Make Marketing Suck Less

Hey, hey rebels. I've been thinking a lot about time lately, especially timing in our business. Because when we choose to do something or to invest in something, it's just as important as how to do something.

Our understanding of how something works, and a lot of the times we choose to invest in something in our business because of FOMO, right? It's the scarcity. It's the, oh my God, this is never going to be offered again with these bonuses and at this price, so I have to do it now. We don't approach it from a place of intention where we're thinking about what does my business need?

And I find this to be true when we're starting our business. Now when I started my business, I invested in a whole lot of things that I didn't need right away. However, some of these things have become quite useful for me.

So for instance, when I first started out, I ended up investing in a Facebook ads course, Absolute Facebook Ads from 
Claire Pelletreau, and she is going to be a guest on the Rebel Rising Podcast in March. And I love Claire. She is the host of the 
Get Paid Podcast. We've been friends for years and honestly I shouldn't have invested in her course because at that time I didn't have a funnel.

I didn't have a message, I didn't have an opt-in that actually converted and I was in that space of, what I think about as that marketing gap, where I was kind of just setting money on fire in my business, where we're just trying out all of these marketing tactics before we actually have our business foundation sat, like knowing what we offer, who we serve, the big problems that we solve for the people we serve. Having a message that resonates and reaches those people but you know, not all is lost.

I'm now at the place in my business where I am using that Facebook ads course. And I will say I got it at a screaming deal back in the day. And it's a fantastic course that I highly recommend if you're looking to learn how to do Facebook ads. But I see this happening all the time. When I was working with speakers, people wanted to be speakers before they really had a business and they didn't really have a message other than, oh, I had this experience and now I want to tell the world about it. And you can't be a professional speaker with that kind of message.

So the question I hear from a lot of people about creating a persuasive brand message that gets your business known is when does it make good sense to work on your message?

And that's a really good question. So I want you to understand two things. Number one, why should you even care about having a message and two, when and when should you think about working on that message? 

There are three signs or inflection points when working on your message might be that right next step, and that's what we're going to be talking about on today's episode of the podcast. 

But first I want to tell you why you should even care. Like why should you listen to me about this messaging thing, because I know you've been listening to me for a while about the 3 Word Rebellion and you probably think, hh, that's pretty sexy. You know, I want to have a message that encapsulates the change I want to create in the world in just three words. But why is this so important? It seems like it could be just this nice to have instead of something that you should absolutely have.

And the thing is, that you've got to understand how to influence and persuade people to choose your business because there are more and more businesses in the world, right?

Like we know this, the online business world is getting more and more crowded. Everybody thinks they can be a business owner these days and quit their nine to five job because it's so easy to do, what we do. And, and let's face it, it's not. You and I know that we've been in this game long enough. So there are so many people others could listen to. It's noisy and competitive and your message and how you influence and persuade people, the journey that you're taking them on, the stories that you're telling them, that is how you're attracting people. That is how you're drawing them in.

And that's why it's important to not only get your three word rebellion, but to really fine tune that messaging.

So with that in mind, it becomes imperative that you figure out how you're going to communicate and communicate with intention. And I'm going to talk about that in more detail on the next podcast episode.

So there are these three points in business and one of these points might be a little bit surprising to you where I do think you should work on your message.

So the first sign that you are ready to step in to messaging and really fine tune it, hone it, step into this bigger message that you can be intentional with and own is pretty obvious.

You've validated your offer and now it's time to dominate the marketplace. 

So what does it mean to validate your offer? It means that you have something you can sell that people want and it gets great results. 

So for me, what this looked like when I was rolling out the 3 Word Rebellion, I didn't just chuck my business, helping speakers write keynote speeches and doing their speaker marketing out the window. When I came up with this 3 Word Rebellion idea, what I did was I created a new offer and I tested it.

I sold it to some people at a very reasonable price and I saw if it could work. I wanted to see if I could sell it, if they could get results. And once it did, I knew like, okay, I can focus my business and on selling it. I had validation. Now I would say 50% of my clients fall in this category because now that you know that you have something that people want, it works for them, it gets them great results.

Of course you want to sell as much of this as possible because it's awesome. Get it into as many hands as possible and you probably also want to be speaking more. And I'm thinking about speaking in the general sense of the term, like speaking on podcasts or in the media on stages, all of that. You want to be getting the word out.

There are three really good examples of business owners who are doing this. Back in December I had an episode called 
3 Big Ways Your Message Makes Your Marketing Investment Pay Off. And I featured three of my clients who have validated their offer and we're getting their message out in a larger way and I recommend checking that out to see how their message really then was fueling the growth of their business. 

o that's the first sign you validated your offer and now it's just time to go out there and start dominating and really spreading the word so that you can grow so that you can scale and really have the impact that you want to make.

So the second sign, this one's a little bit different and unexpected, and this is if you are doing something super unique in your business.

So there are times when I get people who are typically experts in their field or they're doing something that they have a lot of experience in and no one else is really doing, or it's a different or controversial topic that not a lot of people are talking about in their industry. And they may or may not have an offer that is validated because they don't know how to sell it because what they're doing is so unique and so different that they can't create anything to sell until they actually figure out a way to talk about it. 

So a good example of this is an app, another upcoming guest on the podcast. He is an attorney, his name is Glenn Meyer. And when he first contacted me, I was like, why is this attorney contacting me? And then as soon as I hopped on the phone with him, I figured it out because Glenn was on, or is on a mission to put love back into the law. Now think about how weird that is. 

When you think of an attorney, you are probably not thinking of a guy who wants to build relationships. Cause that's not what attorneys do. You hire an attorney when something has gone horribly wrong in a relationship and you're at each other's throat and you just want it to be over and you want to get what yours. What is yours? Right? And he just had a radically different view of the law and thought, well what if we could use this as a tool to build relationships, to build businesses, to build partnerships?

And so how do you talk about that? How do you talk about that too? And have people not think that you're insane. And so that's what we worked on. And so I'm going to share that episode with you, but you can see how that's a challenging and innovative and unique thing that he was creating in the world.

So sometimes when you're doing something that is unique and different, you might not necessarily have a full fleshed out offer. And sometimes the message itself then creates the offer. So if you've been someone who's been thinking about like, Oh, I want to work with Michelle but I don't have my offer down yet because when I'm doing is so unique that I figure I have to, I have to figure out how to talk about it before I can have an offer, then you're probably need to 
talk to me. All right? So that's the second sign that you may need to work on your messaging, that you're doing something unique that's different that no one else is doing.

And the third and final sign is that you are in a pivot, your business is changing, you're known for something, and now you want to do something else.

So you might want to change your audience. You might want to expand your audience without alienating who is already following you. You might want to change what you're doing. You might want to become a different kind of coach or a different type of consultant or a practitioner. Maybe you've always been a consultant. Now you want to be like you want to create software instead.

When you are in a pivot, when you're changing up your business and people know you as one thing and you want to change to a different thing, then that is very special and unique. It's a special and unique messaging challenge and one that happens. We sometimes want to solve a bigger or more complex problem like what I 
talked about at the beginning of 2020 when your businesses are ready to talk about a bigger message or to talk about a bigger problem, that means you have to change up that message and take your audience along with you or give them an option out.

And so with all three of these signs, the common thread is that you want to have a message that allows you to grow with intention. 

Whether you have a validated offer and now it's time to pour some gasoline on the fire, or you've got a great idea that you don't know how to talk about, or it's just time to change things up. It's time to create a message that allows people to make a decision about whether to follow you or not and allows you to create content with intention. 

So your action for this episode is to think, is it time for you to focus on honing your message? Are you in one of these three categories? And if it's yes, then go and get the pricing guide or grab a copy of the 
3 Word Rebellion  and if it's not, that's cool too.

Still keep listening to the podcast obviously, but think about what does your business need from you right now? And do you have a resource that maybe you purchased ages ago, like my Facebook ads course, and could you use that? And can that meet that need. 

So we're going to be continuing this conversation about intention over the month of February. And on the next episode of the Rebel Rising Podcast, I'm going to be talking about creating content and marketing assets with intention and the three specific intentions that most content has and how you can use that to grow your business. 

So if you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast.

And remember, timing is everything in life and in business. And if it's the right time for you and you feel it in your gut, then make the move your business and the people who need your business will.

Thank you.