In this episode, I dive into a core foundational marketing principle that is often overlooked but holds the key to your success. Trust me, this is a game-changer that can revolutionize your connection with your audience, the cost of your leads, and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies across the board.
I’ll be discussing the importance of speaking to what your audience wants, rather than what they need. As experts in our fields, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that we know what our audience needs better than they do. However, this can hinder our marketing efforts because it fails to address the desires and motivations of our ideal customers. By focusing on what people want and aligning our messaging and offers with those desires, we can capture their attention and stand out from competitors who may be talking about what people need instead.
Tune into this episode and I’ll provide practical tips and examples on how to course-correct and shift your marketing strategy towards effectively addressing what your audience truly wants. Trust me, by implementing this principle, you’ll see a massive difference in your marketing success and the way your audience responds to your offers.
Listen now to revolutionize your marketing approach and connect with your audience on a whole new level.
Key Points:
- Understand the Difference Between What People Want and What They Need:
- People’s desires may not align with what you think they need.
- Trying to change their desires is an uphill battle.
- Providing unique solutions fulfills their wants while addressing their needs.
- Clearly Define Your Ideal Customers’ Desires:
- Create a list of their specific desires and aspirations.
- Ask your audience directly for their input.
- Speak their language to build a stronger connection.
- Align Your Marketing with What People Want:
- Review all aspects of your marketing strategy.
- Ensure your content and messaging address what your audience wants.
- Fulfill their immediate desires while offering the solutions they truly need on the back end.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
Hello friends, welcome back to the podcast. Alright, I’m excited for today’s episode. It’s been on my list for a little while after a team training/conversation that happened, and I got inspired and was like, “I’m going to do a podcast on that.” But I hadn’t been able to work it into the schedule yet, so here we are. This is a core foundational marketing principle, something that will always be true, has always been true. It’s based on human psychology. It is extremely important to the success of all of your marketing, your content, your lead generation, your sales conversion, all of it, and it is very often forgotten without meaning to. It’s really easy to forget this without realizing that you’re not doing this. So this is a very important concept, a very important rule, and my suggestion is to listen to this episode, which will be on the shorter side today because it’s a pretty basic, simple concept. But I’m going to talk about it a little bit. It’ll be on the simple side, and listen to this, take it, and just go ask yourself: Do you have three layers to your marketing, your content, and your audience-building and audience growth strategies? Your lead generation, whether that’s a download or a webinar or a series or whatever it is, and then your offer and where you sell your offer, and just do an audit.
And look at it through the lens, right? After listening to this episode and ask yourself if there’s room for improvement in any or all of those areas based on what I say in this episode right now. So today’s episode is about how important it is to make sure in everything you do with your marketing, your content, your copy, your messaging, your sales page, your emails, everything, you are speaking to what people want versus need. And the reason why so many people miss this and so many people struggle with this is that most of us are so far in the weeds with our expertise that we think we’re talking about what people want. And we’re really sometimes talking about what they need because we know what they need, and we are experts at what we do. So oftentimes as experts at what we do, we learn and realize that people actually need something different than what they want. I’m sure you’ve maybe experienced that over time in your business where you’re like, “Ah, you know my audience, my leads, my customers, they think they need this, but they really don’t. In order to get their results, they need to do X, Y, Z,” or they need to change X, Y, Z, and that’s a result of you being very deep in what you do and your expertise in your gifts in the service or product or offer problem you solve. And you only figured that out by probably doing some deep work around it and getting some deep experience around it.
You have to remember that your audience and your leads, they’re not in the same place that you are anymore. They may be where you were before, before you dove deep into your business. A lot of people experience, like, “I used to be my ideal customer” type of situation. So you have to think about what it is that they want in their words because here’s the reality: You can’t change what someone wants. And if you set your marketing up to try to change what somebody wants, it’s an uphill battle. We can’t change people’s desires. We can give them solutions that are different than what they think they need. But when we’re speaking to them, we’re trying to get them to take an action, whether it’s buying or signing up for a webinar. If we try to make our marketing in that phase change what somebody wants, we’re going to struggle because all the other brands and content and businesses out there who are speaking to what somebody wants are going to get their attention, and you’re not. You can give someone a different solution on the back end. Let me give you some examples of this. We had a client, and this is where this conversation came out. We had a client who didn’t like the conversation around helping their customers and their clients get more clients because they’re like, “I don’t want to be known for that.” And then my solution, like it helps them get more clients, but it helps them in a way that they don’t think they know they need.
My answer and the conversation with my team that inspired this podcast was I was like, “But all of those customers, all of those ideal customers that they’re going after, they want more clients. So you can’t go to them and say, ‘Well, you don’t actually need more clients through marketing or through the ways you think you need it. You need this thing, you need this tool, you need this other thing.'” You can speak to them getting more clients through a unique method or a unique way or a unique tool, and then once they get in, you can show them what you’re talking about. And you’re still fulfilling the desire of getting more clients. You’re just fulfilling it in a way that they didn’t think they knew they needed, right? But if you go and you say, “Well, I am not going to talk about helping them get more clients. I’m going to talk about… I don’t remember what it was, I think it was like efficiency or something in their business.” If they don’t want that, they are not going to be interested in what you’re offering them. And so this is true for me too. There are so many of you guys, like most people, most business owners, they need messaging help. You guys need help with your messaging, your messaging, meaning all of your communication.
The way that you connect to your audience’s pain, frustration, and desire is not where it needs to be, and you probably, a lot of people, don’t even have the deep understanding of their ideal customer. I know this because I have worked with hundreds of businesses and been in the weeds of marketing for almost a decade, which is crazy to say. But if I went out front-facing and I had a webinar training about, like, dialing in your messaging or creating the most epic ideal customer description, you guys would not sign up for it because that’s not what you want. It is what most of you need, and I could have an epic workshop about all my processes and my strategies around defining your ideal customer and then bringing that into your marketing and how that gets you results. And that actual component is some of the most profound work that our members do in the done-with-you program. It’s one of the first things we have them go through, and then we also do this in our done-for-you. But I actually don’t really even market it because it’s just something that I give people on the inside because I know they need it, and it’s a part of the process to helping them get the actual result they want, which is more money, more customers, successful marketing, more leads, messaging is a part of that, they need that work in order to get to that desired result. But I don’t market it because people don’t know that they need it. They don’t want it either.
They’d be like, “Oh, well, I’ve already done this, like, I’ve been in business for 5 years,” or whatever, and I did the work on my ideal customer. It’s like, “No, you have to go way deeper on it.” They don’t want it, so I can’t change what people want. So the way that you make sure you’re doing this well is, number 1, you need to have a very clear list of your ideal customer’s desires. Like, what is it that they want, and even more importantly, how would they say it? What are the words they would use? If you don’t know the answer to this, go ask them because people know what they want. They know the ultimate outcome of what they want as it relates to their business or their health or their life or their relationships. If you ask them, like, “I’ll wave a magic wand, and I can make anything happen for you for your health or whatever you help people with.” So for me, it’d be like, “I’ll wave a magic wand, and I can do anything overnight to change your marketing. What would you want it to look like?” And then write down everything they say in their exact words because that is what your marketing needs to talk about. And if you do this exercise and you’re like, “Here’s the kind of hard, challenging part. If you do this exercise and you get a big list of what your audience says they want and then you go look at your marketing and you look at your lead generation offer or your offer itself or what you’re putting out there and you’re like, ‘Oh shoot, people don’t want this,’ well then that’s probably why your marketing isn’t working, and you need to tweak it, and you need to change the way you’re talking about it or maybe you need to change your lead generation strategy.”
Like, if I had a workshop on how to create a great ideal customer avatar description and then I went through this exercise and my list was filled with things like, “I want more leads, I want more sales, I want a marketing strategy that works,” right? I’d have to go back to my workshop and say, “Well, I am not giving a workshop on what people want, and that is my problem.” So having a definition of what your ideal customer wants and the way they say it and making sure you’re not trying to change it on the front end. Now, if you’ve ever been to one of my trainings, do I talk about messaging? Do I talk about knowing your ideal customer all the time? It’s a huge part of my trainings, but I’m tying it within the actual training to this is what you need and this is how you get the result. But in order to get you to the training, I spoke to what you wanted, and I didn’t trick people. I’m not saying trick people at all. It’s typically what happens is what somebody needs will still get them what they want, but they can’t see it, and it’s not an appropriate place for your content or your lead generation or even your sales page to try to do that convincing because that’s a very challenging task to undertake through marketing. You know, a webinar or trying to sell your offer on the sales page where you’re also trying to convince somebody to change what they want, you’re not going to convince someone to change what they want. Most people think they know the answer and what they want; they just need support in getting there.
So when I do my trainings, I talk a lot about messaging because it is so, so, so important. Like, it is the most important part. What we’re talking about in this episode is all messaging, and so I know deep down, like, most of the time, that’s people’s problem. 90% of the time when marketing is not working, it’s messaging. But I can’t go out on the front end and say that, and so I talk about it in my actual webinar. And then what I’ll do is if I talk about messaging and I’m creating awareness to a problem that people didn’t think that they had, now I can tie the messaging support and what they need to my offer. So if I’ve created an experience where I am able to get them there and get their attention and then show them a whole different way, a roadmap, point out mistakes that they’ve been making, and give them that clarity, now I’ve set them in a place where I can make that connection. So this example of this client that I was talking about, if they do not want to talk about how getting more clients that they don’t need to get more clients in their business, their ideal customer, they need to improve efficiency and they’ll make more money, that was kind of the example.
Well, you need to first speak to them getting more clients, growing their business, increasing their revenue, however they say it. Then in the training, I would probably say, “Okay, talk a little bit about getting more clients, but also show them how actually increasing the efficiency in their business would earn them more revenue.” Now you’ve created that clarity. You’ve spoken to what they want. Now you’re creating clarity to what they want and actually need, and now is the appropriate time to tie that to your offer. But you’ve got to do it within the experience where you are meeting your ideal customer and your leads exactly where they are today, and if you don’t know where they are today, that’s also a problem. So here’s some steps of what you can go do. Number 1, if you don’t have a list of at least 10 very specific desires that your ideal customer has in their words, where they are at today, I would go make that list. If you don’t know what it is, like I said, go talk to your ideal customer. That’s a process I teach and essential if you really don’t know. It is interviews, and I have a whole processing questions for it. That’s number 1.
Number 2, take that list and now go take inventory. Number 1, the content you’re putting out. Are your video topics, are your podcast topics, is your social media content speaking to what somebody wants? Even if I do a podcast like this, here’s a perfect example.
I do a podcast like this. I didn’t make the title “Give them what they want and improve your messaging.” The title is “The number 1 marketing rule.” It’s what you guys want. I’m giving you what you need in the episode. So this can be done on a very micro level and a very big level when you look at your marketing as a whole. So take that list, look at your content. Next, look at your lead generation. Look at it in two ways. Look at it, number 1, from the actual lead gen offer itself. The topic of it, the topic of the training, the topic of the download, the topic of the challenge. Is it what somebody wants, or do you need to change the experience? Number 2, maybe the topic is what they want, but the way you’re talking about it and you’re promoting it in ad copy and posts and landing page copy is not really speaking to those desires. And then number 3, look at all the places that you sell your offer to those leads. Your emails, your sales page, a webinar pitch. And make sure you are talking to what people want. Go look at that webinar pitch, go look at that sales page, and are you just listing out the features of your offer or using language that your ideal customer would never use? If so, you’re not making sales or you’re losing sales. So go take inventory of those three different levels, but you can only take that inventory if you have the list of what people want, and that list is in their words.
This alone, like this is a short podcast and this alone can make a massive difference in your marketing success and your connection with your audience, in the cost of your leads because they want to sign up for your offer, and your marketing across the board. This will make a huge, huge difference because now you’re meeting people where they’re at. Now you’re talking about what people want and their desires, and now they’re going to be much more motivated and excited to watch your content, sign up for your legion, and buy your offer. So go take inventory, and then come tell me on Instagram your takeaway if you have a big takeaway or the one thing you’re going to go change. The one thing you realized after going through this exercise. All right, everybody, I’ve got the Black Friday workshop happening tomorrow, if you’re tuning in on Thursday. Tomorrow, I’m doing a live workshop that is going to be really in-depth on your Black Friday sale, what to do the 4 weeks leading up to it. We’ve got a whole four-week plan. I’m giving you also what to actually have your promotion be. It doesn’t have to be a discount. And then how to execute it, how many emails, what that looks like, how many social posts. Everything you need to have a successful Black Friday sale. So if you haven’t gotten your ticket to that, you can grab it at hishmarketing.com/workshop. Otherwise, I will talk to you guys next week.