Make Marketing Suck Less

Hey, rebel. There's a piece of internet marketing advice that floats around the internet that we, myself included until lately,…largely ignore. I think we ignore it because it feels overcomplicated or might feel intrusive on our audience, our clients, or potential clients, or sometimes, I think it just feels like a lot of work when really it isn't. Or sometimes, I wonder if it's just we're so focused on making sales that we forget that we have this resource right in front of us.

And that advice that we're often given is to listen and pay attention to what your clients and the people who want to work with you — your audience is saying back to you, uh, listening and paying attention to what questions they ask, what offhanded comments they make about your work, right. Jotting down like any misconceptions that you find yourself consistently clearing up.

And this is an excellent way to create content and to create copy that really engages with your right fit clients. But I think the ways that it's talked about in the online space can feel like you need to have like a whole research system set in place in order to make this work. But really you don't, it can be super simple and yeah, (taking a pause.) And when, when we do it, it can make our content creation and copywriting just so much easier. 

So I wanted to take you behind the scenes of my business and tell you a little bit about how I capture and pay attention to what people say. So then I can create around it and trust me, it can be easy peasy and super low tech.

And honestly, you don't even have to do it consistently every day to start reaping the benefits of it. So let's dive in and talk about how this works in my business, and how it can work in yours.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we are always supposed to be creating content for our business. After being in business for almost 10 years, I have created a lot of content over the years. And part of my repurposing strategy is now to really start paying attention to what my clients, potential clients, you, the people who are a part of my, my podcast community or my email community are talking to me about or asking me questions about, because I noticed that that's a really great way for me to start repurposing some of the things that I have created throughout my many years in business. So how I have been approaching this? I've been doing it in three different ways, and the first way that I approach really paying attention and capturing client language…

At the end of each day where I'm seeing clients, I just do a five-minute review because my clients ask me awesome questions all the time. And I realize that most of those questions are also questions that you might have as well. Questions about messaging and marketing and how to use your message. All of those things are sales.

I mean, oh my gosh, we talk about so many things during my client calls. So a couple examples of this, for instance, the recent podcast on how to repel shitty clients and word of mouth and how to be more effective with word of mouth marketing and also the alternative to ideal clients. All of those podcast episodes came out of client questions and client conversations and (taking a pause.) So how do I capture these conversations? And now this is what I do. It's super simple. It's super low tech. At the end of a client day, I will just take five minutes and think about my client calls and think about any interesting conversations we had or any questions that stood out to me.

And then I just jot them down in a notebook. That's what I do. Um, and I don't necessarily do this every single day, but it's consistent enough where when I start thinking about, “Oh, well, what am I going to talk about on the podcast next quarter?”, I can go into this notebook and just kind of look at some of the questions and conversations that I've had.

And it's so easy to build out a content calendar around that and align that content calendar with my business goals. And it's also a really great place for me to come up with like email ideas because I do like to send out a weekly, super valuable email. Sometimes it's about the podcast. Sometimes it's about a question that I've been asked or something I've been thinking about, but just so much gold in the questions that I'm asked from my clients.

And clearly, when I talk about these questions, I'm not giving away any identifying information or talking about their messaging, or, or anything private to them. It's just extrapolating the overarching issue they're talking about and then bringing it to you and the podcast or the emails.

So that's the first thing that I do. The second — and this one, if you, my friends, are doing discovery calls or having sales conversations, and you have an intake form. Oh my goodness. That intake form is worth its weight in gold whether they became your clients or not. There is some amazing language. Uh, it's a place where you can harvest, like, why are people booking calls with you?

What are they struggling with? What do they want to talk about? So every quarter I go back and I review my intake forms. So I probably do, I don't know, maybe about 15 to 18 consults per quarter, so it's not like a huge amount of information. And I did a lot of work done in my intake form with Heidi Taylor to make sure that I get great information, but then I can go through, and I can look at like, okay, well, what are they struggling with?

Are there any, is there any language they're using? Like I did find something the other day when I was reviewing intake forms that one woman said that a podcast interviewer said to her like, “Oh gosh, I love you. And I would love to have you on my show, but I don't know what you would talk about.” And I'm like, ooh, ouch that hurts.

And that's a great piece of language to be able to kind of, you know, adapt to my copy on the sales page for the three-word rebellion messaging intensive. So I love doing these audits, and and honestly, it's also a really good way to see if, how my message is resonating, because when I'm hearing some of the things on an intake form that I'm also talking about, I know that it's helping people make the decision on whether to work with me or not.

It tells me my messages also being effective. So review your intake forms. And if you don't have an intake form for your discovery calls or sales conversations, I highly recommend you create one. A They're invaluable for helping you figure out if the person you're talking to is a good fit for your work or not.

And it's also a great resource for gathering that client information and getting some of that language and thinking about the issues and questions they're having. All right. So there’s a final way. It's a little bit more work, but it can be super, super. And valuable, especially if you're thinking about launching something new, and it's all about creating a three-question survey.

Like you can do this in Google forms. That's how I do my surveys. I do them in Google forms. So you don't need other software then that. You don't have to have a type form account or anything. But whenever I'm thinking about launching something new, I will do just a quick survey. 

For instance, when I launched marketing uprising last year, I did a three-question survey, and it gave me everything I needed to write my sales page. Writing that sales page was joyful. I mean, how many times, if you've ever, said that writing a sales page, but it's super fun. And I enjoyed it a whole lot, rarely ever, but since I had all of this language given to me in a survey, it was easy to write.

And if you want to see that sales page, we'll hook that up in the show notes. But. Fun and a joy. And I think that energy definitely comes through, but here's what I did. I sent an email out to my email community. And if you have a small list, you can still send this out, and you can also post on social media as well to get a feedback.

And I essentially asked like three substantive questions. The first question I asked is really to understand my people better, like understand where they are in their business. And so that's kind of like what makes somebody ready to work with me. Like, I know people who are ready to work with me are at a certain stage, and there's probably a question like that for you as well.

So I asked that question, and then I just simply asked a question about what are they struggling with when it comes to mind. Area of expertise, which is messaging and marketing, right? So like, what was your number one struggle? And the question was, when you think about showing up to market your business consistently, what are the first thoughts that go through your head? Be as specific as possible. So here I was trying to tap into the raw inner dialogue of what goes on in their head and wow. It yielded.

Fascinating. Um, just fascinating results to hear how people felt about marketing consistently. And for you, you could easily adapt that question to like, whenever you think about showing up or doing whatever it is that you help people do, what are the first thoughts that go through your head? Be specific as possible.

And I guarantee you will get some excellent, excellent data and information in order to create your next thing and make it really customized to those people. All right. So those are the three ways that you can pay attention to and start capturing the questions, the language, the, the needs, the struggles that your right fit clients have. And then from there, you can use that. I mean, you can use that to create your messaging. You can use that to create social media posts and blog posts and podcast episodes, and so much more. And you'll know that those are areas that your people are lists are that your people are interested in.

And so, I would suggest pick one of these ways. Number one, take five minutes after a client day and write down any questions that came up in a notebook. Number two. Review your intake forms quarterly, or number three, if you're thinking about launching something new, or you want to revive an old product, or just kind of refresh your services, do a three-question survey, but commit to trying one of those and using that as part of your content creation process.

And finally, if you're struggling to create content consistently and show up to market your biz, have you taken the rebel roadmap quiz? This quiz helps you figure out the best way for you to build an audience of superfans while staying true to who you are and your personality. And so, this is a super fun quiz that looks at the best way for you to get your message out into the world.

So you can go to DrMichelleMazur.com/quiz. Take the quiz, read the results, and I'm excited to see what your roadmap is. Now until next time, remember there's client language all around you. There are so many opportunities for you to create content that actually engages people, to create a message that deeply resonates by simply paying attention and capturing the conversations that you're having with your clients, potential clients and your audience in general. All right. Take care.