You market, they respond. Right?!!? (part 2)
Sigh, yes it’s happened to us all. Hours or money are poured into a marketing piece for our new service or widget. We send it off…and there’s no response. Like none. Or so little that we don't even want to count it. You can read article one on this here and now we're at part two. What's the way to be sure this never happens again? It’s simple when you hear it, but it’s not easy to do.
The one thing you must do to get response in your marketing—make your message marketable.
By marketable, I mean that it catches peoples attention and opens them to taking a next step with you. Even if your service or product is marketable (by that, I mean it’s desired in the market by money paying customers) they will never buy it if your message doesn’t help them see that it’s a good fit for them right now. Your messages have to help them take action.
Article one has the first three tips for doing this, read it here.
Here are three additionals your message needs:
- It’s written like you talk. We are not taught to write like this in school. So many of us start to sound stiff and formal when we write our marketing messages. This is a terrible way to move a person from being interested to being a customer. They want to feel the genuine "you" coming through—it’s the first step in trusting you enough to give you cash. Learning to write like you talk is a little tricky, but here’s how:
Step one: talk it out to a recorder, and then type it in. Or type it out first, then read it aloud.
Step two: then the editing begins. Edit it so it works in writing, but still sounds natural and similar to how you would talk. I always read my pieces aloud when I’m done and end up making tons of little tweaks til it sounds like me.
Good news: this approach offers you a workaround when you don’t know what to write. None of us ever have a problem talking. So think about the subject you need to create your message on, just start talking about it (while recording it!) and next thing you know, you’ll have tons of messaging to edit down.
Takeaway #1: Write like you talk so your messages give the same impression of you as if they met you in person. It's terrible when someone's written messaging sound totally different than if you met them in real life.
- It offers the correct next step of what to do next. This might seem obvious but I see many messages that are not specific in what they ask the reader to do. A blog post with no call to action isn’t likely to get a response from anyone. Asking the reader to share their thoughts, to click here to read other articles, or to share it with a friend might. A webpage that explains what you do but doesn’t tell a person how to take the first step in working with you (like downloading that worksheet you made for them!) won’t lead to conversations with potential clients. Tell the person exactly what to do in all of your marketing messages.
The other issue often here is that what the person is being asked to do next is either too big of a leap or isn’t related to the message being shared. If you do a 3 minute video on how to overcome back pain and you don’t add at the end that this is just one of many exercises that you do in your upcoming class, you’ve missed an opportunity for them to take the next logical step with you. If this video offers them a place in your $500 training, it’s probably too big of a step. If you at the end of the back video you mention that you do work on knees and hips, you’ll cause confusion. Line up the action step with the message and be sure it’s the next logical step for them to take with you.
Takeaway #2: Ask your reader to take the next logical step with you and explain exactly how to do that.
- here is some timing indicated. This part might be the most difficult piece for a purpose driven entrepreneur to do well. We don’t want to be pushy. We don’t want to sound disingenuous. We want people to like us. We hate hyped up marketing. But here's the rub: humans are only designed to act when there's a reason to. Otherwise, we prefer to put our feet up and get to it, well, never.
So use the genuine limits in your life and share them so you actually get people to sign up to work with you. It's really for your benefit and theirs that you do this. I mean do you really always want to be in hunting for new client mode? Or would you prefer to do it only 2x per year? Do you have unlimited numbers of clients you can serve each month or only actually 2 high end clients fit in a month? Are you willing to have this price for your class for the rest of your life, or only the next 90 days? Are you getting my meaning here? In truth, we all have natural limits, or scarcity, within our work so be willing to know yours and tell your potential clients what they are. This gets them the service they need and you the financial support you need to keep your biz going to well, serve more people.
Takeaway #3: Figure out a relationship with scarcity that feels comfortable for you and your clients. Then use it.
Good messaging comes from two things: the stroke of genius or little gem that comes out in the first outpouring of your draft and the ability to edit it into something that's usable. You should not keep all these steps in this article in mind as you try and write. Read this article, soak it in and then write or talk something out. There's your draft. Set it aside, come back, and edit the heck out of it based on article one and this one here. Put it aside and come back for another round of editing. Repeat until it's ready to go.
I never said this was going to be easy, I said it could be done. Now go get ‘em tiger!
