EP. 146: The 7 Messages Buyers Need Before They Buy From You

You can have the best offer in the world and still not sell it. Not because your product isn't good enough, not because you need more followers. It's because you're only saying one thing to your audience and it's probably, here's my offer, here's your pain point and here's your desire. And you're skipping the other six messages that someone needs to buy it. Here's the truth, there are seven specific messages, a person needs to hear before they trust you enough to actually buy. Most business owners are stuck repeating message number five on repeat and then wondering why no one is converting. In this episode, I'm breaking down all seven. What they are, why each one matters and exactly what to say in each. So you can stop guessing what to post and start building a content and marketing strategy that actually moves people. From who is this person to take my money? So if that's something that you want to integrate for your online business, but further ado, let's get into it. (upbeat music) Hello and welcome back to Abishus. Today we are talking all things messaging and this is something I gotta be honest. I nerd out on. This is as much in my opinion, a art as it is a science. And I think one of the things that I'm gonna be honest gets my gears going as a fellow business owner is when I hear people talk about messaging and they make it so abstract, they make it so complex, they make it so complicated, and you're sitting there and you're listening to them and you're thinking, I'm hearing that I need this laundry list of things, but I feel like I have no structure. I feel like I have no buckets that I'm supposed to hit, a sequence that I'm supposed to approach and what I wanna do today is help you to merge the science and the art and allow those two things to come together. By the end of today, I want you to walk away feeling like you know exactly what to put into your content, into your messaging, into anything that you are marketing, whether that is email, podcast, TikTok, Instagram, it doesn't matter where you use these tools. If you use these in any piece of marketing that you put out, I can guarantee you you will have very different results in the next two weeks to 30 days of your marketing. So let's get into the symptoms, in my opinion, of how to even know if your current messaging is meeting the mark. One of the things that everyone comes to me about is they're like, can you audit my marketing? Can you audit my messaging, my content, and everyone wants a set of eyes on what it is that they're posting, and basically getting a approval or denial of is this good or is it not good? And I really discuss messaging a lot because I think so many of us get caught up in this idea of content when really the messaging is underneath it. So the explanation that I give to people before I do an audit is I explain that when you order something, for example, on an Amazon, it could come by bus, train, car, plane. There's a million different ways for that package to be delivered. The thing is the package itself is your messaging. So so many of us are focused on how we're putting it out. Do we put this out via a podcast? What do we do in the email sequence? How many emails do we do? We're so focused on the delivery mechanism, which is typically noted as social media or content that not enough of us are asking, is there something in that package that that person wants? Are we delivering the wrong Amazon package to someone? And yet we're here freaking out about whether we should put it on a plane or put it on a train, like Dr. Seuss, put it on a plane or put it on a train. And meanwhile, the actual package itself is not what we want. And so that is what's happening with your social media, with your emails, with your podcasts, you're putting out pieces, you're like, I'm hitting the reps, I'm putting pieces out, I'm posting consistently, I'm on my stories, I'm doing the things, but yet I feel like it's not working and I can't figure out why. So what I typically ask where I look for, when I'm doing an audit for someone, is I literally look for a list of specific situations or symptoms that come up. So in my opinion, while I am nowhere near a doctor, I think about myself as the same kind of approach that a doctor takes when they are trying to diagnose someone with something that they're struggling with. I want to understand, tell me what is coming up. Tell me what you're seeing, when it comes to your sales, when it comes to your marketing, tell me what's coming up. And I want to list out some of the things that every single time that I have found that this person had messaging as a disconnect, all these things were present or at least a good percentage of them I should say were present. So first is if you are someone right now who is getting your content engaged with, you have people who are saving, you've got people sharing, you might even have people who are DMing you and being like, oh my God, love this week's podcast, love this post, love this piece, this so resonates. You know those just hype DMs that you get if you are getting those, but you are also simultaneously not getting inquiries, leads, applications, calls booked and you're like, I don't understand 'cause I can tell people they're consuming but I also can see that we're not converting those people. What do I do about this? That is a telltale sign that there's something a disconnected messaging. This is also something I hear a lot is like, I feel like I am shouting into a void. I feel like I am speaking to nobody because I'm putting out content, I'm putting out pieces of marketing and I feel like I'm not getting any feedback. I'm not getting any response back from people and I can't quite place or put my finger on why. And most people, when it comes to their marketing, it leads them to go into this really long process to be honest of trial and error, which is what if we set it this way and what if we put out this piece? Ooh, you know what we probably should do? We should put out X, like that's gonna be the thing that allows somebody to convert. That's gonna be the thing that actually gets them activated. And what ends up happening is you end up in this kind of endless circle, this endless loop of trying bunch of random things and becoming increasingly frustrated because you think to yourself, okay, clearly something here is a disconnect. And when even in the chance that you do getting queries, like I've had people who are on consoles with me where messaging was the issue, but what we discovered is like they're kind of like symptoms, if you will, weren't really coming up when it came to their marketing. It was coming up when it comes to their sales. So they said to me, I'm getting on consultations, I'm literally having calls with people and I feel like they don't know anything about my offers. They don't know anything about what I provide and the different packages that I have. It almost feels like in a way they haven't consumed any of my stuff before getting on the phone call. So then for us, as business owners, and maybe for you when you're getting on consultations, you feel like you are literally having to explain yourself, you're having to sell yourself as to why someone should work with you or why they should be interested in taking this next step. And so someone had said to me, Kate, I get on calls and people seem like they're bought in. Like they seem pre-sold, they seem pretty like, yeah, let's go, this sounds great. And then I send them a post sales call email or I send them a proposal and I get ghosted. I don't hear anything back. And I'm trying to understand like, where is the disconnect here? Because clearly something is not landing. And this is also seen when people are getting on consultations or you're having people inquire, but there's no level of urgency. Like I literally talked to somebody this morning who said, Kate, I have people who reach out to me. Like she was like, I'm so frustrated. They contacted me, they're asking me for next steps and where we can go from here. And yet they're not moving fast. Like there's no urgency it seems like to move. There's no urgency to invest. And I'm trying to understand like, what is the disconnect here? So when you have people that have no urgency, they have no level of awareness about you or your offer or they're just like ghosting when it comes to you pitching or providing your pricing, that is a byproduct of your messaging. And I'm gonna kind of break down in a little bit as to why. The last is going to be when you feel like you have followers, but you don't have loyalty. Like something that I see as people who have a good size audience, but there's not really like a deep connection. There's not this level of loyalty between them and their consumer. And as a result, if you do have that audience, you may also find that you end up with the wrong audience. Like I talked to someone who has fantastic content, content, main differentiator here is content. It's great content, but she was like, I am getting constantly inquiries and consistent interest from people I don't want to be working with. Like this is not who I want to be attracting. And it can be really frustrating. If any of these are happening to you, even if one or two of them are happening to you, it is extremely frustrating because you think, if you're anything like me, content takes time out of your week. You're like, I've got clients to serve, I've got sales calls to do, I've got emails to do, I have all of these things that need my attention. And then I go and I spend this time filming and I spend this time writing. And I do these captions where I do these emails and I feel like it doesn't do anything for my business. And it's so annoying. It's the most frustrating process. Because then next Friday comes around and you got to film again. So what I want to help you to do is understand what do we actually need to have in our messaging to have it be effective and do the job that we want, which is to help us to generate interest around us and our brand, help us to generate the leads that we want to be working with, and put those leads through a sales process that takes them from curious to convicted to convert it. So how do we actually do that? In my opinion, it's less about like what do I post? And it's more a matter of what stage of the process am I moving somebody through? And I think if we switch the way that we think about the question, it's gonna really open us to a lot of opportunity of how we're going to solve that. Because everyone wants to know am I posting a carousel or a reel? Am I posting social proof or am I posting something where they're making a mistake? Am I posting something about my brand? There's these really narrow buckets, but no one correlates what you post to what its goal is. So what I want to do is I'm going to break down the seven different pieces of messaging that you need. In each one of these pieces of messaging, I'm going to tell you what it is, why it is so important and what it does from a sales perspective. And then I'm also going to give you some very tangible examples of exactly how to apply these, okay? So the first one that we want to look at is what I call symptomatic messaging. Now, symptomatic messaging is something. Remember, if you go back to my doctor analogy, I said, I don't like people coming and telling me what their problem is. I like people coming in and telling me symptoms. You're forward facing marketing in any platform that you're posting, by the way. This is not specific to one platform or another. But if you are posting symptoms, what it means is that I need to see consistently in your messaging, wording that describes what is someone thinking? What are they thinking? feeling and what are they doing and experiencing in their day to day life. And I tell clients, I need to be able to see this and visualize this almost like a movie. It needs to be so granular, so detailed that it helps me to literally picture this person in their environment. It's not a matter of your problem is X. We're not just telling someone a problem. We're saying, if I couldn't say that word. So remember that game you used to play as kids and it's describe it without saying the word bird, describe a bird without saying bird. And that's kind of how you have to think about symptoms. You have to be able to look at how could I describe in such granular detail this thing that I'm trying to say in a way that describes it without saying it. And that's important because symptom based messaging is literally designed to help someone to see the current state of where they are. People resonate with their symptoms. They don't resonate always with a diagnosis unless they've already resonated with a symptom. So when you go to a doctor, say I have PCOS or endometriosis, let's use as an example. And I go in and I say, hey, I'm experiencing this. He goes, we go PCOS and you go, what? You would be taken off guard because he didn't explain the correlation between what you shared and what the diagnosis symptoms are. Think about many of us when we're sick. We always go, unfortunately, myself included. I go to Google and I go to Claw and I go to AI and I'm like, these are my symptoms. What's wrong with me? The reason that we type in symptoms when we're trying to search what rare disease we have at 11 o'clock at night is because we understand and resonate with our symptoms. We don't necessarily always automatically see our diagnosis. The same thing is true with your ideal client. If you are telling people, here's your problem. Here's your problem. Here's your problem. And you're not previous to that. Having marketing or having messaging that hits on those symptoms, i.e., what do they think, feel, do, or experience in their day-to-day life on a granular level. Like I'm talking when they wake up in the morning, what are they thinking? What are they feeling? What do they go to do around their problem? I know that like even for me, some people will wake up and they will open Instagram and when they do, they will see someone who has a bigger business than them who looks like they're having more fun and easier time and they get frustrated wondering, what am I missing? Like, I know that that is a woman right now who is my ideal client. And you have to ask yourself, what are those things? So symptoms are really important because the person needs to feel that you understand where they are currently at and what they're experiencing day-to-day. This is why you will hear that common phrase of, oh my god, I felt like you were like speaking to me. That's not just, oh, I write very well. This is a matter of you put in something that is so deeply what they think and feel on their own. It's in their head. It's in their life. It's when no one's around what they are thinking and feeling and if your marketing can speak to that thing so specifically, that person will be like, okay, this person clearly knows and understands me because if she didn't know and understand me, there's no way that she could speak to these different pieces. So symptoms are the entry point. This is not where you're going to sell. This is where someone recognizes that you understand them and their problem and now they're interested. They're intrigued. They're out of place where they're starting to come to this awareness of, okay, these are symptoms I'm experiencing. I'm going to pay attention and kind of see, what does this mean? What does this look like as a diagnosis? Something that I look at, this is the second type of messaging, is what I consider to be the source. So this is also better known as the diagnosis. This is what a lot of people do in their marketing and oftentimes overdo this to be honest because we are at a place where we're just labeling people with all of these problems. That's your issue. This is your issue. That's your issue. Typically, if you want a source or a diagnosis to be very effective, you want it to land with someone, you want them to resonate with it. It usually needs to be paired with some level of symptom. And that's again, back to our analogy of a doctor with a symptom and a diagnosis. That pairing of here's what it looks like and therefore here's the root cause of where that's coming from. When you pair those two together, people are a lot more receptive. So the source you want to think simply put is those symptoms that you have, those things that you know that someone's thinking, feeling, experiencing and doing. Why is that happening? What is the root cause of why they're there? So you have to ask yourself, what is the actual source of what is creating the pain? And the thing that we have to name is like, what's really going on underneath the surface? Because if we just talked what they're experiencing, right, if you just went to a doctor and you said, here's all my symptoms and they were like, hmm, okay, those are definitely symptoms of something. Your first question and inquiry would be like, what are they symptoms of? What's the source of this? What's the root cause of this? So the thing that we're looking for is to help someone to really understand the root of where it comes from. Here's the most important thing when you're talking source. And this is the thing that I commonly see as a mistake, which is why I want to flag this for you. Explaining the source of someone's problem shouldn't be done in language that you use with your existing clients. So I tell clients this all the time, I tell clients this all the time. The thing you have to remember is that the language that you use with your clients is a different level of awareness. When someone is at a place where they are already your client, that person is no longer at a place where they are unaware of their problem, where they're unaware of solution. They're already bought in on problem, they're bought in on solution. They're already your client. They've already invested. So the thing that is a big gap or I would say a disconnect is when you're using the language that you use with clients in your marketing. And that's oftentimes how people approach source or here's your root cause. I tell clients this, this, this all the time, yes, but they have a different level of awareness. They have a different level of understanding when it comes to their problem and what that actually looks like. So the biggest impact that source has is the ability for someone to realize that you diagnose them. You helped them to finally get clarity of that thing that they have been struggling with for the last three, six months, maybe even two years that they've been navigating something and thinking through it and struggling through it. And they have just never been able to put their finger on it. And yet here you are saying, oh, if this, this, this, this is happening to you, this is the root cause. And this is why it's happening. And here's where it's coming from. And it starts to connect and make the two pieces meet as to why this is happening. So the thing we're looking for with source based messaging is to help people to realize why they are experiencing something, that you're experiencing these feelings, these thoughts, these realities, not because of X, but because of why. And you're helping them to really get a full grasp of their diagnosis. Now, why is this crucial? People can't be interested in working with you inside of an offer and a solution if they don't know their problem, simply put you as a doctor would never prescribe a medication to somebody if they don't even understand what they're taking the medication for. So a lot of us, when we go into I want to sell, I want to promote, I want to invite people into my world. That's great. That's a great place for that. But this is why when I talk about messaging with people, I explain if you are pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, you're selling all the time and you're not doing these other pieces, you have an imbalance in your messaging, which is why you're going to see that people may see and consume you selling, but they're not moving. And that's because you're trying to sell to someone who doesn't even know they have a problem. So the goal with source and symptom is to help to bring people to a level of awareness that you understand them so that they feel seen and then help them to understand here is your diagnosis. This is what's wrong. This is why you're experiencing this. This is the root cause. The goal is to get someone to a place of readiness where they can hear the solution, where they can be ready to receive the solution. If I don't know I have a problem, I'm not going to be receptive to anything that you market around a solution. So if you're doubling down on social proof and you're trying to tell case studies and you're trying to go through a really different client results and you're thinking, I'm showing people that I can get these results. I have great testimonials, why aren't they buying? Because that's a different stage of the buying cycle. So unless you have had messaging along the way that smooth people down to being ready for that, it's part of why it's never going to do anything. So you can post two or you can post 20 or 200 pieces of social proof. It is not going to necessarily change how many people buy unless you have these other types of messaging already present in your marketing. The third is what I consider to be support. So support is really something that a lot of people get wrong because they think support is the stuff that you do. So you think about how many calls you give, your mastermind, your agency, your retainer package. So many people emphasize on, this is what I provide. This is like the literal offer itself. Here's the thing when it comes to support. Support is not about what you do. It is about how you do it. So what you do are the features, the things that you literally provide that you literally do with clients day and day out. How you do it is what's also considered to be a brand differentiator. So I'm going to give you an example. I work with a lot of agencies, specifically right now in this current moment in my business, I work with so many people in the marketing umbrella. I have ads agencies, marketing and copy agency, social media, content like they're all across the marketing sphere. And one of the things that many of them struggle with is that they don't really understand like what makes me different. Like my average entry package is 2500 a month or 3500 a month. So is my competitor. They do a post today, I do a post today. Like you're in this kind of comparison and you're asking yourself like what really is different about me because we're doing almost the same thing. And when you have that moment where you go they're offering what I am, their prices are kind of similar to mine, the thing that we need is we need a differentiator. So one of the things that we need to unpack when we work with a new business is to really determine what is that unique approach. So I had this one content agency that I worked with and they make content for luxury brands. And one of the things that we unpacked together was the fact that they had a very specific model and method that was why they were able to constantly capture luxury content, very aesthetic content, very, I would say like almost like cool girl luxury content. And it's not something that a lot of people could capture. But it wasn't a matter of, oh, we, we capture cool girl content. It's like, okay, like what's unique about that? They were actually able to break down. What do they do from a brand lens, a marketing lens, a message lens, a model lens? If they literally broke down in a granular way exactly what it was as to how their method was crafted to create that aesthetic, to create that luxury content. Instead of just saying, we create luxury content for people, it's like they can give context as to how they do that. And the most important thing is you're not in explaining how you do something or like the approach that you take, you're not breaking down your offer. You're not saying we post for you this many times, we do engagement for you, we do X. That means you're going into the features, which is to be honest, like 2% of why people buy. It's not a massive piece of why people invest. A lot of people, when they are looking to make an investment, don't necessarily care about how they get there. In the sense of the features that you give, the amount of calls they get, the deliverables, that is not nearly as much of an anchor as if I'm going to invest with you. What specifically do you do that I feel like I kind of can't really get from a lot of other competitors? And unless I can answer that, it's part of why you're going to just struggle to get people to move. Because if you are missing this unique brand of wrench here, this unique selling proposition of your unique approach of how you do it, specific support that you give that no one else does, not connected to your features. It's why when they're sitting there and they're browsing other investments, they're looking at making another decision, they can't quite put their finger on why they want to do one versus the other. It's not really something that they feel, oh, this person is a category of one. I know exactly why I want to work with them. That's where I want to go with. If they don't have that level of conviction of why you're unique, it's typically because you're missing this bucket. So this is why when you have sales calls or you're having conversations with people and you feel like they're price shopping, they have objections, they're kind of contrasting and comparing. The reason we end up in that bucket is because before someone inquired, we didn't really have enough to truly differentiate us. So now they're trying to use the sales call to say, tell me what makes you different because I couldn't essentially find it in your marketing. So support is something that really helps us to know this is what makes me unique and makes me stand out compared to all these other investments you could be making. Now one of the things that I really think is crucial as a brand is you need to have clear understanding of what makes you a brand of one. So there's support in the actual service, but the other thing that is a huge, huge piece which is number four is what are the values that you hold to be true as a business and as a brand. So one of the exercises that I do with people is I literally tell them who are the top three to five people in your industry that you're like, when I see their stuff, I cannot stand consuming that. If that is something that you see come across your feed, what do you feel? What do you think? And the basis of having these types of pieces is to literally take something and turn the people who are consumers into believers. So part of why people are going to invest with one brand over another is yes, their approach and how they do it. The second is the values that they have and that they operate from and the perspectives that they share. So one of the things we want to do is actually understand what are your perspectives? But if I say to you, so what's your unique perspective around XYZ that your competitors don't do? Most people get stumped, which is why I do the inverse, which is what do you disagree with when it comes to your competitors or maybe the way they do things, the beliefs that they have, the things that they share. And then I reverse engineer it and I ask myself, okay, great, then if you believe that to not be true, what do you then believe instead? And so something that I weave into a lot of clients messaging is helping them to understand that you have to state what your beliefs are. You have to state what your values are. You have to put that stake in the ground and say, hey, this is a yes and this is a no for me. And here's why. Most important with this specific type of message of your values and what it is you believe to be true, you can't just state what it is, you have to give the explanation of why. And the analogy that I give to people is, as remember as a kid, your parents would say, no, you can't have canned your chocolate before dinner. And you'd be like, why? And they'd say, because it said so. It gives no depth to you actually internalizing that message. The same thing is how your audience feels when you say, this is what's true and just trust me and take my word on it. It's like, okay, I need some understanding and basis or justification as to how you got there or why is that true or what does that actually look like in practice, right? Like how did you get from this perspective to this being so solid and so stern? That depth is what actually creates people being bought into what you share. So why we need the values marketed is because if we don't, we don't really have any aspect of being unique. We are saying the same thing as everybody else. We are marketing the same thing as everybody else. We are literally just a carbon copy of every other option on the market. And then we get this place of, I don't know why people don't choose me. I'm like, cause I don't even know why to choose you. I don't even know why I specifically should be buying from you and not from somebody else. Also included in this bucket number four of brand beliefs and values. There is a little subsection to this, which is what I consider to be identity. One of the things that I think many people get frustrated by is that they get inquiries from people who don't have the same perspective, thoughts, beliefs that they do. And they're like, I just don't understand how did this person even end up in my ecosystem. And what I talk about is the fact that you, if you are marketing pain points and desires, are going to bring in people who have pain, who have a goal. There's no sorting or filtering there of what are their pains, what are their goals, what specifically is the approach on either side. And so the identity piece and a line that I actually got from George that he shared with me that was literally like the, the simply put version of this that also was just so easy to remember. And marketing's job is to create the consumer that you want to convert. And that changed everything when I really distilled it down that way because what I, even for myself do is I have what's considered to be, they call them scripture statements or brand statements, things that I talk about even on this podcast. I have shared things about my perspective around business and, you know, wanting to lead from empathy, but also really believing in hustle and hard work and these dualities. So if you come to work with me as a client and you're not willing to hustle and put in work and look at data and check yourself as part of the way of you being able to grow, you're probably not going to resonate with me and with my approach. And if you come to me and you're wanting that soft life and you don't want to work hard and you're not willing to look at yourself and all of these things, the only reason that you would even be on my calendar is if I haven't done enough of that filtering through my messaging before you got to me. So it means that if I am really consistent and clear about what it means to be in my world, to have the values that I have, what are the ways that you are teaching people to think? I teach people how to think and as a result, when I tell you, hey, this is what I think and here's why I attract like-minded people. It's why even we had some of our team who was at our most recent ambitious dinner and I remember one of them pulled me aside afterwards and they were like, hey, I'm like, yeah. Like every single woman in this room is like literally a duplicate of you. Like energetically, like values wise, I'm like, of course they are. I state what I care about and if you don't care about those things, you're probably not going to resonate with me and that's okay. So the basis of the values and the brand pieces is that we don't want to just tell people what to do. We also want to give them insight on who to become, how to think. If you can help your audience through your messaging to teach them who to become and how to think, they will know and believe on the what to do. So I tell people, this is a kind of an example that I use is that I want you to think about like the commandments and religion. Okay. So this is not by the way about you needing to be a specific religion or being religious. That is your prerogative. But the analogy that I give is like the ten commandments. The ten commandments don't go through every single caveat of all these different scenarios and situations that can happen in your life. What they do is they act as a guiding principle, they act as your bumper lanes. They are the thing that helps you to know how to think about your life, how to think about decisions that you make and with this, therefore how to operate. So like even the Bible for a lot of people who consume it, they're like, just tell me what to do. Right. And some of it can feel so, it can feel so theoretical, it can feel so abstract at times. And I think the thing that is beautiful about that is it teaches us how to think. But it doesn't tell us in this situation, do this, in this situation, do this. There's an aspect of interpretation. So the same thing is true with your message. You have to actually coach and tell your people through your messaging. This is what I want you to think about. This is what I want you to have as an identity. And that identity is something that if you put that into your messaging, you will attract the like-minded people. If you attract people right now that care about things or that you don't care about or maybe you really care about something with your offer and they couldn't be less interested. Part of that is because you haven't done the identity pieces. You haven't actually put in the pieces that really tell someone this is who you need to be. Not just what you need to do, not just what you're experiencing. This is who you need to be. All of us want to call in those premium high level clients, those really aligned people that we want to work with. And in order to do that, we have to have this ingredient because if we don't have it, we're going to call in people who have pain points and desires, but who really are not our person. So number five is what I call the solved, which is also better known as like the dream. The outcome, the transformation. Solved is the broad word because technically speaking, solved type messaging. includes a couple different pieces. So one of the things was solved as it sounds is you want to actually have messaging that speaks to when someone works with you, what is the new state of where they end up? Now the way that I see this done poorly is that people have blanket statements that they rinse and repeat. So you'll have you want more clients, you want to make 10k months, you want to lose 10 pounds, you want to, and it's this big broad statement of you want X, you want Y, and I get the mindset around that because there are people who want 10k months, there are people, even for me, I help people to build seven bigger businesses like that is something that people want and it is something that I help them with. So that's not not true, but what my, my ideal client actually wants is she wants to make more money in her business without having to sacrifice more hours. She wants to feel like she can make marketing without necessarily having to live full time on her phone or share her entire personal life to do it. She wants to feel like she has a rinse and repeat system that she is not feeling like she's on a roller coaster of revenue where she doesn't know what's going to happen in a given month. Like those are the outcomes that she wants that are associated with seven figures. I'm going to lead the horse a little bit because you might feel like, hey, this sounds a little similar and that's the whole point, solved type messaging around the transformation, the solution. What does it look like when it solves? The transformation type messaging of the solution is similar to what we mentioned at the beginning of symptoms. But the thing that this does is it paints the now the future reality that they're going to have in granular details. So before you were thinking about how do they think, feel and what are they doing that are assigned they have a problem. Now, with the solved and the transformation type messaging, I want you to think, what do they think, feel, do and experience now after a transformation has happened? What does that new reality look like? Paint me the picture of where I'm going to be. And again, without using these big broad statements, without using these these big generalizations of, oh, you're going to have this outcome or that outcome. That granular piece is so crucial. I can't emphasize this enough. This is something that you need to flush out of if let's just say your goal, just for example, say, because all of us have seen on the internet is to lose 10 pounds or make 10 K months, right? Like the big, easy, like this is your big broad outcome. I want you to tell me if I hit 10 K months, what would my life look like? How would I feel? How would I have changed? What's my new reality? What's going to happen in a given day? What's different about what I had before versus now? Or 10 pounds? If I lose 10 pounds, what's going to have changed? Are my genes going to fit a little bit looser? Am I going to have more energy? Am I going to feel like I can run a little bit further with my kids when we're out playing soccer? Am I feeling like my brain is not constantly consumed now with wanting to eat sweets and carbs and I'm thinking of food all the time? That's a example of losing weight and getting back into a routine with your health. Those are just as important as the 10 pounds because here's the thing. The 10 pounds, she's only going to feel when her pants fit looser. The 10 pounds and being healthy is only going to be felt when she sees the box of donuts and she doesn't want to eat them all. That's the moment where she goes, wow, I've made progress, right? So calling those things out is so important because that's actually how she sees herself within what it is that you do. The second piece of solved type messaging is also looking at social proof. So social proof is something that I genuinely could do a multiple series on because it's so robust to do it effectively. To put it simply, social proof is really crucial because especially in today's day and age where everyone is online saying they're an expert and I'm the best at this and I am the person that you should trust and the person that you need to rely on to solve this problem. Everyone says they're great, I don't care how great you are, I care how great other people say you are. I care about the proof and the evidence of how great you are. So if you were at a place where you're trying to show people the transformation, telling them the transformation is one way, but you can also just show them through stories of your current clients or your past clients. Someone said to me, they're like, Kate, what do I do if I don't have always up to date social proof? I said, you don't need to use always up to date social proof. Think and rewind back to our days where we used to see those proactive commercials where they would have the before and after of skincare. They used the same Todd's face for five months straight when it came to the product. It doesn't change the effectiveness of the product. If the product works, the product works. So whoever you have as a transformation that the product works is really all you need. You don't necessarily need to have more and new social proof constantly every single week to market social proof. So this can be testimonials, this can be before and after, this can be case studies. I'm a very big fan of case studies because I find that case studies really allow you to explain the full picture. So when we have a case study, we can give context. Where was that person before? Where were they afterwards? What was the process along the way? What doubts did they have? What resistance is they experience? All of those things are something that we're able to really flush out and give detail to. Whereas when we just post a screenshot without depth and context, it doesn't typically land. And that's because there is this big part of the pie that is missing to help us to be really fully bought in on the story. So social proof and actually showing people the solution i.e. what does it look like when I've solved my problem? Are crucial if you want to get people to picture themselves in that end state. This is actually what sells people. A lot of people think that it is the pitch. It's the call to action. It's the invitation. That's just the the activator of people in your audience. That's not actually what sells people. What actually sells people are all of the pieces up until this point, which you will note are five different pieces of messaging. This is the stuff that actually is going to get people to buy. And even if you don't do the second two that i'm going to break down for you, even this alone can get someone to a place where you are getting consistent in inquiries. It's dialing in and refining those inquiries that are the only reason you need number six and number seven. Number six, okay, we're going to take our time at this one because this is something that I get irked about because people do it so badly urgency. We know that urgency is a marketing trigger, right? We know that urgency is something that people need in order to act on things. It's why there are buyers and there are people that literally will not move. They will not do anything unless there's a level of why do I need to do it now? Why is it important? Why do I have to act on this in this moment? And so when we think about urgency, I want you to think about there's two different types, okay? The urgency that most of us know is countdown, the limited time, the discount, the the bonus is going away. All these pieces, limited spots. There's this urgency factor of it's all around the product itself. What I'm going to accentuate is a different type of urgency. It's called problem urgency, which is basically that problem urgency is when somebody feels that their problem is so bad, so imminent, so impactful in their life that they don't take action on it, they recognize how much it's going to impact where they are and where it is they want to go. We call number six cost of an action. Cost of an action messaging is does your messaging actually paint a picture for me of what I'm going to lose right now by not doing something? And what am I going to lose about what I want by not doing something? So how am I going to miss out on the future and how am I missing out right now? What's going to remain true for me if I don't do something? And what in the future will never become true for me if I don't do something? And between these two pieces, this is what gets people to move. It is not your timer, it is not last chance, last chance, last chance. Yes, those have a place within marketing and they do have a role, but I would say more than that, more importantly than that. The thing that I look at is how do we get someone to recognize that their problem needs to be solved today? Like how do we get someone to recognize they need to solve their problem? Not just get them to quickly move in a fast way around our product and the fact that it's here for a limited time offer. It's a very short game when you do urgency around products. What we do instead is we do urgency around the problem. This is also important because if you are somebody who feels like your audience will not buy unless something is on sale unless something's discounted unless you get an added value unless you give this extra piece of something, your people just don't move. Typically the reason that you need to rely on sales and promotions and these kind of like limited time XYZ is because we are missing this cost of an action. We are missing a messaging that highlights what is going to stay the same if I don't do anything and what future state will never happen for me if I don't do something. Why do I need to do this right now? And I talked to somebody the other day and I said with your offer, why do I need to do this right now? And they're like most people want to do it. I said we don't buy just from want. We buy also from need. As in like this is something that I really, really, really deeply need a desire and therefore the thing I need requires this so I'm going to do it. Why do I need this? Why is this important to me? And I said tell me why I should buy this today and why I can't go another day without it. And she struggled to answer it and I said that's why your audience isn't buying because you don't actually know why they can't stall on this. You don't actually have a reason as to why they shouldn't wait. You just believe well, they can buy it whenever they want. It's always here, ideally you'd buy it now, but you could buy it in the future. That's not something that gets people to move. We need urgency of why is this something that I should be moving on soon and fast within my problem? That is cost of an action. It is here is what staying stuck and staying where you are is costing you. Is it costing them money? Is it costing them time? Is it costing them energy, opportunities? What is the thing that they are actually giving up when they don't do something? Last is number seven, which many of us will probably in some way have heard about, but it is something that I really think is crucial if you are wanting to have effective messaging is objections. One of the things that I see time and time again is that people will have conversations, they'll have sales calls, they'll have DM conversations, and people have objections, people have resistances. But then when they have the resistances, I scroll through their marketing and I'm like, I'm not even seeing any acknowledgement of these resistances in your marketing. I'm not seeing that you're addressing ROI. I'm not seeing that you're addressing addressing what kind of people are inside, how big is it? Like all of those types of questions that your ideal client has, I'm not seeing a dress in the marketing. So then we have frustrated when people have objections, 'cause we're thinking to ourselves, "Oh my gosh, this person has so many questions." But the reason they have so many questions and objections, because those objections have not been pre-handled or pre-addressed in the forward-facing marketing. So as a result, if we're not pre-addressing it, of course, we are not going to see people remove those because they haven't been answered. So when you have questions, curiosities, objections, resistance is coming up in your sales calls and DM conversations or anywhere that you are converting someone, it is your responsibility to take note of what those are and put those back into your marketing. Put those back into stories of clients, put those back into a brand piece of your perspective on something, put them back into your marketing as objection pieces, meaning this post is designed to help to take the people who are thinking about working with us and overcome objections before they get in our sales process. Because if we can do that, that generally means that we are going to remove and reduce drastically the amount of objections we're actually getting in our sales process. So this is really about looking at what are the things that people are saying to themselves, that they're kind of talking themselves out of buying and how do we address that in the marketing consistently? This, by the way, I want to be very clear. We listed out today the seven different things that I recommend messaging. The symptoms, the source, the support, the brand beliefs and values, the solved and the solution, the cost of an action and objections. With all of these, one thing I want to notice, this is about balance. It's about harmony of all of these pieces. Just because you're like, I added objections, so therefore we're good to go. We've got objection content. If that's your takeaway, I need you to know this is not about one of these being integrated. Each one of these types of messaging literally has a specific job. It is designed to achieve a specific outcome. It is there for a very specific reason. So it means that if you are missing one of these pieces, I literally want you to think about a pipeline. If you miss one of the seven pieces of messaging, it means that your pipeline works and then it glitches. And you're like, I don't understand why people aren't getting to convert because you have a literal gap, a hole, a break in your pipeline because there's a certain piece of messaging that should exist there that doesn't. So it means that even though you get all this interest, you're not getting anybody on the back end of converting. Or even though you're getting them all the way to interest and they're booking a call with you, you're getting objections, you're getting ghosted. Again, all of it comes down to each piece of these seven pieces of messaging has a job. If you miss one, you will always experience some kind of resistance to getting people to buy. If you have all seven, this is where you really are going to feel like you're in flow with your marketing. It's when people say, I've never had more inquiries. I've never had more leads. I feel like people are coming in pre-sold, ready to buy. This is what we're talking about. We need these ingredients in place because when you do, that's when people have everything that they need to buy from you. So my hope for you today is not to be like, wow, that was really insightful. I want you to take this and put it in your freaking marketing, okay? I can guarantee you something. If you do not let this just sit on a shelf and just be, yep, that was helpful. If you actually apply it, if you actually integrate this, I can tell you, you will see a change in your sales. You will see a change in your brand. You will see a change in your engagement. You will see a change in a lot of things, but the main intention of how I took the explanation of these today was around the sales lens. Because obviously, when we're trying to scale a business, we need more sales. So we're looking at how can we allow organic to do this? This approach and these seven ingredients are literally the thing that I integrate and have been integrating for the better part of nine years in my business. This is something that I can tell you it works. It works for agencies, it works for service providers, it works for coaches, consultants, it does not matter which bucket you are, it works. So if you have questions around this, I always want you to know my DMs are open, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. And also if you're like, I was listening and I realized that I am missing number five, or I'm missing number three. I'd also love to just hear any takeaways. If you feel like you have an aha moment or a takeaway that happened today, I would love to hear about it. And with all that being said, we will see you on next week's episode, but as always, stay ambitious. (upbeat music)