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SHOW NOTES

“If you fail to understand your audience, then you’re probably going to fail to create a customer journey that is for them.”

Let’s say you have a good product or service, but your funnel isn’t “working,” or your ads aren’t converting.

One of two things is happening: You either don’t understand your audience, or your messaging hasn’t delved deep enough.

In this episode, I’m walking you through a few examples of “failed” marketing to explain why it doesn’t work and the best “how to” moving forward.

I’m talking about…

  • Why failed ads are rarely about ‘technical problems’
  • How to nail your messaging (i.e. how to dive deep with your ICA)
  • And why Russel Brunson’s marketing is not your marketing!

Tune in for a short lesson in marketing, and then share your takeaways on Instagram stories! Tag @emilyhirsh for a shoutout.

NOTE – listen to episode 19, “Customize your marketing to YOUR Ideal Client,” for more about the perils of cookie cutter marketing.

Key Points:
[1:23] You think, “My funnel isn’t working,” but really, here’s what’s happening
[3:43] People don’t spend enough time here
[5:01] This gets lost with cookie-cutter strategies
[7:36] You are not Russel Brunson!
[8:55] Messaging is everything. Go deeper.

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Episode Transcripts:  

Emily Hirsh: I’m Emily Hirsh, and this is the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Attention innovators, influencers, creators, and game-changing entrepreneurs, your internet domination begins right here. We are the powerhouse marketers that you’ve been looking for. You’re already making waves in your industry, and we’re here to help amplify those waves of change by creating a connection that cuts through the noise. We take everything you’ve built inside your zone of genius and find its audience. With killer strategy and laser eye for impact, we launch multi-million dollar campaigns and skyrocket your reach online. And now, we are doing the unheard-of. We’re unveiling everything we’ve learned, taking you behind the scenes with the Hirsh Marketing Team, and giving away the secrets to our clients’ success. Stay tuned for top converting strategy, ROI reports, and insider knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else. You’re changing the world, and we’re the team to help.

Emily Hirsh: In this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share with you guys the top two reasons that I believe, and our team believes, and sees over again and again, why your ads and your marketing could fail. So actually, I saw this statistic that said the number one reason businesses fail is a bad product, like 55%. Which is funny, because it’s probably true. But let’s say you have a good product or service, I would assume, and you know people want it and need it, and it’s good, and [you] are getting success from it, at least on a small level, and you need to sell it. And you’re running ads, and you’ve got this marketing plan, and it’s not working.

Emily Hirsh: So a lot of people turn and say, “Oh, my Facebook ads aren’t working,” and “I must be targeting the wrong audience,” or “My funnel is broken,” or … I’m trying to think, like a lot of people blame it on the tech piece of Facebook ads. Here is most likely what it is: failed messaging or a failed understanding of your audience. And so I believe that people don’t do the work they need [to do] to understand their audience and to be able to nail that messaging, to have the success that they want and spend enough time there before saying “Oh, this isn’t working and it’s Facebook ads.”

Emily Hirsh: And the reason why this is something I see over and over again is, people don’t spend enough time here. They don’t spend enough time connecting with their audience, really exploring their messaging, testing their messaging, seeing what’s working. And that is why Step 1 of The Hirsh Process is to understand that person that you’re targeting and that you’re trying to connect with, and to make sure that you can speak to them. Not just on the surface level, but on a deep emotional level. And people skip that, or they think they don’t need to do it. So most of the time marketing and Facebook ads that are not working is because failed messaging, or they don’t understand their audience, meaning they don’t understand who their audience is and what they need and what customer journey they might need. That’s a piece of it.

Emily Hirsh: Because I believe with really good messaging you could still make money with a really crappy funnel, if your messaging is good. Or with really good messaging, you could make money by like, doing your Facebook ads on your own and making all these mistakes. And that actually happens. We have clients come to us and they’ve sold things. And that’s the goal, is that a client has sold some of their product or service before coming to work with us. And they’re like “I’ve been running my own Facebook ads,” or “I’ve done this organically up until this point, and I know I’m making a lot of mistakes and there’s holes, but I’m still selling things.” That’s a good sign, ’cause then you plug those holes and you fix those things and you bring in experts, and it skyrockets, because you’ve already proven it on a small scale.

Emily Hirsh: So make sure you take the time to really understand your ideal audience and customer, and that you know how to connect with them emotionally. How should you do this? The best way is to talk to them. So literally, if you’re at this place where you don’t know them, get on the phone. I just recommended this to a friend the other day, who’s got a really successful business he’s a partner in. But he’s launching a new business, and he’s like “I don’t know where to start. I have all these ideas, I’m overwhelmed by the ideas. I know I can help people with these things.” And I said “I can’t answer this for you, you need to get on calls.” Get on 15 minute .. do 10 or 20, 15-minute calls. Ask people …” Don’t ask them … The mistake people make is they say, “What do you want? If I was to sell something, what do you want?” Or, “Would you buy this thing?” And they’re like “Yeah, I would buy it.”

Emily Hirsh: No, ask them like, “Why are you not reaching your goals,” or “Why are you not able to do this,” or “What are you struggling with,” “What are you afraid of?” If they consume some of your content, like in this case he had podcast downloads and following. And I said “Ask them, why do they listen to your podcast? Why do they love your podcast?” You have to ask the questions that people may not even just tell you the answers to unless you ask them the questions, to go deeper and understand that messaging.

Emily Hirsh: And then the second piece of this is, if you fail to understand your audience, then you’re going to probably fail to create a customer journey that is for them. And people lose this in the cookie-cutter strategies that are out there, where they’re like, “Well, webinars are working, so I have to do a webinar.” Or “Challenges are working, and I have to do a challenge.” And so, actually, a great example of this is, I have a client who, like a year ago, came to me when I was doing the strategy calls and said “Oh, my gosh, I am in this mastermind, everybody’s doing paid challenges now. Up front, paid challenges, and people are paying for them, and then instead of a webinar, they’re selling their next product in the paid challenge. I have to do that. I’m gonna switch, I’m gonna switch my webinar, my free thing. I’m gonna switch it to a paid challenge, and then I’m gonna sell my higher-level product, ’cause everybody in my mastermind’s doing it.”

Emily Hirsh: And immediately I was like “Okay. So tell me what type of businesses those people have.” She’s like, “Well, it’s people who are in the business coaching space, and they have $997 digital products selling…” She gave me some examples, I think it was, one was like, “building your business with influence,” or I don’t know, something like that. Or an Instagram course. And I said “All those people are in the business-to-business space. Everybody you listed. And you are in the health space, so your target audience is consumers.” And, I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but in the business-to-business space, people buy a lot faster. It’s a business expense, it’s how to make more money in your business, they can write it off. They see the immediate ROI of being able to do that and invest in it. It’s easier to sell in the business-to-business space, harder to get the leads, so you’ll pay more for your webinar registrants, but you’ll sell more to the people you get in.

Emily Hirsh: In the business-to-consumer space, you get cheap leads, everybody will sign up for the free stuff. But it’s harder to sell. The average consumer out there has a really hard time spending like $50, to be honest with you. It’s crazy. So people go into it thinking, “I’ll just charge $20, cold traffic, [for] a challenge.” And I said “This is never gonna work. Your audience is not the same audience, and I guarantee … We can try it, [but] I’m telling you it won’t work, and I’m saying I won’t recommend it.” And she’s like “You are so right. Because I have a hard time selling a $10 membership to cold traffic, so why would they pay for a challenge?” I said “Exactly.” And so, if you don’t understand your audience and the customer journey that they need, and you take this cookie-cutter strategy, ’cause everybody else did it … and the biggest factors being they’re marketing to different people, or they have a following already.

Emily Hirsh: So like, Russell Brunson, of course he can go out and do a paid challenge that people are a part of. He has millions of followers who will buy it, and a name, and a reputation, and people who already trust him. You may not have that, and so you can’t do the same thing to get the same results. So, go back and make sure you understand your audience, that the customer journey you set up has the right amount of nurturing and selling and relationship-building that it needs to be able to produce that sale.

Emily Hirsh: And then, as I said in the beginning of this, failed messaging. Make sure you understand your audience. And messaging comes out in every piece, whether it’s your ads or your webinar or your emails or your sales page. Most of the time people mess up their messaging or they don’t go deep enough with their messaging in the beginning of their marketing, and it’s so important to keep on revisiting this until you really feel like you nail it. And honestly, that’s why hiring experts is great. And I don’t even just say that as our team, but I’m just saying even when we do our course and I do sales pages and emails and everything, I don’t write them. I have my copywriter do it, ’cause that is her zone of genius. I have a creative director and three copywriters, and they write copy way better than I do.

Emily Hirsh: And so, having them represent the message, but it’s also exploring with them. Like I actually just did a call with my creative director about the course that we have coming out in June, ’cause I needed to tell her, from my standpoint, what the messaging should be. But I don’t necessarily know how to put that into the best Facebook ad or sales page copy. She does, ’cause that’s what she does well. And messaging is everything. It will get people to stop the scroll, click, and then from there you could have holes that you’ll eventually want to fill, but if you don’t fix your messaging, you won’t get people in the door to start.

Emily Hirsh: So those are the top two reasons why ads and marketing might fail. So before you say, “Oh, my Facebook ads are sucking,” or “My funnel is totally broken,” go and look and make sure that you have an understanding of your messaging and an understanding of your audience and the customer journey and the nurturing and what you’ve planned for them before you just blame that. ‘Cause you probably haven’t gone deep enough if your marketing is not succeeding. Like I said, people come to us where they’re making sales, they have positive ROI, and they know, “Hey, I’m running my own ads and I’m not an ads person, but I’m still making sales.” ‘Cause with really good messaging and a good product and an understanding of that audience, you can still do well with holes in your funnel or your ad strategy. That’s when you take it and you go get experts and you scale that thing. Because you know you’ve gotten to that point.

Emily Hirsh: Thanks so much for tuning in today, guys. If you’re interested in applying to work with Team Hirsh, you can go to HelpMyStrategy.com to work with a team of experts who know how to nail your messaging, your ad strategy, and all of the implementation with your marketing. Talk to you later.

Emily Hirsh: Thanks for listening to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind the scenes of multi-million dollar ad campaigns and strategies, dive deep into The Hirsh Process, and listen to our most popular episodes over at HirshMarketingUnderground.com. If you loved this episode of the podcast, do me a favor and head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content. That’s all for now, and I’ll catch you next time.