[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

Oftentimes, marketers are afraid to deter potential customers from buying their product/service.

Because of that fear, they end up creating messaging that is far too broad, doesn’t stand out, and ultimately doesn’t hook enough customers anyway.

So let me be perfectly clear: it’s just as important to attract qualified customers as it is to repel customers who are not the right fit.

That’s why in today’s episode of The Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast I am giving you permission to go an extra layer deeper, to be even more specific, and create messaging that weeds out any unqualified customers from your offer.

If you continue to use very broad messaging that caters to everyone, you will never stand out online.

And in this new era of marketing where the digital space is increasingly more saturated by the day, having messaging that stands out and can both attract qualified leads and repel wrong fits is more critical than ever.

If this episode gave you the permission you needed to make these shifts in your messaging, let me know over on the ‘gram (@emilyhirsh)!

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are doing amazing. I’m enjoying the last few days here in Austin of 70 to 80 degree weather before it gets to be the nineties and one hundreds every single day. But we are actually going to be spending a good amount of our summer away from Austin, like I did last year. I’ll be in California for four weeks, in Colorado for four weeks. I am so excited, and my house is going to be fully remodeled while we’re in California. So I’m going to pretend like it’s those shows where they remodel the house and then you come back and it’s a surprise. We’re planning the remodel, but it’s going to be like that. I’m going to leave and come back, and my house is going to be like brand new because we’re doing our entire downstairs, because you can’t really do one thing and not do the rest. So kitchen floors, paint every piece of the downstairs. So super excited. And while we’re doing that, we’re going to be staying in a beautiful house in Colorado, hiking every day. I cannot wait. I’m really looking forward to the summer and trying to bang out a lot of content. So I’m trying to work like maybe five hours a day when I’m in Colorado and spend a few hours doing extra outdoor stuff, cause I absolutely love being outdoors and hiking. 

Anyways, today’s podcast episode, I am talking about not being afraid and really stepping into your messaging and not being afraid to repel the wrong fit customers. I’ve noticed, and our team has noticed, I myself am guilty of this. I think like many entrepreneurs do this, the fear around getting too specific in our messaging because we don’t want to lose out on potential sales, or customers, or an audience. We want to make sure we’re covering all our bases and we are attracting everybody and not losing out on money, obviously, because we’re in business. And what ultimately ends up happening though, is if you do have that fear and you stay very broad and kind of wide with your messaging where you’re trying to cater to all these different types of groups, and problems, and dreams that you’re solving for people, then you just don’t end up standing out. 

And so we have noticed and done a lot of work, I’ve shared it a little bit on here, but I shared it in my recent live webinar too. One of the biggest things that I’ve seen shift online in the last year to two years is the importance of your messaging. And that has always been important with marketing. I think since the time I started this podcast, like two and a half years ago, I’ve always talked about how messaging is kind of the most important thing that if you don’t have that foundation with your messaging, that your strategy, and your ads, and everything you build on top of it will be broken.

So messaging is super critical, but even more so as we’ve seen some Facebook ad costs go up, and iOS updates get rolled out, and the industry as a whole just get more saturated, and you know, COVID bring more people online to market. I think that messaging has become even more important than it was before, even more than that. And top of that, not just nailing your messaging, but being very specific in your messaging. And what’s just as important that you do as you don’t do is figuring out who do you want to attract, and who do you not want to attract, and not being afraid to repel the wrong fit customers and being clear on who that is. 

I think that oftentimes we might spend a little bit of time kind of defining who our ideal customer is, but most of the time people and entrepreneurs are barely scratching the surface with that definition. And I know this because I recently did a live webinar and I was trying to prove this point on the webinar. So I was like, I’m going to just ask for these certain questions that I’ll share in a minute to see what I get. It was so perfect because it proved exactly my point when I was on the webinar that people are staying really surface. So they think that they’ve defined their ideal customer, but then they go to say it and I can easily show them that they are still very surface level. 

So for example, on the webinar, I asked people what is the main problem you solve for your customer? Then I asked, who is your ideal customer? And as I suspected the answers were like the main problem I solve is save time and money, and my ideal customer is business owners, or people who want to start an online business. And these broad, you know, save time and money, or what was some of the other ones? It was just like, so if you define the problem that your ideal customer, you solve for them, and if everybody wants that problem solved, then you haven’t gotten more specific. So if you write copy, or you are creating a webinar, and what you’re saying is you could look at it and say, who doesn’t want that, right? So saving time and money, like who is like, “I want to spend more time and waste more money,” nobody says that, right? So then your messaging is going to not be specific enough. That’s how you’re staying surface level. 

If you say like, you know, if I went out and said I’m going to help you make money on Facebook ads. Yes, I can do that, and I will do that and I will solve that problem, but it’s more than that. And so how do I go deeper? That’s when I start talking about the overwhelm. Facebook ad costs. The stop and start game that entrepreneurs play where they start their ads and shut them off because they freak out. The hamster wheel of not getting results. The frustration of launching something thinking that’s going to work and then it doesn’t work. Getting into those details and going deeper on that is so much more powerful than me just saying, well, I’m going to help you get leads with Facebook ads because who’s like, “I don’t want leads.” Nobody is saying that, right? So if I stuck just to that very high level, I’ll help you get leads, then I’m really not going to stand out because me and every other agency is going to say that, right?

So if you are saying, another example would be, “I help people start an online business.” Okay, so is every single competitor of yours. If that’s your industry, what is different about you and who are you the right fit for? And just as importantly, who do you want to repel? So for me, I want to repel people who want the quick, overnight success, who don’t want to put work into their brand, who want to jump in and kind of catered to the message of “I just want to set this funnel and forget it, sit back on the beach and let my funnel work for me. One funnel away. I don’t want to do work. I don’t want to show up for my audience. I don’t want to provide value. I just want to make money.” Those are the people that I don’t want to attract, and I don’t want to work with because our offerings are not right for them.

And so absolutely when I go out in my marketing and I say like, I cannot promise you an overnight quick success. I cannot tell you that all of this is super easy, and I can’t tell you that Facebook ads are cheaper. Then I’m going to probably repel some people who want that, but just the same, I’m going to attract people who are drawn to that truth. I had a point in my webinar where I was like, you know, 98% of businesses want the quick fix, want the easy way out, are not willing to do the work, and that is true. And so if you are that 98% get off the webinar, I didn’t really say it like that, but I was like this content won’t work for you if you’re not willing to step up, be a leader, do the work, and show up.

I am trying to repel the wrong fit customers and not being afraid of being clear who that is. I am really clear that we can’t help somebody who doesn’t know what they’re selling, who is just starting their business, has never sold a single thing, doesn’t know what their offer is, needs help crafting their offer. They’re not ready for our services. We can’t serve them in the best way possible. And so I say in our ads, in our landing pages, and our application page, and my webinar, if you don’t have those things, then you’re not ready and you should go develop those things. 

Now, a lot of people are afraid to be that specific, cause they’re like, “well what if someone doesn’t have that thing, but they have maybe like another investment and they can spend money on this and I could help them? And I could maybe tweak this offer and still help them?” That’s where you get into a massive danger zone. If you’re trying to be like, well, I could accommodate and change my core offer and just make these few exceptions for this one person just so I can get the sale, you should be like red flag. Do not let yourself do that. And as entrepreneurs, you’re going to want to. There’s nothing wrong with you for wanting to, because we want to make the money in the sales and we want to grow our business and feel that momentum. But in the long run it’s going to hurt you, because if you’re not being just as clear about who your offer, and your brand, and your content is not for vs. who it’s for, then you will not stand out. 

So this is kind of my permission to you to step into knowing who that is. I know that my content is going to trigger those people and they’re not going to keep following me. They’re not going to come to my webinar because they’re like, “we don’t want to do the work, we want to find the easy way out, we want to jump platforms,” you know, whatever. Great. They can go do that. They’re not my people, and I am very direct with that in my content. So with your messaging, this is your permission to go back through, run your content, run your messaging, your video titles, your webinar, what you say, through a filter. And if anything in there you could answer and say, “well, this applies to everybody, like who doesn’t want this?” 

You know, I oftentimes see people with content around, for example, with the sale. I did not like this one in a webinar where people say like, you have two options, like either do – I like the two options, but I’ll clarify that. They’ll say you have two options, either buy my product, invest in my course, or you’re gonna fail. It’s so overused, and that is a perfect webinar technique. The two options is great, but the two options have to be legit. So I do the two options in my webinar, and one is your first option is kind of don’t take action to do what you’ve been doing, to not finish your funnel and launch it with ads, to not have clarity on your budget, to not step up and commit to the investment in time and money and in your business. That’s your one option to kind of stay where you are, which a lot of people will choose and is a legitimate option for them because they can choose not to take action, kind of stay in this holding pattern that they might be in. Or, their option is to apply this, do the work, kind of step up, be a little bit uncomfortable, do the things that might feel a little bit scary, and start to get some traction with Facebook ads. So those are legit. Now those are not fluffy Like your option is either buy my product or you’re going to fail because nobody’s going to buy into that. 

So that’s an extreme example, but a lot of times people do do that where it’s like, they’re telling you save time and money, or you’re going to be able to get more leads, or you’re going to be healthy, you’re going to lose weight, like who doesn’t want that right? If you’re promising, if you’re in the health industry, and you’re promising people to lose weight, you and every other health expert out there is also promising those things. So while yes, I’m not saying that that’s not a benefit, that that’s not something that you can mention, but you need to go deeper. What does losing weight mean? How are they going to lose the weight? How are they going to feel? What is the repercussions of not losing the weight? What are they doing right now that they need to be doing instead? 

It’s something else, like going deeper because if you write something, or you put out content and it sounds like everybody else out there, or it’s just like, who wouldn’t want that because it’s so obvious that it’s good, it’s not powerful enough. It’s not going to draw your customer in enough. And on that same token, you need to know who are you trying to repel, because that will allow you to stand out more. So if you look at your marketing and you look at your description of your ideal customer, and you don’t have a clear understanding of who it’s for and who it’s not for – and who it’s not for is actually legit, and it’s not like, “this is not for people who are serious about growing,” or whatever people say, “they’re like serious about making money.” Who is an entrepreneur not serious about making money? Like name one of them for me. Okay?

So that’s a surface level way of putting it. Nobody’s going to be like, “oh, okay, I better choose the option because I don’t want to be the person not serious about making money.” No, you need to go way deeper and actually touch on real things. And so this is not for somebody, like in my case, I’d say this is not for somebody who doesn’t have an offer, who just started their business. That will absolutely lose me people on my webinar, but those are not my ideal customer. And so if I’m trying to mold my webinar and mold my pitch to everybody on there because I’m afraid of losing a sale, what will happen is I won’t be going narrow enough, deep enough, and I’ll also lose the right fit people. I won’t stand out enough to the right fit people. 

So this is your permission to not be afraid to repel the wrong fit customer, to get clarity on who that wrong fit customer is, and to go after them full force and make sure that you are going after it, without that fear of being afraid to go too deep because you don’t want to lose people. And that fear is in everybody. So likely, it’s in you and it’s showing up in your content, and if you could just look at your marketing, and all of the assets, and resources around your marketing and kind of ask yourself, how could I make this more narrow? How could I make this go three levels deeper? How could I make this stand out more? And then repel the person that it’s not. 

Maybe even taking time to go look at competitors and people around you, and look at things you disagree with and things that you’re like, “that is not my brand, that is not what I’m promoting, they are doing it wrong, these people are doing it wrong,” and be calling those things out. I think people who promote this idea that Facebook ads are super easy, or you should jump platforms, or one funnel way and you can set it and forget it, are wrong. And I called that out without fear, and that will lose me customers, but it also brings me people like you listening because you guys like that truth and you are my people. And so I’m not afraid to be bold with that. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you next week.

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