In a recent episode, John Goldon hosted Jason Moss, a multi-six-figure business coach in Boulder, Colorado. Since 2016, Jason has helped over 2,000 clients and shared great insights into the marketing mistakes that business owners make and how to avoid repeating them. In this blog post, I’ll cover the episode’s main points and the actionable takeaways you can use to fine-tune your marketing approach.
1. The main problem with marketing oriented towards the product and company.
Understanding the Issue
One of Jason’s most basic errors is marketing, which is too centered on the company and its products. Many business owners are so enamoured with their products or services that they fail to consider the customer’s wants or needs. This often leads to marketing communications about the features and processes and not the potential customer’s problems, needs, and desires.
Actionable Advice
- Shift Your Focus: First, you must change how you think about your product. You should think about your customer first. What problems does your product solve for your customers? What are their pain points?
- Empathy Mapping: This tool lets you visualize what your customers are thinking, feeling, seeing, and doing, allowing you to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and create messages that will hit home.
- Customer Feedback: It is important to gather customer feedback to know their needs and wants. You can use surveys, interviews, and social media to gather feedback.
2. The Problem of Generic Targeting
Understanding the Issue
Another common mistake is broad audience targeting. Despite the recommendation to target niche down, the fear of restricting the customer base still lingers among entrepreneurs. Jason also shares a story of how he once made a strategic decision to change the orientation of his business from new business owners to established business owners, which was quite intimidating but turned out to be successful.
Actionable Advice
- Define Your Niche: This means defining your target audience based on characteristics such as demographics, psychographics, and behavior. The more focused you are the better you can target your message.
- Create Buyer Personas: Create in-depth buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. Include their goals, challenges, and what your product or service can do for them.
- Test and Refine: This means that you should never stop showing your advertisements to specific groups of your audience, that you should use A/B testing to see what works and what doesn’t, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
3. The Power of Realness
Understanding the Issue
In the modern world, where more and more companies use automation and AI in their marketing, Jason explains why authenticity is crucial. He says success is impossible without stories, openness, and interpersonal communication.
Actionable Advice
- Share Your Story: You should not be afraid to get personal and share the company’s story, including the negative moments—the challenges and mistakes. Stories based on real-life events are more compelling to the audience.
- Be Vulnerable: Do not undermine the confidence in your content. Look behind the scenes at your weaknesses, failures, and lessons learned. This will make your brand more human and, thus, more credible.
- Engage Personally: Find time to respond to your audience personally. Always reply to comments, messages, and reviews with gratitude and interest.
4. The Balance Between Sales and Value
Understanding the Issue
Jason shares two marketing strategies categories: those directly connected to sales and those that build content without even considering the sale. He thinks the right approach is to find a middle ground between the two.
Actionable Advice
- Value-First Approach: First, focus on the value by producing content that addresses your audience’s pain points and will benefit them. This builds trust and makes you an authority in the industry.
- Strategic Calls to Action: Include CTAs in your content naturally and in a well-thought-out way. Ensure they are relevant and that your audience knows what to do next.
- Content Ecosystem: Create a content ecosystem that covers different formats and channels. This ensures that more connections are made and more engagement is achieved with potential customers.
5. The Multichannel Approach
Understanding the Issue
This is especially important in the current market, where different media are available. Jason points out that people have different ways of consuming content, and since companies are targeting a certain group of people, they have to use more platforms.
Actionable Advice
- Identify Key Channels: Determine the channels your ideal customer can reach. This could include social media, email, blogs, podcasts, etc.
- Consistent Branding: Guarantee that your branding is consistent across all channels. This includes the visual elements, messaging, and tone of voice that you will use.
- Cross-promotion: Use each channel to direct the audience to other channels. For instance, share your blog posts on social media and include links to your social media pages in your email newsletter.
6. How to Create Valuable Content
Understanding the Issue
According to Jason, empathy and relevance are essential when creating content to be visible in the sea of content. Knowing the needs and wants of the target audience is also important.
Actionable Advice
- Audience Research: To truly understand your audience, you must discover what interests them, their problems, and what they like and dislike. You can use Google Analytics, social media insights, and customer surveys.
- Content Calendar: A content calendar is a tool for developing a content plan and schedule. It ensures a clear action plan and that you are on the right path with your content marketing.
- Engage in Conversations: To engage your audience, you must converse with them. You should participate in forums, social media groups, and industry events to gain ideas and build relationships.
Conclusion
In this episode, Jason Moss offers excellent tips on business owners’ common marketing mistakes and how to avoid repeating them. It is, therefore, safe to say that more thought should be given to empathy, specificity, authenticity, and the use of various channels when addressing the target audience. In the current marketing environment, those who embrace the concept of real people and their needs will be in the best position.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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