“I just want to make my site and my products and not reach out or communicate as a marketer except minimally…”
This was in a note we received recently. It was from a Fizzler who was considering giving up.
She felt like she had realized that “active marketing” was required in order to succeed… and she wasn’t willing to do that.
I loved this question. It felt so human, so natural.
So on the show today we talk about how active you really need to be in marketing your product, service, content or website.
We also talk about how to get into a new mindset about marketing so you don’t build a wall between you and your customers.
Your product might be good, your podcast or blog or service may be literally the best available, but people may not know WHY it’s good.
So, click play and let’s learn about the difference between PUSHY marketing and PERSUASIVE story telling and give people a truly compelling reason to buy. Enjoy!
It’s better to listen on the go! Subscribe on iTunes
Show Notes
The Sock Queen of Alabama – The New York Times
Bucketfeet | Artist Designed Footwear
Sponsor: FreshBooks — FreshBooks is the #1 cloud accounting solution designed for small business owners.
Learn how to set goals that actually stick!
The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business
Every week we talk with entrepreneurs. We talk about what’s working and what isn’t. We talk about successes and failures. We spend time with complete newbies, seasoned veterans, and everything in between.
One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.
These conversations have been fascinating, so we compiled a list of the 10 mistakes we hear most often into a nifty lil' guide. Get the 10 Most Common Mistakes in Starting an Online Business here »
This is the best one yet! As someone who has alot of ideas and makes projects that I find difficulty getting out there, the points that you all brought up had a great impact.
I know whom my audience is, I just don’t know how to reach out and approach them to entice them to sign up. Got any ideas? I own an internet talk radio network.
Timely and excellent episode! I’m working on my about page, and this episode really got my wheels turning into thinking about communicating my story. So many great points by the four of you. Thanks!
I loved this one. I have been reading a lot of neuroscience lately and this offers another angle to the “I don’t like selling” debate. Marketing and sales is all about opening yourself up to rejection in order to find your tribe (as Jia Jing, the man who did the 100 days of rejection project, said “Rejection has a number”…. Ask enough times and at some point some one will say yes)
What few people realise is that rejection is so terrifying because our primitive minds see one person’s rejection as our whole tribe casting us out…which meant death at one time…and our primitive minds have not evolved beyond that point. I loved what Barrett said about standing behind your story. This is essentially saying “Anyone want to join my tribe?” So marketing and sales is about deciding to challenge our primitive minds and tell it: OK we are going to test out whether these ten sales calls/Adwords campaign/Kickstarter campaign will in fact finish us off or maybe we will survive and if we make another ten or another 100 someone will join our new offshoot tribe.
Of course getting out of the instant gratification culture we have indoctrinated ourselves into is the other part of the puzzle.
An episode on rejection proofing ourselves would be great. I do like it when Chase goes off on one in his existential crises, these make me feel not so alone :-)
I’ve always felt that marketing is about telling stories. That’s all. If you don’t want to tell people how excited you are about what you’ve made and why you’ve made it, even if they ask you, then that becomes a very different discussion.
In the meantime, don’t worry about me.. I’ll be over here ordering a new briefcase and dinner table.
We hide and we love hiding behind our products or services. Maybe we should admit to ourselves that our product and service aren’t good enough or worth talking about.
If you have a product or service that someone needs or wants why wouldn’t you want to tell them about it? Wouldn’t you be doing yourself, your product, your service or the world a disservice if you kept such a good thing to yourself?
Nobody wakes up and says they want the thing you have to offer. They may want what the thing offers but not necessarily the thing.
I think many times we feel that just because we create something that we feel is valuable that the market should also feel the same way so we are afraid to get feedback from the market. So what do we do?
We blame it on the fact that we don’t like selling. We blame it on the so-called pushy salesmen or sales woman.
But what we rarely do is look at ourselves. But we’re always selling. She was trying to sell you on why she cancelled after her two week trial. She was selling you on why she thought an online business selling process should be approached differently.
I just finished reading a book called Dreams Are Built Overnight, How To Create A Bridge Between Your Day Job And Your Daydream by David Shands.
In Chapter 13 of the book David says, “Building a brand is not about selling a product, it’s more about painting a picture. He said you have to give people enough reasons to care about supporting your brand. (your product or service)
He went onto say, ” I stopped trying to point out the details of the design and telling them how this color was in season, having them fell the quality of the shirt, and asking them to try it on so they could feel how it fit them perfectly.”
“I begin to just sell the Sleep is 4 Suckers concept. I explained to them my belief that sleep was more of a mental condition than an act, and that if you give up a bit of sleep, you can have everything you desire….I would tell them what Sleep is 4 Suckers meant and why I was willing to give up sleep to accomplish my goals.”
“My closing rate quadrupled and I began to have a real business.”
My customers were going out and promoting to other potential customers, not because of a shirt design but because of an idea, a philosophy, a concept…a “picture” that I began painting.”
Just like you articulated so well in the podcast, people buy based on emotion (connecting with your story) and justify based on logic.
Honestly, this is where the real fun really starts to happen to me or should I say a continuation of the fun I’m already having through the creation process.
You knocked this one out the park.
Starting an online business is not so much about the business itself but more about what we must become in the process. It certainly reveals a lot of things we need to work on internally, especially how we think.
Thanks to all of you.
What was the dog bed company? (Mentioned around minute 19)
Her company is called Cozy Cama: http://www.cozycama.com/