The 4 Most Important Words In Your Marketing

29 May

Having a great product or service, it's just simply not enough to reach the income goals that you have for your business.

You want a great product and a great service. But you need to pair that with strategic marketing, because marketing is how you get people to notice what you have to offer and care enough to buy it.

Now most people get marketing completely wrong, or they overcomplicate it. So let me simplify your marketing for you today and boil it down to just four words. That’s it, 4 words. And these 4 words if they flick a switch for you and give you that “ah ha” moment will literally transform everything you do from this point onwards because, these are the four most important words in all of marketing.

What’s up guys welcome back to another Light & Lines video. I’m Ben Greaves and if we haven’t met before I’m a content creator & marketer for the building industry and you see,

Most builders & architects don't know how to repeatedly land their dream clients and projects. So I created an easy to follow 5 step guide that helps you simplify your message, create great marketing material, connect with customers, grow your business and land the clients and projects you've always dreamed of

I know a lot of you are short on time so I’ve made this as practical and straight to the point as I can and it’s completely free. All you have to do is click on the link in the description below and a copy will be sent right out to you.

So with that being said, let’s get into it and move on to todays video.

So what I’m going to teach you today is something that was a major lightbulb moment for me and completely changed how I talk about my business and how I serve the guys I work with and it’s something that 99% of builders I see haven’t learned yet.

You see, having a great product or service, it's just simply not enough to reach the income goals that you have for your business.

You want a great product and a great service. But you need to pair that with strategic marketing, because marketing is how you get people to notice what you have to offer and care enough to buy it.

Now grab a pen and write this down. Are you ready?

Nobody

Cares

About

You.

Sound harsh? Well, maybe it is. But it's strategic.

And trust me, once you embrace this truth, it'll help you sell more products sell more services, and allow you to get to the income level and business level that you really want to be at.

You see, the biggest issue most people but especially business owners face is that they are focused too much on themselves inwardly, and not focus nearly enough on other people and outward focus.

So business owners ask themselves these inward focused questions, what do I need from this business? What are my goals? Am I successful yet? And rarely, rarely, are they looking outside of themselves and at their audience and asking the opposite of those questions?

What do they need in their life?
What are their goals?
How do they define success?
And how can I help them achieve it.

And as human beings, we have limited cognition or brain power. So every moment every ounce of brain power we spend on ourselves thinking about what we want what we need in our business, and I wanted to grow blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, is brain power and willpower and cognition that we don't have to focus on looking outward and finding out who our audience is and what they want.

And ironically, the only way to get what we want as business owners inward is to give people what they want outward. Make sense so far?

And third, and the only way to give them what they want is to actually know what they want in the first place.

And the first step to knowing what your audience wants and to get inside their head and read their minds is to embrace these four important words.

Nobody cares about you.

This means less talking, and more listening to your audience.

Now before I continue I just want to make a little side bar here. A lot of you guys when you’ve sat down to look at something like “who your ideal client is” have probably looked at something like this and generally speaking when someone is looking at an ideal client or creating a “client avatar” they’re looking at Demographics. So you know, things like age, gender, race, religion, employment, location etc etc.

Now while those things are ok to know they don’t really help you with your marketing and connecting with the types of clients that you actually want to be working with.

What you should be thinking about instead, and I’m going to teach you a new word here, is what’s known as “psychographics” which you can probably already tell are based on psychology.

So what the hell are psychographics.

Psychographics is the psychological study of consumers and their attitudes, interests, personality, values, opinions, and lifestyle. Psychographics are incredibly valuable for marketing because They attempt to identify the beliefs and emotions of an audience, not just their age and gender.

Why psychographics are important

What’s the big benefit of psychographics for marketing (other than sounding cool)?

Essentially, if you know how people choose and compare products in your category, you know how to structure and prioritize content:

If you know their deepest held beliefs, you can align your marketing messaging more closely.
If you know what they don’t care about, you can dismiss those messages and pull them from your site.
If you know their problems, you can provide them with solutions.
If you know their pain points, you can offer pain relief.
If you know what they read, you know where to reach them.
And on and on.

Psychographics tell you why people buy. They help you craft the right message and put it in the right place. They’re less objective and clean, but—for marketing they’re super useful.

Basically Psychographics help you know your customer. And knowing your customer better makes your marketing better.

Now, here are three ways that I personally try to listen to my audience better so I can know what they want, so I can give it to them.

Number one, I have an auto responder email that goes out to new people who join my list and asks them, how can I help you?

Very, very simple. I've pre written this email. It's very conversational. It's very short. It says thanks for joining my list. I'm glad to have you here. I want to make content that's helpful to you. So tell me, how can I help you right now, please respond to this email. In fact this email was the very first email that I sent to my mailing list of builders this year and some of you may have gotten it.

Now not everybody is going to respond to this, and that’s ok. You’re never going to get 100% of people responding to your emails. You’re actually never even going to get 100% of people even opening them.

But by doing this, by asking this very simple question “how can I help you”, you create a system that gets feedback to your inbox on a regular, and it's easy, you open your inbox, and you'll see responses from time to time from new people who are responding to that email, giving you gold telling you exactly what they need help with.

And then you can log that stuff away for future products or services, and it will help you learn how to best sell your products or services to people.

Secondly, I get on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you like to live online. And I just ask my followers, what is your biggest frustration right now in this niche?

So obviously for me it’s marketing and content for builders and the building industry, I'll ask those people that follow me, what is your biggest frustration right now with marketing your business.

Not only is this targeted to the right people. But it's completely open ended, I don't lead the question because I want them to tell me what they're frustrated with. I don’t want to prompt them or put ideas in their head because this isn’t about me. It’s about them.

Doing this then gives me a bunch of ideas of what is in their head and what they want and I bank that and keep notes so I can create content on it later.

And thirdly, you can just go to Google, and YouTube. And start typing in keywords for your niche. And looking at what Google and YouTube pre populate as suggested searches.

The way this works is these suggested searches are based off of real people typing into Google and YouTube.

So they bring up the most popular search terms related to those keywords, which tells you everything you need to know because it tells you what people are anonymously, typing in and searching for, which is exactly what you're looking for, for example, go on Google right now, and type in how to lose weight, and then stop typing.

Take a look at what Google pre populates for you.

These are real search terms that people have typed in and from this I learned a couple of things when I did this. I learned that people want to lose weight quickly, Duhh but specifically they want to lose weight in two weeks or less. Very interesting.

Maybe I can use that if I were a fitness person. I also learned that People want to lose weight in their face very interesting.

So maybe if I'm a fitness person, I create a product or a mini course, or training, or at least use marketing material that focuses on what people want, which is to lose weight in two weeks or less. And maybe the face is a problem area for some of these people.

So I have a program or a way to focus on losing fat or losing weight in the face.

If I typed the same thing into YouTube, I find similar results, meaning that people are typing similar stuff there, which only backs up what I learned on Google.

But I also get one more nugget, which is that people want to lose weight without doing any exercise.

Now, if you're a fitness person, you may laugh at this, but you shouldn't, because this is what people actually want.

This is what's in their head. So if you want to sell product, you got to find a way to give people what they want, and YouTube, and Google just told us what they want.

So now that you're training yourself to look outward and not inward, when it comes to your business, here are two simple and practical ways you can apply these four important words of marketing, nobody cares about you and your business. I mean have you noticed that for however long I’ve been talking, I haven’t even told you my name or what it is that I actually do. Because you don’t care, you don’t care how long I’ve been in business or who I’ve worked with or that I do great work blah blah blah. That’s irrelevant to you and tell me if I’m wrong here but I’d bet that what you care about is something like can I get a nugget of info from this guy that can actually help me in my business and make things just a little bit easier for me.

And this is where so many of you out there get this so wrong. And I mean it’s not your fault you’ve just never been told otherwise. I’d bet that most of you have gone to whoever does your website and asked them “what info do I need to put in here” and they told you that you need to have how long you’re in business, you need to tell everyone that you’re honest and reliable and you do great work. You need to tell them that you believe in quality, have great communication and you’re trustworthy blah blah blah. To all of that, the answer is “no shit” I mean it really is and EVERYONE, EVERYONE says the same crap. And guess what, trustworthy people don’t need to tell other people that they’re trustworthy! What id you think to yourself the last time someone said “trust me” I bet you thought “yeah right you’re full of shit!” And telling people you do great work… great work is the MINIMUM you should do. That’s literally what they’re paying you for. So you’re just telling them “I do my job” and guess what, if your work was shit, they’ll tell you.

So please, the next time you sit down with anyone to look at the copy and the messaging on your website, if they tell you that you need to put how long you’ve been in business or tell you that need to mention ANYYHING about how good you are, get up and leave the meeting because they’re going to 100% waste your money and they’re going to deliver the same mediocre crap that builders websites have said for decades. It’s just not good enough anymore because ok you do good work? So does the next guy, and the guy after him and the guy after him.

You can get the job done on time and on budget, so can the next guy. There’s a hundred builders out there who can get the job done on time and on budget and deliver a project that the client is going to love and again, that’s the bare minimum the client expects.

So what the hell is going to make someone want to work with you, compared to the other guy.

Well let me tell you.

There are two things that your audience actually cares about when it comes to your product or service. And the first of these is benefits rather than features.

We as product and service developers are obsessed with our products and services. And so we focus on the features, what comes with those product or services.

And so when we create our sales or marketing, copy the actual words that we use all around our materials, we tend to focus on those features, what they're gonna get what's included when they buy.

But ironically, no one in the history of the human race has ever bought anything based off of features.

Sure, we might justify our purchase later, by bringing up the features and bullet points. But that's never how we buy, we always buy based off of benefits, what benefit Am I getting by buying this thing or signing up for this service.

This is huge if you understand it.

So let me just give you an example of features versus benefits in two different markets. Okay, going back to the fitness example, if I have a business that has a fitness workout training program, and I wanted to sell it, here are some of the features of that program.

Okay, it's 12 DVDs or 12 video modules. It includes a meal plan and a free shaker cup, and you get free access to a private community. These would be features of the workout training program. But here's how you would look at the training program through the lens of benefits.

This program will help you lose 30 kg in eight weeks by following the step by step plan, you will know exactly what to eat every day, and how to quickly prepare it. Oh, and you'll get built in accountability and encouragement. So you won't give up.

You see the difference there.

Both are true. But people don't buy DVDs. They don't buy shaker cups and private Facebook groups. They buy what those things give them. They buy weight loss and a specific amount of time without having to think about it just a done for you hand holding step by step plan, please just tell me what to do.

They buy accountability and encouragement, all the things they don't have. Those are benefits to them. That’s a benefit rather than a feature.

Here's another example and this is a real word one for my own business when I’m speaking with prospective clients. A lot of people come to me telling me that they struggle with their social media, it takes up so much time, it does their head in having to take all these images on their phone while they’re running around on site and it pulls them away from the actual work that they’re getting paid to do.

Then when they get home or they get back to the office, they’ve then got to sit there and work out what images they like, which ones they actually want to use then edit them and create the posts that are going to end up in their social media feeds.

That’s what they tell me.

Now I could sit here and I could say “that’s great. Well when you work with me I work with a this camera and this lens and I edit in that program and my equipment is really expensive and I’m really good because I’ve been doing it for this long” but they don’t give a shit about that. They’ve literally just told me their problem.

Instead what I tell them is this - When you’re working with me and I help you with this not only am I coming out to your site monthly, creating all the content that you need for a months worth of posts. But I’ve just given you hours of your time back because you no longer have to do it yourself, I’ve given you peace of mind because you can now rest easy knowing that it’s done and taken care of which frees you up to do other things, and your prospective clients and people that land on your feed instantly now see nothing but high level professional content from this point moving forward which is going to make them more likely to want to click through to your website to learn more about you.

So let’s take a sec to look at that and see what I did there.

They’ve told me their problem - they don’t have time and because they’re doing this themselves.

They’ve also told me - the quality isn’t the greatest because they’re doing it themselves and they’re not a photographer.

I’ve then told them the BENEFIT of working with me is they get nothing but professional work AND they get hours of their time back.

So here’s a question for you guys. How many of you have said “I don’t have enough time” or “there’s not enough hours in the day to get this done” so if someone says to you I can literally give you that time back and now you’re free to take care of other things you know you need to take care of, would that be valuable to you?

But that’s not how most people speak to their clients. That’s not how most people sell. And don’t be mistake, that right there, that’s selling.

How many of you, just with a raise of hands, hate selling. Well when you get this stuff right you’re not “selling” anything. You’re not convincing someone of anything. If you need to convince, you’ve failed.

Someone has a problem, you’re offering a solution to that problem and can make it go away, and this is the benefit you get when you do it. Does that sound like it could be good for you and how much would you be prepared to pay for that solution?

Great sign here press hard.

It’s not rocket science.

Learn to distill what the true benefits of your product or service are as viewed through the eyes of your customer or audience member and then feature those benefits prominently through all your sales and marketing material everywhere it lives.

Now, the second way to apply these four words of marketing that nobody cares about you is that people do care about solutions, not credentials.

This one's similar to benefits in some ways, but it's different. And then it's more personal as it relates to you.

And I'm going to call you out right now because I know you're like me because you're a human and that is that you and I are in secure. We are afraid that we're not credible enough to be selling or charging what we're charging or having a business.

We're afraid that we don't have enough credentials or enough proof that we are worth receiving their money.

This is one of the biggest roadblocks for business owners out there is this fear that I'm not good enough or credible enough to charge but people, AKA your customers, they don't buy credentials, they don't pay for credentials, they don't care about credentials, they care about solutions, solutions to the problems that are real to them and real in their life.

So you got to know what the problems are. And then you got to deliver a solution. And when it comes to credentials, in fact, the only real credential people actually care about is can you deliver the solution? Can you get me results.

So if your product or service delivers results to people, who cares how credible you are or what degrees or what certifications you have, your customers don't, so you shouldn't either a good example of this is something called the freelance arc. And it's not an industry specific thing but it’s something that’s relevant to almost all service based businesses and that’s what building is, it’s a service based industry.

So the concept is, when you start out wanting to sell a service. The only way you can sell that service is if you can prove to people that you can get them results. And the only way to prove that you can get results is to build up a portfolio of past work that shows what you're capable of.

So I’ll use a photographer for example as this is a REALLY common one. So you're a photographer, if you have a portfolio of actual pictures you've taken of families or weddings, or products, or people or senior portraits, whatever it is, if you have that portfolio, I as a potential customer can look at it and immediately know if you can get me results or not. Because your pictures either look good to me, or they don't, it's very simple.

I don't care if you went to photo school, or if you're a professional photographer that has big credits, because all I see is your product or your results.

And in the building space, since that’s where you all are, it's the same thing. You get some portfolio built up of past projects you’ve worked on whether that’s through photos or video, or both so they can press play and experience something you built and go, Wow, that looks really, really good. Those are results, I trust what he or she can do, I want to hire him or her.

The other really powerful thing for this is testimonials. Testimonials are your results. So you want to either get testimonials from people that have used you so people can see what kind of results you're getting them. Now I’m going to just put it out there now because I’m going to give you guys a training on this but most testimonials I see for builders are shit. I’m sorry, but it’s true. “They were nice and friendly and showed up on time” isn’t doing a damn thing to get you any additional business. There’s a science to a great testimonial and a formula that has to be followed if you want them to be powerful enough for people to take action.

Like I said though, that’s going to be a training for a different day so you’ll have to join me again for that one.

In a nutshell though testimonials need to prove that you can solve a problem. I don't have to have credentials. I don't have to have certifications, I have something better, which is results. And that's what people pay for. They want solutions.

They don't care about you and your credentials, or your experience they care about what you can do for them, can you solve their problems.

So, if you want to sell more products or sell more service, then you got to up your marketing game. But the good news is that marketing is so simple and it comes down to one thing, nobody cares about you. Instead, they care about themselves.

If you understand this, then you can create more compelling sales and marketing copy that's focused on benefits, not features, solutions, and not credentials, and your products or service will sell better.

So now that we’ve kind of gone over what the core belief or core principle is that should be behind all of your marketing, we’ve still got time so I’m going to dive a bit deeper into this and talk a bit about marketing in general.

You see, customers tend to buy things when they read or hear words that make them want to buy things and it's not just buying things.

Sometimes it's ideas if a leader has an idea that they want people to subscribe to or understand, they have to communicate very, very clearly.

If a political leader wants to get votes, they need to communicate very clearly. In marketing language, they need an offer. I would actually say the most powerful way to influence a group of people though is to invite them into a story. Not to tell a story, telling a story is interesting & it's great but if you actually want to change the world, invite people to play a hero in a story.

Set out what those the details of that story are what the plot points of that story are.

You know, look at any mass movement. You look at Mohandas Gandhi, in India, you look at Martin Luther King, you look at Mother Teresa, and you say okay, how did they get so much momentum and so many people behind them?

Really what they each did was they invited the public the body politic, if you will, to assume an identity of hero and overcome a challenge and even defeat a villain so that they could experience a release from their burdens and struggle and you know, potentially freedom, or what we would say in story structure is a climactic scene.

It's the same thing though, if you look at it that Coke does to sell more cans of Coke or any of their other products. Sadly, it's also what some bad actors do if they want to cause chaos.

And you know, it's what Putin is doing to his own people in Russia, he's inviting them into a story. He's vilifying the people of Ukraine and so forth and so on, and inviting them to defeat those awful people in current war in Ukraine and it’s what Hitler did with Nazi Germany. He invited people into a story where in their minds people were the hero and they were saving the greater good.

So these these tools can be used for good or they can be used for evil and I'll share them with you in a kind of summary level.

So how do you invite people into a story so that they engage with your ideas, they buy your products? How do you do that?

Well, first of all, let's talk about why. Why would you use story? Well, the average brain spends about 30% of its time daydreaming 30% of its time. Daydream that is just more or less checked out.

The reason our brains check out is not because we're not disciplined. It's actually a survival mechanism.

I believe that the brain has been designed to ignore information that isn't going to help us survive. When I say help you survive. I mean, that's what the brain is looking for. Its its dominant job a dominant objective of the human brain is to keep you on the planet.

So you're constantly scanning your environment for data for information that will help you survive.

And you know, when you think about survival, you might think about the hierarchy of needs. The bottom layer is food and shelter and moving all the way up through social relationships and status, all the way up to self actualisation.

We are in a first world economy you're all business owners and I’m going to assume youve got your food and shelter taken care of. You're thinking about more complicated ways of surviving.

You're thinking about friendships, you're thinking about tribal connections. Thinking about relationships is a big way that we survive because we feel like we survive better in a tribe. And even here with Duayne and Live Life Build, this is a tribe. It’s a tribe of likeminded people all working toward a common goal.

In fact, if I were to say to one of you, Hey, I’m going to the back of the room would you like me to get you a refill on your cup of coffee you, might say, Well, Ben is such a really wonderful person, he offered to give me a refill.

It's not what's happening on a primitive level, what's happening on a very primitive level in our brains, is I'm saying to you, can I get you a refill on your coffee? Because I would like to create a connection with you and if I keep making these connections solid you will have an affinity to me we will create a bond so that if barbarians come over the hill behind our coldest acts tonight you will fight with me.

So I have an interior ulterior motive of getting you a cup of coffee.

And I hate to say that it's that pragmatic or that, you know, primitive, but it really is. We’re constantly thinking about survival.

And if you didn't, if you didn't think about survival all the time, you wouldn't be on the planet for very long you wouldn't look both ways before you cross the street. I wouldn't have that pattern recognition of saying I you know, I think I dated somebody like that before it didn't go well. I'm not gonna date somebody like that again.

All of those are survival mechanisms being formed in your brain. What story does is it invites you into a story in which you have a better chance of surviving by addressing a certain enemy or villain in a certain way so that they can be overcome.

You can be freed from the tyranny of that villain.

I just described every story you have ever seen that maybe a philosophical villain or an idea or an actual villain, or, you know, you can change out the dynamics of the plot points, but that is the basic structure of every story.

There's the miracle of story though.

The miracle of story is even though the brain spends 30% of its time daydreaming, it won't Daydream while you're watching a story you actually engage in a story you can go to two and a half hours.

If you start, you know, series on Netflix, you go a whole weekend without daydreaming, just paying attention to the story and eating ice cream is the only tool known to man to captivate people's attention.

It also motivates their behavior. So all directed behavior is directed truly by narrative structures.

We say look, that's a villain who's going to get you we have to overcome that villain in order to be free. People begin to move they begin to take action and so if we understand the formulas that create stories, and actually invite people, followers, if you will, customers, if you will, into a story that they almost have no choice but to step into that as if they emotionally resonate with the plot points of the story.

And so, how do you actually do it?

So I'm going to share with you basically a really simple plot point structure to help you understand how this stuff works. Really five things that you you need in a story from a consumer standpoint that is if you're going to do effective marketing, there's five talking points or plot points that you would need to cover in your marketing campaign.

The first is a problem.

Every story and every good marketing campaign is going to start with a human being, a person, a hero, as a problem, but rather than going to the audience and saying, Here's my problem, that’s telling your story but inviting them into a story says, here's your problem.

If you're struggling with this, or we're tired of experiencing this, this is driving us crazy if this is frustrating you and if you think about the way you sell products, you sell products by first starting with the problem, you know you've got a dirty sink and you can’t, you know the scouring brush won't get it clean. It's driving you crazy. So we have made this particular whatever.

You're really bored on the weekends, you never have anything to do that your family is not coming together. You're all divided, therefore we created a family pack for Disney World.

You start with a problem and position your product is the solution to that problem. You're going to sell a lot more products and when I say products, for you guys I’m talking about homes. That’s your product. Yes you’re all builders, but your product is really you’re selling a newly built or renovated home.

The problem is the hook. If I tried to tell you a story without a problem, it's not going to be an interesting story.

I say you know I have a friend who loves to play beach volleyball and he lives in Bondi and he got a call saying his friends were down on the beach playing volleyball could he come down. He goes down, he sees his friends down there on the beach. He plays a couple games, they all end in ties.

Then one of them says I'm hungry and my friend says well, there's a taco truck across the street. In fact, it's Taco Tuesday. It's buy one get one free. Let's go over and get some tacos.

They start eating tacos. There's a brisket taco and a chicken taco there's an avocado taco this story is getting very, very boring and I can tell each of you listening is about to check out.

You're actually saying yourself when is the story going to begin?

So Let's analyse that.

The story did begin. It's a good story. It's about a guy who plays volleyball on each tacos. It's just not interesting.

Your brain is actually saying is where's the problem? Here's the problem. A story doesn't get started. In other words, you don't get interested untill the story has a problem.

Now if this guy’s walking down to the beach. He looks at his friends. He's excited to play volleyball and suddenly there's an earthquake the ground opens up half of his friends fall into the hole in the ground.

He himself stumbles to the floor and crawls around as the earth shakes. He looks he hears the screaming of his friends down at the volleyball court.

Now we have a story. We have story questions. How are they going to get out of the hole in the ground? Are they going to survive? Is everybody going to be okay? Are they still going to eat tacos?

We have a lot of story questions to answer here. And that's why you keep paying attention. And so when you actually open with a problem and you open a story loop the in customers brain that they need to buy your product in order to close and I’m going to say that again cuz its really important.

You sell a product and you start with a problem. You open a story loop in the customer's brain that they have to buy your product in order to close for example, let's say you're at a party and you meet two people who do the same thing.

Talk to the first person and you say what do you do for a living and they say well, I'm an at home chef. I come to your house and cook. Interesting. You're probably going to make some small talk. Where do you go to school? Did you go did you study culinary skills in France did you did you ever cook for anybody famous what's your favorite restaurants? What's your favorite recipe? All that kind of stuff.

You meet the second person say what do you do? And they say well, you know how most families don't eat together anymore? And when they do they don't eat healthy Well I’m an at Home Chef.

It's different, isn't it? When you start with a problem, you actually define the value of the solution. Nothing in this world has value unless it solves a problem. Nothing in this world has value unless you solve a problem.

In fact you want to be valuable as a business professional on a problem. And you won’t have value as a business until you can solve a problem for someone.

I'm a person who has spent a lot of time understanding marketing and marketing messaging to learn what works and what doesn’t and what works in marketing and in business is when you can present yourself as the solution to someones problem. For example if someone is a first time home builder and they don’t know where to start, that’s a problem. If someone wants a high end architectural entertaining style home, that’s a problem. If someone doesn’t know if they want to work with a design and construct builder or not or they don’t know what one is, thats a problem.

If you walk into a company and you say, I have a really great attitude, I comb my hair every morning I brush my teeth. I never say cuss words. And I really want to work with you and I can give you a free quote, none of that is a problem that someone has and if that’s not a problem that needs solving, then you’re of no value to them

So learn to solve a problem for your clients. It can be incredibly valuable.

The next thing you have to do is position yourself or your product as a solution, to the problem you just stated.

Whenever you sell a product, when you position that product as the solution to a problem, the value of that product goes up just like the value of you on the open market.

You're a product by the way.

And so if you position yourself as somebody who solves problems, you're gonna get paid more. This is the exact reason why a specialist, can charge a lot more money than your regular doctor or GP. The GP knows a little about a lot. The specialist has honed his expertise in to one area and knows A LOT about a little so if what he specialises in, let’s say cancer for example, is a problem that you have, the specialist is someone who comes with great value to you and you can expect to pay a lot more for his knowledge on how to solve that problem. How to get rid of that cancer. A GP can’t do that.

If you position your product as a product that solves problems, you're gonna get paid more and the bigger the impact your solution makes to the lives of your clients, you’re going to get paid more

That's basically how business works.

So if we want to market our products, position our products as the solution to the problem that will save people money, save them time, make them money, some sort of benefit that they'd be willing to pay for.

All right now we've got a problem and we got a solution to a problem. We're going to start selling a lot of products but some people aren't going to buy those products. So there's another thing that we want to add to the story.

We want to build a bridge using words a mental bridge between the problem and the solution.

What we’re going to do is we're gonna have a three step plan. So our chef is going to say, I'd love to cook for you. Here's how it works. It's a three phase process I come to your house. Talk to you about food allergies, what your favorite foods are, what you like to eat.

Second, I'll cook one meal for you. I'm gonna charge about 120 bucks for that you'll have leftovers so basically makes about three meals.

If you like the food, I will come to your house once a week on a retainer basis, and I'll cook meals for you.

Three phases three steps is a magical number that helps you sell a lot of products. If you say here's your problem, here's my solution. If you take these three steps, everything's going to be okay.

Three steps can be almost anything.

Sometimes it's we have a meeting with a prospective client, we issue a report and then if you wanted to do business, enter into a contract.

Sometimes it's go to the website, click Buy Now, download it and make use of it.

Three steps are powerful.

Even if you go buy a box a box of pop tarts on the side of the box of Pop Tarts. Literally I'm not making this up the side of the box pop tarts it says open the package put the pop tart in a toaster and the Pop Tarts who doesn't know how to get a pop tart. We all know how to eat a pop tart but what really what's that saying to our subconscious is it's really easy to get from your problem to our solution.

Really, really simple. Never overestimate how important it is to explain the process people should take to use your product. Don't think they're going to figure it out. Tell them, explain it. Marketing is finding and explaining the value that you're getting in exchange for money.

That's a big part of it. You need to put the cookies on a lower shelf.

I meet young marketing people all the time. They love colors and style guides and mood boards and they study complicated ads from Vogue magazine and they get creative with fonts, and then they get jobs in marketing and they basically rip people off because they make everything look so beautiful because really what they think of themselves is they think of themselves as artists, making these beautiful creative ads or websites that people read and don't understand and so don't buy the products.

Trust me, nobody gives a shit if your website uses Times New Roman, or Helvetica Now or if your primary colour is off white or beige. Nobody cares but the person selling it to you. It’s not going to get you any more business.

Sometimes the best marketing which is the definition of value, explaining value to customers, sometimes it's just a big black and white text. It just says it plainly.

And so if you ever find yourself, you’ve worked with a company and you just can't sell anything and nothing’s really changed in your business expect you’re an extra few thousand dollars out of pocket it’s, probably because they’re being an artist, not a marketer. If you want to work with an artist, there’s a whole different thing for that but that’s usually not why you’re there.

I am paid to help the guys I work with solve marketing problems in their business and help them get from where they are, to where they want to be and I need to know how to invite customers into a story build a bridge a three step plan

Forth - Paint the stakes. You want to paint negative and positive stakes in the story. Here's what I mean by that. What will be won or lost if somebody does or does not buy your product? what will be won or lost?

Why should I buy your product unless it is saving me from a rainy day and giving me a sunny day.

If you take the stakes out of a story, you ruin the story. Let's say Liam Neeson his daughter in Taken has been kidnapped and he's flying over the Atlantic Ocean to rescue her and he gets a call. And the call says Liam, your daughter is actually fine. Yes, she was kidnapped. It's true. She was kidnapped, but it was a college prank. These are just some of her friends. She's great. She's here in the station. In fact now she's looking forward to you coming over because she would like to do some shopping in the West End and she's considering grad school.

And then the rest of the movie is 90 minutes of Liam Neeson going shopping with his daughter, every dress fits in there all half price and she's clearly going to Harvard.

We have ruined this movie. Lol we’ve ruined the movie! Why? Because nothing can be won or lost. There's no urgency there's no reason to pay attention.

When we paint the stakes of what can be won or lost if people do or do not buy your product or work with you, you up the sense of urgency as it relates to those products.

When our chef says I can come over and do an intake session with you guys. Remember you only have so many meals left before the kids go off to college.

I mean sheesh, low blow right. That is a punch in the gut for any parent wants to spend time with their kids.

And that's the negative stakes that he says people who hire me sit down at the table, look each other in the eye, have pleasant conversations deeply Connect and Don't worry about cooking and Don't worry about cleaning up. Those are positive stakes. So the negative and positive stakes create a sense of urgency in the story. They make people want to cross that bridge. We've got a problem. We got a solution we got a bridge that we're trying to get people to cross three steps and the stakes light of fire on one side of the bridge and paint a picture of heaven on the other.

Get more people to cross the bridge.

Finally we want to call people to action.

We Want to say cross the bridge. You should buy this product. We need a fixed call to action that actually gets results. You know I see so many times when I review websites and marketing collateral that people create and I mean really expensive people who've been in the business a lot longer than me and who charge 10x my fee create marketing collateral that will say things on the website like learn more. Get started.

What in the world does even mean? Get Started?

A good call to action is buy now, schedule a call enter your credit card here. You're asking for the sale at this point. You're not asking to be friends.

This is a this is a relational transaction but it's also a business transaction so lets not be mistaken. Yes, we’re likeable and friendly but we are business people talking about business problems in a business like manor.

And an authentic business transaction says I have a solution to your problem that costs money. If you give me money. I'll give you that solution.

Anything else is an inauthentic relationship in which you're trying to be friends with somebody just to get their money. Stop doing that.

Have an authentic business relationship with your customers and call them to action with a clear call to action.

Buy now, schedule a call. I want you to buy this product to solve your problem and I'm not going to mix words about it. I'm not afraid of rejection. I know it will solve your problem. If you don't buy it, somebody else will and it'll solve their problem and you'll just keep having the same problem.

I'm not going to apologise for having a product that works. That's the kind of boldness that a marketer has to have.

Often marketers get into this business and they're passive aggressive about sales. They never want to ask for money. They don't want to trouble a customer and so they don't have any money.

They don't make any money and their business fails. You are in a profession for the bold. The bold. This is a great product and you should have it.

You may be afraid to be somebody who uses people or sleazy or salesy. Never ever sell a product to anybody if the product doesn't work. Don’t Do it. Never sell a product to anybody if it's a ripoff, just don't do it.

Walk away every single time. My reputation is worth more than that.

But I'll gladly sell you something that is actually a great value.

Alright Let's go through it again. How do you sell somebody something? How do you invite somebody into a story? How do you lead a movement?

Start with a problem by the way, one problem. I’m not going to give you three or four problems. Commas are not your friend. Commas are not your friend. In writing if you're using commas, you're not making a pointed point. You’re not being decisive.

There's “A” problem in a story, theres not 30. There's 1 main problem in the story.

Jason Bourne wants to know who he really is. Jason Bourne doesn't just want to know who he really is and also adopt a cat run a marathon and lose 30 pounds and marry the woman.

Nobody would know what that movie is about. He wants to know who he is. It's one thing. Stick to one thing for the problem.

Position your product is the solution to that problem. Build a bridge between the problem and the solution with a three step plan.

Create a sense of urgency by painting the positive and negative stakes that make people want to cross that bridge and then ask them to cross the bridge. Ask them to cross the bridge.

That is good marketing.

Everything else is the creation of art. Is the creation of art important? is branding important? If I could choose between a pretty website and an ugly website I will choose the pretty website every time.

However, if I had to choose between a pretty website with very confusing language and passive aggressive calls to action, or an ugly website with an extremely clear message that invites people into a story and has a clear call to action, I will choose the ugly website every time because it will grow my business and the pretty website will do nothing.

In fact, I might as well print it out frame it and put it above the fireplace because at that point, I'm just a patron to the arts did not invest in marketing. I bought a piece of art.

Marketing is about inviting people into a story with extremely clear language.

Let me just say this, if you know how to do what I just explained, you are in an elite class of marketers. An elite class of marketers. You are extremely valuable.

Most marketers who are paid hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars, don’t know how to do this. They're artists if you really want to be good, do great marketing AND great branding.

But, cute and clever, don't win the day. Clarity wins the day. If you want to start a movement, want to grow a company, you want to be a good marketer, make the customer the hero and invite them into a story.

Ok so what next, where do we go from here. Well I wanna leave you guys with a bit of plan of action. The plan of action basically it summarizes the big takeaway points from you know, that we talked about, really that that last little conversation, I think was the plan of action.

I mean, the idea is differentiate yourself by owning a problem. Differentiate yourself by owning a problem and differentiate your products by owning a problem.

You know, that's really it, and I don't see any reason to add anything other than that, if you can do that you are so valuable on the open market and I think it does take a minute you know, you're not gonna have it right out of the gate. I live in this space and I’m still learning but if you solve one problem and be known for that and maybe solve another switch to your heart lights up when you solve this problem.

But as soon as you find it and that you realise I can spend the next 20 to 30 years doing this and I'd be completely happy, market the heck out of yourself.

I mean, just become known as the person who solves that problem.

Because you're buying mental real estate in somebody's brain. When when people go to look for products services, leaders, they actually don't look for us by name. They look for us by problem we solve. And when they get to the problem you solve you want to be the dominant name and their Rolodex. You want to be known for that. That's incredibly valuable niche down on that.

That's the question.

Everybody here today. What problem do you solve and what problem can you be known for solving and then market yourself that way? Tell people that's the problem that you solve. You do that you can create value in the marketplace and you can differentiate yourself from from your competitors. You can market yourself by owning a story

The other thing I want you to do and this is going back to the top of this session, think about your main core product of service. And in the Facebook group, let me know and list out what are the two main benefits of that product or service might have more than that.

But I just want you to leave a comment let me know

what do you think are the two primary benefits to your product or service?

Let's get this discussion going. If you don't know what they are, that's the point of this homework is it's going to force you to stop and think before you move off of this before you forget this concept.

I don’t want you guys to be all motived and then tomorrow you go wow that was great and then go right back to being on the tools and none of thus has stuck,

I want you to think right now what are the two primary benefits of your main product or service? We can start a conversation and I can help you out if you're getting stuck. Thanks for hanging out and I’ll speak to you guys again real soon.

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