[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

Time for a hard truth my friends: your audience doesn’t care about you.

It might be hard, but it’s the reality we’re in.

Too often, marketers make the mistake of highlighting themselves in their messaging. They’ll go on and on about their story, how they got to where they are today, their expertise, all the technical pieces of their offer and why they think it’s so great…

That’s not how you connect with your audience and convince them to buy.

You do that by focusing on THEM.

You need to highlight their fears and frustrations, hit on their pain points, and most importantly, you need to focus on the RESULTS that your offer will get them.

That’s how you hook ‘em and reel ‘em in.

It’s easier said than done, and this is something that we need to continuously strive to improve in our marketing (myself included!).

In today’s episode of The Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast, I’m diving into the importance of shifting the focus from you to your customer, and how to apply a filter to ensure you’re nailing this in all of your messaging.

After tuning in, shoot me a DM on Insta (@emilyhirsh) answering this question: what’s one area of your messaging you could improve to focus more on your customers?

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello there. What is up? How are you guys doing? I have been feeling on fire this week. I have had a crazy week in terms of a schedule. I had three different interviews on podcasts and one was for a summit, and then I had a half a ton of content to do, but I’m feeling super productive and I’ve been trying this new thing that I’m going to share before we get into today’s content, because it’s been very powerful for me. It takes a lot of discipline, but every night I have to put, I’m in charge of putting my youngest son to sleep, who just turned one, crazy. If you guys have been following me, you probably remember. It feels like he was just born. So I’m in charge of his bedtime, my husband does the other two kids and we tag team. So I’m in charge of his, and I usually just lay with him and nurse him and he falls asleep. Usually I bring my phone in the room and I just go on my phone while I’m nursing him, and it takes anywhere from like 30 to 40 minutes, usually, until he’s asleep. Then usually he wakes up again, whatever later on, and then I have to go back and do it again. 

But lately I’ve challenged myself this week to not bring my phone into the room. And I have a watch that I use in my bedroom at night cause I don’t sleep with my phone in the room. I already do that, but I’ve been challenging myself to lay with him for that 30 to 45 minutes without my phone, which is pretty dang boring if you think about that, like I’m just laying in the dark doing nothing. It’s been actually a really incredible experience. I’ve kind of watched what it’s doing to my mind and I’ve noticed how we really create no time for ourselves to just think and how much we probably used to have time to do that, but if you think about it in your day, like when do you actually just do absolutely nothing? Because I know for myself, I usually, even if I’m resting or doing what I would call doing nothing, I’m reading, or I’m listening to an audio book, or a lot of people watch TV. I don’t really watch much TV, but watching TV when I’m with friends. 

So I’m never actually doing nothing, and it’s really crazy when you allow yourself to do that. Time actually goes by really fast and your brain is just kind of thinking and processing, and so what’s happened is I’m doing that every night without my phone, and it does take discipline. I noticed my mind being like, well, you could just have your phone tonight, you’ve done a good job the last five days. And like my mind wants it, cause it’s almost like a fear of being all by myself and completely in my own head, but otherwise I feel like the only time it’s like that is right before I fall asleep, and I come up with the best ideas right before I fall asleep. Does anybody else do that too? I come up with the best ideas or I have the like most crazy thoughts right before I fall asleep, but I like these subconscious thoughts. So I was like, okay, if that’s the only time that I’m allowing my brain to think that way, I’m going to create more time so I can think those great thoughts. 

So anyways, I’ve been doing that and it is changed, I’m not kidding or exaggerating when I say this has changed how relaxed I feel for the rest of the night. So I noticed that when I’m in working mode all day, if I work, I work like six to seven hours a day. If I work those six to seven hours, it’s really hard for me to unplug and shift gears, to being more present and calm and just a slower pace after that. If it’s a weekend and I don’t even pick up my phone, or start working, or get into a doing mode, I can be relaxed all day a lot easier, but it’s really hard for me to switch gears. Except if I do this at night, for the whole rest of the night I don’t feel connected to my phone. I don’t feel like I have to jump around and check things out and have that stimulation on my phone, and I create great ideas, and I process things, and I just feel, I actually feel way calmer after I do it. So it’s like a meditation, but I’m not meditating. I’m just thinking. 

So if you want to try it, you should try it. It’s been a game changer for me. I’m going to do it every night. I’m going to keep the discipline. My goal would be to not even touch my phone after like maybe 6:00 PM, not even touch it. I already go a couple hours without it, but anyways, you should try it. I think it’s very powerful. We need to create more time for our brain to think. Our brain is such a powerful thing, and I mean, it’s like the most complex, coolest thing ever. If we just let it do its thing more and follow that kind of subconscious mind and thoughts, I think we’d all be smarter. So that’s what I’ve been doing, which really doesn’t have anything to do with today’s episode, but I love to give you guys these little snippets. I was on a podcast interview recently and they were telling me how much they enjoy just like the little updates at the beginning of the podcast, and they feel like they know me from that. So hey to that person, who’s listening and I hear ya. 

All right. Today’s episode, we are talking all about how to shift the focus in your marketing and in your messaging from you to your customer and if you’re actually doing this. So this is something I’m excited to talk about because it’s very needed. This is something we all do without realizing we’re doing it, and this was inspired by one of our clients. We did a webinar audit for them, that’s something our team offers, where we go in and audit their webinar and pull out all the places that they could improve it. Most people have a lot of spots that they can improve their webinars, myself included. I’ve done dozens, maybe even close to a hundred different webinars, and I’m always improving them. We can always improve those presentations, they are like an art. 

So one thing that comes up a lot is the kind of default to highlighting yourself, highlighting your business, versus highlighting your customer, or highlighting your client in your marketing material. And I think this shows up everywhere. So I think that shows up with your ad copy, I think it shows up actually in your webinars, in your emails, your sales page copy. Every place you have an opportunity to communicate with your customer, there is oftentimes the mistake, unintentionally, where we focus too much on ourselves and not enough about what our customer really cares, about what our potential customer really cares about, and always coming back to and kind of having that filter. 

One thing I do when I’m reviewing content, whether it’s an Ignite student who sent through a landing page to look at, or it’s my own emails that I’m approving, or whatever it is, I ask myself, I put myself literally in the place of my ideal customer and I kind of channel that in like where they are with their frustrations, their fears, and like in that mindset of where they are. Then I ask myself, why would I care about this? I think one of the reasons I have such a good marketing brain is because I’m really hard to persuade. I am somebody who’s doubtful of everything. I’m like, yeah right, that’s not true. Or like, that’s probably not true. I just have that really, it’s hard to convince me to buy something. It’s hard to get my time. I’m extremely disciplined. And so I think because of that filter, I’m able to, like, I know when something sucks. I know when messaging sucks and when it’s not focused enough on the customer and it’s not going to convince them to buy. Even if I’m not the ideal customer, I can see something and be like, that’s not going to be good enough. It’s not going to be good enough to stand out. 

So you need to develop, if you can, this filter. Whenever you put something out in your company, whether it’s ad copy, your actual webinar presentation, sales page, or emails, that you have this last layer that it kind of goes through and this last set of eyes where you look at it and you ask yourself, what if I was my ideal customer looking at this right now, watching this video, whatever it is, would I care about this? Is it going to speak to me? Is it going to highlight me, and not even directly highlighting this is what it will do for you, but speaking to them in a way that they will care. 

That means, if we’re talking about ad copy, what’s going to get your customer to stop scrolling and to pay attention to ad copy? What’s going to successfully do that is something that stands out, something that directly connects with their frustrations or their dreams. It has to either connect with some pain they’re having or some future dream they want, and if it’s not doing that, they will not click. They will not stop. They will not keep reading. They will scroll right past it. So your ad copy, whether it’s directly or indirectly, needs to call out pain points, needs to call out those dreams, needs to show and use their language and really focus in on that.

So instead of one, staying really surfaced there, or two focusing on you as your brand. So the mistake people will make is they’ll say, I helped all of these people do this, or I have spent five years doing this and that’s why you should listen to me. Those are fine credibility building statements sometimes, obviously said better than I just said it, but then it’s not enough. I don’t, especially someone scrolling Facebook, I don’t care if you’ve helped five clients. I don’t care if you achieve this result. I don’t even care if you spent 10 or 15 years creating the result that you have or building your business, I don’t care about any of that. I care about what are you going to do for me? What is the promise for me if I listened to this, if I pay attention to what you’re saying?

Your ad copy needs to, when you read it, put yourself in their shoes of your ideal customer and ask yourself, is it about them? Is it speaking to them? Is it highlighting what they want to hear? What will connect with them? And is it doing that on a deep enough level? That’s another big problem people have as they stay very, very surface level with their content, and therefore, it doesn’t stand out. Using fluffy words, or very dry, boring statements, or surface level statements in your ad copy is not going to work. Okay, then when we move through the funnel. Obviously you have your landing pages, you have your webinars. So even down to your webinar title, don’t make that about you, make it about the customer, make it about what the customer wants. 

I recently just did a training in our Ignite program where I was talking about defining your ideal customer and speaking to your ideal customer, and one of our students, who was awesome, came on live and asked me questions and I spent like 10 minutes working with her around her messaging. She had tried multiple iterations of her webinar and it hasn’t been working, and I asked her what her title was, and she said the title of her webinar. I’m probably going to butcher it, but the title of her webinar was like, master your messaging in your YouTube videos, or something like that. So something like that was a little bit longer, but basically that master your messaging. And I said, do you think your ideal customer is saying, I want to master my messaging in my videos? No, they’re not saying that. 

And then, so it’s how do you get to the next level? And it needs to show up in your webinar title, into your webinar promise. People are not going to sign up for a webinar if they don’t think they’re going to get something out of it, they’re going to get value out of it, they’re going to get a result out of it better than they could anywhere else. You need to remember that at all times, your audience, your leads, your potential customers, have dozens of other options of content to consume that is not yours, of webinars to sign up for that are not yours, have products to buy that are not yours. And if yours is not the best, if yours is not speaking directly to them about what they want, connecting on a deep level with their fears, with their dreams, with their struggles, with all those points, you will not stand out. You will struggle with your marketing. 

So your webinars, the promise of your webinar, the hook of your webinar, ask yourself, if I was my ideal customer, and I was scrolling Facebook, and I clicked on this ad, and then I saw this webinar title, would I care? What is it going to do for me? And is that clearly communicated? Just literally look at your webinar landing page, or whatever. This can be relevant for any funnel, your challenge, your opt in your quiz, your video, your physical product. Just look at the page you’re sending people to and ask yourself, is this clear for me as the ideal customer, if I take whatever action it is you want them to take, that I know what will it will do for me, I know why I should care, I know why this is the best out there? And is it centered all right around your customer? 

I’ve said this before on the podcast, but at the end of the day, the reality is your customer, your ideal customers, they do not care about you. They really don’t. They care about what you can do for them. As humans, we care about ourselves. We care about improving our results. We care about what things can do for us. Think about the products you buy, the services you buy. Are you going to buy services and products that you’re like, oh, I really care about this person, she has 15 years of experience and so I better give her my money. Or I really care about this person because she helped this other client do this one thing, and so I don’t understand what she’s going to do for me, but I’m going to sign up for that program, or I’m going to buy that product because they’ve worked so hard in their business, and they did this and they did that. They don’t care, right? They don’t care about any of those things. 

So do not, you can highlight, obviously testimonials, more credibility building things, but that’s not ever the main hook. The main hook is what are you going to do for your customer? And so that also means your entire webinar presentation. This is a big mistake people make in their actual webinar presentation, okay? Because a lot of people are not experts at creating webinars, so on the webinar and they talk like so much about themselves, they talk about their story and how they started their business, and how this has impacted their business, and how you should do this because here’s their story. It’s all about them. 

Even the offer, it’s about them. Everything in the webinar, except maybe one single slide that you can talk about yourself and you can share your story, which still, all of that information needs to be relevant to your ideal customer, why they should care about your story, because they don’t care about it. They really don’t. You can build connection by saying I have done this one statement of credibility, but it needs to relate to you should listen to this because this is why this will impact you, this will get you results, to your ideal customer. So your entire webinar needs to be focused around connecting to your ideal customer, needs to be about them, needs to address pain points, their frustrations, their dreams, their struggles, what’s blocking them right now, what’s held them back from success, what will continue to hold them back. All of the content.

And then moving into the pitch, the same thing. Don’t just say, this is my product, here’s all the things in it. They don’t care. They don’t care about the names, they don’t care about what is inside, they don’t care if it’s 20 modules, or five modules, or a hundred videos, or 17 lessons, or taking you five years to build, none of that matters. What is the result that they’re going to get by consuming your product? Why does it matter to them, and to their results, and to their success? No matter what industry you’re in, that’s the reality. Then if we move from webinar to the sales page, same thing. Don’t highlight on the sales page the what of your product, highlight the why. Why they need it, why they should sign up right now, what the result will be for them. Make it about your customer. 

So have this filter where you put yourself in this situation of your ideal customer, and then you just simply ask yourself, why do I care? Why is this going to help me? What result is this going to get me? How is this relevant to me? And make sure you can check those boxes off at every piece of marketing, every messaging component, every way that you try and connect with your audience, and you put it out there and you make sure it checks those boxes. If you can just do that with your messaging, you’ll greatly greatly improve your marketing results. Thanks so much for listening today, guys. I’ll see you next time.

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