How even the best marketers can et wrapped up inside their own product.
Hi, this is Steve Pratley and this is another short edition of the Automatic Business show.
I wanted to talk you through an email exchange that I’ve just had with a business coach.
I’m not going to give his name away, just because I don’t want to really criticize him because he’s doing some really cool stuff helping lots of people out, but I had a bit of an exchange with him this morning because I think he dropped the ball on a certain part of how he’s promoting a new part of his business.
This guy, he runs a Facebook group which has grown in no time at all, it’s bringing thousands of people, it’s got some really cool people in there, lots of good advice about people growing their businesses, a bit of exchange in there.
He’s providing a ton of advice about productivity and just getting on with the big dream that you’ve got.
The Facebook group’s a free thing and he’s now created a private members’ group so that people can get more access to him and some other benefits as well.
I’m just going to read you a list of the things that he says when you join the group. I’m going to leave any brand names out of it, just to try and keep it anonymous.
“There’s daily access to me and my experts in the forum, my complete training system, a daily accountability group, each of my webinar recordings, weekly calls, the book that changed my life, a digest or monthly newsletter, 20% off some future products, what sounds like a fast-consultancy call, priority access to new training and seminars that come up, there’s a tech gadget there, priority access over another social media channel, some notes from some other seminars and then some other bonuses that will be added in.”
There’s a lot of stuff in there
But the problem I had is, I thought this is a guy I’d like to get some access to, he’s gettng a lot of things moving, he’s building a big audience and starting to monetise it.
In my business, at the moment, I’m trying to take the one-to-one consulting that I’ve been doing with clients for 20 years. Be that client-side or agency or whatever and turn that into some products that can get out to some smaller business owners who can’t afford to work with me one-to-one. It’s a model I’m really interested in progressing as well.
But, he’s missed out saying who it’s for and actually what the end benefit of any of these products are. I’m looking at this thinking,” the amount of money’s not really the issue, the issue for me is the time it’s going to take to go through all this stuff to try and find the bits that I need that are going to help me with the particular challenges that I’ve got”.
It’s very easy to get wrapped up in … When you’re creating a product or you’re creating a service, you get very, very wrapped up in creating that, seeing it from the inside and losing sight of actually the benefit that it’s going to get for your customers and …
You see this an awful lot. If you go to any kind of networking.
The question that everybody asks is, “What do you do?” And people in return usually give a job title. I would say a Digital Marketing Consultant whereas actually, what they’re really interested in is what’s the thing that you do for your customer. I’m somebody who helps a customer scale their businesses by using easy to use and relatively cheap technology to communicate with their customers at scale and with consistency.
That’s what I do for people, that’s what I do for companies and that’s what I’m trying to do in my own business, ironically now, scaling it up from a consulting business on a one-to-one basis to more of a training, digital training products and some Grid training products as well.
I think this guy missed a little bit of a trick, so I emailed him back and I’m just waiting for a response and I hope that maybe the penny drops for him to say, “Actually I need to be a little bit more clear on who this is for and what the benefit at the end of it is”.
It’s kind of assumed from the content you’re putting out, but I haven’t seen all of his content by any means. I’ve not been to his private sessions, I don’t go into the Facebook group on a daily basis. There’s lots of stuff that I’ve probably missed over time and I’ve seen him interacting with lots of people. There’s been some productivity stuff, there’s been health and fitness stuff, there’s been some copy-writing stuff, so it’s becoming a little bit vague what the real direct benefit of the group is.
Just have a think about that, particularly in your sales pages or when you’re thinking about “what am I going to present as the benefit that customers will have with me”.
Right from adverts, sales pages, webinars, whatever else it might be, make sure you’ve really got that clear outcome that your customers are going to get, in mind. Then you’ll find it much easier to say, “And if you want this at a higher level, then you can pay me some money for it”.
The right people will be attracted to you because otherwise you’re too watered down and actually you miss people far earlier on in the conversation. Just have a look through your marketing sales messages and marketing and sales messages and just see if you tick those boxes.
I hope that helps you clarify some of the marketing you’re working on at the moment, and I’d love to hear your comments on whether you’ve managed to achieve that or instances where you’ve managed to improve it, for example, and what the results have been.