Make Marketing Suck Less

How to Know If Your Message Is Really Working for Your Business

I am always asked, “How do I know if my message is really working for my business? I have a 3 Word Rebellion. I'm not sure it's actually getting the job done.”

To me, the test of a great message is that it makes people curious about the message while also allowing them the space to reflect on their own lives, their own situation or circumstance.

Let's think about this for a minute. Start with “why”. That is the type of message that you think, “Cool, I need to start with my why, but what the heck is my why? I need to think about that.”

Or even something like the 5-Second rule. We wonder what is it and should I be following it and is it going to make my life better? Or even one of my favorite 3 Word Rebellions from the author and former guest of this podcast, Amber Rae, whose 3 Word Rebellion is Choose Wonder Over Worry.

For me I think, “yeah, I'm over worrying. I do think choosing wonder sounds amazing, but how do I do that?”

When we have a message that makes people think, it makes that message stick in their brain, and it is a message that people want to act on.

Even in my own business, I work with a lot of service-based business owners and when they find the right message, the right 3 Word Rebellion, it does that exact same thing.

It causes people to think.

For instance, my client Michelle Evans, who is a marketing strategist, her 3 Word Rebellion is Profit Without Worry.

When people hear that, they think,” yes, that is what I want in my business. I want to profit and not have to worry. How do I make that happen?”

During the last webinar that I gave all about creating an audience journey, taking your people from unaware to heck yes, one of the questions that came up over and over again was how do I know if this message is working?

Yes. Curiosity and people reflecting on my message is amazing, but how do I know it's actually working for my business? What are the signs and the signals that I should be looking for?

That's a great question because having a solid message that actually gets your business results creates stability and predictability.

If you're in a season in your business where you need to go out and generate some more people to work with you, then you know exactly what to say to get those people in conversation with you.

On today's show, we are going to talk about the different ways to test to see if your message is not is working or it's not working.

Tune into the audio:

Don't worry, I am not going to be talking about statistical tests. There's no A/B testing here. You need a very large audience to do A/B testing to get real results. So no statistics ahead, but I'm going to give you one big ass “DON'T” to follow along with four ideas to try out and see if your messaging is working.

But before we do, it's time for my new favorite part of the show where I give some love back to you, the listener and give you a shout out. So Rich Hopkins left this podcast, a five-star review on iTunes and I just want to give him some love and much thanks for this review because this review tells me that my intentions for this podcast are coming across. Rich wrote,

“Michelle is always looking out for her listeners, Michelle's enthusiastic, experienced, and full of information and inspiration that she is willing to share if you're starting a movement of any type, business or personal. This is a great podcast to get marketing ideas and continual encouragement and even a kick in the butt.”

So thank you so much rich for leaving this review, it is the heart of everything that I do in this podcast and my business with the 3 Word Rebellion book. I am putting my audience's best interests at the center because that's what matters most for me.

I love being reminded that you, Rich, see this about this podcast, a million thank yous to you. And if you have something to say about this podcast, please leave me a review on iTunes or your favorite podcasting platform and who knows? You might be getting some listener love in a future episode and you'll also be helping other people discover the show. So now, now that we're done with the listener love, let's get on with the show and talk about how to know if your messaging is working.

Here is my biggest don't for trying to figure out if your messaging is working.

It is one of the big rants I've been going on about for a while. It's about crowdsourcing, nothing makes me shake my head and go, oh, what are you doing?

When I see people posting on Facebook or Instagram and saying like, “Hey, I think this is what my message is. What do you all think?”

I see people do this with their business model, their branding, their logos, and it drives me insane.

Crowdsourcing feedback on your business is the worst way to get valuable feedback.

And the first reason for that is those people responding are not your ideal clients.

When you are making business decisions, messaging decisions, you should be talking to the people who would buy from you at some point in time because that's who you want your message to resonate with, not some freaking rando on Facebook.

The second big reason not to do this is that when we crowdsource, our message will get watered down partially because we don't know who we're talking to.

We have a bunch of random people who never may work with us or buy our books or whatever we're selling.

But they will always produce something that sounds very, very boring and like everyone else, and that's not their fault. It's because they're not experts in messaging and they're not your ideal clients.

Then the final thing to keep in mind about crowdsourcing is that when you are leading with an edgy, with a rebellious message that is going against the status quo, random people don't know what to do with that.

It makes them feel uncomfortable.

And that's one of the things, a good 3 Word Rebellion does, it repels the wrong people and brings the right people in.

But Facebook, Instagram, random groups are not the way to test your message. So please raise your right hand right now and swear to me, “Michelle, I solemnly swear I will never crowdsource my message,” because if you stop doing that, you can actually start getting some valuable insight into what's working and what's not working with your messaging.

So now that I've covered my big ass, DON'T, let's talk about what you can do to see if that message is working.

One of my favorite techniques, especially if you are someone who is having sales conversations, is to drop your message, your 3 Word Rebellion, into a sales conversation.

This is the perfect opportunity to see how the other person reacts. See if it's an oh, tell me more about that, heck yes. Or it's an oh, I dunno if I want to buy this or even if it doesn't even register for them.

For instance, and at the beginning of this episode, I talked about Michelle Evans and her Profit Without Worry, 3 Word Rebellion. We knew that it was the right one because when she was having sales conversations, people were either all in like, yes, I know I can profit without worry. Show me the way. Or they didn't believe that that was possible. They thought business needs to be full of worry, full of stress. She knew that she had the right 3 Word Rebellion.

Another one of my clients who has a service-based business, Mona Moore, she's an online business strategist and her 3 Word Rebellion is Calm by Choice.

She used it in two different sales conversations. Each of those people were interviewing other online business managers for the same job, and she was chosen by both of them because they wanted calm by choice and then she knew that that message was going to work for her business.

The caveat I will put here is that you do want to elicit a strong reaction.

That's how you know it's working.

Either “oh, that's what I want,” or “I don't believe that's possible.” Both of those are a sign of a great message, a great 3 Word Rebellion.

However, if your people are like, “I dunno,” or they don't really react, then you probably haven't nailed it yet. If you drop it into a conversation and you get no reaction, no noticing of that message, then it's not the right 3 Word Rebellion.

Of course, test it a few times. But if you're starting to see that you don't get a reaction, then it's time to keep working on that message.

The second idea that I 100% believe in for testing your message and getting feedback is the business bestie test.

And you know we all have that one, no-nonsense, no BS friend, the one that will tell you the truth no matter what, no matter how painful it is.

This is the person, the person who understands you and understands your business and is a truth-teller that you want to run your messaging by asking them, “Hey, what do you think isn't making you curious? Does it represent me and my business? Does it make you want to take action?”

Get some feedback from your trusted sources.

It's better if you have a few people to run this by. Ask them and then listen, and then obviously go test it more with your audience as well.

The third idea I have for you, and this is more about intuition than anything else, is following your gut because your gut will never lead you astray on your messaging.

I've seen this time and time again when I'm working with a client.

We're working on the 3 Word Rebellion. And when we land on it, when we land on something that is really curiosity provoking and makes me go, oh, tell me more.

I get a physical reaction. There's a little chill that runs up and down my spine when a new 3 Word Rebellion that is amazing is born.

Part of that is yes, my intuition, but also my 25 years of experience doing messaging work. I know what's going to work.

Here's the thing you do to my clients, feel that same shiver, that same electricity.

Follow your gut. If you are having massive doubts on what you think your messages and whether or not it's going to work for your people, then that's most likely a heck no. From your gut, if it's a heck yes, you know, and if it's like, and I'm not sure, go drop it in a sales conversation or try this next idea.

This is my final idea for you for testing your message to figure out if it's really working for your business.

Are you achieving your goals?

When I sit down to create a podcast, I have a specific intention for my business in mind.

So, for instance, if my goal is about audience growth then I want to reach new audiences.

I know I need to create content for my unaware problem aware people.  I talked about that episode about the audience journey and where you're leaving the audience behind a few weeks ago. Check out that episode because it will help you set your intention for your message.

When I'm in a season of audience growth or I'm in a season of, “hey, I need more people to work with” so I'm in a season of sales or a season of launching or a season of getting people to make a decision about working with me, then I that's the intention I go in with when I create content.

If I know I'm in a season of audience growth, I'm going to look at the numbers at the end of the month and see, hey, is my audience on growing and how much is it growing for the podcast? How many downloads am I getting for Instagram? How many new followers, what's the engagement, the profile visits, how much is the Facebook group growing?

And if it's not growing or I'm losing ground and it's negative audience growth, it's probably something wrong with my messaging. The content was somehow off base.

When you are thinking about your 3 Word Rebellion, your overall messaging strategy, think about the goal that you currently have.

Whether it's audience growth or revenue or a combination of all of those things and really access it, is your message moving that needle? Is it getting you closer to your goals or further away from the goals or is it taking you forever to get to that goal? Then it could mean that your message isn't working as effectively as it should.

If your gut or the numbers are telling you that your message is likely not working, then I'd love to help you in the 3 Word Rebellion messaging intensive.

Where we'll not only create and test out a 3 Word Rebellion for your business, but we'll also come up with a messaging strategy so that you always know exactly what to say to achieve your goals and it's going to move the needle in your business. Getting more followers, income impact, influence, all of it. And just imagine what it's like to be prepared for a podcast and know exactly what to say to get people to buy a book or to get people to opt-in.

You'll always know what to post on social media. And heck, you can even turn over that messaging master plan to a marketing team.

So if that is interesting to you, what you should do is book a free discovery session 

I want to leave you with this one final thought:

Testing your message and getting a message that works for your business 24 hours a day, seven days a week is one of the most important things you can do.

It will make everything in your business easier. It will give you the stability that you crave. It will get you recognized as an expert.

As long as you remember when you're testing that message, not to crowdsource, and instead, follow your gut, drop it into the conversation and look at the goals of your business. Keep honing that message until it works for you.