EP77: [REPLAY] The Missing Piece: Why Niche & Offers Aren't Enough

Obsessed over perfect brand colors but still have no clients? I've been there. My brother's tough love made me realize: action over aesthetics. This impactful replay episode dives into niche and offers, sharing my journey from brand perfectionism to creating resonant offers. Perfect for newbies, those needing a refresher, or anyone in a pivot.

We also tackle social media marketing. Likes and comments don’t pay the bills. Learn the power of consistent, strategic posting and genuine engagement. Hear how a client saw remarkable results by promoting an offer over eight weeks, showcasing the power of persistence.

Elevate your marketing and achieve lasting success with these actionable insights. Don’t miss out on valuable takeaways to stay ahead in the business game.

Chapters

• 0:01 Niche and Offers
• 11:07 Consistent Marketing and Engagement Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Well, hello, blasphemers. Today I'm bringing you a replay of one of the most impactful episodes that I did way back last year. It's an episode that really hit home for a lot of you. In this particular episode, I dove into the critical topics of niche and offers, and I shared a lot of my own early struggles with things like perfecting my brand not seeing the results I wanted, and it's really an episode that is perfect for anyone who's ever felt stuck in a cycle of creation. And you're putting offers out there and you've got beautiful branding, you're just not getting clients. You're not getting the kind of feedback or ROI that you are hoping that you would get. It's a real look at what truly matters in building a successful business. Now, whether you are new, you need a reminder. You're undergoing a pivot. This episode is packed with insights and focusing your efforts where it counts, and it's also the last replay episode of the season. Next week, we've got an all new episode of the Business Blasphemy Podcast. Thank you for sticking through the summer with me. I will see you on the other side, but for now, let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 1:13

Welcome to the Business Blasphemy Podcast, where we question the sacred truths of the online business space and the reverence with which they're held. I'm your host, sarah Kahn, speaker, strategic consultant and BS busting badass. Join me each week as we challenge the norms, trends and overall bullshit status quo of entrepreneurship to uncover what it really takes to build the business that you want to build in a way that honors you, your life and your vision for what's possible, and maybe piss off a few gurus along the way. So if you're ready to commit business blasphemy, let's do it. So if you're ready to commit business blasphemy, let's do it. Hello, hello blasphemers. Today I am going to talk to you about niche and offers. I had a different episode planned for today, but something came up, so we're going to talk about this. Let me give you a little bit of a story time first.

Speaker 1: 2:03

When I first started my business, I spent a lot of time getting my branding right. I wanted to make sure that I came across professional. I chose my colors using psychology-based color theory. I taught color theory as it related to marketing when I taught in college and so, yeah, it might sound a little bit over the top, but it was something I was interested in and something that was important to me to do. So I did. I also studied graphic design principles to make sure that my logo and other graphic assets were balanced and pleasing to the eye, and took into account the golden ratio. It took me a second. I almost forgot what it was called and, yes, I took graphic design courses.

Speaker 1: 2:44

I obsessed about the name of the business because I'm a wordy McWorderton and I wanted to choose something that conveyed the feeling that I wanted my future clients to have. I tell you, I spent a lot of time in Google rabbit holes searching for the meaning of different words and phrases. The thesaurus was my best friend. I was two months in to this whole process and still obsessing about the right shade of pink that would appeal to my ideal client yes, pink. When my brother gave me a proverbial slap in the face, I had asked for his feedback on my logo for about the 30th time. He's a marketer and he said Sarah, it doesn't matter, because that's not making you the money. That's exactly how he said it too, and it was like an oof to the gut. It really was, because he called me on my bullshit, which is the relationship we have. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 3:37

So I drew a line under it. I thought, okay, my branding is as good as it needs to be right now, and my name is all right and it's it's. I got to move forward. So I drew a line under that, started to focus on creating offers and I did all the courses that helped me, you know, draw out all my knowledge and my expertise and my areas of interest, and I got myself a good old list of things that I could do. And then I looked at that list and I started grouping them into categories and figuring out you know, how could I package these and how could I package them in a way that was appealing to my ideal client. Oh, and I also did the who is your ideal client and what kind of coffee does she drink? Bullshit client avatar exercise, which I think it's bullshit. I'll talk about that another day, but it's bullshit anyway. But I did the bullshit there. I was beautiful branding, beautiful packages, but I had no clients.

Speaker 1: 4:27

So I built a website with all the bells and whistles, because clients needed a place to find me to see what I offered. And then I created an opt-in because I needed to be able to collect their details Somehow. If they weren't ready to buy now, I needed their details so I could get them into my email list and nurture them, and I had to give them something of value in return. So that involved market research and creating a workbook, and all of this stuff was in place Still had no clients breaking down my virtual door. So then I took courses on messaging and marketing. Do you see where this is going? I spent a ton of time really getting clear on my messaging, learning how to speak to my ideal client who drank Starbucks, by the way, just in case you were wondering. I took courses on how to refine my messaging, how to create content, how to get clear on my mission and vision, because those are also really important All the right ways to create content for the various social platforms. Look, I took more courses than you could possibly imagine Broad ones, granular ones, everything in between and still no fucking clients. So let's put a pin in that for just a second.

Speaker 1: 5:36

I am very blessed to have people trust me enough to come to me for advice, because I have taken time to cultivate relationships and I also, I think, in my messaging it makes it pretty clear that people know I'm not the kind of person to give bullshit platitudes or bullshit advice. I tell it like it is. I have that Gen X penchant for pragmatism and practicality, something that isn't really all that common these days. Now what does that mean? I call out the truth when I see it. I also really, really, really love simplicity, so I like to get rid of all of the extraneous nonsense and get straight to the point, to the thing that is actually going to get me the result that I want.

Speaker 1: 6:18

So when a dear friend reached out recently, she just started working on her business and she was sharing with me the other day the frustrations that she had around finding clients, even now that she's got offers and packages ready to go and has started posting on social media, and it brought back a lot of memories. So this isn't specifically about her, but it was the thing that kind of inspired me to do this episode, because she's not alone. I talked to a lot of newer newish entrepreneurs who have maybe been in business for a year or two. They're kind of over the hump of starting, but they're still not really seeing the traction that they want, and it really did bring back a lot of memories of my early days. So today I want to talk about something that's incredibly common, that I do see a lot of and so many people are still struggling with.

Speaker 1: 7:04

So a lot of programs do help you figure out your offers, your target market, your niche. Some will help you with messaging, some will help you with content creation and all of this stuff all of it absolutely crucial to building a business foundation. None of it is wasted time or energy or busy work if you stay focused because, let's face it, you can turn anything into busy work if you don't have a clear plan of action and a good amount of self-awareness. And, as an aside, a lot of people do use some of these things as distractions from other things that are more uncomfortable. That's exactly what I was doing in the story that I was just telling you. Who spends two months on a logo? This guy right, because the other stuff was uncomfortable, and I'm getting to that. But you can use even the important stuff as a distraction if you are afraid of the things that will actually make a difference.

Speaker 1: 7:56

So, yes, these are important things. You need all of them to have a viable business, but the problem is that most people think it is all you to have a viable business. But the problem is that most people think it is all you need for a viable business and it is not. You could have the best offer in the world, the most beautiful website, the greatest funnel ever made, the most appealing branding in the galaxy, but if no one knows about it, you don't have a business. The disconnect that a lot of people have is the actual selling, the actual talking about what they do and how they do it.

Speaker 1: 8:35

Now, I am by no means a sales expert. I'm going to put that caveat out there right now. Sales is something that I have historically had a lot of trouble with because of my own experiences with selling and, quite frankly, with really, really unethical sales coaches. So for a long time, I had conflated sales with sleaze, and I think a lot of people feel that way. I think it's hard for a good majority of people to sell comfortably and to sell confidently because we always carry this fear with us of being sleazy or for me it was always. I don't want to pitch slap, especially since I'm so vocal about how gross it is, but the bottom line is that unless you're selling your offers, you don't have a business.

Speaker 1: 9:17

And what people also fail to think about and talk about is how long it actually takes to get clients. I mean, we've all seen the bullshit and we all probably have been pitch slapped at some point in the DMs about how, if you just hire this person who's pitch slapping you, you'll have 200 qualified leads in a month. Right, I mean, first of all, I don't know any business owner who has the infrastructure or the time to handle 20 leads a month, let alone 200. And, honestly, I don't buy any of that crap. But the truth is, you do need a lead generation process and you do have to have patience. So I'm going to save the sales piece for another episode. I've got some amazing sales coaches that I'm connected with who I will invite on to share their perspectives, so stay tuned for that.

Speaker 1: 10:01

But today I do want to talk about what you can start doing if you're struggling with getting clients, particularly if you're just recently starting your business. Or if you're struggling with getting clients, particularly if you're just recently starting your business, or if you've pivoted recently your business model, your offer suite, and now you're selling something very different to a different ideal client type. There are some fundamentals that I want to share, particularly around being visible on social media, because that's the main tool that a lot of online business owners use to market their businesses, and the first is make sure you're saying the right things. Start with understanding what problem your offer solves and who the best beneficiary of that solution would be. They need to see clearly, very clearly, how hiring you is going to solve their problem. Don't make them connect the dots on their own and don't just talk about what you do. Help them see that they might possibly have a challenge, and if they do have that challenge, here's how your particular offer can help solve it. Understand how to speak to them and then speak to them often.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Don't get caught up thinking that just posting about something once or twice or even 12 times is enough. The algorithms and just the sheer volume of information that people are bombarded with every day can almost ensure that your shit isn't getting seen as often as you think. It has nothing to do with you, it's not personal, so don't take it that way, and what I mean by that is don't get caught up in the vanity metrics of how many people are liking or commenting on your posts. Case in point I recently signed two clients to my one-to-one mentorship that rarely, if ever, interact with my content, but I've been speaking about it long enough and it spoke to them and when they were ready, they reached out and signed up. One didn't even like, really ask, she just signed up. She got the link and she signed up.

Speaker 1: 11:53

Likes and comments don't pay the bills, and most people will tell you and I believe there's a stat somewhere that supports this, but I don't have it to hand. So take it with a grain of salt, but also a tiny grain of salt, because I've heard this enough times that I do believe it's true that most people who buy services don't often engage very heavily with the service provider's content. They're not actively out there liking and commenting and sharing. They're reading the content, they're taking all of that content on board and they're starting to connect the dots about how it could make a difference in their business. They watch from the sidelines. But regardless of all of that, remember that likes don't pay the bills.

Speaker 1: 12:35

You want to keep focusing on quality of content and making sure you're also engaging with other people, not just people who comment on your posts. A lot of people will post and then wait for the likes and comments to roll in, and if they don't, they're like, well, shit, and they post something else, and then they wait for the likes and comments to roll in and they don't. You need to actively go out there and actually comment on comments on other people's posts. So people that are in your niche, people who sell similar things to you who's commenting on their stuff? Comment on their comments, right. Who sell similar things to you who's commenting on their stuff? Comment on their comments, right. Bottom line engage. Be social. It's social media, social media, not passive media. All right, go and talk to people. It makes a difference.

Speaker 1: 13:23

One of the, I think, fallacies, one of the big challenges that people, the belief system that they have, is if you build it, they will come. But this is not fucking field of dreams. They will not come just because you've built it. You have to get yourself out there. So start really honing in on how to speak to the person who would be ideal for your particular offer. Talk to them, right. Stop posting just nonsense posts. I mean, it's fine to post fun stuff once in a while, but if you're not actually posting about your offers and how your solution fits somebody's problem, what are you even doing?

Speaker 1: 14:00

Also, start taking attention spans into account. Most people have a short one. That's the truth of it. People are also really distracted. They have a lot going on. Particularly women, particularly moms. Some are so distracted that even if they see your stuff, they'll probably have gotten distracted before they were able to take action on it, right? Maybe they were mid-scroll and a client sent them a message, or they were in the middle of something else and they took a break and they were looking through and they saw your content. They're like, oh, I should comment on that, and then a kid bugs them. Or maybe they were doom scrolling in bed the night before and dropped their phone on their face and forgot. I don't know, but people do have shorter attention spans and, truth be told, people require at least 16 to 20 exposures to something before they make the decision to buy. That's a lot 16 to 20 exposures. So think about the math on this and I'm going to leave you to do the math because I don't math very good. But if 1% to 3% of people are seeing your posts on any given day, that's the algorithm stat right, and they do need like 16 to 20 exposures to you making a clear pitch with a clear call to action not your funny reel where you're lip syncing or your post about your coffee like actual call to action content.

Speaker 1: 15:16

How many times do you think you need to be posting about your shit to get people to take notice and buy your shit? It takes time for them to see themselves in what you're talking about. There is this unrealistic expectation that if you post, you'll get sales immediately. It doesn't work that way. You actually have to work for it and have a plan. My friend, please don't just post randomly. Sit down and plan it out on a quarterly basis and if that feels too long, do it on a monthly basis. Plan your content on a monthly basis so you know exactly what you're going to be selling, and that allows you then to give your offers enough time to gain traction, understand what offer you're going to sell in that timeframe and then stick with it, because the other thing that too many people do is they don't give it enough time, they give up too soon or they switch their offers if people don't buy right away.

Speaker 1: 16:14

I have a client. Last year she was promoting something. Now I want to tell you a little bit about this client. First of all, she's fucking phenomenal. I absolutely love her. She had an offer that she was selling and she has a very engaged Facebook group. She has a very engaged email list, thousands of people on her list, thousands of people in her Facebook group, and she posts regularly. She's really, really good at talking about her stuff. She talks about her offers, she sells very actively. She's gotten into the habit of posting several times a day, so she does all the right things.

Speaker 1: 16:50

Now she had this offer and she talked about it for eight weeks, two months. That was the promo window that we were using and she talked about it on social media in several places, at least twice a day. She was sending one email a day to her email list for eight weeks, two months, every single day, including Saturdays and Sundays. And when doors were about to close at the end of the promo period, there were people who were like on her email list, in her community, who engaged with her stuff all the time, who were like what's this offer? What are you talking about? I didn't hear anything about this. So if she is already doing all the right things and people who are like, engaged with her, are still like I didn't know you were selling a thing two months into the promo period, you are not talking about it enough. That's the hard truth. Give yourself and your offers time to gain that traction. It does take time. This is why I like to give offers a quarterly window, three months. You may get annoyed listening to yourself, but trust me, it's more to you because you're there. You're hearing it all the time. Other people are not.

Speaker 1: 17:59

And I also want to add don't discount other things that you can do to get in front of potential clients, like join networking groups, post in groups that allow for promotion. I mean, they're fewer and far between than they were maybe a year or two ago, but they still exist. The important thing is don't just post and ghost. If you're going to post in groups, make sure you engage in those groups to get to know people, share their stuff, talk to them, comment on their things, let them get to know you, because the other side effect to this is that you become referable. When people know who you are and what you offer and they like you right. When they meet someone who needs a thing that you sell, they're going to think of you. But they have to know you and they have to like you, and that requires investment in creating relationships. I did a fantastic episode on this I think it was episode five, where I brought on Jennifer Battle to talk about building community. So go back and get some great tips from her about how to do that.

Speaker 1: 18:59

But the big takeaway here is that you need to actually talk about your shit. You've got to talk about what you're doing actively, proactively, talking about your offers. Now, like I said, you may get annoyed at hearing yourself talking about the thing so much, but it's only because you hear it every single time you talk about it. Nobody else does, and if someone has a problem with you selling your shit, they're more than welcome to self-select out of your network or to mute you. One of the things that I like to do if I'm going to be going into a particularly long promotion period for something specific, is I warn my audience, right? I say like, look for the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, I'm going to be talking about X, y, z, and if you're really not interested in hearing about it, feel free to mute me for 30 days or just scroll on by.

Speaker 1: 19:44

I used to have a really big problem talking about my shit because I had a really bad experience with a particular MLM like 20 years ago maybe not that long ago, but it feels like 20 years ago. That was not only like super aggressive with its marketing and its recruiting, but it was borderline, unethical and that really turned me off of marketing and selling altogether. And this is not an indictment of MLMs, it's just my experience with this particular one. But that made me almost apologetic about selling my stuff on social platforms. I felt there was this air of like I'm so sorry, but I want to talk to you about this thing that I'm selling. And I mean it makes it extra worse because I'm Canadian and we apologize for everything for no reason. So I was apologetic for a long time and nobody wants to buy something if your energy is like. I am so sorry to bother you, but can I talk to you about a thing? People pick up on that? So you really need to start getting comfortable with talking about your stuff. You have to believe in what you're selling. You have to believe that what you are talking about, what you have to offer, is valuable as shit.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Because here's the other thing I realized when I started to get over myself I could do this in a way that actually felt good to me. I can actually talk about my stuff. That feels aligned with how I want to show up, because if I wasn't talking about my business. I didn't have a business. That may feel harsh, but it's a tough love truth If you're not going to talk about your business, you don't have a business. And the last thing I'll say before we end this week's episode this one is a little bit harder for people, but it's a truth nonetheless, and I want to give a hat tip to Jerisha Hawk for this, because she talked about it on her podcast recently.

Speaker 1: 21:28

But if you're going to have an online service business where you are the face of your business you're going to have an online service business where you are the face of your business then you need to be the face of your business. In this era of deep fakes and AI and bots, more and more people are opting to do business with people that they know are real and that they feel they can trust and that they have a connection to, and you can't trust someone that you've never seen. So, as much as you're able get your face on your socials, it's a lot harder to sell if you don't appear visible somewhere, unless you are super, super niched or you have exceptionally clear branding and marketing and you have a polarizing opinion that draws people in. But even then, the vast majority of people that I know are going to buy from people that they can see, so just some food for thought. All right, that was a lot of yelling at you, for I don't know how many minutes it's been, but hopefully, hopefully, this was a value to you.

Speaker 1: 22:25

I did have a totally different topic in mind for today, but my people needed me, so here we are. If any of the stuff we talked about today, you're like shit, she's calling me out. I'm not, I'm calling you in and I'm asking you to get in touch so we can fix it, so you can start making money before the summer's out. All right, I will talk to you again soon. You can have success without the BS. I'll talk to you soon. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Business Blasphemy Podcast. We'll talk to you soon.