Audio Lesson Three: WHAT
THIS IS WHERE IT GETS FUN. AND IT ALL STARTS TO CLICK.
Now that you’ve completed the first two sections of your simplified, one-page marketing plan, we’re ready to continue the process of creating a system that allows you to sell more by doing less. It’s going to all start coming together for you.
We currently know:
Who we’re marketing to
Why they are motivated to buy from us
Now we just need to create an inventory of What we have to offer them that will make their Sandler-defined “Pain Today” go away.
Let’s continue.
(If you haven’t completed Audio Lesson Two, or the corresponding section in the worksheet, turn back now or go all the way back to the beginning, if you must.)
Don’t confuse your “what” with your offer. it’s more than that.
So now you’re thinking, “Finally! We get to start selling!”
Well, not quite. At least not in the way that you might be used to.
Marketing comes first. It lives outside of and above the traditional sales funnel, and it’s all about getting prospects into your sales funnel [PODCAST].
So, yes. Your product or service is indeed a “What” that has the potential to make the prospect’s pain go away. That’s great.
But the path from the marketing funnel to the bottom of the sales funnel, when a prospect becomes a paying customer, is a many-stationed route. It is not a singular leap, typically, that makes one hop from discovery to delivery.
In other words, there has to be more Whats than just what you’re selling.
Those Whats are your marketing assets.
lining the customer journey with fill stations
Think of the prospects you’re marketing to—your audience—as people you are inviting on a journey. The ultimate destination is a sale for you. But if you try to drag the prospect directly from undecided to your proverbial checkout lane, they’ll resist.
People like to buy things. But nobody likes to be sold.
These days, people like to feel as though they’re in control of their own purchasing decisions. In fact, they are. Gartner, a leading and respected sales consulting and advisory firm, released research that shows that buyers get 57% of the way through the buying process before ever making contact with a potential product or service provider.
So if the ultimate goal is to get a buyer all the way through to an actual purchase of some kind, you have to allow them to take their own time and path to get there.
What you can do, however, is use various forms of content to serve as the proverbial “filling stations” along the journey people are taking to make their pain go away—the path from prospect to customer—ultimately leading them to the destination you want to direct them to…you.
These pieces of content are your Whats. They are breadcrumbs to the ultimate What: your product/service.
WHAT THE WHAT?
So this is the content that you keep hearing is “king” nowadays? Yup.
But here’s what they’re not telling you: It doesn’t have to be as complicated, cumbersome or consuming as they’d have you believe.
In fact, I counsel my coaching and training clients to do as little as possible, not as much as they can handle.
Because nobody likes the content treadmill. Not you. Not your audience. Nobody.
It takes time to create and distribute. It takes time to consume.
All in a time and place where people are more time-crunched, more bombarded, and more attention-deficit than ever before! Ever get halfway through a long tweet and give up? Because 166 characters seemed like just too much to waste your time on?
That’s the world we’re living in nowadays. And that’s where your audience is. So you need to meet them in the moment.
This does not mean bombarding them with mounds and mounds of content, that you’ll spend hours creating and they’ll spend seconds skimming. Nope. Not anymore.
Remember, you started this audio lesson with the intent to sell more, but do less. And I gave you a permission slip to allow yourself that luxury, right? That promise still holds. I’m not about to burden you with you more than you can handle now.
In fact, I’m still driving you toward a new reality in which you’ll actually be focused on only ONE marketing medium…plus email ;-).
…not trying to do it all out of FOMO. And not doing “nothing” because you don’t know where to start.
So let’s get on with it.
HERE’S THE HOMEWORK
This may be the shortest of the six lessons in this audio course. That’s because it has the most homework. Sorry.
But this is the fun part. We get to start mapping out a simplified marketing system for you and your business. And you’ll see it begin to take shape right before your very eyes!
Let’s go back to that audience you identified in lesson one. Remind yourselves who they are, and go back to the worksheet to re-familiarize with their “buyer persona” (remember that fancypants term?). Think again about their:
Demographics: age, gender, geography, earning power, occupation, etc. (WHO)
Psychographics: the pains today they are looking to address or eliminate (WHY)
Knowing what you now know about your audience and their motivations, what pieces of content do you expect they’d go looking for to:
educate themselves as to what the available solutions are
find fixes they can apply themselves
consult a trusted resource for recommendation or referral
get that 57% of the way through the purchasing decision that the Gartner research suggests is true
…and knowing what you do about the types of people you interviewed to get the answers to your questions (existing clients)…
what do you understand to be that audience’s preferred mode of content consumption?
Find out, if you didn’t ask them the first time…
Do they like to read?
Watch videos?
Listen to podcasts?
Take online courses?
Attend webinars?
You see where this is going.
You won’t have to guess. They’ll tell you.
It’s Your Turn
Now let’s finally turn that window back into a mirror. Out of everything your research and intuition tells you about the types of content that your audience will self-select as their primary learning modality, which of them most closely aligns with your ability to deliver answers?
What lines up with your natural skill set and genuine passions?
Do you like to write?
Can you present on screen and easily produce video?
Are you more of an audio person? Can you teach yourself or learn how to podcast?
Do you like to present in person? Small rooms? Big conferences?
Can you train and teach, either digitally or in person?
This will take you some time to think about. So don’t rush it.
But the next step is the promised land. You will want to pick one—and only one—as your best bet to get content into the eyes, ears, minds and hearts of people willing to be guided along your customer journey, fueled by content filling stations along the way, until they reach your final destination—a purchase!
But before you absolutely settle on a decision here, you’ll need to complete Audio Lesson Four. This is where you will stress-test that decision to make sure that it aligns optimally with your audience’s preferences as to where they go to find the type of content that you’re going to focus on.
If and when you think you’re ready for the final stress test to de-stress your marketing efforts and remove FOMO once and for all, move on to Audio Lesson Four: WHERE. I’ll walk you through this in the next installment, but start thinking along these lines: Now that we know with confidence who we’re talking to, what their purchasing motivations are, and what we can give them to bring them into our sales funnel, start to think about:
Where do members of my audience naturally live, work and play?
Where do they spend their time online?
Where do they go to find solutions, answers, resources and referrals?
This is where you’ll be. Armed with filling stations.
See you next time.