Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: In business, the obsession with marketing tactics is never-ending. Whether it's the latest Instagram hack or webinar trick, there seems to be an endless array of tactics promising to skyrocket your following and make your business go viral overnight.

But chasing the greatest and latest tactic tends to make marketing suck more, not less. because those promises of social media stardom often fall short, plus you're busy juggling sales and client delivery. So you don't have time for any of it.

It's time to take a step back and look at what your business needs to have in place before trying any marketing tactic at all. Let's do this.

[00:00:51]: Welcome to Make Marketing Suck Less. The podcast that knows marketing is freaking hard, especially when you're a solo business owner trying to juggle it all.

I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Mazur, author of the 3 Word Rebellion and founder of the ExpertUp Club.

Forget the latest marketing fads and tactics promising social media stardom. I'm here with research-backed strategies to help you clarify your message and get twice as effective with your marketing. And while I can't promise you'll ever love marketing,

I'm here. to make you hate it a tiny bit less.

[00:01:32]

Welcome to the first episode of the newly renamed Make Marketing Suck Less podcast. If you are used to seeing the Rebel Uprising podcast in your feed, that name, and podcast has been retired. And from now on every show we're gonna dedicate to making marketing suck less.

First, I want to thank everyone for all of their kind words about the new name, and I can't wait to see what happens with this new direction.

One of the reasons I decided to call this show Make Marketing Suck Less is because marketing is hard. Too many of the web celebs selling you courses and programs make it look like it's the easiest thing ever.

I've sat in Fortune 500 conference rooms with extremely bright people who can't figure out why a marketing campaign flopped or what they should tweak to make it work. Those people, they know that marketing can be challenging. It is a puzzle that is meant to be solved. Because unlike you, they haven't been fed a constant stream of bullshit by web celebs. They know when you figure it out, when you unravel the mystery, it can work exceedingly well for your business.

So let's talk about 2 pairs of foundational business principles that if you grasp them, can have a profound effect on how you approach marketing.

Those 2 principles are strategy vs. tactics and messaging vs. marketing.

Now, you know, everyone in the online space is eager to sell you their latest marketing tactics. And tactics by themselves don't allow you to achieve your business goals.

Tactics are just actions.

And if you don't understand how you should be using these tactics in order to reach revenue goals or audience growth goals or maybe the goal of launching that group program, you've always wanted, it's going to feel random that these things don't work because tactics by themselves do not work. Tactics are easy to teach and sell. That is why all of those programs are teaching you tactics.

But most of these web celebs don't teach strategy.

And strategy is what you need to make a tactic work. So what is strategy? I love the definition David Spinks gives in his book The Business Of Belonging.

He says “All strategic frameworks aim to take a big nebulous goal and make it more specific. They do all of this with 3 elements. The goal you're trying to achieve, the measures that tell you if you achieve that goal, and the actions you'll take in order to achieve the goal.”

That's it. It's that simple. You have to understand the actions that you're going to take, to achieve the goal, And then you need to know how to measure if it's working or not. So a strategy includes tactics, but those tactics are in service to the bigger goals you have in your business.

Now I'm always shocked even though I shouldn't be when I ask clients or members of the ExpertUp Club, what a specific tactic is doing for their business. And frankly, a lot of them aren't sure. They felt like, oh, well, I like Instagram. I like posting pictures, but I don't know exactly what goal this is helping me to reach, and they don't know how to measure it. And that's how we waste a lot of time and energy doing stuff we think we should be doing. but that's not getting us anywhere towards the goals we have in our business and what we want most for our business.

So before we talk about 2 different types of strategies you should have in place before ever deciding on a single marketing tactic, Let's take a quick break.

Are you ready to be recognized and hired for your expertise? Without spending heaps of time on social media or dancing for the ‘gram. If your answer is yes, you're going to want to join me for the ExpertUp Club Open House. I created this event because I wanted you to experience the power of this community for yourself and how it's supporting experts like you in putting their most important work out in the world so that it's seen and valued by the people who need to hire them.

Here's what you'll experience at the Open House. You'll discover the resources that will help you nail your message in a behind-the-scenes tour of what's inside the club, you'll mingle with our members, the same ones who are claiming that marketing sucks less, and you'll uncover what makes the club unlike any other community on the internet. So it's happening on Tuesday, September 20th, at 10 AM Pacific Time. You can grab your spot at drmichellemazur..com/openhouse. Also, a link is in the show notes. I hope to see you there. Once again, grab your spot at drmichellemazur.com/open house.

We are back.

Now let's talk about the 2 different types of strategies. you need to decide on before ever thinking about a marketing tactic.

Those 2 types of strategies, message strategy versus marketing strategy.

So in the ExpertUp Club we have quarterly marketing retreats where we evaluate our marketing strategy, set some goals, then create a marketing plan. Now we also have messaging sprints that get you to your minimum viable -- meaningful marketing message. And one day, one of the members asked “What does this marketing plan have to do with the messaging we're doing?”

And I thought, oh, no. I have failed you. Like, you're still not understanding how these two things work together.

So too often people confuse marketing and messaging. Somehow they perceive the messaging strategy that you're doing for your business is a separate entity from marketing, but In reality, messaging and marketing are intricately intertwined. They have a symbiotic relationship, much like a perfectly matched couple, peanut butter, and chocolate. They just go together. And, really, you can't have a message strategy that works for your business to grow your audience, find clients generate leads, all of that jazz, if you don't have a marketing strategy.

So you know how to broadcast or amplify a message in order to build the relationships that you want. These two things, they have to go together.

Messaging refers to what you say in your marketing that leads people to work with you. Now this is not content pillars. In fact, I don't really believe in content pillars because they seem really random, and it's not clear if those content pillars lead people to being interested in the work you do. Because one of the ways we make marketing suck less is knowing that every piece of content we put out there is leading people to the work you do.

So this involves understanding the belief shifts that need to occur, debunking misconceptions, and positioning your solution to the problem. you can best solve for your people. So message strategy is a vital essential component of marketing.

Marketing strategy on the other hand is the vehicle in which your message is communicated. Right? It's how you're amplifying what you want to say, and it helps you develop relationships with your audience and allows you to grow your reach.

A marketing strategy should encompass 3 big ideas. It has 3 jobs it should be doing for your business.

1. How are you growing your audience?

2. How are you nurturing that audience and leading them into your work?

3. How are you guiding them into your sales process?

It's essential to align your marketing strategy with your message and your goals around audience growth and revenue generation. And once you know, “How do I wanna grow my audience?” “How big do I need my audience?” “How am I my best nurturing my people?” This will inform the tactics that you choose to employ.

The key takeaway here is strategy should always come before tactics. Without a well-defined strategy, the tactics you employ will seem random. and it won't have the desired outcome that you want. So it's crucial to take the time to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that incorporates a clear message strategy that is building an argument for your work that is leading people to your work.

By understanding these 2 components, you'll be able to decide quickly amongst the overwhelming sea of marketing tactics, You'll be able to choose which one you want to do because you know how it's going to achieve our goals.

So let's shift our focus from a frenzy of marketing tactics and instead invest our energy into crafting thoughtful strategies that will truly make a difference in your business. This will make your marketing twice as effective. And on its own, it will start sucking less because you're gonna know what to do and what to say and how that helps you get where you want to go.

Michelle Mazur [00:13:09]: If the Make Marketing Suck Less pod is making your marketing more effective 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.

The Make Marketing Suck Less podcast is a production of Communication Rebel. Our production coordinator is Jessica Gulley-Ward. The podcast is edited by Steven Mills, executive producer is me, Dr. Michelle Mazur.

The make marketing suck less podcast is recorded on the unseated traditional lands of the coast salish peoples, specifically the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish people, original stewards of the land, past, and present all.