Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: No one understands your work quite like you do. What you consider common knowledge, your potential clients don't even know about, it is not on their radar. And, really, this is part of the curse of expertise.

What we think as experts is universally understood - it's not. And what your potential clients don't understand, keep them from taking the next step from working with you.

So that's why I wanted to talk about misconceptions and dispelling misconceptions as a core piece of your minimum viable marketing message.

So let's dive in.

Michelle Mazur [00:00:54]: 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 [00:01:34]: Over the past few episodes, we've been talking about creating your minimum viable marketing message. And so far, we talked about messaging that helps grow your audience, such as voice of customer and your problem statement. And now we're beginning a transition. We're bridging the gap between messaging that grows your audience and builds your brand awareness. And now we're getting ready to start nurturing and engaging your audience so that they are ready to work with you, so they enter into your sales process.

Now misconceptions play a role in both phases of marketing. So a misconception can be a very powerful, grow your audience type of message because it's giving your audience a massive ah-ha that's valuable, and that is something that is often shared. But at their core, what dispelling misconceptions do is it removes any of the barriers or roadblocks from people taking the next step to explore your work.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:18]: So let's start with some definitions. So what's a misconception? Simply, there are a lot of things your clients do not understand about your work or why they need it. There are a lot of false assumptions that people tend to make.

And there are two flavors of misconceptions that I talk about in the Expert Up Club when I teach this messaging sprint. And the first is a knowledge gap, and the second is incorrect assumptions. Now these two are not mutually exclusive. You might have both of them when you are ferreting out what misconceptions, your audience has about your work. So a knowledge gap is basically your potential client doesn't know what they don't know. Right? They're missing an essential piece of knowledge.

Michelle Mazur [00:04:07]: So in my business, one of the things I see all the time is that messaging is just an elevator pitch. Like, if you nail this one sentence, then your messaging is done. And as a messaging expert, I know that that's not true, but you, who are not messaging experts, that's clearly something you might believe. So when I hear that, it's clear to me that my audience doesn't understand how comprehensive messaging is, what role it plays in their business.

Because, yes, an elevator pitch is messaging, and there's so much more to it. And then it is my job to dispel that misconception. It's not your fault that you don't know what you don't know. But when I find a misconception, my role then becomes the person who actually shines a light and shows you a different way. So that's the first one, a knowledge gap.

The second type of misconception is an incorrect assumption. And an incorrect assumption is what someone gets wrong about the work you do. It's not necessarily about the knowledge, but it could be more based on their beliefs. So something like I should be able to do this myself. Oh my gosh. If I had a dime for every time I read that statement in an intake form for my 1x1 work, I would be wealthy beyond imagination. Because there is this idea that if you can do messaging for other people, if you're great at writing copy, like, if you're good at brainstorming with your friends about their messaging, that you should be able to do this for yourself because after all, you are smart. You are bright.

And, no, that is not true. Messaging is one of the hardest things to do for yourself because you don't see yourself clearly. It's hard for you to identify where these misconceptions are or when you might be talking over people's heads or talking about your expertise in a way that isn't relevant to them. Right? So that is something that I'm always coming back to, the “I should be able to do this myself vibe”.

Michelle Mazur [00:06:31]: I also wanna give you two other examples from members of the Expert Up Club. So you hear more from different types of businesses than just mine. So the first one is from Bev Feldman[a]. She is an email automation and ConvertKit consultant. So, really, what Bev does is help with the back end of your emails and making sure that they get delivered. Essentially, she gets your email into the right person's inbox at the right time.

One of the misconceptions she sees that when people's email marketing is not performing, meaning their emails aren't getting opened, it's not leading to sales, people are not getting the click throughs that they want. They think, I have a copy problem. Like, my email copy isn't good. Like, I don't know how to write emails. And in Bev's experience, sometimes, yeah, that is the case, that it is the copy. But sometimes, it's something technical that keeps the right people from getting your message.

So this is a knowledge gap that her people have. That type of misconception with always thinking, oh, well, I need to get better at writing emails and copy. That might not be the right thing for them to focus on, but they don't understand that the back end, your email setup, can actually impact your emails getting delivered.

Michelle Mazur [00:08:00]: So let's look at one from the coaching world. So Norma Frahn, who is a coach in the Expert Up Club, she works clients on emotional eating. But here's the deal. Most enormous clients think they just need to lose weight. That is what they're concerned with, weight loss. And they think, oh, if I just lost weight, I'm going to be happy. My life will be great. Everything will be perfect, and they view weight loss as that solution.

However, Norma knows that even if people are successful losing weight because it's really freaking hard, that if they get to that goal, they're not usually satisfied. And then they start eating again, and then the cycle begins again. And, really, what a lot of people are dealing with is emotional eating. Not eating to satisfy, like, our body's needs, but eating because we're feeling some certain way.

And so Norma's about digging underneath that. So for her, she does have to start with talking about weight loss because that's why people are Googling. That's why people are trying to find her. But then once she gets their attention, she can have a conversation about like, hey, you have tried a lot of diets, maybe you've seen some success, but the weight always creeps back on. And, hey. It's really not your fault.

Like, diets set you up for failure. And then she can say, and there's usually something else going on underneath, a bigger reason for why you're eating the way you do.

And so then she can talk about that misconception around weight loss and emotional eating.

Michelle Mazur [00:9:53]: So I hope it helped to hear three different examples of misconceptions. Because here's the deal - this is the tough part about identifying misconceptions for your own business. People are not going to straight out tell you what their misconceptions are. You can't do a voice of customer research, interview, and say like, hey, what don't you understand about my solution?

That's not the role of voice of customer work. Voice of customer work is very much about getting their experience. So how you have to find these is you've got to listen and read between the lines of what your potential clients are saying from you. And getting feedback from other humans can help you identify what those misconceptions are. Because misconceptions is very much that piece of messaging where you feel like, I should be able to do this myself, but it's only through other people seeing your work and giving you feedback that you can identify those misconceptions more easily.

And that is why the Expert Up Club exists. Because when you have these conversations about misconceptions, you get feedback from me about what those misconceptions could be and how to overcome them, but you also get to tap into the collective intelligence of the group that helps you identify and speak to the misconceptions.

Now the Expert Up Club is always open to new members until we get to 65 members, and then I'm gonna close it for a little while. You can take a private tour of the club right now, you can just go to ExpertUp.Club. Click the book a private tour link. I'll ask you a few questions so I can tailor the tour to you. But, basically, I'm here to help you figure out if this is a right fit for your business. So that's at ExpertUp.Club

So there you have it. Now go forth and dispel those misconceptions because misconceptions stop people from entering in to your sales process.

Michelle Mazur [00:12:14]: 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.

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