Improve Your Messaging and Speak Directly to Your Client (5 Questions to Ask) | 96
You want to speak to your ideal customers…but, um, how exactly are you supposed to do that? Marketing gurus talk a lot about what ideal customers are, but they don’t often say how you can speak to them. Let’s change that.
I want to share five questions you can use to improve your messaging, so you can attract your dream clients over and over again.
#1 Who is my ideal client?
You have to start with the basics. If you don’t have a clear idea of who you are talking to, it’s going to be hard to hone in on your messaging. At that point, you’re just yelling into the void and hoping someone hears.
I actually recorded a podcast about the four audience personas, which I think is a more helpful way to look at your ideal audience. Essentially, they are four audience personas, and you want to speak directly to them in your messaging.
#2 What problems are your ideal customers facing?
Alright, I want you to do something. Get out a sheet of paper and write down every problem your client faces. Yes, try to think of every single problem… Don’t think about a specific product or service you offer, just general problems. For example, if you target English teachers, what are they facing? Planning time struggles, missing resources, a broken photocopier, etc.
Then, highlight or circle all of the problems that your product or service directly solves. Likely, you will still see problems left. Begin to think how you might be able to fill in the gaps and improve your products to solve more problems.
When you are talking to your ideal customer, you want to specifically address the problems that you solve.
#3 How can I provide value?
No surprise here - people don’t want to be simply sold to. And people no longer respond to fear-based marketing… in fact even a sliver of a hint of fear-based marketing sends many people running in the opposite direction.
Instead, you need to honour your clients where they are and nurture them by offering real value. Think about ways you currently offer value to your clients (emails, blogs, podcasts, etc), and where you could add even more value each and every day.
#4 What are the parts of my funnel and where are my customers in the journey?
This one goes along with question three about providing value. You need to understand where your customers are at in their journey, so you can attune your messaging. For example, you wouldn’t talk to a cold customer the same way you talk to a warm one.
It can take 40-50 micro touchpoints before a client begins to recognize you and start to warm up to you. That’s a lot! These micro touchpoints include posts on social, ads, emails, and more. You need to constantly show up with value.
#5 Are they problem or solution aware?
Just like we talked about tuning your message to cold vs warm clients, you have to do the same with problem-aware and solution-aware clients.
A problem-aware client knows they have an issue. They might think, “I really need something to help with X.” or “I’m struggling with X.” A solution-aware client knows what they need and is actively looking for it.
At the beginning of your funnel, your audience is more likely to be in the problem-aware phase. As they begin to warm up, and you have nurtured them, they will become more and more solution aware as they start to learn about your offer!
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:06]
Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Growth, a podcast created for ambitious entrepreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dream.
[00:00:36]
Okay, so before we hop into the episode, I just want to remind you to download my free guide to Facebook targeting audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners and I go through the warm lookalike and cold interest-based audiences that you need to have set up to be running Facebook and Instagram ads. There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know you have everything. But as an exciting special, I'm opening up some audience audit calls where you can hop onto a 15 minutes zoom call with me and you'll get my eyes on your audiences so that you can make sure not only you have all the audiences, but they truly are perfect for your business. So head to Marketscalegrow.com/Audienceaudit to book your free audience audit call today.
[00:01:39]
Okay, now into the episode. Hello Holly, how are you doing today? I'm so good. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I'm really excited to chat with you today.
[00:00:06]
Hey there, I'm Nazarea and this is Market Scale Growth, a podcast created for ambitious entrepreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dream.
[00:00:36]
Okay, so before we hop into the episode, I just want to remind you to download my free guide to Facebook Targeting Audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners and I go through the warm look alike and cold interest based audiences that you need to have set up to be running Facebook and Instagram ads. There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know you have everything. But as an exciting special, I'm opening up some Audience Audit calls where you can hop on to a 15 minutes zoom call with me and you'll get my eyes on your audiences so that you can make sure not only you have all the audiences, but they truly are perfect for your business. So head to Marketscalegrow.com Audienceaudit to book your free Audience Audit call today.
[00:01:40]
Okay, now into the episode. Hello. Welcome to Market Scale Grow. My name is Jenza and this is a Saturday strategy session. So today we are going to be talking about how to improve your messaging with five questions.
[00:02:02]
And so I'm coming at this from a lens of your messaging for Facebook ads. But truly you can use this for any of your marketing, actually for all of your marketing. It will help you improve your messaging in your content, for your long form content, for your emails, for your social media, for your ads, for your Pinterest, like everywhere. And so these five essential questions are going to take your messaging up a notch. So let's get started.
[00:02:32]
Question number one is who is my ideal client? I talked about this in a previous episode, all about the four personas of the Ideal Client. You need to know your client better than anyone else. So the four personas are the identity persona, value persona, challenge persona and motivated persona. So basically, Identity Persona is capturing their attention immediately, like, hey teacher Business owners or hey fifth grade ela teachers so that instantly in your messaging, they feel like you are speaking to them.
[00:03:12]
The Value Persona you weave throughout your messaging, you don't necessarily like, call this out directly, you just add pieces of it and the vibe and the tone based on the values of your business and that your clients are going to relate to. So maybe you're a mom and you're going to talk about being busy and trying to keep track of all of your kids and how important family is. Or maybe you are speaking to teachers who don't have their planning time. And so one of your values is saving time, having time with your family and getting those precious moments right. So the values are going to be weaved throughout and you're not necessarily going to be calling those out.
[00:03:53]
The challenge persona and the motivated persona are really what you're going to speak to. So the challenge persona is the pain points that your customer might be feeling and the things that will quote, unquote, trigger them as like, ah, I'm struggling with this. This is what it's like, I lay in bed at night trying to fall asleep and I can just like circles in my head. How do I solve this problem? And then the motivated persona is your solution, how you are making their hopes and dreams come true. So that's just a quick little overview.
[00:04:28]
If you want more episode 84, dive in a bit deeper to the four personas so you can learn more about them. And again, you need to know your people better than they know themselves. And they need to feel like, ah, this person is speaking to my soul. So do your market research. Do not skip the market research.
[00:04:51]
It is so important.
[00:04:55]
OK, question number two is what problems are they facing? Now, this does come up in the challenge persona, but what I really want you to do, I want to challenge you to write out a list of all the problems that they are facing, from the little tiny problems to the huge, gigantic problems and try and see which ones your offer actually solves. And then you probably aren't going to be solving every single problem. But now that you have a list of them. You can really start to think about which problems you can start solving and like how you can fill those gaps so that your offer really is meeting all of their needs and you can see from tiny to gigantic where they're really struggling and what the most important pieces are for you to solve and then those cherries on top.
[00:05:56]
And once you have this list of all the possible problems that your clients or your customers are facing, you can start to create a game plan to improve your offer over time. This is absolutely not something that I'm going to say like, fix it today, but you can start to have that game plan and you can also incorporate this list of problems and your solutions into your messaging. Question number three is how can I provide value today, this week and this month? Providing value is going to help take your customers or your clients from where they are to where you want them to be, which is the buying position. And that is like, essential.
[00:06:37]
Like absolutely essential. And so coming from a position of providing value, serving your clients is just so, so important in today's digital marketing space. We definitely went from, and I've talked about this before on the podcast, there's been a shift where fear based marketing was so much more popular and now people are lacking trust. They want to build relationships. They want to know that you know what you're talking about, that you provide massive value, and that you're really going to be able to support them and help them and work through the problems.
[00:07:14]
And that you're actually going to be able to solve these problems. And so by providing massive value every single day, every single week, every single month, you're building up your, oh, filling your bucket. At school, they always talk about filling your bucket. And so you're putting value in the bucket. And when you're doing like fear based marketing or whatever, you're taking value out.
[00:07:34]
So filling the bucket, that analogy is like being kind to people. You want to fill people's bucket, make them feel good about themselves, and you want to be a bucket filler, right? And so you want to be a value bucket filler in the same way where you're just like pouring in tons of value. And I was listening to a podcast the other day, and she was talking about how you never know where your value is going to, like, come back to you. So you put in your serving, you're creating massive value, creating amazing content, you're creating amazing Facebook posts, and you're serving your audience.
[00:08:07]
And it may come back to you how you were expecting, like, the people you're serving come back and work with you, but it also could come back in a completely different way that you weren't expecting because somebody saw your post and then they recommended you. And then that person recommended you. And all of a sudden you have these people that are like third generation not generation, but like third link away from you that you have no idea how they came to you. And it's really just like putting that value out into the world, putting that good karma, those good vibes out into the world, and then just knowing, trusting that it's going to come back to you. So how can you provide value today, this week, this month?
[00:08:48]
Give your audience amazing value and pour into them because it will come back to you and it's so, so worth it. And also with that, as you're creating content that's valuable, you start to tune in to your audience more, see what they're asking of you, see those questions that are coming up again and again, the comments that are being made. And that really helps you to fine tune your messaging. It's really a type of market research. So in providing value, you're going to get feedback and that will improve your messaging.
[00:09:22]
Okay, question number four is thinking about what are the different parts of my funnel and where are people in the buying journey? And so you need to know and really deeply understand your customer journey and how it impacts people's awareness of you, of what they want and what they need, right? And so people have just come to find you are going to be colder. And as they warm up, as they get to know you better, as they consume more of your content, remember, it takes upwards to like 40, 50 micro touch points. So that's like watching a couple of seconds of a reel or a TikTok video or scrolling past a feed of the post, seeing that there was an email in the bot in your inbox and opening it and like scanning through it but not actually reading, all those are micro touch points.
[00:10:14]
Now you are listening to this episode and making it this far through. This is a macro touch point. Like, this is a big touch point, right? But maybe when you're looking at my Instagram, you're going to be scrolling through and you're just going to see a quote and be like, oh yeah, I remember that podcast. And you keep scrolling.
[00:10:29]
And those are micro touch points, right? So it takes tons of them. And as people warm up, those micro touch points become more and more and more valuable and more and more impactful because they'll start to recognize, oh, that's Gen Xiao. I recognize it as a burgundy color. That's hers, that's her logo.
[00:10:47]
Okay, I'm seeing Genzai more and more and more. And so as they see, as those micro touch points build up, as they move further through your funnel, they've consumed more of your content, they become warmer. And there's definitely a shift in how you speak to cold audiences versus warm audiences because those people are more like your friends and it's a more intimate relationship. So knowing where they are in the customer journey and really looking at your customer journey and figuring out how they are going to be impacted based on that point in your customer journey, that's number four. And number five is kind of a spinoff of that.
[00:11:29]
But are these people problemaware or solution aware? And this is something I've started thinking about more and more as I'm writing ad copy. Am I writing this ad copy? Someone who is problem aware or solution aware. And so what that means is somebody who is problem aware is looking to know that they have a problem.
[00:11:50]
They're saying, okay, I have my students in my class who are reading below grade level. I need some resources that are going to help support their reading growth so that I can do guided reading groups and that I can assess them more effectively. That's my problem. I don't even necessarily need to find a solution to the problem, just like I have this problem, whereas solution aware people are looking and they're saying, I am looking for XYZ guided reading groups. And so like the XYZ program.
[00:12:29]
So a specific person's specific program for solving this specific person's specific program that solves my problem and so on. A completely different idea is someone who is thinking like, oh, a business owner, an online business owner. This is just another example because I feel like I got lost in the last one. So problem aware. I want to start a course.
[00:12:53]
I don't know how to start a course. I'm thinking about googling different ways to start courses, different approaches to it, different methodologies behind marketing, and all those pieces. That's your problem-aware person. Their problem is they don't know how to start an online course, whereas a solution-aware person is, oh, I've heard about Amy Porterfield's digital course greeters DCA. I've heard about her program
[00:13:18]
I'm looking to buy Amy Porterfield's digital course. Academy. So that's a difference of like, I know I want to start a course, I don't know how I need to look into my problem. I know that I have this problem in that I don't know how to start a course versus solution awareness. I want to buy Amy Porterfield's DCA.
[00:13:39]
And so most people, especially if you're doing Facebook ads, most people are going to be problem aware. They know that they have that problem. They know that they have readers that are below grade level. Then they want to be able to support them. They know they want to start a course, but they don't know how.
[00:13:57]
They know that they want to run Facebook ads, but they don't know how to start or they've had a bad experience or the data overwhelms them. They're problemaware. They know that that's their problem. They're not necessarily looking for XYZ's Guided Reading Group solution or Amy Porterfield's DCA or my Facebook ads brands. Right?
[00:14:17]
So the colder the person is to you in your audience, and this comes back to point number four, is knowing the different parts of your funnel. The colder someone is, the less solution aware they will be. So as people warm up, they become more and more aware of the solution that you offer. But when you're first attracting people to your funnel, they're going to be more problem aware. So your lead magnet, you're needing to be targeting people who are and speaking to people who are a problem where they know what their problem is, less so than somebody who's going to be looking for exactly your offer with your title, right?
[00:14:57]
So I hope that that makes sense. Just a quick recap. Your five questions are number one, who is my ideal client? What are the four personas? Question number two is what are the problems that they are facing, listing out all those problems and trying to find solutions and how you can help solve those problems.
[00:15:15]
Question number three is how can I provide value today, this week, and this month. Question number four is what are the different parts of my funnel? Where are my people and how warm are they? And then question number five is, are these people problem aware or solution aware and how should I message them in that state? So I hope that these five questions are going to help you with your marketing strategy to narrow in and get more specific and more on point with your messaging so that resonates whether again it's for your long-form content, your emails, your Facebook ads, your Pinterest posts, your social media.
[00:15:58]
I know that these five questions are going to help you. So thank you so much for tuning into this week's Saturday strategy session. I'll be back in your ear with another episode next week, so thank you.
[00:16:14]
Thank you so much for listening to Market Scale Grow. If you're ready to build your email list and generate consistent leads on autopilot, then we would love to partner with you. Our growth package is perfect for course creators. Service providers and coaches look to inject their list with fresh leads so that they can amplify their amazing program and get it out to new people.
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