Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: You do all this work to build relationships. Get the word out about your business and grow your audience. Then once you have someone's attention and they are finally following you or joining your email list, 95% of the time, they are not ready to work with you. Surprise. So today, we're talking about what's next. After you've got someone's attention, how do you keep them engaged and that relationship going strong? And that's what we're gonna talk about on the show today. So let's do it.

Michelle Mazur [00:00:44]: 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 [00:01:32]: Over the past few episodes, we've been talking about how to defeat the marketing blob, that big amorphous thing that is sucking up your time, your energy, and even your hope. How do we make marketing less overwhelming and more manageable? And that is where the GEO framework comes in. Now a quick refresh about what GEO is all about. GEO encapsulates the three main jobs your marketing does for you.

Michelle Mazur [00:02:13]: So G stands for growing your audience, relationships, and brand awareness. E is for how we nurture and engage folks to get them ready to work with us. And O is for offer and how we invite people into our sales process in a way that feels natural and not slimy and not like scammy McScammerson. And we're gonna be talking about that on the next episode. Last episode, we dove into the G of GEO, getting your business in front of new people. But now that you've done that work, people have discovered you what's next. So today's episode is sponsored by the letter E for engage. So before we dive in to what does this phase look like in your marketing, If you want to go deep and really understand the GEO framework to create a marketing strategy that lets you do less marketing but see better results, think more clients, more opportunities to share your expertise, then, you'll wanna check out Market Like an Expert.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:31]: It's my free seven day crash course that takes you through all the steps to create a marketing strategy that is unique to your business and your strengths. You can grab it at drmichellemazur.com/mle or just open your podcast app, click on the link for Market Like An Expert, and sign up because this course will help you save time and do less marketing. I absolutely promise you that. Okay. So now let's talk about this Engage phase. The great part of the Engage phase when it comes to marketing is the tactics are very straightforward. Because in the Engage phase, we are looking at doing more longer form content. We are starting a blog.

Michelle Mazur [00:04:30]: We are launching a podcast. We're creating a YouTube channel, and we pick one of those, and then we usually put some email marketing in there because email marketing can do a lot of the heavy lifting. So when you're deciding what to do, you wanna pick something that plays to your strengths. Like, if you love to write, blog. If you like speaking like me, podcast away, my friend. You wanna be the guy girl bae on film? Cool. Do video. But here's where things get tricky.

Michelle Mazur [00:05:05]: What do you actually say to get people ready for your offer? What do they need to believe before they enter into your sales process? Now this is where I'm gonna be a contrarian, and I know this might ruffle some feathers for other marketing folks who are out there. But the best way to get people ready for your offer is not through content buckets or content pillars. And that's the common advice out there. What are your content buckets? What are your content pillars? But here's the thing. Those only work for creators, and you are not a creator. You don't need content pillars or buckets. In fact, those pillars might actually be pushing people away and make them think that they can DIY your expertise. Right? Because a lot of content buckets will be things like how to do this certain thing.

Michelle Mazur [00:06:08]: Great. They don't need to know how to do it when they can actually benefit from you doing it and paying you for that. So inside the Expert Up Club, we focus on three major pieces of messaging for the Engage phase. And these pieces of messaging are what allow you to kick the content buckets to the curb, but they're also the messaging that does lead people to your work. This messaging, what it does, it is building the case. It is making the argument for why people should choose to work with you. There is information that they need before they can even think of buying from you. So those three pieces of messaging are the problem statement, and I love problems.

Michelle Mazur [00:07:12]: I I love working I love problems. That sounds weird, doesn't it? Give me some problems. No. I love problem statements because they are very rich. They are a very deep piece of messaging, because with the problem statement, the goal is to actually help people diagnose the real problem they have and the root cause of that problem. Because I'm a let you in on a little secret, not so secret, but people are terrible at figuring out what's really happening in their business. I see this all the time. And for instance, one time I had someone come to me, and she's like, I think the messaging is off for my offer. I'm just not generating leads. And so she had a group program. And I'm looking at the message, and I'm like, yeah. This seems pretty good. It's, like, solving a problem. It's clear. It's clear who it's for. And so I asked, like, how many people do you have on your email list? And she's like, oh, 70.

Michelle Mazur [00:08:17]: I'm like, oof. That's the problem. Right? So I was helping her diagnose the problem. And sometimes that problem leads people to me, and other times, I get to send them to solve that problem with someone else. And I'm fine with either because I am being helpful and of service. So the problem statement. The second piece of messaging is dispelling misconceptions. There is a lot of things people believe about the work you do that is inaccurate, and it's not their fault.

Michelle Mazur [00:08:53]: Sometimes they've heard bad advice. Sometimes they just don't know what they don't know. So our job in the Engage phase is to dispel these misconceptions, these points of friction that cause people not to move forward, not to say, oh, maybe I should have a call with you. Right? So misconceptions, I love misconceptions. Like, one of the big misconceptions before people join the Expert Up Club for me is they're like, oh, but if I'm not on social media, aren't I gonna be missing out on clients? Isn't that going to hurt my business? And my job is basically to show them, like, hey. No. Because what you could do is look back and see where your last five clients have come from. Have they come from social media? And if not, that gives them permission then to explore other ways to market and do that inside the Expert Up Club.

Michelle Mazur [00:09:55]: The final piece of messaging we need in this phase is your unique solution. I'm not talking about your offer. We are not about talking about how people are working with you yet. When I talk about your unique solution, I am talking about your approach, your philosophy, how your brain thinks so that they can see how you could potentially solve a problem and lead them to solve their problem. So we're not at the offer phase. That's next week's podcast. But having these three pieces of messaging really are the key to building an argument for your work, for getting people actually ready to enter into your sales process. And there is nothing like getting on a sales call with someone and having them already know what your work is about.

Michelle Mazur [00:10:58]: Having them be supremely ready to work with you, and then the call is just about fit. It is so lovely. Okay. Now sometimes we get lucky when we're in that grow phase. Someone finds us, they listen to a podcast or two, they jump on a sales call, and they're ready to roll. But 95, maybe even 98% of the time, that's not how this works. Your people need time to figure out why your solution is the best one for them. They need to work through any of their misconceptions that cause friction.

Michelle Mazur [00:11:36]: And they have to understand what their actual freaking problem is so that when they make a buying decision, they're actually going to solve that issue. That's where this longer form content, like your email marketing, plus a blog or a podcast or a video come in. And the marketing tactics, remember, those are the easy parts. The messaging, that's the key to making nurturing and engaging with people suck less. Because when you understand what they need to hear and what you have to say in your marketing, you're going to find that it is easier and far more effective. And remember, this isn't about creating random pieces of content to fill up space. It's about being strategic. It's about intentionally building a case for why and how you can help. Because when you nail this engagement phase, those leads turn into clients who are actually ready to work with you. And that, my friend, is when marketing really pays off and feels so much easier.

Michelle Mazur [00:12:51]: 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.