Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: How many marketing courses have you purchased and how many of those online courses did you implement and finish?

If I were a betting person, which I am not, I'd guess you'd need both hands to count the number of courses you bought, and yet the ones you've completed and implemented is probably close to zero. And there is a reason for that. These marketing courses always seem like they are the thing, the solution to grow your audience, fill your client pipeline, and make marketing easier.

Not just make it easier, make it completely automated. Hands off so you can get clients in your sleep.

However, the reality is different because once you log in, there is a talking head on a screen with a slideshow and it's just an information dump, and it feels overwhelming and hard to know where to start.

And even if you try to start, there's always a place where you're going to get stuck that makes it hard, if not impossible, to implement the course anyway.

So how about we change that? How about we talk about what you need to actually get something out of those marketing courses? So let's do that on today's pod.

[00:01:44]: 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 Truth Telling Guide to building a business that gets noticed.

[00:02:15]: Here's a Rebel Truth for you, any marketing strategy or tactic that you want to use in your business can work! If and only if you have your messaging dialed in. I don't care if you want to market on Instagram or LinkedIn, have an SEO strategy, use podcasts to nurture your audience, or write blogs.

You can choose any strategy that feels good to you, that allows you to create the content in a way that you want to create it.

But if your message isn't on point, then that marketing strategy will not work for your business. So when people come to me and talk about the Expert Up Club and they say, “Oh, but Michelle, I don't need another marketing course”,

I agree. You don't need another marketing course. You don't need a course at all. But what you need is to get that message dialed in. Because marketing amplifies your message. That's its job.

If you don't have anything to amplify or if you're just throwing out a bunch of randomness in whatever marketing strategy you choose, you're not going to see the results. And I know there's part of you who thinks, “well, if I can just buckle down and finish that course, then I'll be able to market my business”.

And the fact of the matter is that is sunk cost fallacy speaking, you are probably not going to get what you need out of any marketing course, unless you have the messaging first.

And I know messaging specialists are expensive to work with and for a very good reason. It is a heavy creative lift to figure out what you need to say at each point of your client's journey.

How do you get their attention? How do you get them to raise their hand and opt into your email list? How do you get them to figure out the real problem that they're having that is related to your solution?

And so it's so easy to get sucked into these courses because they promise you marketing and messaging help, but they don't really deliver. And not only that, courses are a terrible way to create your messaging, because it's hard to create a message in a vacuum.

There's an old saying that you can't read the label from inside the jar, and that applies to you; expert business owner. Like you can't see yourself, the value you create like other people can, they see you clearly and know the benefits of working with you.

So you need to tap into that knowledge.

So how can you create a message that you can use in your marketing, and that, hey, you might even be able to use in these courses that you've already purchased while getting feedback from someone like me, an expert in messaging, along with other experts who know a whole lot about your business.

And how can you create it without that overwhelm feeling that most online courses and programs get you? And this is where the minimum viable meaningful marketing message comes in.

And this is what we do as part of the Expert Up Club.

This is the solution. And I want to be clear, the Expert Up Club is not a course. It is a community of experts who are all marketing their business, so they can get known, seen and hired for their work.

In order to be effective at marketing, one part of that is nailing that message, dialing it in, so that you can apply it to your marketing strategy and then start rinse and repeating.

So what does it look like to create this minimum viable meaningful marketing message? So what you should absolutely know about it is that these are the essential messaging pieces that help you become an effective marketer. It helps you become more efficient with your marketing while you're juggling the duty of client delivery with marketing and sales.

So, the way we have it structured in the Expert Up Club is there are six sprints that are delivered over 90 days. In just 10 or 15 minutes a day, you can take a very specific action to get your messaging handled and do it with structure, feedback and support.

So within the six sprints, sprint one and two, this is where we're focusing on marketing messaging that grows your audience to attract those future buyers to you. And we kick it off by talking about, what do your people need to believe before they work with you. Because once we establish that we know where we are steering your message, we know the mindset shift, the belief they need to have in order to jump into your sales process.

And once we figure that out, which is actually a very simple process, then we can take the next step and get into the heads of your “right fit” client and use their words. And how we get their words is client research.

So some voice of the customer research and we use Chat GPT and AI in order to analyze and pull insights. So this becomes so much easier. And the best part is you can start using this messaging right away.

Then sprints three and four are all about engaging and nurturing your audience. The goal here with your message is to prepare your audience for the work we do.

We do a deep dive on the problem you solve and how to connect that to your solution, your offer, so that people know that you, and only you, can solve this problem and get results. We talk about the major misconceptions that hold people back from taking action. We also position your solution as the one and only solution they should buy over all the competition.

So how does what you offer stand out?

And in the final two sprints, it's all about how you talk about your offer in your marketing. So we create your framework or process that makes it easy for people to say yes to working with you.

We craft your “Reason To Believe” story, which is all about showing people what's typical and what's possible when they work with you.

And we'll also craft your “Why Buy” statement, which is the most compelling reason why people should say yes to your offer. What I love about delivering these messaging sprints is that I can see the members of the Expert Up Club start implementing this messaging right away, whether it's on LinkedIn or the podcast they're recording, or the emails that they're sending. So you're going to be able to use this messaging right away.

And finally, we'll put this into a messaging guide. And this is going to be like The Bible that informs what you say in your marketing. And once we've completed the messaging sprints, the Expert Up Club is there to help you with your marketing, so you can figure out what's really working and tweak and evolve what's not working.

Because I want more experts to be visible, I want to flood the zone with experts. I think the best part of the club is not the sprints, it's the community. You have the other members of the club to get feedback from.

And of course, you're going to have my eyes on your message and on your business. But we have such amazing experts who you'll be hearing from next week. You're not going to be the smartest person in the room. And these people are generous with their feedback and support.

So if you are interested in the Expert Up Club, we are accepting applications right now. You can go to Expertup dot Club to get all of the details. It's in a Google Doc, so don't expect a fancy sales page.

But if you are that established business owner who wants to market with ease, who wants to know what to say, we'd love to have you in your club. So don't market a business without a message. Join us in the Expert Op club instead. You can do that at Expertup Dot Club.

[00:12:49]: 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 PodLink. You can find the show at pod dot link forward slash 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 Dot Link forward slash Rebel.

The Rebel uprising. Podcast is a production of Communication Rebel. Our production coordinator is Jessica Gully-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 Stew words of the land past and present.