Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: There's a famous episode of South Park where gnomes are stealing the kids' underpants. The kids go on a quest to find out why the gnomes are stealing underpants. The reason? It's capitalism.

You see, the gnomes have a plan: Step 1: steal underpants

Step 2: I don't know

Step 3: profit

The way marketing is taught often uses the exact same strategy as the underpants gnomes, and it could be the reason why your marketing isn't as effective in bringing you more clients and booking more business.

So let's unpack this underpants gnome strategy, and I'll talk about what actually goes into step number 2.

Let's do this.

Michelle Mazur [00:00:52]: 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 Expert Up 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.

Michelle Mazur [00:01:43]: Land clients with Instagram! Book more business with blogging! Make bank with your podcast! These are all marketing messages that I've seen. Everyone talks about how a certain tactic will cause you to land more clients, make more money, and get more opportunities to share your expertise, which sounds amazing, right?

Until you realize these programs are basically teaching you the underpants gnome strategy for business.

Step 1: Instagram

Step 2: I don’t know

Step 3: profit

Or

Step 1: blog.

Step 2: who knows?

Step 3: profit.

So Instead of stealing underpants, you decided to have someone teach you a particular marketing tactic. They will go all in talking about content buckets, how to post, the hooks for the post, and all the mechanics of implementing this tactic, which can be super helpful if you've got step 2 in place.

Step 2 is the one thing that they aren't teaching you in these courses and programs, and the reason why, it's really because it's out of their scope of practice.

It is complicated. Step 2 actually has multiple steps. It has threes, like, substeps, basically. So in order to profit from any marketing tactic, there's certain foundations that need to be in place, and that's what happens in step 2 of the underpants gnomes strategy.

So the first piece of this puzzle is product market fit. This is something that we don't talk a lot about in business especially, in the online space. There's so many programs and coaches who will help you create an offer, and those are needed. But once you've aided that offer, you need to make sure you have product market fit before you even think about marketing.

So what is product market fit? Simply, it's that your offer solves a problem for your clients, and they're willing to buy it. They are willing to spend money on that solution. So the best indicator that you have product market fit is sales. And you might not be making all the sales you want. That is fine. But if you are selling or better yet, if your clients are getting great results and telling other people about your work, so referrals, word-of-mouth, then you have product market fit, and you can start thinking about marketing strategy and marketing tactics. Because here's the deal.

No marketing tactic can solve for an offer that your audience doesn't want to buy, that they don't see a need for.

So make sure you do this step 2A of the strategy before you even think about to marketing at all.

The 2nd piece of the puzzle is messaging, knowing what to say to lead people and prime them to work with you. Now in the first quarter of 2024, I'm going to do a deep dive into messaging, especially messaging that gets people ready to work with you.

It's been a while since we've talked about that. I have developed more ideas and concepts that I want to share with you. But to me, messaging is the number one most important thing that makes marketing suck less.

Because once you're able to lay the foundation of messaging. You know what to say in order to make that marketing tactic actually work. Messaging is a huge topic because it's everything your business says to your audience. What you're communicating in your marketing and sales from the moment someone initially finds you and discovers you, right up until they're about to sign a contract and become a client.

So messaging is this thing that is the foundation of your business, outside of the offer, of course, and informs your marketing and sales process.

So this part of step 2 of the underpants gnome strategy is crucial after product market fit. And I truly believe I am a marketing agnostic. I believe any marketing tactic can work for your business if you know what to communicate in order to lead people to work with you. You gotta know what to say in your content in order to make marketing work.

The final piece of the puzzle of this step 2: is a way to convert people into clients, and this is obviously your sales process.

Marketing getting in sales work together, and I know that we're used to dividing them up. Like, you'll see sales coaches, you'll see marketing coaches, but, really, they are not 2 separate things. They form an ecosystem in your business. So marketing is what generates interest in your offer, and then sales capitalizes on that interest and says, oh, this person's raising their hand, they want to talk to me. That's when you're able to convert them into a paying client.

Michelle Mazur [00:08:38]: And once you have all 3 of these pieces of the puzzle of step 2 then and only then can you profit. If your marketing isn't working the way you want. Ask yourself, is the underpants gnome a strategy to blame?

Because if step number 2, the product market fit, the messaging that primes your clients to buy and work with you, and your sales system aren't there. It's impossible to profit. And I don't wanna say it's impossible. It's exceedingly difficult to profit, to have the revenue that you want for your business, whatever that looks like for you.

Because no matter the marketing tactic, it can be Instagram, blogging, podcasting, email marketing, it won't be as effective if you don't have all 3 pieces that make up that 2nd step.

Michelle Mazur [00:09:44]: 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, our 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.