How To Fix My Marketing

It’s true most of the time that knowing there’s a problem is most of what needs to be done to solve the problem. Obviously once you know there’s a problem you can take steps and actions to resolve it, but until you know and accept there’s a problem, it’s really difficult to resolve. 

 

One of the biggest questions I get asked is ‘I just want my marketing to work, I just wish the problem would go away, I need a fairy godmother of marketing, I need a marketing superhero, won’t somebody please just fix my marketing? Our business is a well-kept secret, we’re really good at what we do, we deserve to be making more money, I just want somebody to fix our marketing.’ 

 

It’s heartbreaking really because often this is said by fantastic business leaders who really are good at what they do, very passionate and committed to serving their market. I try and help as much as I can because I want to see everyone succeed but obviously I can’t help everyone.

 

What I really want to do is take people on a journey into marketing leadership, so that instead of giving them a fish for a day, I can teach them how to fish and solve the problem and actually show them how to fix their marketing, so that even if it breaks again they can carry on fixing it. Because it’s not an overnight experience. There’s no silver bullet that’s going to fix your marketing in one day. 

 

But there are five things you need to do to fix your marketing. 

 

The first one is you need to understand why you do what you do, and why your customers care. If you don’t know why you’re doing what you do, there will be no passion in your business. And if you don’t understand why customers care, you’re targeting will not work. 

 

The second thing you need to do is you need to know who the customer is. You really need to have a deep sense of understanding, not only the types of customers but what motivates them, where they get their information from, what their lives are like, who they interact with, where they interact, why they interact, what they care about when they’re interacting, what their outcomes are, and how do they achieve those outcomes? 

 

I often talk about the donut theory of content. 

 

In the middle is the customer and all of their concerns and all of your concerns. But around the concerns are all the other things that they care about, all of the side dishes if you like, not just the main meal. 

 

So you’ve got to know why you do what you do and why they care, you’ve got to know who they are, really got to understand your market. And you’ve got to really understand what you can do to connect why you do what you do to their why they care. 

 

The third thing is a what, as in what you do to help them achieve their goals which hopefully also aligns with your goals. So I care about this and my client cares about this, in the middle somewhere there is a product and/or service that I can create that I can offer to them that achieves my objective and helps them get closer to achieving theirs. 

 

The fourth is taking the what into the how, how I’m going to do it, all of the details the nitty gritty, the technical specifications, the processes, the services but the customer doesn’t care about that. I heard a really great saying from a fantastic copywriter this week; ‘don’t don’t sell the mattress, sell the sleep’ The customer never cares how or what you do, they care why it matters to them – that’s all they care about. 

 

So once you’ve worked out your why – why you do things and why they care. 

Once you’ve worked out who they are. 

Once you’ve worked out what they would want from you in product or service terms – The fifth thing is how to deliver that. 

 

They don’t really care about the how. But once you’ve worked with those things out, you’re then gonna get a result and now you need to be aware of the result, monitor the result, measure the result and make sure that you’re all over it. So that whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve, that motivates you, and whatever they’re trying to achieve whatever outcome they’re looking for that motivates them and whoever they are, whatever they want and however you can get it to them, that whatever money you’re spending on that you can know what you’re getting back in return. 

 

The simplest way to fix your marketing is to follow that methodology. 

 

Why do we do what we do/why will our customers care? 

Who are our customers? 

What do they really want from us that we could give to them?

How are we going to do that? What what’s it going to look like? What’s the delivery and the process going to look like? 

How are we going to meaningfully measure the outcome for us and for our client? Can we measure the outcome for the client? 

 

A great example of really simple, early measurement is 8 out of 10 cats prefer whiskers. If you saw those ads in the 80s, chances are you bought whiskers because of it because 8 out of 10 cats prefer it. 

 

Measure the outcome for you, but don’t forget your outcome isn’t important to your customer – their outcome is important to them. Remember to measure their outcome too. Measure your impact on their lives because that will be the best marketing you can ever muster. Your marketing will be fixed and vastly improved. 

 

Gary Vaynerchuk really irritates some people because he just is so full on, but if you just sit and absorb what he’s saying it’s always great. Something he said recently which was amazing is that the best marketing strategy is four letters – C A R E , all you’ve got to do is care. 

 

I hope that helps. I hope you’re able to fix your marketing. I hope this gives you some insight into how I do it and how I help clients go on that journey. If you want to find out more obviously get in touch, we run masterclasses and masterminds to help turn business leaders into marketing leaders.