10MINMC.Ep.14.V1.AUDIO
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Trey Sheneman: [00:00:00] If your message sounds like everyone else in your industry, well then congratulations, you're invisible. Today we're gonna talk about messaging that cuts through the noise.
Welcome to 10 Minute Masterclass. I'm your host and lead MC Trey Sheneman, where each week on 10 Minute Masterclass, our goal is to be the weekly mic drop for business breakthrough. We do that through trying to translate timeless business principles to help you solve today's business. Problems. The frame we use to do that through, we call the core four drivers of growth, which means each week on the episode, we take one of those core four drivers of growth and we dive a little bit deeper into it and [00:01:00] unpack for you lessons we've learned in the field of building businesses.
Those core four drivers of growth are marketing, sales, operations, and leadership. Now, before we dive into today's episode on marketing, specifically on messaging, I'm excited to announce cue the applause (cheering noises) . We have gotten sponsored by Live Well, 10 Minute Masterclass is now being sponsored by Live Well Membership.
I'm gonna tell you a little bit about it. I'm gonna take a little while longer on this episode than I am in the future because I'm so excited about this partnership. So Live Well Vacation Club. More information in the show notes. You can find the link down there. It is a travel club. My wife and I are actually members of.
We love this, uh, we homeschool our kids. Obviously you guys know I'm an entrepreneur, so we can travel pretty flexibly, which makes the Live Well Vacation Club so attractive to us. It allows us to spend 14 nights, uh, at over 22 diff different destinations to choose from. At a rate that's unbelievable. I mean it's, when you see the pricing, I think we pay $4,500 a year for our, our membership tier.
They got more than one tier. [00:02:00] Um, but it's just such a great, a great deal and John and the team, they take such good care of you. I got my flip flops on 'cause we're actually going to the airport tonight to fly down to the beach for the weekend. Uh, to 30A. We're staying in Seagrove this weekend using some of our nights.
So Live Well, if you can travel flexibly, if you're empty nesters or newlyweds, or you homeschool your kids like we do, and you don't have to be at the beach or the mountains when everyone else wants to. I highly recommend you look into the Live Well Vacation Club. Okay, let's jump into today's episode on messaging.
As I said, at the start of the pod. If your messaging is the same as everyone else's in your space, you are going to be invisible. And so today I really wanna jump into you, jump into this issue with you. And just I, I, I've, I've actually got some heavy notes here today and I wanna move through these notes here pretty quickly and I wanna make sure that I communicate this really clearly.
'cause I think that messaging matters now more than ever. I, especially because of the rise of AI and a lot of people aren't sure who they can necessarily trust anymore. I think your messaging is the [00:03:00] first conversion layer to your success. So it's important that you get it right. It's the big idea. 'cause here's the truth, attention online is expensive, but confusion is even more costly, and if your market is confused, they cannot buy from you. Most websites, sales pages, and emails fail because they lead with what the company does, not with what the customer gets. You're not trying to impress your com, your competitors. You're trying to impress your customers.
Remember this mantra, if you confuse, you lose. If you clarify, you convert. So again, messaging. The big idea for today is that messaging is the first conversion layer before pricing, before product market fit. Before like really clever copy hacks that your team might suggest. Your core messaging of answering the questions to your pers uh, prospective customer.
Why should I care and why should I act now? Answering those two questions is the most critical thing you do with your messaging [00:04:00] framework. So what I wanna do in the next few minutes is I wanna walk you through the five Cs of really conversion driven messaging that I see work with our clients every day inside of our business.
Herald. Number one, is your messaging clear. Would a seventh grader understand what you sell? Can someone skim your homepage in five seconds and know who it's for and what it does? An example of unclear messaging to me would be something like we revolutionize enterprise workforce automation. A better way to say that might be save 10 hours a week with one simple app for team productivity.
Making your messaging way clearer and the general main benefit that your prospective customer gets from your product is a huge opportunity to be more clear after being clear. The next focus point is to make sure. That your messaging is customer centric. Here's a good way to know your messaging is not customer centric.
Go on your website today. When you hear this podcast, [00:05:00] read your website. How many times do you see the word we? Count 'em up. Then go back and see how many times you see the word you. Count those up. I will bet. Unless you've had a, a marketer in your corner who understands messaging, you're gonna see way more we than you're gonna see you or yours.
The challenge with that is, is we like to talk about ourselves a lot when we're behind the company, but that's not actually what's going to be clear messaging we need to talk at in the, in the headspace. We need to communicate in the headspace of the person reading our website, of reading our emails, uh, reading our, uh, our print mailers, reading our ads.
And we need to frame our product as a vehicle that solves their problems, not as some grand innovation you've made where the spotlight's shining on you. We need to turn the spotlight on the problems of our customers and how our product makes their lives easier. So here's a pro tip. You can try this filter.
I want you to rewrite [00:06:00] your message from the perspective of the customer saying, I want to, what do they want to do? And then just write that in the second person on their website if you want to __. Fill in the blank and fill that in. You. You will, you will, you will see, um, if you could have a camera, uh, you know, a webcam on the faces, recording the body language and the facial expressions of your prospective customer reading a website that has we on it, versus reading a website that has you on it.
You would see the psychology in the emotion of it play out before your eyes, so right in that manner. So clear customer-centric. Number three, credible. Show don't tell. And the best way to show is not by putting pictures of your team on there, even though that would humanize your brand and help. From a messaging standpoint, the best way to show is to let other, the show for you, and you do that through testimonials. Through social proof, through user-generated content, through case studies that have validated quotes in the case studies from the clients that they're about, [00:07:00] um, stats, screenshot, screenshots, anything third party that helps you be able to say the general phrase of it.
Hey, don't take our word for it. Take theirs. They have experienced what we're talking about. They understand who we are. Um, an example of a way you might do a validation state like this is join over 14,000 business owners who use blank product to grow faster. So make sure that you're building not just social proof into the imagery or the videos, but into the words that you're using in your messaging.
The fourth way that you can have messaging that cuts through the noise is about making it compelling. What's the hook? What's the, what's that enticement, the urgency, the emotion? In a prior episode, I talked about the core five, uh, kind of driving emotions in conversion. That's a great episode. I don't remember the number off the top of my head, but we'll link to it in the show notes.
Um, and that can be just a great episode for you to go a little deeper in this compulsion bucket. Um, those emotions by the way, are hopefulness, conviction, nostalgia, belonging, and [00:08:00] humor. But all of those emotional anchors, the best way in my experience for you, for you to be able to create hooks that are compelling, is to tell stories and to tell stories that naturally include those emotions in the arc of what's happening in the story.
So stories, stories that show transformation. They have a beginning and middle and the end. It's a great way to move forward with this. So, hey, the last one is to be consistent. Is your brand promise the same on your homepage, your Instagram bio, your sales? Deck and your pitches. Inconsistency creates friction and friction kills trust.
So make sure that you're leaned into this and your kind of core homework this week is to do a messaging audit. And really jump in and see how much friction is in your, is in your natural way. Your, your team is talking about it. Is the team aligned in what they're saying? So here in this next week, I wanna give you three quick wins based on these five Cs that you could do that, uh, to hopefully move your messaging forward and not have it be so invisible.
[00:09:00] Number one, I want you to rewrite your homepage headline using the problem of the of the customer, the promise of your product and the proof. Another way that uh, you can get clearer messaging this week is you could do five real customer interviews and ask them what the problem was they were trying to solve when they bought your product, and then use the exact words they tell you when they say how your product has fixed that problem and.
Going forward, maybe you are running some ads right now. You could run a split test of a really consistent, clear, compelling headline versus something clever and see what works out. Consistent and clear is something that is going to be, uh, benefit led. Really simple to understand. So again, remember in everything with your messaging, your message at the end of the day isn't what you say.
It's what your customers remember. And if you really want to be remembered, well. Kill the wes. Use the yous. Tell stories, making them compelling. Make them clear. Do the hard work of making your message so [00:10:00] unique that it has to stand out. Don't blend in with your competition. It's not really gonna get you anywhere.
I hope you'll take action on this, this week, that you will get to clarity in your messaging. If you want feedback on your messaging, shoot me a DM on LinkedIn or pop me an email. I'll be happy to take a peek for you. As always, I hope you get something outta this episode, and until next time on 10 Minute Masterclass, we'll catch you on the flip side.
