[social_warfare]
SHOW NOTES
Hit a roadblock with your marketing?
In my experience, the biggest roadblock 90% of people hit with their marketing…
Isn’t their ads, isn’t their funnel, isn’t their offer…
It’s their messaging.
Most people think their copy is good and that they have a grasp on their ideal customer.
But in reality they’ve barely even scratched the surface.
To add to the traffic jam, they only put out content to check off a box, they adhere to a strict template, and they aren’t intentional with anything they create.
That’s NOT how marketing works.
You must be willing to go deeper, to continuously push the needle forward, to be innovative, and above all else you must provide value that your audience actually cares about.
In today’s episode, I’m going to show you how to bypass that messaging roadblock you’re stuck at in your marketing.
Is this the place you’re stuck at in your marketing right now? Send me a DM over on the ‘gram @emilyhirsh and tell me all about it.
If you want to take what you’ve learned today to the next level so that you can truly master your messaging and attract clients on autopilot, sign up for my FREE 3-part video training series Ads Like A Boss at marketingalwaysworks.com.
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Emily Hirsh:
Hello friends, how are you all today? I hope you are having a fabulous start to Q4. I can’t believe, but also, maybe it’s a good thing that we’re in the last quarter of 2020. Honestly, all things said, it hasn’t been that it’s been an interesting year, but it hasn’t been that bad for me at least. I’m very fortunate, but for a lot of people around me right now, too, like they’re just doing really well and growing, and it’s definitely pushed a lot of us, I think, to look at things differently and try new things, or try things that you wouldn’t have had to do before, but nothing, you know, that’s all. That’s all okay to do that. You know? So I don’t know. I can’t believe that we’re going into the holidays. I feel like at least to me it feels like it was just the holidays and now we’re going to be going into the holidays before we know it, crazy.
I just came off of a really fun weekend and I hope you guys got time to recharge and relax. I hung out with it, a new good friend who lives in Austin. And it’s funny, she’s somebody who I have talked about actually on the podcast before and somebody who I look up to in their content and their business and just an amazing entrepreneur. And now we’re friends and like hiking and getting coffee together, and it’s just so weird when that happens, when the people that you’re like, oh, like they’re so cool and then they’re just people and you hang out. So that was really fun. And we took our kids hiking, lots of unplugged time and time to recharge because we are in the middle of a launch here at Team Hirsh.
So today I’m going to talk about what I see as the biggest roadblock, the biggest thing stopping people from seeing success with their marketing. And I would go as far as saying 90% of people, maybe even higher, don’t have an exact number because it’s a very hard thing to actually measure, but almost everyone is struggling with this. And I see this from our clients that come to work with us. I see this from my students. I see this from people I have conversations with who are not a client or student of mine. And when I look at different marketing strategies and it’s that thing that’s really just stopping people from breaking through from getting that strategy that finally sells, that finally starts to take off, that finally starts to get momentum and not the hamster wheel of like a little bit of success, backtrack, a little bit of success backtrack, which is what so many people experience.
And I believe that part of the reason, a lot of people in my space that I am surrounded by struggle with this is because most of us are like bootstrapped, you know, make it work entrepreneurs. And so there are critical components to a business that then sometimes get skipped over because you’re having to do that because you’re having to bootstrap and pull it together and do everything yourself in the beginning and make it work and just like piecing together and it’s not really perfect. And you don’t necessarily have the funds or the time. So many people have, even myself included. Like that was my, that’s my story, where I had a newborn and I was trying to work and I was taking calls in the car and all of those things. And so I think that when that happens, you sometimes skip over critical pieces that you have to go back to because then you’re stuck and you’re not going to see success.
And so I also want to say this content is going to tie directly into the video that was released today, October 6th. Video one in our Ads Like A Boss Video Series. So if you haven’t got access to that, you can go to marketingalwaysworks.com, make sure you get access. The videos won’t be up for very long, but we have a video releasing on the sth, 8th and the 13th and tons of bonus content tied into that. I have content action accelerators that go with each video. So there’s like a resource that goes with the video so you can implement what I’m saying. I’m doing Q and A calls and a popup Facebook group. I have my team in there supporting in the Facebook group. So lots of fun stuff happening, marketingalwaysworks.com. Make sure you get access to those videos while they are available. They may never be available again. And I actually mean that because I don’t usually, if I do a video series again in the future, I do brand new, so it would be not this content.
So what I’m talking about today and the biggest roadblock in 90% of people’s marketing, see if you guys can guess, see if you can guess if you know me, is their messaging. So the reason I was inspired to talk about this, there’s two reasons. One, the first video in the video series talks through how to define your ideal customer avatar in a way that it relates to marketing because here’s the problem and the mistake a lot of people make is they’ll teach, they’ll take maybe like a basic business course, or they will know that they have to do this. So they do it like briefly, but then they have this big gap and separation between the definition of their ideal customer and what that actually means for their marketing material. And what I mean by that is not just like your sales page, but your podcast titles, your videos that you do, your social media, your webinar title, and your strategy itself in marketing, which we talk about in the second video, but there’s this disconnect.
And so I basically am helping people in this first video go out, talk to their ideal customer with specific questions. I have them fill out this a specific document, and then that ties into their marketing and is like a phase two of defining your ideal customer. I was also inspired to talk about this because planning this launch, not like so much of my time and my team’s time has been around the messaging, has been brainstorming sessions around titles of things, around what we’re going to teach, around tying the content. So it’s all cohesive together around updating my webinar, around the sales page copy, around every like everything. So much of what we’re doing is messaging. Of course there’s strategy, but I know launch strategy really well.
And so we already had the foundational strategy, but from, so I launched live about a year ago doing this same format of a video series. And the difference between the year to now is all like all the upgrades, our messaging, our now me taking, okay we’ve had a couple hundred people go through Ignite, taking the feedback. I will go, for example, I will go and I’m planning a training and I go in Ignite. I look at all the support calls. I read all the questions and I’m like, where’s the theme? What are people asking? Where is that happening? Okay. Now let me take that and create my content with it.
So I feel like people treat sometimes messaging as like a one and done thing. Like, okay, I define my ideal customer. I know who I’m targeting. I think I got it specific enough, but you probably really didn’t. Now I’m going to move on to the marketing and I’m going to focus on the strategy and that’s great. And you need to do that, but then when it comes time to like choosing webinar, titles, writing emails, writing social media, writing Facebook ads, creating strategies in the future that you might need to change. I think people get in this template, in a place where they’re just doing it to cross it off a box. And I want to everyone to stop doing that because I think that you should question why. Why am I writing this email? Okay.
The goal is to get somebody to feel this way, to take this action, to understand this point, to feel this pain, to acknowledge this, whatever that goal is. And then that’s why you’re writing the email, or why am I posting on social media three or four times a week? Like really? Why are you and I, and I have to, I talk about this with my marketing team often because I’m like, I do not want our social media to feel like we are just crossing boxes off and like, okay, we do a quote, we do this post, we do this post duh, duh, duh, like every week, the same thing. We have to adapt to our marketing. We have to adapt to what they need right now, what they are saying to us, the feedback we’re getting. And then if our post doesn’t have a purpose, I’d rather not post.
And so everything like we have to come back to messaging consistently and go deeper with it. And the reason why you constantly have an opportunity to go deeper with it is you’re constantly getting feedback. So you’re constantly getting feedback, whether it’s like I was talking about inside of your course or inside of your service, where clients or customers are actually talking and having discussions and using language and you can review that and look at the questions being asked and where there might be gaps or where they still need help or what they’re attracted to.
You can review webinar chats that you have when you do a live webinar. Okay. What are people saying? What are the questions they’re asking? What did you miss in your content? Where did you leave a gap or a hole? Where did you leave people feeling overwhelmed? You can go back every single time you do a webinar and there’s room to update it with that type of content. You can look at what are the questions people are asking on your sales page or about your sales page or about your product that you sell. How do you then take that and update the information on your sales page? What are the objections people have to buying?
I will so frequently meet with Aandra on my team who does our sales calls, because I want constant updates about those conversations. What are people saying when they come in to us like to apply? What stage of their business are they at? What are they attracted to? Are they the ideal client? And if not, where in my marketing did I mess up and attract maybe not the right client in some cases, or if they are the right client, how do I do more of that? What do those conversations look like? Where are people hesitant on the calls? Where they like a hell yes on the calls? So I’m constantly getting feedback, and then I’m taking that feedback and I use it for all of our marketing.
And this is where I’m so against template and marketing, because I think it doesn’t allow you that. It’s like, I want you guys to kind of practice taking a step back, taking a deep breath and questioning did I get it deep enough on whatever that is?
In this case, your ideal customer, like, we’re not just defining your ideal customers, you can cross it off and never do it again. That’s not the point of it. We’re defining your ideal customer and then we’re continually refining it and going deeper. I don’t mean that should change. So if you’re targeting moms like then in a year from now, that’s going to change. No, what you’re going deeper with is their objections to buying from you, their fears, their current state, where they’re at right now, their biggest frustrations, where they’re uncomfortable or afraid in their day to day, where they have maybe already hired help for the problem you solve and are not satisfied with it and you need to figure out why.
All of those things that are things that you’re constantly getting feedback, whether it’s responses to your emails, Facebook group engagement, actual direct conversations with your students or clients, whatever. However you get feedback, comments on your social media, DM’s. You need to constantly take that, refine your ideal customer, and then don’t just stop there. Implement that in your marketing. And so with our launch, how we decided everything, and if you participate in this, I think you’re going to see the cohesiveness. I think it’s way better than last year. And last year it was so good. People were like, “oh my gosh, there’s so much value in this I would have paid to be a part of this,” because of the value I bring. And we’re doing that here as well, but I think we took it to the next level with like, okay, what does video number one need to be? What does video number two, three? And then we’re doing a live training after that. And we took that to the next level because we were so obsessed with the messaging.
I brought in Aandra on my team who does sales, I talked to the Ignite Success Coach who does the weekly support calls, I personally went and analyzed a bunch of things, I talked to my marketing team, the Facebook ads manager who runs my ads, like all of us collaborated. And most of the conversation yes, of course, there’s conversation around strategy, what ads we’re going to run, the dates, the budget, the goals, all of that. But there’s a lot of conversation around that and positioning because that is everything. If you can’t get that right, it doesn’t matter if you have the best strategy. It doesn’t matter if you are consistent with your social media, if you have emails. If you do it all right, but you miss the messaging, you will be hitting a roadblock. And that’s where so many people are right now.
And then I talked to when I will go to a sales page, so here’s an example. In the last month, inside of Ignite I did two different sales page reviews for people. They asked me to do a loom video, look at their sales page, and I did. Both times almost all the feedback I had for them was around messaging. Sentences that were confusing. Paragraphs that didn’t go deep enough. I wasn’t clear what the problem that you solve. You didn’t convince me to buy necessarily from certain statements. It was too not concise, not clear, not hitting pain points. And so all of the suggestions I had was around messaging. They update that and their conversions go up.
And messaging is everywhere. Messaging is in your ad copy. your headlines, your landing page, your webinar itself, your product page itself, your sales page, your emails, your social media, your podcast titles, your video titles, the content you actually put out there. Like I am very, you guys maybe don’t see it necessarily because it happens so much behind the scenes, but I’m so intentional with the content I put out there. And I would never put out here, for example, you probably notice here on the podcast, I don’t put like very beginner, basic Facebook ad content. I won’t say, you know, here is how to run a campaign, or here’s how to set up a Facebook ad. I’m talking very much strategy. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want someone who’s at a basic level for Facebook ads, cause they’re perfect for Ignite if they need that support, but I know my customer is already convinced that Facebook ads are something they need. So my content is not here to be like why Facebook ads are awesome. My content is here to show you how to take your Facebook ads to the next level, no matter where you are today.
And so I’m intentional with all of the content we put out. My podcast, which my podcast drives my social media and a lot of our emails, but all of that content is intentional. It’s also often created from conversations I have with people. I don’t just sit and go like, this is what I feel like talking about today. Of course I do feel like talking about it, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing very good podcast episodes, but a huge percentage of my podcast come from inspiration of either conversations I had with students, conversations I had with clients, or when I’m on a team meeting and I’m hearing about client scenarios and I get podcast ideas, or when I’m at an event. That’s another time I get a ton of ideas and I have conversations with people and I think, and I realize, oh my gosh, I didn’t even think about that problem that everybody’s experiencing with marketing, I’m going to do a podcast on it. And so I’m constantly intentional with the content I create and the messaging I put out in the way I attract people, because you have to be okay?
There’s also constantly room for me to improve. I could have just taken last year’s videos, that script, that content, that layout, changed a few things and rerun it. But we overhauled everything because in a year, are you kidding? I’ve gotten so much feedback. I’ve had, a year ago, just over a year ago, when I first launched Ignite, I mean we had zero students in there. Now we’ve had over 200 and I have so much more feedback. We do calls around Ignite students now, like I have Aandra’s feedback on it. And so if I would have just done that and been like, okay, cross it off, I’ve got the videos, let’s take those emails and update them just a little bit, and barely update the webinar, I would have been massively missing the mark.
And so instead, we spent hours going over and myself, I’m like, oh my god those scripts, the scripts to the video series took me literally 10 hours probably or more to finish the content in them and then there’s content upgrades to every single one. So if you’re not in there just at least go in there and tell me if you like it or not, because I put so much into it. But I spent hours into updating that content versus just taking last year’s, checking things off a to do list, and doing it because I thought I had to. I think that’s where people fall into a trap. Marketing is overwhelming, and so I don’t blame you for falling into that trap because marketing is so overwhelming that at some point we have to be like, oh my gosh, there’s all these moving parts, all these pieces to this launch, like I’ve got to template it somehow, or I’ve got to just cross it off, but question why you’re doing everything. What is the purpose of that email? What is the purpose of that social media post? What is the purpose of that webinar? How do you want people to feel when they read it, or experience it, or hear it? And does that line up with the objections and the fears and the frustration that your ideal customer feels and do you know that? And can you go deeper with that?
So that’s what I’m helping people do in video number one of the video series. So if you haven’t, come play with me in the Facebook group. I’ll be doing bonus Q and A’s after each video to answer your unique questions. And then, like I said, there’s so much content resources. We actually have a challenge with video one where somebody actually goes and talks to an ideal customer and I give you guys interview questions to ask, and then a whole template to fill out to actually put in the information that they said so you can then go use it for your marketing. I don’t know if you guys remember, I don’t know, maybe it was four or five months ago, I did a bunch of avatar interviews and so I took that process that I was doing and then how I took that and related into my marketing material. And that’s a lot of video number one. So marketingalwaysworks.com if you want to tune into that. Thanks so much for listening today guys, and I’ll see you on the next episode.