The Business Lounge Podcast with Kimberly Ann Jimenez
Welcome to The Business Lounge Podcast! Each week we'll share proven marketing strategies to help you build an audience of buyers, create impactful content, and grow a profitable business without compromising on your values with your host, Kimberly Ann Jimenez!
Kimberly is an Online Marketing Strategist, Educator, Founder and Thought Leader in the online marketing industry.
Having worked with 33K+ small business owners & entrepreneurs across an array of industries over the past decade, Kimberly and her business partner Chris Harris are obsessed with helping you level up your marketing game, and grow your bottom line.
They co-lead their flagship program, The Business Lounge, which teaches business owners & entrepreneurs like you how to navigate the confusing & often overwhelming world of online marketing and build an unapologetically profitable business on your own terms (and without compromising your faith, your family or your freedom).
Join us at kimberlyannjimenez.com/businesslounge!
The Business Lounge Podcast with Kimberly Ann Jimenez
S6 EP33: Master the Art of Messaging: Are You In A Problem Aware vs. Solution Aware Market?
Are your promotions falling flat, despite all your hard work? It might be because Is your messaging falling flat during promotions? In this episode, we tackle a critical aspect of online selling that could be holding you back: knowing whether your audience is problem-aware or solution-aware. We'll dive into how understanding this distinction can make or break your promotional efforts, especially when selling digital products, courses, or memberships.
Don’t miss out on this game-changing episode—tune in to start seeing better conversions today!
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What is up guys? Welcome back to the Business Lounge podcast. My name is Chris and I wanna talk this week about something that we just covered in TBL Plus. So if you're not familiar what that is, that's our group coaching tier, and one of the things we were just working on was putting together promotions and a promotional plan, but also making sure that your messaging for your promotions is on point, and it's oftentimes maybe you've experienced this where you run a promotion, you get all excited, you send all the emails, you go live, you do whatever it is you need to do, whatever your promotional plan entails. But here's the deal. Sometimes we do those things and, guess what, we don't make any sales.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Business Lounge podcast where each week, we unpack the hottest online marketing and business strategies so you can grow your business, increase your bottom line and make a bigger impact. And now here's your host, kimberly Ann Jimenez.
Speaker 1:What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the TBL podcast. Today we're talking about something really, really important. In fact, one of the things we were just working on was putting together promotions and a promotional plan, but also making sure that your messaging for your promotions is on point. And it's oftentimes and maybe you've experienced this where you run a promotion, you get all excited, you send all the emails, um, you go live, you do whatever it is you need to do, uh, whatever your promotional plan entails, uh which you can, by the way, if you haven't gone through to run profitable promotions inside of the business lounge. It's an entire program that you get access to that teaches you how to do promotions the right way. So definitely do that if you haven't checked that out already. But here's the deal. Sometimes we do those things and, guess what, we don't make any sales, and it's a disheartening moment.
Speaker 1:I can empathize with you if you've been there, in fact, when I just put some context behind that when I left the running the moving company my first business, for those unfamiliar and I came into the online space and I said you know, I have sold a hundred thousand dollar contracts. Before that, I had a job where I was selling to big companies like Coca-Cola, and you're talking about multi-million dollar agreements and so on and so forth, meetings that I had to sign NDAs for, literally because of the amount of money and the trade secrets involved. And here I think I'm just going to walk into the online space and with all that experience, I am just going to knock it out of the park, right, all I have to do is send emails. What that's crazy. Well, the first promotion I ran was a $7 email swipe file promotion, and I was like you know, I'm just going to launch this thing and then we'll see how it goes, just to get my feet wet in this whole online game, I didn't make a single sale. I'm not even joking, I didn't make a single sale. I'm not even joking, I didn't make a single sale.
Speaker 1:And what people come to quickly realize is that selling online specifically for digital products or for courses, memberships, downloads, right, all the things that I'm referencing here is one of the hardest things to sell. It's a lot easier than it used to be because we've gotten more acclimated to paying for digital things and for coaching and so on and so forth, but for those that have been around for more than I would say six to seven years. You know that back in the day it was not easy. In fact it was probably one of the hardest things that I've ever sold. So I was extremely disheartened, shocked, but also kind of questioning whether or not I can actually do this, and that feeling lasted for quite some time until I really started to put the pieces together. And one of those pieces I would say one of those biggest pieces in fact was problem versus solution aware messaging was problem versus solution-aware messaging. Now, there's a lot.
Speaker 1:When I reference that, what I'm alluding to is Eugene Schwartz. He's an old-school marketer and he created what he calls the upside. It's UPSYD. That's a little bit of a modification from his original source material, but for what we're discussing today it's an acronym. It's called the upside marketing model and what it stands for is unaware, problem aware, solution aware, you aware and deal aware.
Speaker 1:Now, what it's referencing is levels of sophistication in your market, and when I say sophistication, what I mean is primarily how familiar are people when it comes to what it is you're offering your specific solution, right? So most of you are not in an unaware market that's the first one, right Whereby people don't even realize there's a problem to be addressed. So think you know. For some people it'd be blockchain, technology, web, three like words that they maybe have heard, but they have no idea what it is. They're completely unaware. They don't know a problem that exists, that it solves. They don't. They've maybe heard of a solution, but they don't understand it. So, in those markets and again, none of you are probably in there unless you're doing something really cutting edge Um, the primary part of your messaging, though, in an underwear market, is education, because if you don't educate people as to the problem that this thing solves, that you're selling, uh, and then explain the solution and why it solves that problem, you're probably not going to make a whole lot of sales, right, and some people will assume that people know things that they don't know, uh, and so if you find that your broader markets you're appealing to is in one of these sophistication levels and you're not speaking to them with that tonality in your messaging, it's going to fall flat on deaf ears, right?
Speaker 1:So the next rung down, and the two I want to focus on right, are problem and solution aware. Those are the next two rungs down in terms of sophistication in your market. So, problem aware. It's primarily people that are aware of a problem or a challenge or something that they experience in their day-to-day lives, but they're not abundantly aware of a major solution in their marketplace. Right, there's not a Nike in that industry. There's not a Wells Fargo. There's a lack of solutions that they're familiar with to ascertain to the problem that they're experiencing. Right?
Speaker 1:So the example that I gave in the TBL Plus session was some AI tools that exist right now. Right, like, maybe you know what AI is, you're familiar with that concept, but maybe you're not aware that there's an AI tool that can address your specific problem. Now, the example that I gave was a blog writing tool. Right, so it's Jasper, and it's maybe maybe even heard of Jasper at this point, but Jasper is an AI tool that writes blogs for you.
Speaker 1:What majority of the market knows is that writing blogs takes a long time, it's very arduous and sometimes people get writer's block and they don't know what to say. They don't know how to communicate their message the way they really want to. Right, so they're. They're very aware that blogging, although they've heard it's really powerful as a marketing tool, they're very aware of how arduous it can be. So, for Jasper, the primary part of their message is appealing to that problem. Right? They know you have a problem with keeping up with writing your blog. They know you're not consistent with doing it and they know that you need to do that to get visibility for your brand. We help you do it faster and better with our AI tool that writes it for you Eureka sales.
Speaker 1:So you spend the majority of the amount of time in your writing focusing on the problem to then introduce your new or lesser known solution. Right, that's problem aware. You're going to spend, I would say, 90% of your time focusing on the problem and creating relatability to then introducing your new or unique solution. In this case, jasper, being the example that I used right Now, when you go a rung lower into solution aware, it doesn't mean you don't ever talk about the problem, right? Don't think that just because you're a rung lower, that it means don't ever talk about the problem, right? Don't think that just because you're a rumbler, that it means you could just skip over the problem. It just means you spend less time on the problem, right?
Speaker 1:So the example that I gave in the session was a car and I was joking and I said imagine if you read a sales page or you came across a TV commercial. It takes too long to get to work. It takes too long to get to work. It takes too long to get around town. It takes too long to get to the gas station or, well, you wouldn't need gas if you didn't have a car, right. It takes too long to get to the gym. It takes too long to get here.
Speaker 1:Introduce our solution a car. It sounds ridiculous because everybody knows what a car is. It's a very established market and so, yes, you can allude to a problem in the market. Everybody needs a car. You need, right. Maybe your problem you're addressing is affordability, or maybe it's safety is a concern, right, like that's the problem they experience, but it's more catered to the solution. More specifically, you're also going to use solution aware messaging to talk about why your solution is different, right? So you're going to so in that specific example. Notice what they do in those commercials. They tell you got a 9.9 safety rating, which was, you know, number one in the market year over year for three years running. Right, reliability, this and that 32 miles per gallon.
Speaker 1:Right, they're focusing on all the things that sometimes you'll even see them say our brand compared to the other brand, like, remember, they did those whole, they did those whole. Um, they did those whole. Uh, what was it? Brawn? I think the the paper towel brand, I think they used to do this, or maybe not. What was the quicker picker upper like? I even know the jingle, right? You probably hear it as I say that, uh, the the quicker, the quicker picker upper, whatever. And they would do our brand compared to the other brands and they would show when you were cleaning or whatever, the other brand would just completely disintegrate as you were cleaning up a spill or something, and then their brand would pick it up and it was durable and sturdy and you could keep using it for longer and it was gonna go further and you were gonna get more bang for your buck, right. So it was like our brand compared to the leading brands.
Speaker 1:That's solution-aware positioning. So you are primarily focused on. In. That's solution aware positioning. So you are primarily focused on. In a very established marketplace, you're primarily focusing on why your solution is different, and sometimes that means AKA better. It's a nice way of saying better right Now. It doesn't always have to necessarily be that, but what you want it to be is. You want it to be better for your specific people you want it to be is you want it to be better for your specific people? You want your solution to be the blue ocean, and you can utilize where others have failed to address that market. And this is where, by the way, this is where you can flip big corporations and create an advantage for yourself, because a lot of these big brands they're addressing a market that is huge and so they don't have the ability to create these nuanced, specific products per se with specific messaging that applies to a certain niche of the market. So if it was just for women or if it was just for men or it was I don't know specific use cases that weren't broadly applying to an entire market. I don't know specific use cases that weren't broadly applying to an entire market. So a lot of you can take advantage of that.
Speaker 1:Where maybe you're in a course space and you sell courses and there's other course creators that have had big followings and they're massive influencers, well, guess what? Maybe you can do something that they haven't done. Where and we did this where you have coaching tiers and people are willing to pay you tens of thousands of dollars because the other courses they've gone through. Those people have so many people, they're servicing communities of 17,000 or more and they don't have the space, bandwidth or ability in a lot of cases to offer a higher ticket coaching platform. Right, they're. They're too busy servicing people at their course level or at their membership level to to provide that tailored, customized personal service of one-on-one coaching or group coaching. And so we found that we found that there were some people that entered the space long before we did, and what we found was that they actually created a new opportunity in the marketplace because they had educated everybody on this opportunity to build online business.
Speaker 1:But guess what? Then the questions would arise. Well, I don't know how this applies to me. I don't know how to make Facebook ads work for me. I don't know how to make a content calendar for my specific business. I don't know how to create a productivity system for me as a personality type, or me as a busy mompreneur, or me, as you know, right X, y and Z.
Speaker 1:And so what you can find is and this always happens there's always a new blue ocean in any market, ever. And if there's not one, um, then somebody's about to create one the industry leaders and so we can stop looking at competition as oh no, there's no room for me. We can see where they're being underserved, and sometimes that just means that they're creating a new market of opportunity because of their size. And it doesn't have to be that. Again, it could be anything. It's just your job to be a student of your market and understand where people feel underserved, right? So and that applies for physical products, that applies for services, that applies for courses, it does not matter there's always going to be a new opportunity to serve somebody at a level that they're currently feeling underserved, and so we always say this and this is so, so important, right? So? Understanding problem and solution aware is probably going to be a game changer for you. Just that alone, right?
Speaker 1:And we did a recent promotion where we literally ran the exact same offer from last year Literally the exact same offer. The only thing we did differently is I took a look at the sales page and I told Kim I was like Kim, we're solution aware in this market. Now, it's not problem aware. I think the reason it did well last year, but we did incredibly well this year like, massively increased our conversions and actually did less to do that we made sales out of take that we've never made sales before.
Speaker 1:In fact, we had many people, as I told you guys in a promotional recap podcast today, recently we had people like basically coming through the screen heckling us to give us their credit card information to buy our program, to buy TBL, and we were blown away. I mean they were. They were messaging Brian on an off day, on a Saturday, when we're not we're not even available, which we take the day off on every Saturday when we're not even available, which we take the day off on every Saturday, and like messaging three or four times just like I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss it. And so we went from over time and this should give you some encouragement as well where, when we first started TBL, we had to basically give a trial, we had to prove it to people that it was worth your time, attention and money, and that was the only way we could get people into the program. We were never able to sell it directly. It was like, well, hopefully they'll come in and they're willing to pay a dollar, and then we would wow people so much that hopefully they would stay and it works. Right, it worked.
Speaker 1:But man, you feel like you're begging and sometimes I think a lot of you feel like I'm really begging people to, like you know, take a chance on this offer and I feel like I'm having to give away the farm and over deliver like crazy, like I don't feel like this is sustainable. And when you nail the messaging part and you know your ICA right, you know your ideal client avatar and then you know your, your market sophistication, which you're going to learn from your ICA, by the way. So if you feel like I don't even know, like I'm like I don't know, chris, I could be both Well, there's some homework for you to go do a follow-up insight survey uh, work with you know, speak to previous clients, uh, or or just get re-engaged, because usually that answer uh will come from talking to your people. What have you tried before to solve X, y or Z problem? What physical products have you used before in this specific area that I'm selling something and follow up with? How did you feel? Did it meet your needs? Did you find yourself desiring more and what ways were you desiring more?
Speaker 1:The best marketers lean in with curiosity. That's just reality. They're curious individuals and they're able to utilize the feedback and the data that they receive to make discernible, directional decisions, moving forward with their brand and with their marketing and their messaging. And what you'll find is is when you can layer those two together ICA, with proper messaging right, and if it's solution, aware messaging then really understanding where they felt underserved and where they felt like they could have gotten a better service X, y or Z. What you'll find is that it's going to flow, whether you're creating an Instagram reel or whether you're doing a YouTube video, or whether you're running a blog or you're running a sales page.
Speaker 1:That clarity over time, as you get more immersed in your market and as you're looking at other brands and seeing how they're doing what they're doing and you're being a student of the game, right, it's one of the most important things you can do as a business owner is to be a student of marketing, because if you can't market what you do effectively, you will always lose out. Even if it's an inferior service to what you provide, an inferior product to what you provide, you will always lose out to somebody that can market better than you. That's just a painful reality. It's a painful truth, and I see business owners all the time that have a phenomenal product, a phenomenal service, and they're struggling to make ends meet, and it's because someone else, even with an inferior product or service, is able to get their messaging in front of other people and land it with those people in such a way that they just outsell the other person, even though it's a non-as-great-of-a-service. So would it be an ideal situation in which everybody was able to recognize, man, the value of this and this person's not charging enough, and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, that would be great, but it's our job to make them see those things. It's our job so that they understand how we have something that is made specifically for them, that meets them exactly where they're at.
Speaker 1:And then, at that point, guys, what I can tell you is this it becomes fun. All this frustration with marketing becomes really, really fun. Because here's the problem, right, and this is what we always talk about, and so I just want to qualify it further. Guys, we love content, we love social media. We, contrary to popular belief, we rose to prominence because of social media. Like that was our shtick. And so sometimes I think we don't give a, we don't have the full time and space to fully explain, like, our true position on it. The problem is. What we've seen is this People jump into the mechanics of doing social media marketing.
Speaker 1:They jump into the mechanics of doing blogs. They're worried about the fancy bells and whistles of chasing algorithms and what's trending and what music do I apply to my reel, and this and this and this, or everybody's doing this and everybody's doing that, but here's the deal. Doing this and everybody's doing that, but here's the deal that is only as potent as the messaging is relevant for your ICA. When you know the ICA, when you know them deeply and intimately, because you've taken the time to sharpen the ax and know who these people are, you've taken time to get to know who they are, how they feel and what they really desire, what's the transformation they're seeking, what's the ultimate benefit that they want, and then what, where are they at right now? When I say solution aware, it's really where are they at right now? What have they experienced? And how do I meet them with something that is better for who they are in this particular season?
Speaker 1:Right, when you can do that, then you take that very refined messaging and you bring it to any of your marketing mechanics Again, whether that's YouTube, blog, social media, etc. And what you're going to find is, instead of just creating more noise for the Internet, what you're going to realize is that you're creating signal. Signal is what you want to create, and not just signal for the sake of getting engagement. Signal for the people that matter to you and your business. There's nothing better than realizing holy, wow, I am attracting the exact person that I wanna work with. Not just people that will take me up on my offer because I undercut the price in the market, but people that truly are a dream customer for me to work with. And now, with this refined messaging, I can go out every day and find more people like that.
Speaker 1:People are showing up in my DMs because they're like oh my gosh, this is exactly what I've been looking for. People like they were doing with us, emailing three, four times in a day, on an off day for us, because they do not want to miss out on your offer, trying to get approved four or five times for a firm or Klarna, because they're like I have to get this thousand dollar offer, I have to get approved for this. People that literally will start pitching you on them because they want to end your program so bad. That's 100% possible when you pair the right messaging and you understand your person at a level of depth that allows you to communicate with them, where they know that you know who they are and now they understand what you offer. Marketing first is about making sure people feel like they're understood and then, when they get to your website, it's about they understand you and what you have to offer. When you hit those two alignments which all starts with what I've talked about so far here today, with ICA and market sophistication game over Now you've got something scalable and then the fun part starts to happen. Then you start scaling out and it goes beyond organic not that you have to, but the pros pay for ads and if you want to have a winning effort with paid advertising on any platform, that's how you do it. Right there it's creating that campfire, so that gasoline is the equivalence of the ads that you're going to run to it and you can see and I went back historically and looked at some some of our ads campaigns that we've run over the years that have been successful.
Speaker 1:We made something like 3000 one-time sales in two months on one offer that was really qualified, with ads going direct to that offer. We added 574 trials to the business lounge at about 60 days, literally. Now that's life changing for a lot of you Like. Imagine if you had a membership and you added 500 and almost 600 trials in two months your life could go from I don't know how I'm going to grow this business or how I'm going to make this work to I don't know how I'm going to keep up with this growth. And it was all because and other people, by the way, where we crafted that ad, because we went and worked with an ad expert to do that almost everybody else did not get results. Kim can testify to what I'm telling you right now and tell you I'm telling you exactly the truth here.
Speaker 1:People went to that same workshop where we worked on that advertising the one I just mentioned, the one we made 3,000 sales and then I think we went on to make 30,000 sales to that offer with just that same campaign, literally just direct to a straight to an offer with a Facebook ad.
Speaker 1:I would say of the bunch, two of them, us included. So we were one of two that actually got tangible results. Why? Because the other ones did not have qualified offers and proper messaging to the right person. They had proven the offer. They had no idea how to speak to an ideal client avatar and they had no idea how to put messaging together to sell them. We came in with a sales page that was already converting because we had proven it with organic efforts and organic traffic, and then we just put gasoline to the fire. I can absolutely take your offers to the next level. If you have questions about that, let me know in the comments below on this episode. You can actually comment below. So if you have questions, make sure you drop those below and we'll see you guys in the next one.
