543: When Something Doesn’t Convert, This Is Usually Why — The Anti Marketing Hack Series #4
I believe that 85% of the time, when you’re facing marketing challenges and trying to figure out what’s going wrong, it boils down to one crucial aspect: your messaging. It’s not just about the words you use; it’s the way you communicate with your audience.
You can have the strategy and the ads, but if your messaging isn’t on point, your marketing efforts might not yield the desired results. Tune in to episode 4 of the Anti Marketing Hack Series to learn how important it is to constantly refine your messaging and why getting your messaging right is a massive factor in defining your marketing success.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to this series, the anti marketing hack series. This is episode four. If you’ve tuned into all the episodes, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If not, if you just go back in the podcast, you’ll see the first three episodes. And I’m honestly really enjoying this series because I feel like it is relevant to every single one of you. And it’s just such simple reminders that we could all use, we could all use more including me in my own marketing as I was creating this, I’m like, these are all things that we all need to remember and keep top of mind. So if you haven’t tuned in, I would definitely go back and listen to those and let’s dive into episode number four. So episode number four is when something doesn’t convert, this is likely why. And I seriously think probably 85% or more of the time when something isn’t working in your marketing and you are trying to narrow down what it is and why and what you can do to improve it that it usually almost always comes back to your messaging and I define messaging. If you wanna hear that definition because I think sometimes people are like, what’s messaging or what does that mean? It’s the way that you communicate. It’s your copy, it’s your topics, it’s your titles, it’s your content. It is the way that you write a sales page and email, it’s the way that you communicate on all levels of your marketing from your free content that you’re using for attraction to selling people on taking action in your lead generation and signing up for something or downloading something to converting them to sales. It is all of those things and this takes constant refinement. And so most of the time and I say this, you can have an OK strategy and you know, ads even that are OK and they’re not, you know, 10 out of 10 and get away with that if you nail the messaging. But if you have the best strategy in the world and you know, the perfect targeting in your ads and you’ve got everything checked, but you don’t nail the messaging, usually your marketing will not work. And that’s because the communication and the messaging is how people are attracted. It’s how people are convinced to take action. And so when something’s happening, like an ad isn’t converting, you aren’t getting people to click on the ad or they’re not opening emails or a sales page or a landing page is not getting someone to take action or leads aren’t buying an offer or people are maybe watching and consuming your webinar, your video series, but they aren’t taking the action on it or maybe they aren’t watching those things or your audience and leads aren’t taking that next action wherever that is in an email on a sales page in the webinar itself in any of those places, if they’re not doing the next thing, 85% of the time it comes down to your messaging. And I harp on this and I harp on this because seriously, every time I look at a strategy, I look at a sales page or I talk to somebody, I can usually pinpoint it back to this, not every single time. And there’s obviously other factors that contribute which we’ve talked about in this series, like for example, experience and building a relationship, but the messaging is so important and it also doesn’t happen overnight that you nail this. And so I’ll sometimes have people come to me and be like, well, should I, you know, make these small changes. Should I add this video on my page? Should I, should I change this section for this section? Should I, you know, target this audience instead of this audience? And a lot of the time these are all things that are I seen on the cake and are a small amount of, of what’s actually gonna move the needle, whereas your messaging and your communication is going to make a massive difference in your success. So most of the time when something isn’t working, the first place I want you to look is in your communication is in your copy. And this also is, you know, the titles you use, the topics you use, the way that you present your offer, all of those things I can solve most marketing problems and struggles and lack of the lead or the audience taking action by improving the messaging. And so let’s talk about improving the messaging and why does it take time? So it takes time for a couple of reasons. Number one, I think that most entrepreneurs don’t have a deep understanding of their ideal customer. I think that most people think that they do and this is feedback I get over and over and over again. When people come into any of my paid programs, both past and current. It’s that I didn’t realize how much work I had to do with my messaging. I didn’t realize how off my offer was and my offer positioning and you know how much deeper I needed to go. And so most of you guys don’t even realize that this is an issue. But the reason it takes time is because one people aren’t aware that it’s a problem. But also two, it’s a lot of like refinement and coming back to it and getting feedback and learning more and digging deeper and it takes time to communicate something extremely clearly concisely and in an impactful way, it’s a lot easier to just communicate on a surface level, not really well thought out, and, and very kind of thrown together and there’s a saying, I can’t remember the exact saying, but it, it’s something about how when somebody writes, like it’s harder to basically write a shorter book and a more concise message than it is a really long book. And I think that is so true because it actually takes more skill and more time to shorten a message and say the same thing than it does to have a really long message that is trying to get a point across, right? And also, you know, when you’re starting your business or you’re, you know, just launching a new funnel or a new offer, you’re, you’re not gonna nail the messaging the first time around because you can’t predict and understand the feedback and the response that you’re going to get until you actually go execute something, you actually go launch it even myself. I feel I have a very deep understanding of my ideal customer of our clients. It’s why I stay so involved in our delivery and my content and getting on trainings with you guys and listening to questions because it helps me stay really connected. So I think I have a very deep understanding of this and yet still I will put something out there, whether it’s content or an experience and it will not do as well as I wanted it to until I go and refine it based on feedback, feedback around where people got confused where they were overwhelmed where they were unclear about something. I don’t always know what that’s going to be until I go and execute and until I go and put it out there, take the action, launch the thing and then be like, OK, how’s it doing? And where can I improve this? Right? So now let’s talk about how to improve the messaging. If you’re listening to this one thing I would encourage you to do is go to all the main places in your funnel, add, copying creative landing page, copy, email, copy sales page, copy the actual webinar itself and look at it through the lens of how could I dig a little deeper? How could I talk to my audience in a little bit deeper of a level? Hit those emotions just a little bit more. How could I take this to the next level? How could I get more clear with them? How could I be more specific with them? And I guarantee you, you’re gonna find like five things you could change right away, especially when you look at it through the lens of OK, this is somebody on this page or reading this email, who this is the first time that they’ve heard about this or that they’ve come across me, right? So you wanna dig deep into the emotional parts of your audience and you want to practice and refine and optimize the way you’re speaking to them. And here’s a couple of tips of, of things that I see all the time as mistakes with people’s messaging. So the first one is using their language. I see this so frequently that someone who wrote the copy, a lot of times it’s business owners trying to write their own copy are using the language that they would use. And so typically, what happens is it’s a little bit more technical than what your ideal customer would use. And so I was actually just, I ran one of our essential coaching calls this week to fill in for my team. And I was looking at a sales page for somebody. And one of the things I said was I read back, I can’t remember what the sentence was, but I read it back to her and I said, would your ideal customer say this, would they come up to you and say this sentence? And she’s like, no, they wouldn’t, you know, that’s, that’s my language. And here’s the thing: you can’t use language that you’re gonna use and connect with your audience to the level that is possible. You have to use the language they’re gonna use, which oftentimes means taking a step back to where they are versus where you are. So let me give you an example. I could go out in my own marketing and I could say something like I’m gonna help you. I’m gonna help you convert your leads because I am gonna help you do that right? But is my audience maybe they’re saying that, are they saying I’m, I need help converting my leads or are they maybe saying I need help getting more sales? I need help bringing in more business revenue. I need help making sure that my ads are profitable. Like maybe like maybe they’re saying converting more leads. But most of the time people are talking about like the most basic form of their communication, right? And so I think also I read this, I think it was Alex Hersi who said something like there was some big study done and when people used the language of I think it was like second grade level, their copy converted better, which I, I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before on the podcast because I find it so fascinating and it’s not that people are bad readers or bad communication. It’s that it takes less energy to understand and comprehend what you’re reading if it is written at that base level. And so simplifying what you’re saying and using your audience’s language, like what they would say if they sat down and were having coffee with you and you were having a casual conversation. And so an exercise I’ll do is as I look at someone’s sales page or their page, I’ll just highlight specific things and I’ll say, would the audience say this word for word? Would they come up to you and say, you know, this is what I want. I think one of the things on the sales page I was looking at said something like I want to fulfill my promises and, and it was not about that and it wasn’t gonna solve that root problem. It was something else. And so I don’t think the audience would come up and say, hey, I’m really having trouble fulfilling my promises because that wasn’t even fully related to the offer. So use their language. That’s the first thing. The second is to make sure to meet your audience where they are at right now today, which if you look at a customer journey, somebody who is listening to your content versus somebody who’s on your webinar or has been on your list for six months might be in a different place than each other, right? And so also oftentimes I see someone where they are their own ideal customer and they’ve already solved the problem that they solve and they’ve already gotten to the result and to the success and they forget about who they were before. So make sure when you talk to your ideal customer, you’re talking to them based on where they’re at right now, where they’re at in their business, where they’re at with their health, where they are at, with their personal development, with their relationship. What are they experiencing right now today? And are you speaking to that or are you speaking way in the future to something that they can’t even comprehend and see clearly yet? Ok. OK. Another trick that I have that works really, really well is ask why in every like bullet that you have or every, you know, piece of copy that’s trying to get a point across because this will help you dig a layer deep. So for example, I was reviewing a page a while back and it said something like I’m gonna help people make more money and save time, right? And it’s like, yes, that is what they want and it is not wrong. But are they, first of all, are they really saying like I need to make more money and save time? There’s probably other ways that they’re saying it. But second of all, why, why do they need to make more money? What does that mean? And why do they need to save time and what’s happening right now specifically, that’s preventing them from doing these two things. And so I will oftentimes look at a page or maybe it’s an email and whether it’s like a list of bullet points or it’s a point trying to be given across in the email, I’ll just keep asking why, like why does that matter? Why does the person want that? Why is that important to them? Why is this priority to them right now? Why do they want to solve this problem? What does that mean for them? And if you keep asking why eventually you get to a base answer that is so specific and so deep, you’re able to communicate better and you’re able to stand out more. Because what happens is if you stick with these surface level messages about, you know, save time, save money, get healthy, lose weight. It’s like everybody’s saying that you’ve got to figure out what your unique edge is and sometimes you can do that by asking why, why does that matter? OK, why does that matter? How do we keep going deeper until we get to that base foundation, core level of specific copy? And that’s the last thing inside my kind of list of suggestions is use specific language and sometimes this takes refinement like there’s oftentimes with my team or with clients where we’re brainstorming. This just happened in a VIP call the other day where we were going back and forth for probably 15 minutes, kind of bouncing off each other, you know, about the ideal customer, about the problems about their desires and just like having a conversation. And then all of a sudden the word came to us, the specific word came to us that we were trying to kind of communicate. And it was like, yes, that is it, that is exactly what I’m trying to say through all of this, through this like 15 minutes of conversation, it can be simplified down into this one sentence, but that took a little bit of time. It took a little bit of, mulling over, of refining, of kind of brainstorming and going through each thing and then being able to get to the specific language. So oftentimes, you can get to the specific language by asking why and continuing to ask why and digging deeper and digging deeper. And making sure again, you’re, you’re talking specific because that’s the only way that you’re gonna be able to stand out from everybody else talking about it. And so I will often also ask somebody when I’m looking at their messaging, like why you, there’s other people who can teach me how to lose weight or how to make more money or how to improve my marriage or whatever the problem is that you solve, why should I listen to you and how specific can you get about that? And how specific can you get about the problem that you solve? So when something isn’t working in your marketing, usually I can pinpoint it back to the messaging. And yes, of course, the strategy and the targeting and the experience all plays a part. But honestly, none of that matters if the messaging is not in place. And I think normalizing and understanding that getting your messaging to the place it needs to be is also a process. It’s a process of refinement of utilizing feedback because feedback can be in the form of direct like questions or feedback. It can also be in the form of people not taking action on something. And if somebody’s not taking action on something, there’s usually a reason why and we can go into the messaging and say, OK, where are we not clear? Where are we overwhelming them? Where are we not focused on what they care about, on their frustrations, on their desires. And it’s the job of the entrepreneur, the CEO, the founder to have that very deep understanding of your ideal customer, so you can do all of these things. All right, you guys, that was episode four. That is probably the most important thing I’ll say. I feel like I’ve said these things on my podcast before, but I will continue to say them because there’s always refinement. I guarantee every one of you listening to this, you could go and find room to improve your messaging today with just what I said. So go do that and I’ll actually be back tomorrow, which is a Saturday. We’re gonna do the fifth episode on Saturday just to give you guys a little weekend episode unless you listen to it next week. But tomorrow, I’m actually gonna tell you the marketing formula that works 100% of the time. And there’s a catch to that because I don’t teach templated marketing So this does work 100% of the time, but it’s highly customizable to your business. So I’ll be back tomorrow with that. Thanks so much for tuning in.