Make Marketing Suck Less

Dr. Michelle Mazur (00:00): When it comes to marketing, sometimes it's hard to know where to focus and what to do in order to make your marketing work for your business. Plus, it also doesn't help that marketing is a dirty word in your business, meaning that you hate doing it. And I know you want to be working with the clients you love, not promoting your business. How do you make the most of the time you spend marketing? How do you do it so you actually see results in your business and you're not just spinning your wheels? Well, that's exactly what we are talking about on today's show, how to pinpoint what you need to be doing in your market so you can stand out from the competition and be unrivaled in your field. Let's do it.

(01:09): Get ready for the Rebel Uprising podcast, the only podcast dedicated to business owners who feel overlooked for their expertise, skills, and experience. Let's claim your expertise and turn your complex ideas into unmistakable messaging that grows your business. I am your host, Dr. Michelle Mazur, the author of The Three Word Rebellion and Your Rebel Troop Telling Guide to Building a Business That Gets Noticed.

(01:39): My favorite class in eighth grade was Greek mythology. I loved the stories, the fantasy of it all. I loved Medusa and her snakes for hairs. And I really loved the story of these fatally flawed but larger than life gods who were moving humans around like chess pieces on a chessboard. But the one story that always stuck with me was the story of Achilles. And if you remember his story, his mother held him by his Achilles heel and dipped him into the River Styx, and he came out as invincible. He was indestructible except for that one tiny spot on his body, his heel.

(02:31): When I think about you, you are the expert. You've been established in your business for a while now, and you're strong like Achilles. Your work is unteachable. Clients love the results they get from working with you. And if you can just get someone on a Zoom call, you know that your sales skills are strong. And your Achilles heel, well, it's your marketing.

(03:00): And for me, this all goes back to that Michael Lewis quote that I talk about all the time, how the people who develop exquisite expertises are not the kind of people who sit around thinking about how to market their business. They're not thinking about how to promote themselves because for you, you'd rather be working with your amazing clients than thinking about, okay, what do I need to say to make people interested in the work I do?

(03:39): But if you want to reach more people, if you have goals to have a group program someday, maybe you want to start your own community or maybe you have even bigger plans like getting a traditionally published book deal, then you know you need marketing. And let's face it, the predictability of word of mouth marketing is always hit or miss. You don't feel like you have any control over where your next client comes from. To get control, you need to market. And this is your one weakness of an otherwise strong business.

(04:22): Marketing has a pretty big job in your business. Its job is to find people who are interested in working with you and get them ready for your sales process. It's simple as that. And here's the rebel truth. Even though and you don't love marketing, there are probably some parts of your marketing you're actually pretty good at and other parts you need to pay attention to. It can be hard to know where to focus your attention to make your marketing work for your business because there's just so much to it, there are so many things to pay attention to. It's why I created a marketing audit called Discover Your Achilles Heel and Rise as the Unrivaled Expert in Your Field so you can pinpoint exactly where you should focus your efforts in marketing and you could already see where you're already strong.

(05:18): If you want to pause the podcast right now and take the assessment, it'll take you about two minutes, you can do that at drmichellemazur.com/marketing. That's drmichellemazur.com/marketing. The link is also in the show description for today and in the podcast show notes. Take a beat, do the assessment, and I'll be right here when you get back so I can help you figure out what your results mean.

(05:48): All right. Did you take the assessment? Good. Now let's talk about the four components that help you become unrivaled in your field. The first component that we assessed is the grow stage, which is all about being discovered by new people and growing your audience. This is important because in order to grow your business, you need to expand your audience.

(06:18): Now, I don't mean you need millions of people or tens of thousands of people, but you want to be creating an audience of buyers so building brand awareness is key. And getting our work in front of new people with the right message, that draws them in. If you scored high on this, good job. Most expert driven businesses, mine included, struggle with that peace.

(06:49): And the key here, if you find yourself in that pay attention or you're in the medium range, is to find a growth strategy that works for you, whether that is social media, borrowing other people's audiences, podcast guesting, speaking, teaching, or you can do search engine optimization or even good old-fashioned networking, but you have to find the right strategy that you actually enjoy doing or that you want to do and then know what to say to those people who do not know you yet so they pay attention and they pay attention because you get them.

(07:37): The second component of the assessment is engage, which means you're nurturing your existing community to get them ready for your work. Typically, that content is thought leadership content. Maybe it is your blog, your podcast, a video that you do, but the content that you're creating here is strategic. You want to be talking about things on your blog, your podcast or your videos that move people closer to working with you because they realize there's a gap. There is something that is missing from their business or life, and they don't know exactly how to do that. This type of messaging dispels misconceptions and shows from a high level what the solution is and how to actually close the gap, how to solve that problem.

(08:37): Now, most experts love creating here, but I'll let you in on a little secret. They don't necessarily love promoting the things they create. Case in point, this podcast that you're listening to right now. For years, I did a shit job at promoting this podcast. I didn't really have a system in place, I wasn't really showing up on social media to promote it. I would even very rarely send an email to my list to tell them about the podcast. I'm surprised I've seen the growth that I've seen with my shoddy marketing of this podcast, but that is the key. It's not enough to create content that actually moves people towards working with you, you also have to distribute it so that other people can find it. And for me, I'm getting much better at that. I've been consistently emailing my list about this podcast, I'm starting to promote it more on LinkedIn. I actually have a system in place for repurposing this podcast finally after years. This is episode 314, and I'm just figuring it out. If you are not distributing your great work, your great content, know that you are not alone.

(10:02): And finally, the final phase of marketing is the offer phase, which involves making clear offers and being transparent about your frameworks and how you work with people. And it's also giving people a taste of what can they expect? What are the results?

(10:22): Now, the channels that we use for making offers are usually email marketing or conversations, not social media. I feel like this is when we get message marketing channel misalignment is that people promote their frameworks and how to work with them on social media to a bunch of people who don't even know you have the problem they solve. When we are making offers, it's going to be happening when people already have buy-in, they already know us, they already have figured out that they have the problem. When we're in this stage, we're going to talk about what our frameworks are, what our results are, how we work with people.

(11:04): Now, here's the deal. Those three components grow, being discovered by new people, engage, nurturing your existing community to get them ready for your work, and offer, making the ask, letting people know how to work with you. That is the job of marketing, but there is one final component of this that, if you've taken the assessment you have seen, and that is your standout message score. How well do you communicate the value of your work through those three phases of marketing? And what makes you different? Because the rebel truth, marketing won't ever be effective for you if you don't know what to say to make your marketing work.

(11:59): We have to know what to say in each phase to grow our audience. We have to know how to get people's attention, how to make them interested and curious. Then we need to know what are the key messages that actually get people ready to work with you so that you're not convincing anyone? People show up and they are bought in, and then you have to be able to talk about the work you do in a way that's compelling and that you're letting people know that you're available for them to hire.

(12:33): If your score here is in the pay attention zone or even that orange mun zone, start with the message first because starting with the message, it's going to make marketing way more effective for you. It's going to make it way more efficient. You can even start creating marketing assets that you can deploy again and again, so you're not constantly thinking about, oh, I've got to market my business. You can actually have a system that does it for you. And if you're nailing it on your message, awesome, awesome, awesome, I'm so thrilled. Remember though, your clients and your audience, just like you, they change, they evolve, so keep a watchful eye on the message and make sure you know what's working.

(13:26): Now that you've taken the assessment and you know exactly where you're strong and what needs to be sharpened, you now can focus on the areas that need a little sharpening and put your energy and effort into that. And if you haven't taken the assessment, you've listened to this whole episode and you haven't taken it yet, then go to drmichellemazur.com/marketing or look at the show notes and the podcast description for the URL. Take two minutes and pinpoint exactly what your strengths are and what your Achilles heel is because, unlike Achilles, you can actually overcome whatever your marketing weakness is because it's really an opportunity. Because knowing where to focus can help you go from overlooked to unrivaled in your industry. Plus, it will keep you from spinning your wheels so you can actually achieve your goals in your business and spend less time marketing.

(14:38): If the Rebel Uprising podcast is helping you claim and communicate your expertise so that your clients can find and hire you, please share the show with a friend. The easiest way to do that is through Pod Link. You can find the show at pod.link/rebel, and that page will allow anyone you share the show with to subscribe and start listening in their favorite podcast player. That's pod.link/rebel.

(15:07): The Rebel Uprising podcast is a production of Yellow House Media. Our production coordinator is Lou Blaser. Our production assistant is Emily Kilduff. The podcast is edited by Stephen Mills. Our executive producers are Sean and Tara McMullin. The Rebel Uprising podcast is recorded on the unceded traditional land of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically the First people of Seattle, the Duwamish people, original stewards of the land, past and present.