Episode 455: Tip: Can I see myself in your marketing?
In this episode, we explore how to make your marketing more relatable by showing authenticity and building genuine connections with your audience. Learn how to reflect your audience's frustrations to strengthen engagement. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Authentic marketing
Understanding audience frustrations
Examples of marketing
Evaluating your recent marketing efforts for relatability.
Resources for marketing assistance and coaching.
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Welcome to episode 455 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today is a quick tip episode and this is something I share with clients all the time and with friends in business and think about quite often. If you have ever been challenged by marketing or feel like there's just something missing that is not getting people to go from let’s say, awareness to research or research to evaluation in terms of the buyer cycle, then today's quick tip may just help you. Before I get stuck into that, I want to of course acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these beautiful lands that I live in and work in and play and do all the things in. And for me in North Warrandyte that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
I also want to acknowledge that we are on the anniversary of the referendum in Australia. That did not go the way that I had hoped that it would go. However, there's so much work that we can still do. We can't let an outcome like that feel like that's it. That's the end of the discussion. There's so much that all of us can do. First Nations, and non-First Nations to bring about equality and equity for First Nations people. I'm going to list a couple of resources in the podcast show notes for this episode, which is at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/455. Also, if you are First Nations reading this, I hope that you have support around you. I hope that you are reaching out for support if you need it. A good place for you may be 13Yarn, which is helpful for the MOB because I can only imagine how painful this anniversary must be. Again, if anyone wants to look at those resources that we will list in the show notes, you can go to mydailybusiness.com/podcast/455. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
How often are you listening to a podcast, watching YouTube, talking to a friend or overhearing a conversation and thinking, we are on the same page? That is me. We get that feedback all the time. Even this morning I posted one of the podcast episodes on social media on stories, and we had four people within the first 10 minutes send a DM saying, oh my goodness. It's like you read my mind, or this is exactly what I need to hear right now, or this is exactly where I'm at at the moment. That is the type of feedback we get a lot about this podcast. Also, I have to say about my Sunday email, I have a lovely friend who has supported me from day one, Chris Manix of Soda Communications, and she often writes back on Sunday or Monday after I send the email, she's like, you are reading my mind again.
This is exactly what I'm going through this week, or this is exactly what I needed to hear. Now that idea, none of us are like these original snowflakes and a lot of us go through the same stuff at the same time. But that element of I can see myself in what you are putting out, whether it's a podcast or a YouTube video or a conversation or a masterclass or just the way you show up in your retail store and someone's like, I feel you. That is crucial for building a community building connection, which is ultimately what marketing is all about. In today's quick tip, I want you to ask yourself how often you're showing up authentically in your business and marketing so that people get to understand who you are and what you're about. But also how often are you sharing stories of something you have gone through that somebody else, your ideal audience or different personas will see themselves in?
Many of us see ourselves in other people's stories all the time, and it's one of the most incredible ways that we can build connection regardless of what background we're from, what ethnicity, or what religion. We see ourselves in people all the time when there is an element of what they're sharing that we feel connected to. For example, it could be that you are in the fitness space and maybe you are super fit and super healthy now, but you weren't always. You are sharing what it was like the very first time that you hit the gym, or that very first time that you decided to change something about your health. That element, if your audience is people that have not been hidden the gym or exercising for a certain amount of time and they're coming back into that, maybe your audience is even more niched down.
Maybe you are aiming your fitness program at women who have given birth that are, and not in some weight loss way, but in a strengthening the body after it's gone through the huge undertaking of building a human. Then you may decide where are they at. Like where is their head at right now? They may be feeling all sorts of things, and how can I say to them, I get it. I get it. I have been in your shoes, but do so in an authentic way. That's a big question and it sometimes can lead to people being inauthentic or manipulating marketing. What I'm talking about today is being genuine and genuinely showing up and saying, I have been there, or I am there, I am there right now. And that can build connections so much quicker than so many other marketing tactics that are out there.
If you are reading this and are like, that's cool, but I don't even know where I'd start with that. I mean like, what story should I choose? Or how do I start being vulnerable if I haven't been vulnerable before? One of the quickest ways that you can think about this and come up with ideas is to consider the three biggest frustrations that people have with your industry or with whatever it is that you're selling, whether it's a product, service, an experience or a mix of all three. What are the three biggest frustrations they have? What are the things that lead them to do a complete eye roll and are like, cool, you're putting that out but you have no idea what it's like to be me, or you have no idea, or you're so far ahead that you don't even remember what it's like to be here?
Let's say for example, in this idea of this health coach or fitness person, you may be so fixated in terms of your marketing on saying what will happen, so like the future you is going to be this or that, as opposed to meeting that person where they are right now and sharing some connection story. Let's say somebody has just given birth and they are feeling all sorts of, all sorts of emotions and the hormones are going crazy, but also they're just not feeling strong. They're feeling like, my back's going to go out if I pick up the baby a certain way, or after I've been wearing a baby carrier, I feel that my lower back is absolutely in agony or I'm wondering if I'm ever going to be able to like to take this pram for a walk because maybe they had a cesarean section or maybe there's something else that's happened.
I'm not an expert in these places. I'm a mom who's had two cesarean sections myself and has worried about fitness and has worried about strength and my back and not having necessarily a family that was able to physically support me because they live in other places or my parents had passed away, so I had to get my body physically strong to look after a child and also his older brother who was at prep at that time. It was necessary to start getting physically healthier and stronger. If I was in that head space, I'm not going to look at marketing that is all about these super toned people and how they're crushing it at the gym and how they're doing X, Y, Z, and I'm not going to feel a genuine connection. However, if I have a fitness coach who's out there saying, I get it. Believe me.
I remember when my child was X amount of weeks old and I tried to do this one exercise and I peed my pants, or I did this or I did that. Or I remember thinking, I don't even know if I'm going to be able to get home with this pram walk because X, Y, Z, that is going to hit me a lot harder and are going to have a much more genuine connection because I see myself in your marketing as opposed to marketing for just the result. And I think that's what people miss a lot of the time, thinking about, can I see myself in your marketing? Can I see myself in your message? Can I see myself in whatever it is you're putting out there? At the start of this podcast, we use a line like, do you love your business?
Well, sometimes you just don't. The amount of people that have told us over the years, oh my goodness, when it says that, I'm like, no, I don't love my business. I don't, that's why I'm listening to the podcast. But they can see themselves in that one line, do you love your business? Sometimes you just don't. It's like, hell yeah, that's me right now. I don't love my business right this second. That connection is already getting them into a headspace of, I'm going to listen because this person gets it. They get where I am right now, even if their business, my business, very different businesses where they are where I'm at may be very different. But the way we are connecting is we are connecting on that level of sometimes you don't love your business and let's figure out why that is and let's figure out a way forward that maybe will help you love your business a bit more on the regular.
With your marketing, I want you to think about if you looked at like the last nine posts on Instagram or TikTok the last two videos you put out, the last couple of podcasts you put out, or whatever your format of marketing is, or an email or just your general chitchat with people who come into your store, how often are you relaying stories that allow them to genuinely connect with you to say, I get it, and feel that you get them just as much. That is it for today. Can I see myself in your marketing? Look at your audience personas, look at your buyer personas, whatever you want to call them, and take one and then run it through that filter, that lens of can they see themselves in our marketing? If they were to look at the last nine posts we did, the last two emails that we sent, the last whatever, can they see themselves?
If they're not if you look and you're like, I don't think anything in the last 21 posts that we've put out is something that they could see themselves in, then it's time to refresh your marketing. If you need help with this, we have our Marketing for Your Small Business course, it's always available. You can just go to marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. We do run a coaching component to that twice a year. We have closed the one for 2024, but in 2025 we'll be running that, again, if you own the course, you can just upgrade for a very small fee to do the nine weeks of live coaching. This is also the stuff that we go through in group coaching or one-on-one coaching. If you just want to book an ad hoc session and be like, here's my marketing plan, let's discuss how we can make it better. You can do that. You can buy all of these things over at mydailybusiness.com/shop, and we'll link to that in the show notes, which for this episode, you can find at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/455. Thanks so much for reading, I'll see you next time. Bye.
