Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: Can we talk about how batshit bananas the current economic climate is? Online business is undergoing a major correction right now. Sales cycles take longer. Trust is at an all time low. And all of those business owners who were touting their “Big Teams!” and “7 Figure Success!” are now talking about descaling and degrowth.

The bottom line is people aren't buying like they used to. I felt it, and I'm sure you have too. But now that our economy has a big case of the weirds, how do you adjust your marketing and your message to stay relevant to your clients during this strange time?

That's what we're talking about today on the pod. So let's do it.

Michelle Mazur [00:01:02]: 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]: Think back 4 years ago. The pandemic was just starting. The government was handing out stimulus checks, and we were all at home not doing a damn thing except making bread and binging Netflix. Except for me and perhaps you.

My business was booming. Everyone wanted to work on their messaging. They had the time, the opportunity, and the money to do it. 2020 was one of my best years in business by far. And back then when people wanted to work with me on their 3 Word Rebellion and Brand Messaging, they had some pretty aspirational reasons to do so. They would tell me things like,

“My messaging will help me get a book deal.”

“I wanna speak on the TEDx stage once this pandemic is over.”

They felt like messaging would give them more recognition and respect.

And, basically, this work would help them realize their full potential as a business owner. Now if we think about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we know that when we have all of our base needs met, we can then work on our need for self-actualization. And back in 2020, even though the pandemic was raging, the clients who came to work with me had their basic needs met. They really wanted my work to help them meet their needs for recognition and esteem. So for messaging in my business, I talked about those things, right? It makes sense. That's what my clients were booking me for back in 2020.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:44]: However, everything has changed. Last year, we saw a lot of inflation impact our economy, and the money and online business seemed to just dry up overnight.

We saw this because some of the biggest names in the industry stopped focusing on online business owners because they didn't have the money to spend on a $3,000, $4,000 DIY course. And they started to talk to people who were in a 9 to 5 and were dissatisfied.

And as I look at my own business right now, the reason people come to work with me either 1-on-1 or in the Expert Up Club is it's not about esteem or self actualization, but they want to work on a more basic need: security and stability. So, here's what my clients are telling me right now. The service providers that I've been working with have been killing it through word-of-mouth, but they find that unpredictable and it's not giving them stability in their business. I'm hearing a lot from people who want to have a community or group program or they do have it so that they can make more money, have a bigger impact, that ripple effect with their work, and they don't have the audience. So, once again, they don't have the stability to reliably fill that program again and again. They need to build the audience.

Michelle Mazur [00:05:31]: They realize that they need a message because that's going to make them more effective in their marketing. It's going to save them time. It's gonna save them energy from creating marketing assets that don't work. It gets them to that need for security and stability. And so, my friends, those are some pretty functional needs and concrete problems. And by the way, I find it so much easier to speak to these concrete problems instead of the aspirational pie-in-the-sky goals. Because of that, my messaging needs to pivot to focus less on the aspiration and really focus more on the functional side of what messaging does for your business. How it brings security and stability in. The rebel truth of it all is in an economic downturn, people aren't investing in aspirations, but they will invest in something that solves a problem.

Michelle Mazur [00:06:43]: So what does that mean for you? And how can your message stay relevant during this tumultuous time? So the first step to take is to assess your message.

So if your message is focused on the aspirational wants of a client or is it focused on their concrete needs? Let's face it. Most marketing people will tell you to focus on the aspirational side. The… Live Your Best Life! Have a 7-Figure Business! Work Less! Don't Work At All! Make money in your sleep! Those messages, a) people don't trust them anymore because we all got duped by them when times were good. They don't speak to what people really need when things are unstable in the economy. So a great guide for figuring out if you're focusing on aspirational or more functional needs comes from the Harvard Business Review. It's called Elements of Value, which you guessed it. It's based on Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs. We will hook up the link to that HBR article in the show notes.

So at the base of this pyramid that you'll see from the Harvard Business Review are the functional and emotional needs. The top of the pyramid is life-changing or social impact. And right now, we have to focus on those functional and emotional needs that actually solves people's problems in order to invite them into our sales process.

Michelle Mazur [00:08:31]: Now, before we go to the second step, if you're ready to Make Your Marketing Suck less, give me 2 minutes of your time, and I'm gonna help you crack the code on your biggest marketing frustration so you know exactly where to focus to make your marketing half the work and twice as effective. And it all starts by taking the Discover Your Marketing Achilles Heel Assessment. All you have to do is open your podcast app, click on the show, and click the link called Marketing Assessment or go to drmichellemazur.com/marketing. That way, you are going to know where to focus to give your audience growth and sales a boost.

Michelle Mazur [00:09:15]: Alright. Let's go on to step number 2. Step number 2 is all about identifying what functional needs your offer helps with. Voice of customer research is key here, and we talked about that in episode 345. So go check out that episode if you haven't. And here, you can identify what your clients are saying against the elements of value. When I look at the functional level of value through the lens of my own offers, my own messaging, I see that the work I do saves time.

It simplifies. It simplifies what you're talking about. It simplifies your marketing strategy, so you're actually doing less. It helps you make money because it's leading people to your work. It avoids the hassle of starts and stops and “Why isn't this working?” And it fundamentally organizes how you want to market and what you need to say to get people interested in your work. So what functional value does your offer create? Look at your Voice of Customer and then link it back to the elements of value.

Michelle Mazur [00:10:43]: And then finally, step 3 is message to those elements. Obviously, you just don't wanna list the elements of value, but you need to translate them into how they are showing up in your client's life and then tell your potential client how your offer creates that value. So your Voice of Customer is very important here and also understanding how to talk about your solution, your framework, your Why Buy in a way that is meaningful to your audience. So, for example, for my people, I know they don't want to waste their time trying to figure out what their message is because, spoiler alert, most of my clients have spent an average of 3 years. 3 years, my friends, trying to figure out what it is they need to say in their marketing to bring people in. That's a really long time. So for my 1-on-1 work, if they can grow their audience and launch their group programs in 90 days, that could be a very enticing message to them. It's a message I need to test. I don't know if it's going to work, but it is an experiment because I can now make the argument about how the right message leads the right people to hire them.

Michelle Mazur [00:12:14]: And that speaks to the “makes them money function” of the elements of value. So I can pivot my message so that I stay relevant and top of mind to the clients I want to work with. And when I do that, sales and lead generation can be easier. Now it's your turn to assess, identify, and pivot your message to stay relevant to your people during this very funky time. Stay tuned for our next episode as I'm going to talk about why your message may need more than a tweak to navigate this economy. It might need a whole new audience. See you next time.

Michelle Mazur [00:13:00]: 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.