Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: Is your business flying under the radar. Happy clients who get great results see you as their secret weapon. Being the best kept secret kind of sucks, doesn't it? It means that you're losing out on clients revenue, opportunities to let your expertise shine through so that it reaches more people. How can you stop flying under the radar? Well, it starts by letting go of this one pesky little thought that stops you from putting your work out in the world. And then it's just about following this three step process that will help make marketing suck less. Are you ready for that? Let's dive in.

[00:00:54]: 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 Mazer, the author of The Three Word Rebellion and your Rebel Truth Telling guide to building a business that gets noticed.

[00:01:24]: Brene Brown once said that perfectionism is a 20 ton shield that keeps you from getting seen, heard and valued. And I really believe that trying to get it right is this protection mechanism.

Because every time you post, you're making yourself vulnerable. You're making yourself vulnerable to disagreements, you're making yourself vulnerable to things not working, to people not understanding.

And to top it all off, every time you market, you feel like you're putting your credibility on the line. And if you could just get your message right, if you could make it perfect, then you could put it out there safely and no one would disagree with it. Clients would flock to you and unicorns would sing your praises.

But there is no right thing. There is no perfect message that no one will disagree with. And really, that's a good thing, because when you share what Wes Kao calls a spiky point of view, people will disagree with it.

And when you share what you're rebelling against, you stand out and bring in the right clients who align with your values and your beliefs and repel the wrong people.

But it's not just this fear of people disagreeing with your work, right? It's this fear of if you don't put out impeccable work, then somehow that's just going to trash your credibility. If you make a mistake, everyone will notice and they will question your expertise.

Now, there is psychological research to suggest that no one is actually noticing what you're doing as much as you are. This is called the Spotlight Effect, and it was a term coined by the researchers Thomas Gilavich, Victoria Husted Medvek, and Kenneth Sassovic. It's a very well documented psychological principle that we think other people are noticing us more than they actually are, but they're not.

So when we market, when we make a mistake in an email, we misspoke in a post, we think, oh, man, everybody's going to notice. We are very aware of how our marketing performs. So we think when something flops, that that harms our expertise. So we have to put everything out there that is going to perform well so people don't question our experience and our expertise.

And the best way to move out of that perfectionism, to let go of the need to get the right message and have the right marketing, is to realize that, yeah, people are wrapped up in their own shit and they're not really paying attention to you. And that gives you permission to be messy. Because even if a post totally flops, it's not going to impact your credibility. It does not take away your experience, your expertise, or how you can help the clients who are out there but just don't know about you yet.

And so, with that in mind, I want to lay these two big rebel truths about getting it right.

So, rebel truth number one. There's no such thing as a perfect message. It is a myth. Like bigfoot. The Loch Ness monster. It doesn't exist. Messaging is a constant evolution. We change and evolve. So our message changes and evolves. Our audience changes and evolves. And then we need to change how we're talking to them.

And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know how important your messaging is because it literally impacts and influences everything in your business, from your copy to what you say in your marketing to what happens during sales conversations.

So it is foundational and the way to start improving your message, evolving your message, figuring out what works is, number one, to do some foundational messaging work to create a minimum viable message.

And this is the messaging I talk about all the time in the Expert Up Club. It's what I'm walking the members through to create. Because then once you have that foundation, you can put it out in the world because you'll never get a message, let alone a message that works for your audience if you're just up in your head.

Here's the thing about that, why we need to put it out, why we need to get feedback. And I think a little analogy helps here. So most of the clients I work with tell me all the time, like, I am great at sales. If I can just get someone on a phone call on Zoom, I can sell the work I do. Yet they feel like they suck at marketing. But there's a reason you're great at sales. It's because you can adapt your communication, your message to that person in real time.

You can look at their face, you can hear their voice. You know what's interesting to them. You know when they look a little bit confused, you know where you need to ask more questions to them. You're able to assess what makes your work valuable. That is why you're great at sales. And when you are marketing, you do not have that feedback loop people are watching a video, listening to a podcast, reading your website. You're not able to adapt in real time. So the feedback you're going to get is, oh, that copy didn't work. Oh, that post flopped. Oh, that email did not get the response I was hoping it would get. So when it comes to marketing and creating that message that we're putting out there, that's why there's no right message, because we always need to be evolving it. We always need to think about what is working and what's not and then double down on what works.

And that brings me to Rebel Truth Number Two, which is embrace the spirit of experimentation.

It's easy to take marketing personally, to think, I suck at marketing. It's just not working for me. Why can't I do it? The truth is, your marketing succeeding or failing has nothing to do with you as a person. You don't suck at marketing. You just haven't figured out what marketing message works yet for your audience of future buyers.

You might not have even figured out where your audience of future buyers is hanging out yet, so you can reach them. So stop thinking that you suck at it or you need to get it right in order to market. And instead, embrace that spirit of experimentation. Make your marketing about figuring out what works and what doesn't. When a piece of marketing works well, ask yourself why. Look at the comments and see what are people resonating with? Figure out how you can double down on that in the future. When a post or an email tanks, it flops. Look at it and think about why was that? What was it about the message that didn't really resonate? Maybe it was just the time of day you posted. And if you were going to repost something similar in the future, how would you change it based on what you know about your clients?

So when you've nailed down your message, the Minimum Viable, Meaningful message. And by the way, I talked about this in the Don't Like Marketing episode, so we'll hook up a link for that in the show notes in case you want to dive in and find out, okay, what is this Minimum Viable Meaningful message and how do I start creating it so I can start experimenting? So what is the plan? So you can stop flying under the radar, stop trying to get the right message, and embrace experimentation instead.

So here are the three steps that I recommend you following to make marketing suck less for your business and make it way easier for your clients to find you.

The first step, take the discovery your marketing Achilles heel assessment. You can do this www.drmchellmazer.com/marketing. Why I recommend you start here is because this assessment pinpoints exactly where you need to focus to improve your marketing efforts. That way, you're not trying to strengthen an area of your marketing that you're already good at, but instead you can focus on the gaps that's making marketing harder than it needs to be for your business.

Step number two work on your minimum viable, meaningful marketing message. Marketing sucks way less when you know what to say. Check out that podcast episode and think about how you can start creating conversations in your marketing that grow your audience or help your audience diagnose the real problem they're having, or how to talk about the solution, your point of view in a compelling way so people are ready to work with you.

And then finally, step three experiment to know what's working. You need to put your message out there to see what works and what doesn't. And then practice that detachment of letting something flop, letting it fail, seeing it as learning. What can I learn here?

If you want to stop being the best kept secret and become the unrivaled expert, the first person people think of when they need support or they're looking for an expert to share their stage, then let go of getting it right. Focus on developing your message and experimenting. And if you want more help from me and a community of like minded experts doing this very vulnerable work of creating a message and sharing it and seeing what works and what doesn't, the Expert Up Club is the place for you and will be opening up for new members soon. So watch this space. And in the meantime, I dare you to put your imperfect work out into the world.

[00:14:36]: 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.

Subscribe and start listening in their favorite podcast player. That's Pod link Rebel. The Rebel Uprising podcast is a production of Communication Rebel. Our production coordinator is Jessica Gulley-Ward of Juggling Logistics. Our sound engineer is Stephen Mills. Rebel Uprising podcast is recorded on the unseated traditional land of the coast Salish Peoples, specifically the first people of Seattle, the Duamish people original stewards of the land past and present