually don’t need to lose weight, losing weight is a byproduct of being healthy. What you need to do is clean up your diet and do this and this and this.
So then you jump over that marketing of what they want, losing weight and connecting with them about the results that you’re getting, and you jump into what you think they need. You will miss so many people doing this because they are not experts. They do not see the world from your perspective where you’ve seen all these patients or all these clients and you’ve seen the results and you’ve done studying. They are just your audience who have had all of these various experiences and they might be living their life saying, “I really need to lose weight. That is my number one problem. I want to lose weight.” And then you’re saying, “Well no, losing weight is a byproduct of being healthy you need to get healthy.”
Who do you think they’re going to listen to though? An ad that’s like you don’t need to lose weight, you need to get healthy or an ad that’s like, let me show you how to lose weight. Now there’s a lot of controversy out there with ads. I’m being hypothetical here you guys, I’m being hypothetical with this because a common place I see this is in the health industry. I saw this a few months ago with a friend, she hates the keto diet and she was like, “Well I cannot outwardly talk about the keto diet, but I have a version of it that I teach to my clients.” And I was like, “Yes, but most people want to master the keto diet because the keto diet is really hot right now and people are talking about it. So why don’t you get people in?”
Not saying I’ll teach you the keto diet, but at least like not bashing it because you’re going to lose people bashing it. If they think they want that but they need something else it’s your job to give them what they need later on, but you have to market what they want. You still solve that problem for them. So market the problem you’re solving without giving them what you think they need too early. Another example would be someone who wants to make money, they want to grow their business, but maybe you know that actually what they need to do is learn how to connect better with their audience. But what ad do you think is going to do better? The one with messaging saying learn how to have a successful business, how to make money, how to thrive, how to build a six figure seven figure business, get clients.
Those are all key things that people want or do you think saying you don’t need any of that, learn how to connect with your audience, learn how to grow an audience? Which one is more polarizing? The first one is way more polarizing and will get people’s attention way better because that’s what they want. Here’s an exercise that I do every time I want to launch something new. So if I want a new webinar, when we created our self-liquidating funnel, when we created a new opt in, anything that I create, I go through this exercise so I can work through it with my copywriter. I write down the current state that this lead who I’m trying to attract is in. And the key is making it in the language they would talk with their friends in line at a coffee shop or over dinner or over wine.
Sitting there talking like what would they say? Their current state. So for example mine might be, “I need to figure out how to get Facebook ads to work for me. I need to figure out how to market my business so I can make more money. I need to figure out how to double my ad spend and still double my results.” Right? Those are things that people, my audience might say. If you’re in the weight loss industry people would be saying, “I need to lose 10 pounds. I need to be able to sleep better at night. I need to have more energy. I’m so tired of having low energy.” What would they say to their friends when they’re complaining about their current state? Where are they right now? What is their current state? And making sure you’re not changing it into your language, but you’re taking it out of the voice that this person would say if they were just in a casual conversation.
Then I write down their “dream come true” and I write down these two things, “current state” and “dream come true” and usually I have a couple. And so the dream come true would be for me our client’s dream come true would be, “I’m spending money every single day on Facebook ads and I’m making money back every single day with Facebook ads. I’m spending money every day and I’m getting sales every day. I’m meeting all my sales goals. My business is growing every month. I’m making a million dollars in my business using Facebook ads to market.” Those would be some of my clients’ dream come trues. If you’re in the health industry, it would be, “I feel great every day. I have so much energy, I’ve lost my weight, I’ve hit my weight goal and I’m able to maintain it. I’m sleeping really well at night.”
What would your person say? If you are a coach and it’s to other business owners, it would probably be, “I’m signing dream clients. I am growing my business every month. I am communicating with my team. I am connecting with my family while also running my business.” What is your client and customer’s dream come true? So every single time that I launch something new, even if it’s just like an opt in, if it’s a new lead magnet or an opt in, I do this brain dump with me and my marketing team to then give it to my copywriter to figure out who we’re trying to attract. And the reason this ties into the book and how I tie all this with that book, How to Win Friends and Influence People is that the reality is people care about what you can do for them.
People care about what result you can get for them, about what you can do for their life, for their happiness, for getting them more money. Whatever it is, the reality is people are pretty selfish and they care about themselves. That’s even true for you probably, it’s true for me. I’m not going to invest my time in watching a webinar or talking to somebody or buying something, especially when I’m buying something if it’s not going to massively improve the quality of my life or solve a problem that I have or make me more money or make me happier or make me healthier. I believe it will do that with everything.
So when you’re marketing, what people do and they make the mistake, and I’ve done this, it’s very easy to do this. What I want is to bring awareness to this so you don’t do this is, they will talk about the offer, so they’ll be like, “I have a course and it has six modules about this, this and this, and you get live coaching and you get a Facebook group and all this stuff.” And they list out what the offer is, but honestly who cares about all of that? If I don’t know what that’s going to do for me, what result is that going to get me if I go consume all of that content? So it’s more like this course has six modules and video trainings that’s going to show you how to get two new clients every month in your business or how to make money every single month using Facebook ads or how to get to your ideal weight within 60 days of implementing this.
I’m totally spitballing, I’m just throwing stuff out there, but do you see the difference between just saying, “I have six modules that cover this, this, this and this topic.” compared to, “I have six modules that are going to get you this result when you consume it.”? That’s true for a webinar, what is the promise? Even if it’s a free thing, what is the promise? If you come to this webinar and you watch this webinar, what will you walk away with? Not, I’m doing a webinar here’s the three points I’m teaching on. Sure you can say that, but you still have to give a promise of what somebody’s going to receive by either consuming your content, buying your offer, or buying your service. If you’re asking for somebody’s time and their money or maybe it’s just their time through a free offer, then what are you promising that they will get?
You have to think about it from their perspective, what is their current state? What is their dream come true? Why should they care about this? They only care about themselves and bettering their own life, their own happiness, their own health. So how do we speak to that in everything we do? That’s where marketing to what your audience wants is so important and so many people make this mistake and they don’t mean to. The problem is you’re so deep in it. If you’re a health coach or you are a business coach or a digital marketer or somebody who does what you do every single day all day, you have thousand times more knowledge on that subject than your audience does. And so don’t forget that. Zoom out, tune into that current state, that dream come true for them and then make sure when you write copy and you have messaging, it’s speaking to those points.
When I wrote my book at the end of 2019, I went through this exercise very deeply to talk about our ideal reader. Every time I’d come back to write a new chapter, I would read it because I would want to get into the place of, “Who is this person reading the book? What current state are they in? What is their dream come true?” and get really connected to that so that when I then wrote my book, I was speaking to that person because I could so easily get into the mode of talking to my team who knows digital marketing so well. Or talking to a friend or myself. It’s going to be different and so you have to know who you’re talking to and then market what they want. Don’t try to give them what they need too early on because you will lose people. Because people only care about what they want and what it’s going to do for them, what problems it’s going to solve.
So that was one of my takeaways from this book. I do recommend the book, it’s a little bit heavy. I did it on audio book and like I said, my first reaction was kind of like, well that was stupid, I could just read a checklist that told me all those things like remember people’s names, be nice. But it was good. It was the more I thought about it, the more I was like there is more room for me to do this better and be more strategic with this. So it’s a good classic book, but at the end of the day, the takeaway of that book is people care about themselves, about what you can do for them, about what your offer can do for them and that’s all. They don’t care about anything else. And so you have to remember that in your marketing and market what your audience wants because messaging is so important.
Your ad copy, your sales page copy, your landing page copy, your webinar titles, your course titles, all of that is the most important part in marketing, in my opinion. And so because every time I see something not working, it’s messaging almost always. Because strategy targeting all of that, it doesn’t matter if the messaging is not there. So that’s the first thing you have to solve, it is the first step of the Hirsch process: know your audience, know their current state, know what their “dream come true” is, and then speak to what they want.
Thanks so much for listening today guys. If you want support with this, so this is something our copywriter does with all of our clients when they launch something new. We get on a call, she goes through a series of questions so that we can make sure our copy team is able to write to what your audience wants. Whether it’s writing what they want with them getting, downloading a free opt in, signing up for a webinar or actually purchasing your offer or product. So if you want support like that in your own marketing, you can go to helpmystrategy.com to see if you qualify to work with our team and I will see you all on the next episode.