Marketing Your Service? Don’t Scare Off Clients With These 3 Common Mistakes!
‘Why isn’t anyone buying my service? Did I do something to scare off clients?’
Last week, I was working with a client who asked those EXACT questions. She’d done so many things right – had a great offer, tested the idea out with her ideal clients, she had loads of credibility with her experience and personal track record – yet no one was buying what she had to offer.
At first, she wanted to reduce her price. She thought perhaps she had priced too high and no one could afford what she was offering (this is such a common belief, and usually not true!).
Yet, after I took a look at her sales pages, I quickly realized that she was making all three of these very common mistakes. This is why no one was buying – they didn’t understand the value of what she was selling.
And I’m sharing them with you because they can completely KILL your marketing efforts!
But before we get to those mistakes, I want to review where we’ve been in this series. In the past couple of posts, I’ve talked a lot about how important it is to understand how your marketing is performing.
First, we went through three simple questions you can ask yourself about your marketing efforts to begin tracking what you’re doing. Next, I shared three ways to begin improving your efforts (including some great insights + examples of how to start testing) .
Hopefully you’ve had a chance to implement some of those tips. Now that you’ve begun tracking your own marketing efforts, you may be wondering, “OK, my marketing isn’t performing as well as I hoped… how do I make it better?”
Good question – that’s what we’re covering today.
When I work with a client on their marketing strategy, we start by taking a look at everything they already have in place and getting a baseline performance.
Then we roll up our sleeves to make it hum like a well-tuned (marketing) engine, consistently delivering paying clients right to their door.
With just about every client, I see at least one of these three very common mistakes and I wanted to share them with you so that YOU can avoid them in your marketing efforts.
Mistake 1: It’s All About YOU or YOUR Product/Service/Offer
Imagine a completely new visitor arrives on your website’s Home page, About Me page and Work With Me Page…
… are those pages clear about who you serve and what you offer in language your client understands?
Here’s the deal: YES, people want to know about what you do… but what they really care about is that YOU understand THEM and can help them achieve a goal.
So your Home, About and Work with Me pages should first and foremost speak to your potential clients where they’re at right now.
Instead, most business owners go on and on about themselves (or company), their bullet points and their feature based offers.
Take a look at your site and ask yourself these questions:
- Have I been clear about who I serve?
- Is it clear what their problem/goal/desire is?
- What have I said to be clear that I can help them solve their problem/goal/desire?
If not, roll up your sleeves and do a little work. This will make a huge difference in your marketing efforts (and not just on your website – do this with your email, social media profiles, your in-person introduction, absolutely everything!).
Mistake 2: No Clear Benefit
Another common mistake I see ALL the time are feature lists like this:
With XYZ service, you get all of the following:
- Email access
- Workbook
- 10 60-minute phone calls
- Exercises and homework
- Etc.
Guess what? NONE of those bullet points will sell anyone on your service.
What does email access mean to me? Why do I want a workbook? And I certainly don’t want ANY homework!
Instead of a laundry list of features (like above), make them a lot more appealing and enticing by asking yourself this simple question three times: Why does that matter?
If we take that list from above and ask ourselves ‘Why does that matter?’ to get to the root of the benefits, we get a list like this:
- Unlimited email access so you can ask all your burning questions without waiting for our next call
- A comprehensive kick-off workbook so that we focus don’t waste any time on your background and goals – we’ll be able to jump right in to focusing on XYZ service to get you quickly moving towards ABC goal/desire
- To keep you moving towards ABC goal/desire and focus on your next action step, we will spend the next 10 weeks connecting on a 60-minute call
- You will receive personalized exercises throughout the program to support your ABC goal/desire as we move towards your big goal/desire
- Etc….
OK, I just made these up on the spot and they could be even more tailored if I had a specific audience, need and goal in my mind. But you get the idea — take your feature bullet and keep asking yourself, “Why does this matter?” until you get to a much more enticing bullet. Make sure your bullets are specific and clearly articulate the value of what you’re offering.
Mistake 3: Not Asking For The Sale
When I was working with my client last week, she was shocked when I pointed this out.
You see, she had a very feature-heavy bullet list with a price at the end. But, there was no clear ‘Buy Now’ type invitation. It was left up to the client to try to figure out how to hire her.
It was almost like she was afraid of asking for the sale. So she got all the way to the end, said the price and left her potential clients abandoned.
Don’t make that mistake! You need to make it easy for people to do business with you.
Be super clear how people can work with you. Do you want them to fill out an application? Schedule time with you? Buy time in your calendar?
Tell them, plainly, more than once.
Whatever that looks like for your business, make sure it is really clear. You don’t want people to struggle trying to figure out how to hire you!
Bottom line – learn all about where your clients are NOW and tell them how you can help them get where they want to go. And then test different ways to tell that story. This is how you improve your marketing so it continues to perform even better for you.
Let me know!
I’d love to know what you’re going to do after reading this blog post. Did you start to notice these common mistakes on your site? Comment below with the first thing you’re going to do to massively increase your marketing results.
Want more?
Marketing funnels really can be your hustle-free way to a sold out business. When marketing funnels are done correctly they connect you with the best people, and takes those people on a transformational journey to how you can really be a big part of their life, their business.