In this episode, I share with you five marketing non-negotiables that I believe are the key to success, no matter what changes happen in the industry or online world. These principles have been the foundation of my own business and marketing strategy, and they continue to hold true time and time again. If you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level and create results that impact your business, then this episode is a must-listen.
During a recent dinner conversation with fellow entrepreneurs, I was asked about the principles, strategies, and values that have consistently worked for me in my business. This sparked an important discussion about the timeless elements of effective marketing that always hold true. In this episode, I’ll be sharing the five non-negotiables that I believe are crucial for any marketer or business owner to master. From the importance of solid messaging that creates a deep emotional connection with your audience to the need for a custom strategy that guides your leads to becoming paying customers, these principles will transform the way you approach your marketing efforts.
So, if you’re ready to unleash the power of these marketing non-negotiables and take your business to new heights, listen now to gain insights that will help you connect with your audience on a deeper level, create a compelling offer, and consistently nurture your leads to drive conversions.
Key Points:
- Messaging:
- Define your messaging and create a strong connection with your target audience.
- Understand their pain points, desires, and frustrations to create emotional connections.
- Continuously evolve and refine your messaging as your business and ideal customer evolve.
- Custom Strategy:
- Create a strategy that guides leads from awareness to becoming paying customers.
- Provide clarity and belief in a better way or a desired outcome.
- Create a gap that your offer fills, leaving your audience wanting more help and support.
- Clearly Defined Offer:
- Connect the dots between your offer and the emotional desires of your audience.
- Avoid overwhelming your audience with technical details and focus on the outcomes and benefits.
- Ensure that your offer addresses their pain points and fulfills their desires.
- Consistent Nurturing and Relationship Building:
- Establish a nurturing strategy to build relationships and maintain connections with your audience.
- Consistently remind your audience about your offer without overwhelming them.
- Stay top-of-mind for when your audience is ready to make a purchase or take the desired action.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
Hello, my friends! Welcome back to the podcast. Happy Thanksgiving week for those of you who celebrate. We are headed to California for Thanksgiving. We don’t always travel on the holidays; I feel like it’s always this tossup. Wouldn’t it be so nice to be with family, and do we want to navigate the airport during this time with three kids? So last year, we didn’t go anywhere and I really don’t like to travel on Christmas. It’s just hard with the young kids and having to bring all the stuff and. So we haven’t traveled for Christmas in a long time. This year we’re traveling for Thanksgiving, and then my family will come around Christmas time this year. So I’m looking forward to a week to hang out with my mom and my brothers, and my kids are so spoiled with my 3 younger brothers and all their uncles and aunts.
I’m the first to have kids, so they all don’t have kids yet, my younger brothers. And I’m super excited to just have some really good unplugged family time. Alright, today’s podcast episode is inspired after a conversation I had the other night at dinner with friends, and someone asked me a good question. It was a bigger dinner, and so it was some people I didn’t know, and it was entrepreneurs, and so as always, we talk about business and someone asked me, “What principles and strategies and values have I seen hold true for my whole time in my business and in marketing? And if I’m seeing things that even through the shifts and the changes that happen in the economy, in the industry, in the online world, you know, through COVID, like what did I feel stays the same always?” And I thought that was an awesome question.
So I’m going to talk about the 4 marketing non-negotiables that I believe are always true, no matter what happens in the economy, no matter what changes, no matter what changes your business goes through, no matter what happens in the tech world, right? Because if we look back however many years ago when there wasn’t even internet, I think these are still true and so they’re very important concepts to pay attention to in your marketing because they’re always going to be true. They’re foundational. As I talk about these, they’re not new concepts. This is not the episode for a shiny new strategy, which I rarely do that anyways. But it’s not the episode where I’m sharing a hack or a tactic or like a specific strategy. It’s things that I have talked about enough on my podcast. It’s not new and also serves as great reminders.
But likely when you listen to this, you are going to hear one of these that comes off stronger for you than others, and this is very true when we hear information; we can’t retain all of it. And so a lot of times we hear something and for you individually right? Now there is something in this episode that likely needs to be your focus. So if you hear one of these points and you’re like, “Oh, I totally forgot about this. I haven’t paid attention to this in a while,” lean into that because that will likely move the needle in a lot of your business versus trying to master all of these and retain all of these. They’re all true. We need all of them. We probably all have some version of them whether it is as optimized as it could be or not but lean into the one that really stands out for you. Because it will likely also be different now than in like six months or six months before this because your business changes so much and you’re taking action and you’re evolving and you’re growing and so then sometimes as we grow like 1 thing needs more attention than the other.
So with that said let’s dive into this the first marketing non-negotiable is not going to be a surprise and is number one intentionally and this is your messaging. Your messaging is everything and I define messaging as the way that you communicate your message with your audience. This can be in the form of verbal written content, your emails, your ad copy, the way that you create an emotional connection with your audience and so focusing on and having solid messaging is a non-negotiable because it’s one of those things that you can have the most cool up-to-speed marketing strategy or even offer you can have the best offer that you sell that you know is going to solve people’s problems. And if you don’t nail your messaging and your communication around it. You won’t sell it and so that’s why this is number 1. Looking at “how strong is my connection to who I’m trying to attract and serve in my business.” Because that connection is what creates the powerful messaging so when you have that strong connection around people’s pain, their desires, their frustrations, the things that they don’t even know how to fully verbalize what they are feeling emotionally because people only make decisions off of emotion.
Whether you realize it or not it is true and you having that connection, you having that deep understanding allows you to then go and create a strategy and communication and assets that genuinely connect with people and get them to make a decision. So the first step in this is really asking yourself “do I have that connection?” Like if I was to sit down in front of Emily and she asked me “could I describe who I’m trying to attract and serve in my business” could I tell you who they are on a deep deep level, could I create a connection to where if you explained it to me I would be like I feel it. I can feel what that person is going through, I can feel what they are frustrated about, I can feel what they want and their desire and it’s so clear and if your answer to that is no, dig into that and as you create the deeper connection and you bring clarity to that. You will then get clarity on what that means for your marketing for your offer for how you sell your offer for everything and that is why it’s number one and honestly it never is finished because you’re continually evolving.
So your ideal customer is likely also evolving. Most humans in the world are shifting seasons, change, things happen and so as that happens we have to evolve our messaging with our ideal customer. So people make a big mistake where like they address this at the very beginning of their business and they don’t bring a lot of depth to it and then they never look at it again and when something is not working in marketing 8 times out of 10 it’s the messaging. It’s the connection. It is the lack of connection that is causing the lack of action because when something isn’t working in marketing, there’s a lack of action. It can be a lack of clicking on an ad. It can be a lack of signing up for something for free and it can be a lack of buying or booking a call or fill out an application when something isn’t working in marketing. There’s a lack of an action happening. And when there’s a lack of an action then we don’t have the motivation the desire the need to take that action coming from your ideal customer and we can likely solve that with messaging. The second marketing non-negotiable is also very intentionally number 2 on this list. And that is a custom strategy or experience that successfully does 2 things and this is super important.
So listen to this very carefully. This is what any marketing strategy does, any, I don’t care your business, what you sell, the industry you’re in, this is the goal with your strategy to take someone from not knowing who you are or a lead to becoming a paying customer. This is what you want to do through this experience. You want to create clarity and a belief. A belief in a better way or a possibility or a desire or a dream you want to create clarity and create a belief and allow them to see a path to that desire that you are fulfilling and. Simultaneously you need to create a gap that your offer will fill and this is like a dance here because there’s a very fine line on this and this is why I’m going to talk about this and say it again because. Your job in a marketing strategy and an experience that you’re creating to take someone from a lead to a sale is not to overwhelm. It’s not to deliver a high volume of information that is not well organized and well thought out and intended to create an experience.
Because if you do that people will be overwhelmed and they will not buy because I’ve said this before but overwhelm people do not buy if I’m overwhelmed I am not going to make a buying decision. So your job is to figure out what clarity and what information do I need to provide and in what way do I need to provide it to create clarity and create the belief that their desire is possible. So this could look like you explaining the steps. They’re going to need to take to get from where they are now to where they want to be this could look like you explaining the things that they’re doing wrong and why those things don’t work this could look like you bringing clarity to how they do things and you want them to feel like oh I get it now I understand why I’ve tried all these things and it hasn’t worked or oh I I didn’t see the path before but now I totally could see myself doing this and getting to that result and at the same time you need to be creating a gap which means at the end of giving that information and creating that clarity the feeling you want people to have is have the clarity I have the belief and I also know I need more help.
Usually this is in the form of you are telling them the what and the how is your offer a big mistake people make either 2 mistakes here. There’s 2 directions that I see people go one is they overwhelm. They’re associating volume of information with the success of their strategy and so they overwhelm and they just like vomit information in a presentation or something and then the audience is like oh my god this is awesome. But I have a to do list a mile long and I don’t need any more help or people stay very surface level and they like don’t bring any depth and don’t bring any clarity and belief to what they teach because they’re afraid of overwhelming but then ultimately they don’t create any form of transformation or clarity for their audience and then they’re also not ready to buy so no matter what business you are no matter what type of marketing like again if we go back 30 years like this was still what needed to happen with marketing. It just happened in a different way creating a custom strategy and a custom experience that you need to create in order to take someone from where they are right now to purchasing your offer the third marketing non-negotiable is a clearly defined offe that addresses your audience’s pain points and fulfills a desire.
A lot of people find themselves in a situation where they might have a great offer that they sell but the way they are talking about that offer is not selling it. Because they are not talking about the emotions I see this all the time I go to a sales page and on that sales page is here’s my offer. It is twelve modules, three months, here’s the titles of the modules, group calls, pdfs. Okay, that means nothing to somebody who is interested in your offer because I have no idea what that’s going to do for me and how that’s going to help me achieve my goal achieve my desire get to the outcome that I want to get to so your job in. When you sell your offer which comes up on sales pages emails Webinar pitches. If You’re a product business. It’s the Same. It’s still on your product page and you are trying to create an emotional connection of how your product is going to. Create the desire that people want Sometimes it’s a little bit less on product businesses but still do people buy health products or skincare products or products because they’re like oh I’m just I’m just buying it for the ingredients.
For example, if I’m buying my skincare product that I buy. I’m buying it because I want really quality ingredients because I care about my body and there’s a lot more depth to that in terms of I Want to live a long time I don’t want to put toxins inside of me etc I Also want my face to look good like there’s emotion there right? I’m not just buying the what. So your job is to connect that for your audience and not just explain to people the what because the what to you and this is why people make this mistake I believe I don’t think it’s intentional I think it’s because to you the what makes a lot of Sense. You made the offer you have a reason behind why you made this offer. And so you already have the connection to why? it’s so powerful your audience and your leads do not have that So the job of selling your offer is to connect the what of the offer to the actual outcomes and the benefits that your ideal customer. Has what you know because number one was the connection to that. So it’s explaining you’re going to have group q and as and this offer so that you can get any answer to your question and you are never stuck so that you can get 1 on one coaching and catapult your results to Xyz.
Whatever the outcome is why did you put this in your offer. What’s the outcome. It’s trying to provide if you don’t have a clearly defined offer that actually connects to your audience’s pain points and desires. You will have a very hard time selling it. And like I said this shows up every place you talk about your offer even when you verbally talk about it practice this like try to go to somebody and sell your offer to them. How would you sell it are you just talking about the what. Like here’s what we do for people here’s the what or are you talking about the outcome and the benefits that your offer is going to create so that’s number 3 number 4 this is a non-negotiable. This is always true. Always will be true, having consistent nurturing and relationship building. And connections being created that then lead back to your offer so that people can’t forget about your offer once they’re in your world. So a lot of people create a marketing strategy that’s like a 1 anytime thing, it’s like, here’s my marketing strategy, and I think that I’m going, you know, I’ll bring leads in. I’ll put them through one sequence, and then that’s it.
Now I’m just focused on bringing the leads – more leads, more leads. Most of the time, people do not buy the first time that they come into contact with your brand. So, a marketing non-negotiable is how are you consistently nurturing and building relationships, and, also, to your audience and to your leads. How are you consistently talking about your offer so that they can never forget about it? In a good way, not in a forcing it down their throat way, but just consistency, really. That’s it. Because the reality is, to you, it’s gonna feel like a lot. To you, it will feel like you’re talking about it all the time. But very few people, like very few of you guys, listen to every single one of my podcasts, read every single one of my emails, read every single one of my social posts. I love the ones out there who do that. You guys are amazing, but it’s probably like two percent of you in my audience. So, if I only talk about my offer, like, once every 10 podcast episodes or like once a month in my email, not a lot of people are going to hear about it. And, with your offer, the marketing formula is literally as simple as, like, build your audience, build your leads, talk about your offer consistently, and you will get sales, and a snowball effect starts to happen. And, like, that is the long game. So, having a strategy where you can genuinely nurture and build constant relationships, which really, like, this one comes down to consistency. Are you emailing your list regularly? Are you showing up on social media? Are you serving your audience? Are you doing once-a-quarter live events?
And then, how are you incorporating your offer into this? You guys will hear me talk about how we help clients on the podcast in very casual ways, because it all goes together. I’m not pitching every podcast, but it’s very clear what we do and the results we get and why we’re so awesome in everything that I do. It is not constant selling, but it’s constant reminders, consistent reminders because when that person is ready to buy and solve the problem that you solve, you want to be the first choice. So, for me, I have quite a large audience, and 90% of my audience is not ready to work with us yet. But when they are, I want to be top of mind, which only comes from consistency. So that is the fourth marketing non-negotiable. I’m going to add a fifth into this that I think is obviously very important, but it only can come after these 4 and that is a traffic strategy. Because you can do all these things and then get nobody to look at your strategy and nobody to connect with your content and all the work that you did. So whether that’s organic or paid, or you have to literally every single day go create conversations and build relationships.
You need to have a traffic strategy to actually get new people daily looking at your business, coming into your world, and building that audience and building those leads. Now, that doesn’t mean that these first 4 things have to take, like, months before you’re ready for traffic. These things, we do this all in onboarding a new client, like, these can happen quickly. It’s almost like a Q&A checklist of, like, okay, before we run ads, before we have a traffic strategy, do we have the messaging nailed down? Do we know the strategy, like the custom experience we’re creating? Is our offer positioning good, and do we have a nurturing strategy in place to follow up and stay consistent with everything? Boom, boom, boom. Like, this all happens in onboarding a new client so it doesn’t mean you have to wait, like, six months to be able to run ads and have your traffic strategy. But the traffic strategy does come after all 4 of these things because your traffic strategy is only going to amplify these 4 things. So if these first 4 things are nonexistent or very poor, your traffic strategy will not work and this is why I really discourage you from working with a marketing company or an agency that only addresses traffic because it’s such a small piece of the puzzle. It’s the amplifier, but most of the work actually happens in the messaging, in the strategy, in the offer, and the offer positioning in the nurturing. Like, that’s the bread and butter of marketing.
Traffic is a small amount that amplifies again everything that you’ve done and this is why this is built into our onboarding. Every single one of these things, no matter if you’re coming into essential or all the way up to elite, like, this is a part of our onboarding because this matters more than the traffic. So, that’s the fifth one. You obviously need traffic to your business in order to make sales, but that can’t come until these 4 things are addressed. So, as you tuned into this, pay attention. If anything really stood out to you where you’re like, oh, I haven’t looked at my messaging in a while. I’m not sure that my strategy is really creating clarity and a belief, and then also a gap, figure out where you’re called to dig in deeper and go look into that and make a goal or an action or a few around that this month. All right, everybody, have an amazing day. And I’ll be back on Thursday.