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So it doesn’t matter if it worked a year ago, it doesn’t matter if it was your most successful launch 2 years ago. Things have changed. People have changed. Society’s changed, what people want has changed, the speed at which they want things has changed, and if you haven’t pivoted your business, both your free and your paid offer in a long time, I can almost bet there’s opportunity for you to do that. 

You are listening to The Not for Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 408.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back for episode three. In this series around marketing in 2022, marketing in this current state, marketing through the next years of a recession, a more difficult time, it’s going to be interesting. This is going to dive into rule number 3 in my 5 rules for marketing this year. So let’s get into that and rule number 3 is that your offer is both free and paid. So we’re going to talk about what that means with a free offer and how that should be treated like a sales offer is king. Here’s the reality. I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but this is so important. I need to bring it up again. It doesn’t matter how good your strategy is. Your messaging, your strategy, your messaging. You could hire the best coach, the best ad agency. You could hire all the things, but in the end, if your offer is not hitting the mark, your marketing isn’t going to work.

And this has only amplified in the last year to 2 years, whereas in the past, because the space wasn’t as saturated, because there wasn’t so much fighting for attention, people were not struggling with this. It was easier. You know, if an offer wasn’t fully dialed in, but it was pretty good. It was okay. Now it has to be the best, and like I said, just a second ago, this is relevant to both free and paid offers. So many people make this mistake where they’re like, “well, it’s free. It’s free training. It’s a free PDF. And so that in and of itself is valuable. Why wouldn’t someone want it? It’s free, right?” And the thing is, that’s not enough. You have to sell your free offer to get an affordable cost per lead. And that’s a mistake. A lot of people are making is they’re not putting the same attention and energy into selling their free offer and actually convincing someone to take action.

Whether it’s downloading a PDF or sign up for a webinar or whatever, take that action because they’re thinking, “oh, well, it’s free so I don’t have to work as hard to sell it”, but you actually do. And if you don’t, you’re going to have a really high cost per lead and be struggling with your ads and the volume of new leads you’re bringing in. Now here’s a mistake that a lot of people are making. And this is what has to change this year and in the future to be successful. I have found at least 12 different business owners, like I’ve had personal conversations or witnessed a conversation being had with my team where the narrative is, “it worked a year ago”, or “it worked 2 years ago”. Or “I know this works because it’s sold before”. Or “I know this works because people have signed up for this webinar before”.

So there are a lot of business owners right now trying to force an offer that worked before and it isn’t working now and they don’t want to make big pivots. They’re very resistant to that. They’re very against that because they’re convincing themselves well, it worked before, so I don’t need to change it. It’s the ads. It’s the targeting. It’s the landing page. It’s these other little details that impact so greatly the bigger foundation. Okay. So it doesn’t matter if it worked a year ago, it doesn’t matter if it was your most successful launch two years ago, things have changed, people have changed, society’s changed, what people want has changed, the speed at which they want things has changed. And if you haven’t pivoted your business, both you’re free and your paid offer in a long time, I can almost bet there’s opportunity for you to do that.

There has been this increased frequency to also adjust the wrapping paper around your offer. And remember when I say offer, I’m talking about free and paid. So the wrapping paper is how you present your offer. It’s how you sell it. It’s how you position your webinar. It’s how you title your webinar. It’s how you promise what’s in your webinar, how you structure it. It’s not changing the entire backend and the entire funnel, but sometimes we need to just change the wrapping paper in order to sell our free and paid offers, because you need to connect the way you’re selling your free and paid offers with exactly what people want right now. And that shifts and changes. And so if you’re having a hard time selling something that you know worked before, and you know the actual deliverable is good. Let’s say you have a webinar.

And it used to get a lot of leads and it used to do really well. And now the volume of leads has greatly decreased, but you still get some leads. And when you get those leads on the webinar, they actually do convert. So then that’s pointing to the fact that we need to change the wrapping paper because the webinar itself converts, but the way we’re positioning the webinar to get people on it is what’s not working. Same thing with the paid offer. If you have a paid offer and when someone buys, they achieve the result and it’s a good experience and it’s exactly what they wanted, but you’re having a hard time connecting with people and actually selling that offer. Maybe you don’t have to change the offer itself, but you have to change the wrapping paper around that. So a lot of times when I share this, people are like, how do I do that?

How do I know what to change? How do I know if I need to change my offer? how do I know how to change the wrapping paper? What do I change it to? And it’s the most simple solution that I can ever give you guys, but yet, so many people don’t do this because you guys get so wrapped up in what other people are doing or following this template, or checking off the boxes or implementing X, Y, Z. Here’s how you align your offer to make it convert 100%. You listen to your audience, you listen to your audience, you listen to your ideal customer and you truly listen and connect with their frustrations, their struggles, their pain, their dreams, and then you craft your offer and the wrapping paper around that and that feedback. If you are listening to this and you’re like, I’m disconnected from this, that’s a problem.

And that is what a lot of business owners are experiencing. They grew this business. Let’s think about the evolution of typically a solopreneur, a business. How a lot of you guys are, myself included you guys. I went through this already and I’m going through it again where it’s like, it’s this every 6-month thing right now. We grew the business and we were doing everything. So we were super connected to our ideal customer because we were doing everything. We were talking to them. We were writing our emails. We were managing our social media. We were delivering to them. We’re doing everything. And maybe some of you are still in that boat. And you actually have an advantage if you’re still in that boat, because you’re still very connected, but you have to make sure you listen. Now, as we grow, we start outsourcing things.

We start outsourcing our delivery. We start outsourcing our social media. We start outsourcing our emails, our marketing, all the things, which is good. But then we start to build a bridge. We build this disconnect, this gap between us and our audience and our ideal customer. And when that happens, when there’s a shift and a change in your industry for your audience, for your leads, for your customers, your team, and the systems that you’ve built around what you’re doing, keep doing the same thing while this gap has been created. And you now have to come in and create the bridge. That was a good analogy, right? I actually suck good analogies, pretty proud of that one. So if you are feeling that disconnection, the best thing you can do is just go talk to your ideal customers.

Talk to your customers, talk to your audience. I don’t care if that is one-on-one calls, or you do a group zoom call where you ask questions, or you let people ask questions, whatever it is, however you want to do it. You just need to listen and you need to ask the right questions to make sure you fully understand on a deep level, your ideal customer’s current, (and that’s really important) current struggles, frustrations, pain, and dreams. Not what it was a year ago, not even what it was six months ago, because things are changing at a rapid pace. So you can’t miss out on that. So I think what happens is that

unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs focus on the need for leads and sales. Of course they do, right? Of course that’s what we want. But their focus becomes laser-focused, narrow-focused on getting the number of leads in sales that they need.

And it makes sense. But in that process, they lose sight of the fact that all offers exist to solve a problem. Your webinar, your lead magnet, your VSL, your paid digital product, your membership, your service, it is here to solve a problem for your ideal customer. So instead of focusing on, I need to get 100 leads, of course, document that and set projections and goals, but don’t make that the only goal. Make the goal “How do I solve a problem for my ideal customer? For my leads? For my audience? How do I completely solve a problem?” Whether it’s a micro problem, that’s going to be solved in a webinar, or it’s the big problem, the main problem that your offer’s going to solve. If you focus on that and you focus on making sure you’re wrapping paper around your offers is clear on the problem you’re going to solve and what you’re promising, the leads and sales are going to come.

So right now, and through this more challenging time in business that we’re in and we’re headed into probably for the next couple of years, the businesses who focus on having the best offers are going to still be here. They’re going to weather this storm, the ones who are just trying to get leads and sales, they don’t care about the impact. They don’t really connect with their audience. They’re disconnected and they refuse to connect again. They don’t care about the success. They don’t care about if the PDF download actually made an impact or not, or the webinar actually was valuable or if the offer actually delivered. You know, there there’s a lot of that that has happened over the last several years unfortunately in this industry, where people were able to and delivered on an offer that didn’t deliver, that didn’t fulfill the promise. And what happens is every time you do that, even if it’s a PDF that someone downloads and they’re like, oh, that wasn’t as good as I thought it was.

That’s a loss of trust with your brand. And those things build up and over time, your business then comes crashing down and that’s happening to people where they had their intentions in the wrong place. Now I know my audience on here doesn’t operate that way, but don’t let people who teach, who have a place of operating that way, cloud your judgment, to be honest. So now, and over the next several years, mark my words. Businesses who don’t focus on this, who don’t focus on, how do I serve my audience more? How do I help them solve their problems? How do I take away their overwhelm? How do I get them results faster? How do I deliver on my word? How do I deliver on what I’m saying? They’re not going to be here because it’s going to feel so hard to be successful. I mean, you won’t be successful.

It’ll feel like you’re walking through mud every day. Now, when I say like, you have to have the best offer and your offer is king, right? To be successful. I don’t want you to be intimidated by that idea. I want you guys to shift your mindset because I think that can be hard, especially those of us who deal with that self doubt, because I have this, especially when I have a new offer, like I’ve actually played with some higher level consulting offers that I might roll out soon. And I have the thoughts of like, is it worth that amount? Like what if it isn’t the best? And we all have that, especially with a new offer or something that we’re shifting and changing. I don’t want you to be intimidated on, what if I can’t come up with the best offer?

I want you to use that mentality of your goal is to have, every free offer, every paid offer, be the best it possibly can be. And allow that to drive you and challenge you versus intimidate you. I sometimes like to look at this as a game, but maybe that’s because I’m super competitive, but just focus all in on serving my audience and say, how do I be better? How do I strive to be better tomorrow than I was today? And that’s a core value of mine and that’s a core value of our companies. And you’re never done with that, which is the good thing. Your offer today is going to be better in 6

months if you constantly maintain this mindset. So see it as something that’s challenging and fun versus intimidating, and don’t let it paralyze you from taking action.

Just make it. What can I do now? I was just having a conversation with a good friend who was like, “I want to build this app for my members and my membership, but it’s going to cost me, you know, $200,000.” And I was like, no, it’s not going to cost you $200,000 to build a basic app that will add value into your membership. And he’s like, yeah, but I want to do this and this and this. I’m like, yeah, but you can’t do that tomorrow, but you could build a $5,000-$10,000 app that is going to provide instant value for your members and meet yourself where you’re at in your business. And so also don’t get caught up in my offer has to have all these shiny bells and whistles that I can’t afford right now, or it would take me a year to build it out. What can you do this month to make your offer better? And as long as you just keep doing that every month, your offer will continually be better and very important though, as long as you do that, while listening to your audience and your customers. Don’t make those decisions based on what you think. If you’re disconnected, that’s not going to work. But if you know, because you’re paying attention to your customers, because you’re paying attention to your leads and your audience and what they’re saying and where they’re getting stuck and where they’re getting tripped up and what you could do to support them, and if that’s in alignment with improving your offer, and you just every month ask yourself, what can I do to serve people in my free offer and my paid offer? then you’ll improve. There’s no way that you won’t.

So here’s my recommendation for you guys leaving this episode on this rule. I want you to listen to your audience and your ideal customer. So for you, that could mean I’m going to get on one-on-one calls. I’m going to do 20 of them, or it can mean you’re going to go in your Facebook group and you’re going to ask some questions or it can mean you go on Instagram stories and you ask some questions or you could do a group call. I want to challenge you to listen to your audience, to ask the right questions and to make

sure you have an accurate representation of their frustrations, struggles, pain, and dreams. And then I want you to ask yourself based on this, “am I connected to that? Or do I need to go change my offer or the wrapping paper around my offer after you get that feedback?”

So that’s your challenge for today. That’s what I want you guys to go do, and I have kind of a surprise to go with this. I teach a lot of what I’m going through, to be honest with you. And so it’s about like, it’s been maybe seven months since we did interviews with our audience. And so I think this is something that in this current state you’re going to have to do every 6 to 12 months. So I decided I’m going to do a live Q&A with me and it’s happening this Monday and no opt-in, anyone can come what I’m going to do in that Q&A  in that call I’m going to do two things. Number 1, I’m going to spend about 15 minutes teaching you guys my quick process for auditing your marketing. I was feeling super stuck in my marketing. I audited it.

We have massive momentum within seven days on a plan. So I’m going to spend 15 minutes teaching you guys that. So there’s a tangible reason for you to come. I’m going to teach you my process for auditing your marketing, removing the overwhelm, knowing your next step. That’s going to take about 15 minutes and then I’m going to do live coaching and Q&A for as long as I need to, to get to all your questions and the why is, I want to make sure I’m connected to you guys’ frustrations, struggles and dreams. So I walk my talk. And so if you want to come to that live training, all you have to do is go to hirshmarketing.com/live E and it’ll add it to your calendar. It’s happening on Monday on zoom. There’s no opt-in required. You don’t have to opt in.

It’s going to be at 1:00 PM Eastern time on Monday, and you can show up live and get coaching with me. Ask me anything about your business. This is something I only do in Market Like a Pro the reason being I want to make sure I’m connected to you guys. A lot has changed since we’ve talked to our audience, one on one, about seven, eight months ago. So that’s why I’m doing it. You can watch me model it, but also come ask me all your burning questions and I want to see you there. So if you go to hirshmarketing.com/live, you’ll be able to save the calendar invite. There’s no opt-in nothing. We’ll send the zoom link out to our list. If you, for some reason that doesn’t work and you need the zoom link directly, feel free to send me a message on Instagram I’ll send you that zoom link. We will also be emailing it out to our list, but come join me live. And then you can replicate this process for your own audience or do one on one calls or do something else. All right, you guys, I will see you back here on Monday for the next rule.

Thanks for listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast. Each episode is brought to you from the trenches of Hirsh marketing, where our team of industry-leading copywriters, marketing strategists, ads, managers, graphic designers, and tech wizards use their unique genius to help our clients profit more and scale faster than they ever dreamed possible. Want to see what happens when we unleash our experts on your brand? Head over to helpmystrategy.com and apply for a free strategy audit with team

Hirsh. No matter where you are in your marketing journey, we have solutions to take you to the next level and beyond. So apply for your call today and discover what marketing magic we can create for you.

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