65. How To Make Customers Aware That You Exist
Having a great product or service isn't enough if nobody knows about it. Attracting customers is crucial for the success of your business. So how do you make customers aware that you exist?
It starts with a powerful marketing message and great strategy that captures attention of the right people and showcases what sets you apart from the crowd. And customers are more likely to choose your business if they know, like, and trust you.
On this episode of The High Performance Marketing Podcast, I'll share three reasons why your marketing might not be connecting with your target audience and what you can do about it.
Building a Story Brand + How To Grow A Small Business
Story Brand Course on Business Made Simple
Free Download: Simple Marketing Plan
Transcript
Welcome To the High-Performance Marketing Podcast, a show committed to helping small business owners connect with their ideal customers using simple marketing and quality content. I'm your Host, Ali Garbero.
In the years that I’ve been providing marketing services for various kinds of businesses, of different sizes, from the solopreneur to the mid level business owner - is this phrase or mindset that in tough times or when you’re just starting out, budgets are tight and marketing is perceived as “an extra.”
I know you’re going to think I sound biased when I say what I’ll say next - your business will not survive to the level you want it to without a marketing strategy and quality consistent content, I’m not saying that because I want to sell you my services. I say it because marketing is not an extra, it's fundamental to business. Period. Without marketing, those sales you keep hoping will happen, won’t and I’m going to tell you why before the end of this show.
On today’s episode of the podcast, we’ll dive into why your marketing maybe isn’t working the way you want it to and what you can do about it. But most importantly why marketing should always be your right hand for creating consistent sales.
So let’s get started.
First, what is Marketing?
Marketing is more than branding or advertising, which are tactics of Marketing. True marketing is the big picture plan you put in place on HOW you will acquire customers.
Remember how I’ve shared my story with you before. How a decade ago I left my corporate gig, got my real estate license and literally showed up to my brokerage ready to get to work. What I learned immediately was that I had been very naive. I knew I was open for business, but nobody else did. Who was going to teach me how to get clients? I was told to start door knocking and cold calling. This was the advice one of the best real estate training programs at a top tier brokerage told me was a viable customer acquisition strategy. And you know why? Because that’s what almost every single small business struggles with. They have zero idea about “how to get customers” and naively believe if “we build the product, if we create the service, the customers will come.” I have zero doubts that you have learned for yourself, that is not the case - ever.
If you don’t attract people to the thing you’ve built, they won’t come.
Our business will never grow simply because we have a great product or service. Why? Because there are just way too many great products out there. Companies that thrive are companies that master the art of telling customers about their products. If our marketing message is confusing, doesn’t make sense, doesn’t help customers understand what’s in it for them, they simply don’t pay attention.
Donald Miller released a new book recently called How To Grow Your Small Business: A 6-step plan to help your business take off. In the book, he compares running a business to the key elements of an airplane. He shares that testing your marketing language is like testing an engine before you connect it to the body of the plane.
Most businesses will wait until the last minute to prepare their marketing ideas because most often your energy is used on creating your products or services. But without the right marketing language and plan, nobody will be attracted to your products or services once they’re ready.
How to combat this is to actually create foundational messaging. How I help my clients do this is with a Brand Identity + Messaging Guide. I spend time with them understanding who their message is for, what challenges their customers are facing as it relates to the product or service you offer, marketing positioning and your unique value proposition, things - and after a two hour workshop - I have what I need to craft foundational messaging. If you want to do this on your own, the simplest way to get started is to read Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. Or you can watch the on-demand course at Business Made Simple. I’ll include links to both of these in the show notes.
People don’t buy the best products or services, they buy the ones they understand the clearest. And when you don’t have an existing marketing message or it’s confusing, you lose customers. If you don’t believe me, head over to the internet and try to make a decision about buying a new water heater based on the information on a website.
Second, let’s talk about what I call copycat competition.
Most business owners try to copy telling others about their products based on what they see other businesses or their competitors doing. No doubt you’ve been like, oh maybe I need to start a youtube channel, get on the tick tock band wagon or worst of all, like I was told so long ago, start door knocking and cold calling. Holy cow, you want stress in your life, start calling strangers that aren’t expecting your call, or show up at their house. From experience, that’s the most miserable way to do business.
I can’t tell you the amount of CEOs and company leaders I see on LinkedIn every day sharing insights about how to succeed and behind the scenes they are in the red, their turnover is insane and they are literally making it up as they go.
Copying others is the fastest way to fail. And here’s why. Your goals are different than your competition.
For example, let’s say you decide you’re going to copy successful big brands. Who doesn’t want to be a Nike or an Apple. Well let’s think through this….
- Nike and Apple have completely different goals than you do.
- Their agenda, their strategies and priorities look different.
- Their goals might include: things like making their board members happy, satisfying their shareholders, winning advertising awards, you name it.
- Big companies also have ginormous marketing budgets. Which allows them to work the mass marketing and branding model.
- They have the money to invest thousands or millions in ads to build brand awareness.
Mass marketing (which is really undifferentiated marketing) is a business marketing approach that advertises to the widest possible customer base, up to and including the entire market available. Imagine just throwing a net into the ocean and hoping you catch a trout. In Nike’s case, they’re going to throw out a net and hope they find someone who wants to buy their shoes regardless of things like gender, income, need of use, it’s just let’s see what we get. Also, mass marketing is super expensive, takes a lot of time, and requires you to spend a lot of money on media channels like TV and radio, over a long period of time.
Big companies have something a small business doesn’t - time to wait on results and they also have the manpower to help them with their creative. (Like full time videographers, copywriters, graphic designers, etc.)
On the flipside a small business is usually self funded, which means you don’t have the time to wait to see results. You need sales yesterday. And your number one agenda and priority is to:
Make a profit.
So it’s costing you a lot of money if you’re using the wrong marketing strategy for the scale at which you’re operating. I mean just imagine leaving your corporate 9-5 to start your own business and the first thing you do is go lease office space. You haven’t even made money yet and you’re already in the hole for space you don’t need. That’s why most of us start our companies from a home office space of some kind, right?
So two approaches I recommend you add to your marketing strategy include inbound marketing and direct response marketing. I’ll explain the difference between both and how they’re powerful in helping you grow sales.
First, what’s inbound marketing? It’s not outbound marketing, things like cold calling or pushing and paying for expensive advertising to the masses - inbound marketing is designed to create curiosity and engagement, and draw the right customers in. Your target audience. So if you’re going after trouts, inbound marketing targets trouts.
It’s also been referred to as “pull or magnetic marketing”
Some examples of inbound marketing include:
- Blogs where you write around the specific problems or questions your customers have
- Webinars - where you teach solutions for your customers needs
- Ebooks or white papers
- Video content or mini courses
- And targeted social media campaigns
You’ll notice there’s a common theme with inbound marketing. It’s focused on educating your audience about solutions to the problems they have. My podcast is a form of inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing uses a strategic approach to creating high quality content that aligns with the needs of your target audience and helps create long-term customer relationships. I have never loved cold outreach. Even today, I don’t ever send Linkedin messages to people I don’t know, I don’t send blind emails or cold call agencies, or other businesses.
I have a teacher's heart, so I like inbound marketing because it allows me to share and teach information around the things my customers need, which in turn helps me get to know them better as well as build trust by providing the information they need for better decision making.
Ultimately, our customers become our customers because we provide solutions to their problems. Have I drilled that one down enough? Inbound Marketing helps create long term and sustainable lead generation by attracting or pulling potential customers to where you live online and inviting them to visit your website or to follow you on social media. Basically to get into relationship with you.
Next is Direct Response Marketing. Direct response marketing is designed to get potential customers to take an immediate action, like opting into your email list. It involves providing information or a service directly to a segment of people who are most likely to respond. Again think about trout. We’re serving trout not every single fish in the ocean.
For example, many times when I’m scrolling on Instagram and let’s say I see an ad for a makeup product, when I click on the ad a pop up comes up offering me a 50% off coupon. Of course I’m asked to enter my email address so that the company can send me a discount code. This approach ups the ante so that I’ll take the company's desired action to buy their product because, after all, who doesn’t want to save 50%?
Direct response marketing allows for quick lead generation opportunities too.
So in the example of my podcast, it can work for both inbound and direct response marketing. Inbound wise, I’m sharing information without asking for anything in return. But now and again I’ll share something with my audience where I do ask for their email or I ask them to schedule a call with me. There’s a response I want my audience to take.
Alright, the final mistake I want to share with you today that many entrepreneurs and business owners make is having no marketing strategy at all. This is why shiny object syndrome creeps up. Without a marketing strategy you literally have no idea how you’re going to acquire new customers. You’re just guessing at what works and you find yourself constantly looking for the next new thing to help you get customers and make sales.
I would always tell the real estate agents I coached, that if you aren’t strategic with your marketing, then you don’t know if investing $5,000 a month on zillow is right for you or not. It’s why so many small businesses spend thousands of dollars with lead generation companies, looking for their next customer. Because they don’t have a plan in place.
A marketing strategy sounds super sophisticated and convoluted at times, please don’t make it that. I have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars and helped others do the same, using a simple plan.
Your marketing strategy or plan should be printed somewhere you can see it every day. I’m embarrassed to share that I’d been in business a few years before I finally created one. And the moment I did, some powerful things happened. I was clear about what my goals were and had a simple roadmap to actually achieve them. With this marketing strategy in place I made more money than I had the previous five years.
And the response I most often hear from the clients I work with on strategy is: “I can’t believe how easy this is. Why hasn’t anyone shared this information with me before?
So, while I'd love to work with each of you one on one to put a strategy in place, I understand some of you out there prefer to do it yourself. Which is why I have a resource you can access at writebrandmarketing.com/plan
It will walk you through some key factors for creating a simple and I mean simple plan that helps your business grow by helping you determine the economic objectives for your business, select the marketing channels that best fit your audience and business, as well as outline how you can consistently execute on your marketing. Go grab it today.
By far the biggest leverage point in any business is marketing. Marketing is where the money is. Marketing it’s just advertising or branding. Marketing is the strategy you use to get your ideal target market to know you like you and trust you enough to become a customer. And your strategy is the big picture planning you put in place before you execute the tactics. It’s the blueprint you put in place before building a house, it’s the roadmap or GPS you use before heading out on a long distance drive. Social media, email marketing, or paying for ads are elements of the big picture not your actual strategy.
Marketing in my mind is customer acquisition. And that is not an extra for any business.
Thanks for joining me today, I’m Ali Garbero, copywriting is what I do, content marketing is what I create, more customers is what you get.