7 Effective Marketing Strategies for 2024 (TIPS, TRICKS & TACTICS)

Summary

In this insightful marketing guide, Adam reveals seven lesser-discussed yet powerful strategies to enhance marketing effectiveness. He emphasizes the importance of volume and consistency, introducing the 'marketing sweet spot' concept and the 'rule of seven' for customer engagement. Adam also discusses the psychological 'mere exposure effect,' advocating for strategic and frequent brand presence to build trust. He advises going deep with a specific target audience rather than broad, using the 'Ideal Customer Avatar' (ICA) approach to understand and connect with customers' 'miracles and miseries.' Lastly, he stresses the significance of focusing on benefits over features to emotionally resonate with customers, suggesting a flexible marketing approach that alternates between emotional and logical appeals.

Takeaways

• 🔑 The core issue with ineffective marketing often lies in insufficient marketing efforts rather than quality.
• 📈 Success in marketing is not about quick fixes but understanding the underlying principles and strategies.
• 📊 The 'Marketing Sweet Spot' is a critical concept where businesses need to push through the minimum effective dose to see significant results.
• 📉 The 'Minimum Effective Dose' (MED) is the threshold that must be exceeded to make an impact with marketing efforts.
• 🎯 The 'Marketing Rule of Seven' suggests that customers typically require seven touchpoints before making a purchase decision.
• 🤔 The 'Mere Exposure Effect' indicates that familiarity breeds trust, which is why consistent brand exposure is crucial.
• 💌 Email marketing is emphasized as a vital tool, suggesting that businesses should be sending more emails than commonly recommended.
• 🎯 Targeting a specific audience ('going deep') is more effective than casting a wide net; businesses should aim for quality over quantity.
• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The 'Ideal Customer Avatar' (ICA) is a concept that helps businesses understand and connect with their most profitable customer segments.
• 🛍️ Understanding a customer's 'Miracles and Miseries' is key to positioning a business as the solution to their problems.
• 🔄 The importance of alternating between highlighting benefits and features in marketing to appeal to both emotional and logical decision-making.

Q & A

What are the seven marketing secrets that Adam wants to share in the video?

The script does not explicitly list all seven marketing secrets, but it discusses the importance of volume in marketing, the concept of the marketing sweet spot, the marketing rule of seven, the mere exposure effect, focusing on a specific target market rather than going broad, and the significance of understanding the ICA (Ideal Customer Avatar).

Why might someone's marketing not be working as well as they want?

According to Adam, 90% of the time, it's because they're not doing enough marketing. It's a matter of volume and quantity, not just quality.

What is the 'marketing sweet spot' Adam mentions?

The 'marketing sweet spot' refers to the optimal level of marketing efforts where saturation of the market occurs, and the audience is effectively reached with enough touchpoints and engagements.

What does Adam suggest is the typical mistake people make when their marketing doesn't get traction?

People often make one post on social media or a single ad and expect immediate results. When it doesn't work, they switch platforms instead of understanding that marketing requires time, energy, and consistent effort.

What is the 'marketing rule of seven' and why is it important?

The 'marketing rule of seven' suggests that a customer needs around seven touchpoints or interactions with a brand before making a purchase decision. It's important because it emphasizes the need for consistent and repeated engagement with the audience.

What is the 'mere exposure effect' and how does it relate to marketing?

The 'mere exposure effect' is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to develop a preference for things they are frequently exposed to. In marketing, this means that the more a brand appears in front of potential customers, the more they are likely to trust and like the brand.

Why is it not effective to target 'everyone' as your market?

Targeting 'everyone' leads to a watered-down and bland message that doesn't resonate with any specific group. It's more effective to target a specific ICA (Ideal Customer Avatar) to create a deeper connection and a more impactful message.

What is an ICA and why is it crucial for effective marketing?

An ICA, or Ideal Customer Avatar, is a detailed profile of your ideal customer, including demographic, geographic, and psychographic details. It's crucial for creating targeted marketing messages that resonate with the specific audience you want to attract.

What are 'miracles and miseries' in the context of creating an ICA?

'Miracles' refer to the desired end states or aspirations of your customers, while 'miseries' refer to their fears, problems, and pains. Understanding these helps in positioning your business as a solution that can move customers from their current state of misery to their desired miracles.

What is the difference between selling 'features' and 'benefits' in marketing?

Features are the attributes or characteristics of a product or service, while benefits are the positive impacts or advantages those features provide to the customer. Marketing should focus on selling benefits because they are emotionally driven and more compelling to potential customers.

Why might a marketing strategy that initially focuses on benefits later switch to focusing on features?

If a marketing strategy that leads with benefits doesn't convert customers, it might switch to leading with features to appeal to those who are more logically driven. This approach ensures that the marketing covers both emotional and logical aspects to appeal to a broader range of customers.

Outlines

00:00

🔑 Unlocking Marketing Potential

In this segment, Adam introduces seven marketing secrets aimed at enhancing business strategies. He emphasizes the need to understand why marketing might not be as effective as desired and suggests that often, the issue is a lack of sufficient marketing efforts rather than quality. Adam proposes that the key lies in identifying the marketing sweet spot, which involves reaching the right volume of marketing activities to see tangible results. He illustrates this concept with a bell curve analogy, explaining that most businesses fall short of the 'minimum effective dose' required to impact the market significantly. Adam encourages persistence and a deeper understanding of marketing strategies to improve results and sales.

05:01

📈 The Marketing Sweet Spot & Rule of Seven

Adam discusses the concept of the marketing sweet spot, which is the optimal level of marketing effort that yields the best results. He argues that most businesses have not yet reached their full potential within their industries, suggesting that they should increase their marketing efforts. Adam introduces the 'marketing rule of seven', which posits that a customer needs approximately seven touchpoints or interactions with a brand before making a purchase. He advises marketers to be strategic and consistent in their efforts, tailoring their approach to the specific platforms and preferences of their target audience.

10:01

💌 Harnessing the Power of Email Marketing

In this part, Adam stresses the importance of email marketing, dismissing the common belief that sending one email per week or month is sufficient. He argues that businesses should aim to send at least three emails per week to leverage the marketing rule of seven and the mere exposure effect, which suggests that familiarity breeds trust and liking. Adam advises against the 'one-size-fits-all' approach and emphasizes the need to tailor the frequency and content of emails to suit the specific characteristics and preferences of the target market.

15:02

🎯 Targeting the Ideal Customer Avatar (ICA)

Adam introduces the concept of the Ideal Customer Avatar (ICA), which is a detailed profile of a business's ideal customer. He suggests that instead of targeting 'everyone', businesses should focus on creating a deep connection with a specific group of customers. To build an ICA, Adam recommends considering demographic, geographic, and psychographic details of the target audience. By understanding these details, businesses can better tailor their marketing messages to resonate with their audience on a deeper level.

20:04

🛍️ Benefits Over Features: Connecting Emotionally

Adam explains the marketing principle of selling benefits rather than features, arguing that customers are more interested in how a product or service will improve their lives than in the features themselves. He uses the example of a pen with a cap to illustrate the difference between a feature (the cap) and the associated benefit (preventing ink stains). Adam emphasizes the importance of appealing to emotions, as they are a more powerful driver of action than logic. He also touches on the idea of adjusting marketing messages based on whether they are initially driven by emotional or logical appeals.

🚀 Marketing Funnel Strategy and Persistence

In the concluding part, Adam circles back to the importance of marketing persistence and the need for a well-thought-out marketing funnel. He suggests that not having a clear marketing funnel strategy is a major oversight and encourages viewers to explore a linked video for further insights on digital marketing strategies. Adam reiterates that achieving marketing success requires time, energy, and investment, and that businesses must be willing to do more to see the desired results.

Keywords

💡Marketing Secrets

The term 'Marketing Secrets' refers to the not widely discussed strategies or tactics that can significantly improve marketing effectiveness. In the video, Adam introduces the concept by stating that he will share 'seven marketing secrets' which are more nuanced and complex than common marketing advice. These secrets are meant to help viewers understand why their marketing might not be as effective as desired and how to enhance it for better results.

💡Minimum Effective Dose (MED)

The 'Minimum Effective Dose' is a concept used to describe the threshold of marketing efforts that must be reached before any significant results can be observed. In the script, Adam explains that many businesses fall short of this MED, leading to a lack of momentum and ineffective marketing. The MED is part of the bell curve analogy used to illustrate the different stages of marketing efforts and their outcomes.

💡Marketing Sweet Spot

The 'Marketing Sweet Spot' is the optimal level of marketing efforts where the maximum impact is achieved without reaching a point of diminishing returns. Adam discusses this as the ideal zone on the bell curve where businesses should aim to be, ensuring they are saturating the market with enough touchpoints and engagements to be effective.

💡Marketing Rule of Seven

The 'Marketing Rule of Seven' is a principle suggesting that a customer needs to have around seven touchpoints or interactions with a brand before making a purchase decision. In the video, Adam emphasizes the importance of this rule to not give up too early on marketing efforts and to ensure consistent engagement with the target audience.

💡Mere Exposure Effect

The 'Mere Exposure Effect' is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to develop a preference for things they are frequently exposed to. Adam mentions this effect to highlight the importance of consistent brand presence and how it builds trust and familiarity with the audience, ultimately leading to increased likability and trustworthiness.

💡Email Marketing

Email Marketing is a method of directly marketing a business's products or services through email communications to potential or current customers. In the script, Adam argues against the common belief of sending limited marketing emails and suggests that businesses should be sending more emails, potentially up to two per day, depending on the industry and audience.

💡Ideal Customer Avatar (ICA)

An 'Ideal Customer Avatar' is a detailed profile of a business's ideal customer, including demographic, geographic, and psychographic details. Adam discusses the importance of having a clear ICA to tailor marketing messages effectively and to understand the common characteristics of top customers, which is crucial for creating targeted and appealing marketing campaigns.

💡Miracles and Miseries

In the context of the video, 'Miracles and Miseries' refer to the desires and fears of the target audience, respectively. Adam explains that understanding and addressing these elements is key to creating effective marketing messages. 'Miracles' are the positive outcomes customers hope to achieve, while 'Miseries' are the negative situations they want to avoid.

💡Benefits vs. Features

The distinction between 'Benefits' and 'Features' is a fundamental concept in marketing. 'Benefits' are the advantages or positive outcomes that a product or service provides to the customer, whereas 'Features' are the attributes or characteristics of the product. Adam emphasizes selling the benefits over the features, as customers are more interested in how a product will improve their lives rather than the product's technical specifications.

💡Emotion vs. Logic

The terms 'Emotion' and 'Logic' represent the two primary drivers of human decision-making. In the video, Adam discusses the importance of appealing to emotions in marketing because it is a more powerful motivator than logic. However, he also acknowledges the role of logic, suggesting a balanced approach where marketing messages initially evoke emotion and subsequently provide logical reasons to support the emotional appeal.

💡Marketing Funnel

A 'Marketing Funnel' is a visual representation of the customer journey, from initial awareness to the final purchase decision. Adam mentions the importance of having a clear marketing funnel strategy, rather than just hoping for results. The funnel helps businesses understand and optimize each stage of customer engagement, ensuring that marketing efforts are directed and effective.

Highlights

Adam shares seven marketing secrets that are often overlooked due to their complexity and nuance.

The core reasons why marketing may not be as effective as desired and how understanding these secrets can enhance results.

The common misconception that a single marketing action like a social media post should yield immediate success.

Marketing is a business function that requires time, energy, and investment, much like accounting or HR.

The concept of the 'marketing sweet spot' where businesses often fail to push through the minimum effective dose.

A visual representation of the marketing sweet spot using a bell curve to illustrate the stages of marketing effectiveness.

The importance of not giving up too early and continuing marketing efforts to reach the saturation point in the market.

The 'marketing rule of seven' which suggests that customers need around seven touchpoints before making a purchase.

The psychological phenomenon of 'mere exposure effect' where frequency of exposure builds trust and familiarity.

The necessity of a strategic email marketing campaign, debunking the myth of limiting emails to avoid bothering customers.

The strategy of going deep rather than broad by focusing on a specific target market to build stronger connections.

The importance of identifying and understanding the ideal customer avatar (ICA) to tailor marketing messages effectively.

The concept of 'miracles and miseries' as a way to deeply understand the desires and fears of the target audience.

The cliché 'sell the benefits, not the features' explained in the context of emotional and logical drivers in marketing.

A strategy for alternating between highlighting benefits and features based on customer responses to marketing efforts.

The necessity of doing more in marketing if the desired results are not being achieved, emphasizing the need for persistence and strategy.

The importance of having a clear marketing funnel and not relying solely on hope and wishes for marketing success.

Transcripts

- Hey there, my friend, Adam here.

Today, I wanna share with you seven marketing secrets

or marketing hacks or marketing tricks,

essentially things that nobody's really talking about.

Not even me that often.

And it's because they're a little more complicated

and a little more nuanced

than the quick hits that we often get

when it comes to social media,

things like post at this time,

or adapt your content for this algorithm tweak

or use this kind of font or this kind of color

or all of those things.

What I'd rather do is get to the core of why your marketing

may not be working as well as you want.

And even if it is working okay,

understanding the seven things

that I'm gonna be walking you through here today

will allow you to immediately upgrade all of it.

Get better results, more clicks, more traffic,

more sales from everything you do.

And not only that,

probably the most important thing that I could ever give you

is to show you how to think about your marketing,

how to process different marketing strategies

and basically the crazy stuff that goes on inside my head

when I'm evaluating different marketing tactics and tools

and resources and all of that.

So my goal here today is as ambitious as it is,

is to try to pack seven secrets and seven hacks

into a very short period of time,

so that you're gonna be able to watch this.

And you're going to be able to extract

these little golden nuggets and apply them to your business,

to your client's business,

to whatever it is that you're doing.

And it starts right now.

So the very first thing that we need to talk about

is kind of what ends up happening when someone says,

"Hey, my marketing's just not working.

Like, it's just nothing's happening.

No one's clicking.

No one's watching my stuff.

The algorithm isn't pushing it or promoting it to people.

Nothing's working."

It's something that I hear all the time.

I see it in the comments below very common.

90% of the time,

it's because they're just not doing enough marketing.

It's just a question of volume.

It's a question of quantity, not so much quality.

So let me explain.

I don't know who's to blame for this one.

Maybe it's the get-rich-quick things.

Maybe it's all of the courses and the programs

that promise that you can become a millionaire in 30 days

with no work or whatever it is.

But for some reason, when people think about marketing,

they think that all they need to do is make a Facebook ad

or an Instagram ad or post one video on YouTube

and they'll just blow up

and become the next viral sensation

and everything will just work out miraculously well,

and, seriously, I wish this was the case.

That'd be amazing, but it's not, right.

It's like marketing is just a business function.

I'm gonna make this sound horribly boring,

but it's like accounting or finance

or legal aspects of a business or HR or sales

or whatever it is.

They're all just different business functions,

which means that they require time.

They require energy.

They require money and investment in them

in order to get them to work.

Now, what ends up happening

is most people will make one post on social media.

It won't get the traction.

And then they'll swear off that platform.

So they'll hop over here,

try out Twitter now and make a couple tweets.

Nobody engages.

So they say, "Well, Twitter doesn't work,"

and they'll make a YouTube video.

And then that won't take off and they get frustrated

and they get angry because it's just not working

when the reality is, they probably just haven't done enough.

And that's why the first concept,

the first sort of hacker secret

is identifying the marketing sweet spot.

So in the most rudimentary art drawing class ever,

let me show you exactly what I mean by marketing sweet spot.

And you can see where you fall

and where the vast majority of businesses fall.

And if you find yourself in this position,

you know that the answer is to keep on pushing through.

It's not to dial back.

It's not to pivot.

It's not to do anything like that.

It's just to keep going forward.

So lemme show you what that looks like.

So I want you to imagine for a second, a bell curve,

kind of like the traditional bell curve.

Of course, that'll be the, there we go.

We'll get some ink flowing here.

So this is our bell curve, our ugly, ugly bell curve.

And it's gonna have three different sections.

Now over here on the left,

this is what you're going to call

the minimum effective dose.

So the MED, the minimum effective dose.

Essentially, what ends up happening here

is until you're in this range, nothing you do matters.

It's about sort of making that one post on social media

that someone sees one time and then that's it.

And then you wonder why it's not working.

It's about spending $5 on Facebook ads or Instagram ads

and not getting immediate sales

and then sort of swearing off

the entire online advertising system and that,

but the reality is we just haven't hit

the minimum effective dose.

There's not enough momentum.

There's not enough touch points.

There's not enough exposures and reach and engagement

with the audience that you're trying to reach.

And we're gonna talk about that one in just a second,

but this is where 90% of businesses fall

as they sit around here in this minimum effective dose

kind of half committing to different strategies,

and then wondering why nothing's working

and the answer here, the solution is, again,

you've got to push through, you've got to move up here.

And this is the sweet spot.

This is where you're going to find

sort of the saturation of your market.

You're going to be hitting the number of touch points

that are required.

Again, we'll talk about that in just a second.

You're going to be making sure

that the people that you want to reach

are actually seeing your content.

You're gonna make sure that you've essentially saturated

everything that you can.

Now, the reality is this sweet spot is huge, massive,

massively huge.

Like when we're thinking about your business,

your market or your industry,

these are huge, huge industries,

billions and billions of dollars.

So unless your business

is doing a billion dollars a year or more,

there's more that you can do.

It's crazy when I hear about someone that thinks that,

"Well, look, I'm already posting once a day on Instagram,"

or, "I'm already making one YouTube video a week,"

or, "I've got a podcast.

I'm pretty much maxed out.

There's nothing else I can do."

And they're sitting at around, say a million bucks a year,

and they're in, let's use health and fitness.

So if you're in,

let's say the health and fitness industry,

this massive multi-billion dollar industry

and your business is doing a million a year,

two million a year, a hundred grand a year, whatever it is,

you haven't even scratched the surface

for what you're capable of doing

and for the amount of people that you could reach.

So you could go from one post a day to five posts a day.

You could make one video on YouTube a week

to one video on YouTube a day.

You could do two videos a day.

You could start other channels.

You could have other podcasts.

There's so much that you can do.

Now, of course, at some point,

you're going to reach this third area,

which is diminishing returns, biminishing returns.

There we go, D for diminishing, diminishing returns.

There's gonna be some point where eventually more money,

more effort, more time isn't gonna pay off,

but I can't even begin to tell you of all of the businesses

I've worked with over the last 10 years,

the tiniest fraction falls in here.

And typically it's when they're spending

like a million dollars a month on ads

and they simply can't get in front of more people

with their ads.

So they're doing blogging,

they're doing podcasting, they're doing SEO.

They're running Google ads and Facebook ads

and Instagram ads and all that.

The biggest example here

is if you're running some kind of search-based PPC,

pay-per-click advertising, like a Google search ad.

At the end of the day,

you can't make people search for more stuff.

So you can max out.

But again, you can make that broader.

You can go for discovery ad platforms

like Facebook and Instagram,

where you can put things in front of people

that may potentially be interested.

There's a lot of ways.

So the reality is,

let's find a bright, happy, colorful marker.

This is where we're going for, this sweet spot here.

Like everybody is down here

in this sort of minimum effective dose.

They haven't even scratched the surface for what's possible.

And then they're wondering why their marketing

is not working.

The best piece of advice of everything

that I could give you here

is, really, you just have to do more.

Now, of course, you need to be strategic.

You need to think through it.

That's what the rest of this is going to be about,

but more is your answer.

So on that note, how much more?

And that leads me to the marketing rule of seven.

Now, depending on your business or market or your industry,

depending on if you're selling something

for low-dollar value or high-dollar value,

it's kind of universally agreed

that for somebody to make a purchase decision,

for someone to take action and actually buy from you,

they need around seven touch points,

which means seven engagements,

seven interactions with your brand.

You can't simply put something in front of them one time,

expect them to buy and then call it a day.

You're gonna have to do this multiple times, seven.

Now, if it's expensive, it's gonna be seven to 14.

If it's significantly cheaper,

like you're selling a pack of gum for 99 cents or something,

you probably don't need seven touch points.

One should be sufficient,

but that rule of seven is important

because it forces you to not give up too early.

It's just like when you're looking

at these statistics around sales

and you realize that most conversions,

most closes for sales happen after like five rejections

or five follow ups, five emails, five extra calls.

It's rarely, pretty much never, the first time.

Same thing goes with marketing.

A bit of a side note here,

but marketing is kind of selling one to many,

sales is one to one, marketing, one to many.

So we use the same concepts, the same strategies,

all of that with sales.

But I like to think of marketing as a little more exciting

and a little more challenging even

because instead of trying to convince

one person at a time and overcome their objections

and their fears and their concerns,

we have to do this on mass

and we have to do it without really getting much feedback

from our market.

So rule of seven, that's important.

Now, how do we do this?

Well, we do this by showing up

in front of our ideal target market

where they're present and active,

which means that we need to be selective

about what social media platforms we're going to,

about what kind of content we're creating,

about where we're putting that.

And we need to make sure that it's in alignment,

not only with you and your content style

and what you like doing, hate doing,

but also where your people are.

In fact, that's the most important element.

There's no point on being on Twitter or Pinterest or TikTok

or Instagram or YouTube if your people aren't there.

So you've gotta find out

where they're present and active online,

and then you've got to make it your mission to follow up

and to make sure that you're consistently showing up

in front of them with value, with content, and with offers.

So that's the marketing rule of seven.

Now the next point is more of a psychological phenomenon,

more of a mental hack that you can use.

I've talked about this a ton on this channel here,

but it's called the mere exposure effect

and what the mere exposure effect is,

is a psychological phenomenon

that says we, as people, as humans,

we associate frequency with trust.

So the more often that we show up in front of people,

the more often that they see us, the more they know us,

the more they like us and the more that they trust us.

This kind of stems back to caveman days,

where if we saw something enough times

and it didn't try to kill us or eat us,

we assumed it was safe.

Well, all of that programming,

all of that evolution is carried forward to today.

So now when we see things again and again and again,

we naturally start to like things more

because we're familiar with them.

They're less scary

and, therefore, we're more likely to trust them.

So this is why the marketing rule of seven is so important.

This is why following up is so important.

This is why making sure

that you've got a solid email marketing strategy

in place is paramount.

It's crucial.

Probably the second most important thing I could offer here,

the first one is to make sure

that you get out of that minimum effective dose zone

and into the sweet spot, by doing more.

The second probably most valuable piece of advice

I could give you is to make sure

that you're doing some kind of email marketing

and you're doing it more than you think.

So for some weird reason,

there's this rule, this gospel in the marketing world,

that you should send one marketing email a week at most,

maybe one a month, 'cause you don't wanna bother people.

Garbage. It's absolute garbage.

There's plenty of businesses and industries

where you could send one email every three days,

you could send one email a day.

There's some businesses and companies

that I've consulted for and done work with

and own and have stake in

that do two emails a day and it works.

People don't get angry, they don't unsubscribe.

You've just got to know who your market is.

At the very least, however,

I'd say that you should be shooting for three emails a week,

kind of at minimum.

Otherwise, again, you're not going to have the chance

to establish yourself

and to take advantage of all of those touch points

and the marketing rule of seven

and the mere exposure effect.

And that leads me perfectly to the next kind of secret,

which is that you really wanna go deep rather than broad.

So let me tell you what is probably my biggest pet peeve

when it comes to marketing.

And that's whenever I ask somebody,

"Well, who's your target market?"

And they say, "Everyone,"

or "People with money," and that's amazing.

That'd be great,

but there's like eight billion people on the planet.

And I promise you, you don't want all of them.

Even if they all wanted to do business with you,

some of them are just terrible, terrible fits

for your business.

So why don't we rein that in a little bit.

And even if we were to say separate men and women,

well, now, we're down to like four billion

or then we separate to this country.

Now we're down to like a hundred million

and then maybe this area, now we're down to 30 million.

I mean, still, we're gonna wanna carve that down

to a significantly lower number,

someone that you're going to be able to connect with

on a deeper level.

So the easiest way to do this

is to take a look at yourself and your business.

Now I appreciate you are not your customer.

You know things that they don't know,

you have experiences that they don't have.

However, most people, when it comes to business,

they're solving a problem that they had at some point.

They're solving something that they know about,

that they care about,

that they want to share and help other people.

So you probably understand a little bit about your situation

and what they're going through,

and, therefore, you're more likely to attract people

similar to you.

It's another kind of same reason

that if you are a personal brand or a coach or consultant

or someone like that, you tend to attract people,

give or take 10 years around your age.

So if you're 30, you'll attract like 20 to 40.

If you're 40, you'll attract 30 to 50, whatever it is.

There's like this 20-year sliding scale,

10 years on each side that tends to work,

that can balloon out a little bit here and there.

But on average, you'll find most of your people

fall in that range.

Again, it's just because you relate to them better.

You know the words that they use,

you grew up in the similar time,

you have the same references, all of that stuff.

But the point is you want to go deep here

and you wanna make better connections with fewer people

than these superficial surface level connections

with a ton of people.

The big reason here is because when you go broad,

when you go after everybody,

you're forced to naturally water down your message.

It becomes more vanilla, it becomes more bland.

And it has to, because if you are being specific

about someone's unique pains and unique problems,

well, it wouldn't be appealing or interesting

to, like, everybody else.

So, therefore, you have to make it broad.

And when you're broad,

you're boring and everybody just ignores you.

And you sound like 99% of the other businesses

and marketers out there saying the same things,

like we offer higher quality

and we offer better service and all of that stuff

that everybody's heard a million times before

and they're completely blind and deaf to.

So the best way to solve this

is to move on to our next point here,

which is that you need an ICA.

ICA is marketing talk for ideal customer avatar.

I'm not completely strict

on this exact fictional representation

of your ideal customer.

And you've got to give them a name and a hair color,

and they've got to wear this kind of shoes

and listen to this kind of music.

I don't think that's necessary.

It's helpful at times, what I think is more important

is that you get really clear around the commonalities,

the common characteristics that your top customers,

your top clients, your top audience members have in common.

And we typically divide this

into three different categories.

The first of which being demographic.

So what's their age, their gender, their income,

their occupation, their title,

all of those stereotypical marketing things

that we associate.

Number two, what are their geographic details?

What city, state, province, country, where do they live?

Number three, they're psychographic details.

This is all of the head stuff.

And this is where the bulk of your ICA

should really be formed.

So what are their values, their attitudes,

their interests, their beliefs, their organizations,

their political affiliations, their lifestyles,

things that make them them.

After all, we often want to group people

into these broad buckets,

like men or women or this age or that age.

But the reality is depending on what product

or service you sell, you may have a wide range of that.

And it may be more problem based.

On the other hand,

you may also have multiple different ICAs,

ideal customer avatars.

That's cool too.

I'm all right if you've got like,

look, we work well with women who are 20 to 25

and we also work well with men who are 40 to 45,

but those two different ICAs

are gonna have different pains and problems

and fears and frustrations.

We'll talk about that in just a second.

So you can serve them both,

but you need to serve them both with different messages.

You simply can't appeal to them

by using the same generic, broad, bland terminology

'cause you're just gonna turn the other one off

by talking about things

that are completely irrelevant to them.

So you have an ICA,

but make sure that it's specific and you can have multiple.

And on that note, the way to dive into that

is with the psychographic details

of their values and attitudes and interests and beliefs.

And I call that their miracles and miseries.

So let me find my pen, and let's talk about that now.

All right, so when it comes to creating

your ideal customer avatar,

when it comes to thinking about your audience,

your clients, your customers, the money is, the value,

the real results that you're going to get

from your marketing come down

to identifying their miracles and miseries.

Now there's this great expression that I love

that says customers don't buy when they understand,

they buy when they feel understood.

The way to make them feel understood is with this.

So their miracles that's over here,

that's all the things that they want, their needs,

their desires, their dreams,

all of the things that they wish would happen,

the desired end state of where they're trying to get.

And then of course, over here, you've got their miseries.

These are their fears, their problems, their pains,

their frustrations,

all of the things that they're trying to get away from,

at least in regards to your business and to your offer.

You need to identify what these are

and ideally drill down into which the most important

and the most painful ones are.

And then what the most desirable end states are,

because then you're going to be able to position

your business as the bridge

that takes them from miracle, oh, here we go.

Memo to self: I gotta buy some smaller tip markers,

but that's it.

This is your business right there.

Your business's job, your offer, your product, your service,

whatever it is that you sell,

it's only mission is to move them away

from their current state that they're in right now,

that they don't want to be in, whatever that pain is,

and towards the desired end state.

And the better that you're able to communicate that,

which is essentially the job of marketing,

it's to communicate the value of what you have to them

in regards to your offer, your product, your service.

The better you're able to do that,

the more likely you are to get somebody to take action

and to actually buy from you and move them here.

And this is where the conversions happen.

It's right here.

It's moving them away from miseries and towards miracles.

And on that note, let's hit the next point here,

which is a very cliched thing to say,

but I wanna break it down a little bit more.

There's this super cliched saying in marketing

that says you want to sell the benefits, not the features

or sell the sizzle, not the steak.

The problem is, is that like most cliches,

there's that element of truth to it

that's absolutely the fact here,

is like when it comes to marketing

and to representing what it is that you're selling

and what you're trying to promote,

it's not about the features,

it's about what those features are going to deliver

through the benefits.

That's what they're after.

They don't care about features.

They care about how those features

are going to positively impact them.

So yes, we can make a cursory mention of the features.

We gotta highlight them.

We'll talk about them.

And we'll talk about kind of the flip side of that

in just a second, but the real value is in the benefit.

Now, one of my favorite examples

and it kind of stems from like, "Hey, sell me this pen."

Well, it comes down to,

this pen doesn't actually have a pen cap,

but we're gonna use that analogy anyway.

It's sort of like,

well, why does the pen have a pen cap or fictional pen cap?

And the reason that this pen has a pen cap

and the benefits it provides,

that's what we wanna highlight.

So the feature is a pen cap.

The benefits is, well, it prevents you from getting ink

all over yourself.

And then of course we could elaborate on that.

We could explain it a little further and so on.

A bit of a side note,

do you know why pen caps have like those tiny little holes?

I dunno if you've got a pen around, you can find one,

but like they've got those little holes on the pen lid,

it's actually so if you swallow it,

you don't choke to death.

Random, hey.

Anyway, the reason that benefits work

significantly better than features,

is because benefits are emotionally driven,

and emotion is far more powerful driver than logic.

It doesn't mean we can't have logic.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't use logic.

We absolutely should, but emotion is the money maker.

That's what compels somebody to take action.

When they feel it, like, deep down in their core,

this is going to make my life better.

This is going to help me achieve the goals that I want.

This is going to increase my status.

This is going to make me healthier or happier or wealthier

or any of those intrinsic drivers that we have as humans,

when we're able to properly communicate that,

that's when conversions happen.

That's when sales happen.

Now here's the kicker.

When you're first creating your marketing,

whether it's through an ad or a sales page

or a social media post or an email or anything like that,

we always wanna highlight the benefits.

And then of course, we're gonna talk about the features.

But if for some reason, people don't convert, we flip it.

And then the next time, we lead with features

and we back up the benefits.

And the reason that we do this

is because we know that emotion

is a significantly more powerful driver than logic,

but logic still has a part.

Not to mention, it's not that some people are,

or it's not just that some people

are more emotional than logical.

We all know those people

that fall on one end of the spectrum or another,

but it's also that we, as people,

we have days where we're more emotional or more logical.

And within those days,

we have hours where we're more emotional and more logical

and there's situations and circumstances

that you can't always control for,

which is why we really want to cover our bases.

We wanna, of course, lead with emotion,

'cause it's the most powerful driver,

but we want to back it up with logic.

The next time somebody interacts with us,

if we tried emotion and it didn't work,

we'll lead with logic and we'll back it up with emotion,

and we'll kind of go back and forth.

We'll sprinkle in social proof.

We'll sprinkle in other forms of testimonials,

we'll sprinkle in guarantees and risk reversals.

We'll use all of the tools in our toolbox as marketers

to get somebody to take action,

knowing full well that we don't have control

over where they're at right now in their current situation.

And it's funny, I didn't actually plan this,

but this actually kind of leads us full circle

back to that beginning statement

of minimum effective dose

of you're simply probably not doing enough

if you're not getting the results that you want.

I mean, you can see here,

when we look over the rule of seven

and the mere exposure effect, we need to go deep.

We need to have ICAs,

talk about their miracles and miseries.

We need to highlight benefits.

And if that doesn't work, we go for the logical element.

And then we go back to benefits.

All of this is going to take time.

It's gonna take energy,

and it's gonna take investment in your marketing,

which is why if you're at this stage right now

where it's just not delivering the results that you want,

you need to do more.

Now of course, I'm not gonna leave you hanging

with just that,

which is why I'm gonna link up a video right here

that's gonna show you a digital marketing strategy

that's going to help.

So make sure to check it out now,

and we'll see you in the next video.

Now the worst offense here is not having a marketing funnel

or more accurately not thinking about your marketing funnel

and instead, just hoping and wishing.