The cold, hard truth about marketing

Want to know the 3 biggest marketing secrets?

Well, if you insist…

1. Everything works for someone

2. Nothing works for everyone

3. There is no magic marketing bullet – if there was, the person who invented it would be richer than Bezos and far fewer people would be lurking on LinkedIn desperately trying to figure out how the algorithms work

So don’t waste your money on £17 courses that promise you’ll make a million a month without having to do any work. If the stuff they taught was true, they’d be selling it for more than a few quid.

But now I’ve burst your bubble, I have got some good news.

While there isn’t a secret sauce for marketing, there are some things you can do that will increase your chance of success…

You need to know who your ideal client is

Trust me, I fought against this one for years. If you’re tempted to brush this advice off, don’t.

I read endless advice on how you should build customer profiles so detailed that you know what car your ideal clients drive and how many kids they have. That you should niche down. That your marketing should focus solely on one type of client or one service.

But I was adamant I couldn’t do that. It didn’t apply to me.

I worked with such a variety of clients, and the services I offered were geared towards different needs, so how could I possibly niche down?

So I ignored the advice.

But the worst part was I told other people that’s what they should do. Whenever I wrote copy for someone, I’d ask loads of questions about the target audience. When I delivered training workshops, I’d bang on about how you should write for the people you want to attract.

What a hypocrite I was!

Luckily, I saw the light.

I realised I was trying to cater to too many people – I kept adding new services to meet the needs of this type of client or that type of client. But it made my marketing too confused, and I wasn’t getting the clients I wanted.

So I bit the bullet and went all-in on training and consulting for business owners – for people like me who offer a service rather than a physical product. People who do their own marketing.

And guess what?

I got more of those clients.

But I didn’t lose the other stuff.

My team still writes copy for all types of companies, even though I rarely talk about copywriting services.

I still get requests to deliver in-house training to teams, even though I hardly promote my Write to Sell courses anymore.

And I still work with people who sell products. I still work with non-business owners – junior marketers in big companies. I still work with a wide variety of clients in a variety of ways.

So if, like me, you’ve been resisting the advice to niche down, stop right now.

You’ll get more of the clients you want if you make them feel like every piece of content you write is written for them.

You don’t have to do everything (but you do need to do something)

Social media, video, blogs, podcasts, email, sales funnels, lead magnets, search engine optimisation, Google Ads, networking, cold calling, direct mail – the list of marketing activities you could do is endless.

And as I said right at the start of this article, everything works for someone.

But just because every type of marketing can be effective, not every type will be effective for you.

And that’s why you don’t have to do everything.

But you do have to do something.

Marketing doesn’t look after itself – you either have to invest time or money. Even the biggest companies in the world like Coca Cola, Amazon or McDonalds still invest in advertising.

You have to be visible. If your ideal clients don’t know you exist, how can you expect them to buy from you? Positive mindset and crossing your fingers will not magically make clients appear.

So you’ve got to do something; whether it’s spending an hour a day on social media or paying someone to do your marketing for you.

But be careful not to invest in the wrong things. You can spend hours creating content that never gets seen, waste time scrolling aimlessly through LinkedIn, or spend a fortune on Google Ads that don’t convert.

I’ve seen too many people get talked into doing stuff that won’t work for them or that they can’t execute properly.

That was one of the reasons I started offering ‘Borrow my Brain’ sessions. I wanted to help business owners overcome the overwhelm and confusion around marketing and invest their time and money into stuff that would work.

I don’t sell a particular type of marketing – video, website design, SEO, social media or email – so I can remain objective and help people work out how to play to their strengths.

Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated – it’s mostly about figuring out how to connect with your ideal clients.

Once you’ve done that, it won’t feel like such a minefield.

Learn how to write sales copy

Ok, you probably think I’m being biased here, and maybe I am. But the whole point of any marketing is to get sales. And that means you’ve got to learn how to sell.

You could learn how to sell face to face or close business over the phone. Or you could learn how to write sales copy.

I have experience doing all types of selling, and I genuinely, hand on heart, prefer the last one.

Timing is everything in marketing and sales. You could call up an ideal client when they just happen to be in a good mood and are prepared to hear you out. Or you could be interrupting them on a really busy, stressful day and lose out on their business simply because you caught them at a bad time.

Sales copy and marketing content is out there for your ideal clients to read when it suits them, not when it suits you.

Take this article, for example. I haven’t called you up to talk to you about marketing; you’ve picked a convenient time to see what I’ve got to say about it.

At the end of this article, I’ll pitch my services, and you’re unlikely to feel aggrieved because I haven’t interrupted you to do so. You can just click away if you don’t want to hear me out – I’ll never know you’ve rejected me. And rejection feels much less personal when you don’t even know it’s happened.

But that’s not the only reason it pays to learn how to write copy.

Almost every type of marketing activity requires words – emails, social media posts, adverts, brochures, direct mail, video scripts, blog posts, your website.

And the words you write can make the difference between someone paying attention and becoming a customer or someone scrolling by and forgetting you immediately.

So that’s why you should invest in developing your copywriting skills. There are loads of great books and courses on offer. And of course, there’s my 12-week copywriting training and mentoring programme. And that leads nicely into my pitch (I warned you it was coming)…

Bespoke one-to-one copywriting training and mentoring

If you are a business owner and you do your own marketing, but you aren’t getting results, my 12-week programme could be just what you need.

It’s a combination of training, practice and mentoring. I teach you how to write sales copy and marketing content, you go away and write stuff that can be used in your business, and then we review it together.

It’s like having your own personal copywriter, but instead of doing it for you, I give you the skills and confidence to do it yourself.

And it’s all completely tailored to your business, so we work on stuff that plays to your strengths but is also likely to get results.

At the end of the 12 weeks, you’ll have a plan (and the skills) to attract, nurture and convert your ideal clients so you can work with more of the people you want and charge the prices you deserve.

If that sounds good, email me at lisa@makeyourcopycount.com or message me via LinkedIn.

Let’s Make Your Copy Count.