You can't just talk about your offer and hope that that's going to reach the
right people, and the right people are just going to want it right.
You can't just hope that that's going to be enough to sell it. You
actually need some kind of journey from when somebody first becomes aware of your brand
through to when they buy from you. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph
Taylor. For years, I read all the books, downloaded all the freebees,
and did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started taking imperfect
action that my business had its first million dollar year. Imperfect action is about
doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving
forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this show,
you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips and strategies to build a business
that brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy. Are
you on the list to get my daily businesses? Every day, I'll send
you a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow your business in a more
intentional way. Sign up at Steff Taylor dot co, forward slash DBB,
or at the link in the short notes. Hey, Welcome back to Imperfect
Action. This is episode six hundred and seventy eight. Today I'm sharing part
two of the reasons why you might be struggling to sell to your audience,
some of the areas that you might be going wrong. Now, last episode,
I talked about the five key areas that impact how well you are able
to sell your office suite, your sales process, your messaging, your marketing,
and your mindset. Now, in part one of this episode, we
looked at the first two the office suite and the sales process. That was
a couple of episodes ago. You can scroll back and find it, or
if you want the direct link to listen to that episode you don't have time
to go and look for it, send me a DM on Instagram, send
me the number six seven five, six seventy five to Steff Taylor dot co
on Instagram, and I'll send you the direct link to listen to that episode
automatically. Okay, So key mistakes that you might be making with your messaging.
We're going to look at messaging, marketing, and mindset today and the
key mistakes that you might be making with your messaging that are making it harder
to sell. Firstly, well, your messaging probably lacks clarity, and that
might be clarity at the offer level, So messaging around this particular offer you
are trying to sell, or messaging around your brand in general. Now,
some symptoms that there might be a little bit of lack of clarity is if
somebody's asking you what do you actually do? They've come into contact with your
brand, or it might have looked at your website and then they're like,
how do I work with you? What do you do? Or they're asking
you is this for me? Who is this for Those are all symptoms that
you haven't communicated what you do well enough. If it's for an offer,
if it's at the offer level, if somebody's asking what is the actual outcome
from this offer? Or is this right for me? Will this work for
me? Those are some symptoms that you might not have communicated it clearly.
And if your ideal client is confused, they're not going to buy right.
So we need to make sure that whatever we are communicating, we're doing it
really clearly. Now, I know there can be a lot of a misconception
or it can be a bit of a misconception around how your messaging and your
copy. It needs to be really clever and catchy and unique. But let
me tell you, clear beats clever any day. Okay. Now, in
launch Magic, we spend the whole of module one and two getting clear on
the problem, the solution, and the transformation and articulating it in a way
that their ideal client understands. And most of my students really struggle with this
because you never have to. This isn't something you usually have to do in
business unless you get forced to do it, like I force them to do
it. It's really easy to understand conceptually in your head. Oh yeah,
of course this is who it's for. Of course this is what it does
when it's in your head, because you're really close to it. But it's
a lot harder to explain it in a way that makes sense, really simply,
really concisely to somebody else who doesn't have the same context that you do.
Okay. The second messaging mistake that's making it harder to sell is you
don't have one ideal client in mind with your messaging. Your messaging is just
way too broad. And I know you want to help everyone, and I
know that it seems like if you talk to as many people as possible,
you're going to sell more because it's a bigger audience, right. But unfortunately,
if you try to talk to everybody, you end up talking to nobody.
You end up resonating with nobody in particular. And instead now instead of
resonating with a really small, narrow market who they're having this response where they're
like, Yeah, this is perfect, this is exactly what I need,
this was made for me. Suddenly, now you're trying to talk to this
broader market where you're competing a against a lot more people who might have a
similar offer to you, so it's a lot more competitive. Back in episode
six hundred and forty two, I shared a couple of ways to choose the
right niche and some questions to help you figure out whether you're in the wrong
niche or the right niche. If you want to listen to that episode,
send me a DM at Steff Taylor dot co on Instagram six four two,
six hundred and forty two, Just that number and I'll send you the direct
link to that episode. I really love when it comes to talking about narrowing
down your messaging. I really love Seth Goden's analogy of making waves in a
swimming pool versus making waves in an ocean. It's so much easier to try
and make waves in a swimming pool than it is to try and create waves
in an ocean where you can't really control it because it's such a big,
big, broad area. So he says, focusing down your messaging, or
focusing down who you are talking to, allows you to make those waves in
that swimming pool. And then once you've made waves in one swimming pool,
you can go make eaves in the next swimming pool, and then the next,
and then the next. Okay, the third mistake your messaging doesn't resonate
with your ideal client. Something that is really powerful when you are communicating what
you do and what your offer is is speaking to the ideal client's identity.
So if I'm saying this is for online business owners, if that's something that
you identify with, you're going to be like, okay, cool, this
is for me. You're going to listen. But what I see happening is
people will use really vague or really fluffy language that doesn't necessarily resonate with the
people that they are trying to resonate with. I see quite a lot of
you know, this is for soul centered coaches. This is for heartseted unicorns.
I see a lot of that, and I love it because it sounds
really nice and warm and welcoming. But you always need to remember, is
this something my ideal client identifies with? And it's worthwhile asking them, Hey,
what do you call yourself? If I say this is for soul centered
coaches? Is this something that you think is potentially for you. The other
thing that we can that the mistake we can make that stops us from resonating
is talking an expert language. So when we are familiar with the problem our
ideal client is experiencing, When we are the experts in the problem they're experiencing,
and we know why they're experiencing it, we know what's caused it,
we know what the solution is, it's very easy for us to talk from
this place of hey, we're the expert, we know this, and we
might forget that the way that they are experiencing the problem is actually different to
how we know the problem. I can't come up with a better analogy than
what James Wedmore came up with, where he talks about the headache versus dehydration.
So your audience is experiencing a headache right now, they're walking around,
They're like, my head hurts. You are the expert and headaches. You
know that their headache is caused by dehydration. But if you go and say
to them, hey, here's a cure for your dehydration, they're going to
say, no, thank you, I've just got a headache. Okay,
So you need to actually meet your audience where they're at, otherwise they're not
going to think it's for them. Now, back in episode six hundred and
sixty two, I shared a bunch of questions that you can ask yourself to
help you find that clarity on your messaging. Send me a DM at Steph
Taylor dot Co six six two, six hundred and sixty two. Just the
number, no text or anything, otherwise the automation gets confused. You'd be
surprised how often that happens. And I'll send you the direct link to listen
to that episode. Okay, now the next part, mistakes that you are
making with your marketing that I'm making it harder to sell. Mistake number one,
you're confusing marketing with sales or you are lumping them together into this thing
and you're just calling it promoting promoting my offer. And this might look like
you are posting posting about your offer or you are emailing your list about it.
This isn't really marketing, and most of the time it's not really sales
either. And this will make sense in a second when I talk about selling
and marketing a bit of the difference there. But you can't just talk about
your offer and hope that that's going to reach the right people, and the
right people are just going to want it right. You can't just hope that
that's going to be enough to sell it. You actually need some kind of
journey from when somebody first becomes aware of your brand through to when they buy
from you. This is what is commonly called a funnel or a sales process.
I prefer sales process because funnels can get a little bit of a bad
rap and they can seem really complicated and they don't really have to be okay,
And this leads me beautifully into mistake number two, which is you don't
know what you're marketing. And sales funnel looks like now if we think of
it as a little upside down pyramid, an upside down triangle, and at
the top, the widest part is the people who are aware of your brand,
and then they move through. They move down this pyramid slowly like some
people will drop off at each stage. That's normal, but they are moving
down this little journey and it's your job as a brand to move them down
this pyramid. Marketing is reaching more people, so filling that top of the
funnel. But then sales is what you do with the people who are already
in that funnel. How you move them down through to the pointy little end
of the funnel, where is when they are taking action. Okay, one
of the theoretical models around this is called the Aida model. Awareness is the
top, then the next layer down is interest, Then the next layer down
is desire, as in they are desiring your offer, and then the last
one is action where they are buying. So you are moving people from aware
to interested in your brand, to desiring your offer to actually taking action and
sales what will move those people down? Now? Back in part one of
this episode, go back and listen to that if you haven't, because that's
where I covered the big sales mistakes back in episode six seventy five. Too
many people try to fill the top of this funnel, but then they don't
think about what they are doing with the people in their audience once they are
in the funnel. Okay. Mistake number three is you are relying on social
media alone to grow your audience. Social media, whatever platform, I don't
care what platform it is. For most of you, it's going to be
more of a nurturing tool than an audience building tool. Okay, it's going
to be a place to nurture the people who are following you rather than a
place of discovering new people making more people aware of your brand. And that's
fine. Great, if you want to keep posting on there and nurturing your
audience, do that. I love doing that, but you also need to
think about how are you intentionally getting in front of new audiences. And that's
going to involve doing the things that feel a little bit uncomfortable, a little
bit scary. Speaking on stages, whether that's virtual or in person, doing
interviews on other people's podcasts, pitching the media, reaching out and doing collaborations
with people who have a similar audience. All of these things are going to
put you in front of new people, but they're a little bit more work
than just posting to Instagram. And then the final part of today's episode is
the mindset stuff, the mindset areas that are making it harder to sell.
So this mindset can be a little bit fluffy, but bear with me if
you're somebody who's really tangible logical strategy wise. I used to be like that,
and now I've realized just how much of an impact mindset has on not
only creating success in your business, but actually maintaining that success once you are
there, without self sabotaging it all. I guess the simplest explanation for this,
this is what really convinced me that mindset was worthwhile. So we think
about it. Your thoughts create your feelings. So when you think something,
if you think something bad is happening, you're going to feel probably a little
bit anxious. Your feelings then create your actions. So if you're feeling a
little bit anxious, you're going to take a very different action to if you
are feeling inspired, for example, or motivated. And then your actions create
your habits, and your habits create your life. Okay, and at a
business level, even if it's not creating a habit, your actions are going
to create what happens in your business. There's only so much that is within
your control. And the only things that are within your control are really your
thoughts and your actions. Everything else the economy, your competitors, your customers,
you can't really control them. You can just take action that affects how
you show up. And that's where it all comes back to your thoughts.
So when it comes to selling, thoughts like oh, I don't want to
annoy them, I don't want them to unsubscribe and unfollow me. What if
my offer isn't good enough? Do I know enough? Is this too expensive?
All of those kinds of thoughts are going to make you feel a little
bit, you know, probably not inspired. If you're saying I don't want
to annoy them, you're gonna then put up a post selling your offer where
you're like you're not really selling it to the best of its ability, or
you're gonna not talk about your offer enough. You're not going to put in
place a good sales process because you're afraid that they're going to unsubscribe and unfollow,
Or if you're if you worry that your offer isn't good enough, you're
going to show up in this place of like this is not good enough,
like a bite from me, but I don't even believe in it myself.
So all of those thoughts create those feelings, which then create your actions,
which then affects how you sell. And it also might be that you have
mindset blocks around receiving money. I know a lot of people do. This
is quite common where we actually feel a little bit guilty when somebody pays us
for something. Or you might have some blocks around your around value. Maybe
you think, oh, I wouldn't pay this much for this, so nobody
else will, or maybe imposter syndrome, or you're worrying whether what you're doing
is good enough. All of these things lead to I don't I don't know
if this is the right word to use, but it's self sabotaging behaviors in
some way, for example, not showing up and selling fully, not charging
the right price for your offers. All of this leads to not selling enough.
So I know it can be there's a lot. Mindset's a huge thing
to unpack. I really love the book The Mountain Is You by Brianna West.
It's a really great place to start if you want to understand how these
things can show up in all areas of your life. And what's really interesting
when you start to dive into it is you start to notice how the way
that these things are showing up in your business, it's also the way that
they show up in your relationships, in your friendships, in your family,
in everything that you are doing. So it's worthwhile getting on top of it
sooner rather than later. All Right, That is it for today's episode.
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