Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: Here's the dirty little secret about creating a new offer that nobody talks about. The hard part isn't creating the offer. The hard part is figuring out how to market and sell it after it exists. And I get why experts don't tell you this little truth. Because “create your signature offer in 4 weeks”, then spend 21 months figuring out how to market and sell it is a terrible value proposition. Every single time I've created something new, whether it was the 3 Word Rebellion or the Expert Up Club, my first thought after finishing was “shit. Now I've gotta figure out how to market and sell this”. It's a process. It's full of peaks and valleys. What I've realized is that it is a big 1,000 piece puzzle and, today, we're gonna talk about the pieces. So let's dive in.

Michelle Mazur [00:01:03]: 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 [00:01:52]: Have you ever heard about this phenomenon called the 2nd launch fizzle? Anytime you create something new, I don't care if it's a new workshop, a service, a membership, a community, it doesn't matter. Launching it into the world follows a pretty predictable pattern. The first launch is typically fire, especially if you've got great product market fit going in. So if you know your people already want what you're creating, your first launch will go like gangbusters. Your raving fans buy, it feels so easy to sell. And you're feeling good because people want what you're offering, and you are seeing people get results from it. But by launch number 2, 3, or 4, things seem to fizzle out. You're selling less or maybe not at all.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:03]: And that's when you hit that valley where doubt starts creeping in. And you think, maybe this offer isn't good enough. Maybe people don't actually want it. Maybe people were just being nice buying it in the 1st place. Maybe I suck. Maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was. Or maybe, just maybe, you haven't figured out how to message, market and sell this offer yet. Because that last one, that's usually it.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:42]: It's going to be so tempting to abandon this offer that you created. But please don't. Please do not. Because while it's fun to create something new and the first launch will go great, you will find yourself in the exact same place. And I know exactly how this feels. So I just wrapped up the latest launch of the Expert Up Club. And for the first time, I feel like I killed it. Like, it went so well.

Michelle Mazur [00:04:22]: My emails were on point. I booked 13 private tours, which was my most ever. My sales page. The sales page, it's so good. It's doing its job. My private tours convert at about 70%, and I got 9 new members for the last launch of the club, which was great. Now do you wanna know how long it took me to get to this point where I felt like I was killing this launch, 21 months. Let me say that again. 21 months.

Michelle Mazur [00:04:59]: So I'm not telling you this to brag or hit you with the” if I can do it, you can do it too“ nonsense. I'm telling you this because it takes time to figure out how to market and sell. Market and selling any offer is basically a big, old puzzle, and it has multiple puzzle pieces that you're going to need to figure out how it all fits together. And that's why this takes time. It takes experimentation. So let's talk about these 4 pieces. But before I do, I just wanted to tell you about this resource I created designed to help you figure out the marketing puzzle.

Michelle Mazur [00:05:56]: Because no matter what you're selling, whether it is consulting services, whether it's a course, a membership, we all face this puzzle that we have to figure out. So Market Like An Expert is a 7 day email based market crash course so you can figure out how to confidently market your business. You'll create a do less but better marketing strategy that helps you fit the pieces of the puzzle together, but it's also going to create demand for your offers and your expertise. So it's time to figure out your marketing and do it in a way that doesn't suck the life force out of you. And it's really designed to help you solve that marketing puzzle once and for all. So if this is interesting to you, you can sign up for the crash course. It's completely free. It's at drmichellemazur.com/mle. Or if you just open up your podcast app and click on Market Like An Expert, it will take you right to the page where you can sign up.

Michelle Mazur [00:07:07]: Alright. So let's talk about the 4 puzzle pieces that took me 21 months to figure out so I could market and sell Expert Up Club. So the first piece of the puzzle is you gotta figure out how to sell your offer because there's no point in in marketing and generating leads for something if your sales process is a hot mess. And when I was figuring out the Expert Up Club I'll talk about this in more episodes coming up because we're gonna deep dive into these different aspects, but it took me a while to figure out how to sell it. I sold it via email and consultation calls. I tried to sell it through open houses. I try to sell it through email only. And then I finally landed on private tours, which actually work. So you have gotta figure out how to sell your offer, which also includes how do you talk about it in order to sell it, which is a whole process as well.

Michelle Mazur [00:08:17]: The second thing you'll begin to figure out as you start to sell this offer and figure out how to sell it is how to raise awareness, how to get people to know about it. This is the second puzzle piece. This is the audience growth piece. This is where we are going to be developing new relationships with other people who might be great fits for what we do. But you have to know how you want to do that. For me, I am all about collaborations. Like, that is how I want to grow my audience, whether it is the Make Marketing Suck Less Virtual Event or it's doing lead magnet swaps and cross promotions. Collaborations are the one way I want to reach new people and then build their awareness.

Michelle Mazur [00:09:12]: We're gonna talk about the 3rd piece of the puzzle, what to do with people once they're in your world. Because if you know how to sell something, you know how you're gonna get in front of new people who don't know you yet. Once you get in front of new people, you have to get them ready to work with you. Right? You have to make an argument for your work, make a case, and nurture them. And, for me, I feel like I have this, I don't know, 80% dialed in for the Expert Up Club, but I know there are things that need to change about how I'm nurturing, how I'm getting people ready for the process. And that's one thing that I'm actively working on in this year.

Michelle Mazur [00:10:04]: So now the final piece of the puzzle. And it's not a piece. It's actually the entire border of this marketing and sales funnel. So it encompasses it all, and we always put the border piece together first, because it gives us the frame. Right? And that's the messaging piece because the messaging piece and knowing what to say to get people's attention and make them feel seen, heard, and understood, which is something that we do when we're growing our audience, knowing what to say to get them ready for your offer, and then knowing what to say in order to invite them into your sales process without feeling like Ccammy McScammerson. Right? So that is the frame. And all 4 of these things, they are figureoutable. It takes time. It takes experimentation.

Michelle Mazur [00:11:04]: So if you haven't cracked the code on marketing and selling your offer yet, just take a deep breath because you will figure it out. You've got this, and I've got you. Because next week, I will be back talking about how to turn this big, amorphous thing called marketing and give it a structure that really allows you to understand what different parts of your marketing should be doing for your business. Because having a structure turns the blob that is marketing into something that feels more doable, more figureoutable, and it just makes your marketing suck less.

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: 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.