Make Marketing Suck Less

Dr. Michelle Mazur (00:00): Once upon a time, back in the good old days of 2019, there was an Instagram influencer, and she had a big following. A massive 2.6 million people hung on her every word. And so, the Instagram influencer decided that she wanted to her own line of clothing and she would start with a t-shirt. All she needed was 36 people to buy a t-shirt and the first run would be produced. This means she needed a conversion rate of 0.00001385. That's a really teeny, tiny percentage of her audience. It should be super easy, right, to get 36 people out of that massive audience. But she couldn't. She couldn't get 36 of her followers to buy a t-shirt. So what's going on there? I think this is a common misconception we have in online business and in the online world in general. We think, oh, if I amass this huge following, it means sales will be easy and I know my message will be resonating because everyone will be gathering around me and supporting me.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (01:31): But what if that's just not true? What if social media is the worst and most confusing way to understand if your message is actually resonating and if it will lead people to become your next clients? Social media is one of the reasons why we get so confused around whether our message is working or not, and today I am going to dive in and make an argument for why social media is confusing you when it comes to creating a message that leads people to working with you. Let's do this.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (02:26): You're listening to the Rebel Uprising Podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping passionate business owners become recognized leaders who make more money and impact the world by turning their messy, complicated ideas into thriving thought leadership businesses. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Mazur, and I'll be your no-BS guide in the art of building a business that gets noticed. Each week, I share strategies, tools, and insights on how to turn your complicated ideas into great messaging and solid business structures. Are you ready to create an uprising in your industry? Let's do this.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (03:07): Now on episode 270 of the podcast, I talked about how to know if your message is working. The best indicator that your message is indeed working is sales. Are you making the sales you want to make? Are you closing the deals you want to close? When people show up on sales calls, are they ready to work with you and they're just seeing if it's a fit or not? Are people filling out your intake form on a regular basis? If your answer is yes, I have enough sales, I'm getting enough leads, then great news, your message is working the way it should. If the answer is no, then it's not doing it's job.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (03:56): And as a reminder, the job of your message is to persuade and turn someone who doesn't know you at all into a client. Your message should be about leading people to your work. It should be about persuasion, making that argument. That seems very clear, right? Cut and dry. The sales are coming in, they're not, the leads are coming in, or they're not. Even though this seems so, so simple, people get confused, because they think if their message is working and working very well, that it is not about sales, it is about social media. I see people spending so much time trying to get the algorithm to pay attention to them and show their content.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (04:56): Business influencers have presented us with a steady diet of to grow your revenue, then you need social media, you need engagement, you need to grow your audience. And even if they tell you that audience is a vanity metric, they still tell you need to be showing up there and showing people you can work with them and creating value. We've really bought into the argument, especially in online business, that we absolutely need to be on social media in order to grow our business. And if we're not getting engagement on social media, if we're not seeing people in our audience turn into our clients, then clearly our message isn't working.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (05:49): And my friends, this is just not the case. Social media engagement is a terrible way to assess if your message is working. But we tend to look at it first. Instead of looking at is my home marketing ecosystem working? Do I know how to lead my people to becoming clients? We look at social media and we think, ah, man, it's just not working. It's just not resonating. But social media is this terrible indicator of what will work for your message. And why it's so terrible is, number one, you are at the whims of the algorithm. The algorithm is a fickle beast that we don't quite understand. And overall across social media, we know organic reach is decreasing. This goes into reason number two why social media is a terrible place to test your message is that the social media companies are not interested in building your business. That is not what social media was created for. Social media is there to build the company's business. Right? Facebook wants to sell you ads on Facebook and Instagram, and if you want people to see your post, you have to pay.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (07:25): Finally, social media is not the best place to test your message to figure out if it's working, because you are casting a wide net, and the people that you're casting this net out to might not be your right people. They might be following you because they like the look of your account. They saw an inspirational post that you created and were like, "Wow, this person is great." But at the end of the day, they weren't interested in the problem your solves.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (08:01): As a side note for anyone who's working on their Three Word Rebellion right now, do not get feedback on Facebook or Instagram about what your Three Word Rebellion should be, because it's you're putting your message out there to a bunch of random people who may or may not be the type of you want to work with. That's going to give you really shady shotty results. It's just not the best place to figure out if your message is working.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (08:37): If we go back to that Instagram influencer with 2.6 million followers who needed this minuscule conversion rate, she had great engagement, but it didn't lead to sales. And why? Why didn't it lead to sales? Well, some of her followers said it was clear that she didn't know how the heck to talk about these t-shirts. They seemed so off brand and she seemed so awkward selling them. She just didn't know what to say. According to Insider, she did two entire posts about these shirts and thought, okay, that will be enough. And guess what? It wasn't, because she didn't know how to communicate about these t-shirts in a way that would drive desire and build demand. The rebel truth here is engagement on social media doesn't drive sales, and if it's not driving sales, oh, it's not a great place to test to see if your message is working.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (09:45): If you are listening to this podcast and realizing that, hey, you know what? I'm not having the sales that I want to have. My business isn't generating the revenue it should be generating. Then it might be time for you to work on your message and figure out that comprehensive strategy for how to build that argument for your work and turn people who don't know you at all into people who are ready and willing to sign up to work with you. This is exactly the work we do in the Three Word Rebellion messaging intensive. So if you're digging this episode and you're thinking, yes, this is my next step or it could be my next step, then I encourage you to go to drmichellemazur.com/3, the number three. W-R. That's drmichellemazur.com/3wr, and apply for a free consultation call. That way you and I can discuss if messaging is the right move for your business. Now back to the show.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (11:03): So what am I saying here? Am I saying like, "Oh, everybody should get off of social media."? No. No, I'm not saying that at all. I want to be clear that social media can be a part of an effective marketing strategy, a marketing ecosystem, but it has a specific job to be done. The job of social media is not to sell, despite what the business influencers say. And I'm not saying you can never make sales on social media. It can work very well when you're selling a lower-priced course or a tiny product. But if you are selling high-touch and high-value coaching consulting and services, the sales themselves probably won't happen on social media or in the DMS. They'll happen on email or sales calls or because of the content you're putting out in the world.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (12:03): Social media's main job is to help raise your brand awareness. Now, brand awareness, this is coming from my corporate background because we talked a lot about that when I was in market research is how well people recognize your brand and what it does. When I was in corporate, we would do whole campaigns around brand awareness, right, just raising the profile of the brand. So, brand awareness. If I say Marie Forlio you think B-School. If I say Laura Belgray, you think copywriter or Inbox Hero. That's what brand awareness is. Social media can definitely help drive that brand awareness, help you reach new audiences, help people discover you. Because I know one of my focuses this year is I want people to think Michelle Mazur and think Three Word Rebellion or messaging.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (13:05): And social media can be very helpful with getting new people's eyeballs on your business, but once you get the or eyeballs, you've got to lead them somewhere and make an argument for your work. If my clients want to use social media as part of their marketing strategy, I tell them the goal of that is to reach new people and get them the heck off of social media. Preferably get them to your email list where you can nurture them. Get them listening to your podcast or subscribe to your YouTube channel. Because when they're more engaged in your content, they're going deeper, and that's where persuasion can happen. That's where you can really build the argument for your work. Social media, great for getting people's attention, growing your brand awareness, getting eyeballs on your business, but not so great for nurturing or making that offer, especially if you are selling higher-priced services and coaching.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (14:27): And here's the deal, folks. Most of us, we don't need a million followers on social media to be successful. You don't to million people following you to feel like your message is working. Last year, I did a podcast episode about how big of an audience do you really need, and I introduced you to Kevin Kelly's idea of a thousand true fans, and these are the fans who will actually pay you for your work. Most of us don't even need a thousand true fans. For my business, I work with 27 to 30 private clients a year. That's it, 27 to 30 people each year. That statistic has been true for the two to three years like clockwork. So I don't need millions of followers to find those people. Heck, I probably don't need social media at all. And next week I'm going to be taking you behind the scenes of my marketing strategy and what I'm testing to be less reliant on social media in the future.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (15:32): Finally, when it comes to knowing if your message is working or not, don't look to social media. It's just going to confuse you. It's not about the number of followers, likes, shares and comments. At the end of the day, it's about sales. That's the job of your message, to lead people to work with you. Are you making sales? Are you getting the consults? That's a far better barometer of what is working.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (16:03): Now stay tuned for next week, where I'm going to take you behind the scenes of my own business and show you how I'm using my to lead people to work with me and how I'm trying to become less dependent on social media. I'll talk to you next week.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (16:22): Thank you for listening all the way to the end of the show. Your support means the world to me. Did you know the Rebel Uprising Podcast has a quiz that can help you pinpoint the number one way to build an audience of superfans while staying true to your unique personality? We do, and it's called What's Your Rebel Roadmap to Exponential Impact and Influence, and you can take it therebelquiz.com.

Dr. Michelle Mazur (16:44): If you are loving the podcast, do us a favor, rate and leave us a quick five-star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. It some more people like you find the show. Until next week, remember, your ideas matter. And now get back out there and cause an uprising in your industry. You got this.