What Going Into Anaphylactic Shock Taught Me About Marketing

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:03 - (Jared Erni): This is the for Impact podcast, the destination for impact driven entrepreneurs striving to live life on their terms and create a ripple effect of positive impact in the communities they serve. Where we put your success stories center stage, dissecting the lessons learned and sharing insights and ideas that will help you amplify your impact. And now, here's your host, Jared Ernie.

0:00:35 - (B): Last week, I had a big scare. This has never happened to me before, but I actually went into anaphylactic shock. I've never been allergic to anything like this, and so it caught me by surprise. But here's what happened. I already had kind of like a little bit of a stomach issue going on that day, and it cleared up by the evening. And so I went out to eat with a friend. Didn't think there would be any problems from doing that.

0:01:00 - (B): But later that night, I think it was probably midnight, 02:00 a.m. My stomach was hurting so bad. And I can't remember in the past 18 years having ever really thrown up in front of my wife. But I went into violent throwing up, and it was terrible. I took a bath, trying to calm my stomach down. I felt better. But an hour later, I was hurting again. And after this was probably now about, I didn't get any sleep.

0:01:31 - (C): About maybe 06:00 a.m.

0:01:33 - (B): I got in the bath again to see if I could just calm it down.

0:01:36 - (C): And all of a sudden, my hive started just popping up all over.

0:01:40 - (B): My hands started scratching, couldn't stop itching. Called for my wife and realized my whole mouth had swollen. And she came and helped try to find some Benadryl. Couldn't find any, so she went to the store as fast as she could while my son was ready to call 911, because now this point, I'd collapsed onto the floor and was having a hard time breathing. And it was kind of scary, scary moment for me.

0:02:04 - (C): I went to the hospital and got.

0:02:06 - (B): The things that I needed, spent the day there. They were trying to figure out what caused this because it didn't fall in the same pattern as most kind of allergic reactions to things. But clearly something set this on.

0:02:20 - (C): And so the big concern for me was we could cover up the symptoms.

0:02:26 - (B): And take Benadryl and an epi and fix myself. But at the end of the day, there was a root cause that we needed to address. And what was that exactly? And it got me thinking about marketing. Now, I'm going to take this, of course, to a marketing spin, but just to kind of put some closure to that story. End result is probably 95% I'm pretty sure that I had histamine food poisoning. And what that is, is when you consume food where there was a bacteria probably on that food, that actually secretes histamine.

0:03:02 - (B): And even though you can cook the bacteria dead, that histamine is still on that food. And so when you ingest that, that histamine goes through your whole digestive system, your body, and then you start to have allergic reaction effects from it. So though I don't believe I am actually allergic to something, I think that was a histamine effect that I had. And that to me, was what we've identified as most likely the root cause of what happened.

0:03:31 - (B): But here's the thing. When I think of how anaphylactic shock caused me to think about how do.

0:03:37 - (C): I look at marketing differently?

0:03:39 - (B): Many of the business owners that I work with are suffering from symptoms of poor marketing. And they're covering up those symptoms by throwing money at this traffic source or at this agency doing this or this thing and this thing, and they're trying.

0:03:57 - (C): To generate more results.

0:04:00 - (B): But at the end of the day, it's not going to give them the results they want because they are actually.

0:04:06 - (C): Suffering from poor marketing principles foundationally.

0:04:11 - (B): And in order for you to really.

0:04:13 - (C): Excel with your marketing, you have to address those root causes to create the.

0:04:20 - (B): Strong foundation you need with your marketing. And so I want to address three things that every business owner needs to do to address the root cause of poor marketing. Because if you can get good at these three things, if you nail these.

0:04:35 - (C): Three things down, mediocre marketing will be everything you need. It will work. Mediocre marketing will generate as much business as you need. But if you have poor marketing or.

0:04:50 - (B): Poor marketing foundations, you have to have.

0:04:53 - (C): Excellent marketing to cut through the noise.

0:04:57 - (B): So reduce the need for having to be the best at something when you can actually target these foundational marketing principles.

0:05:06 - (C): So here's number one.

0:05:08 - (B): Principle number one is get really clear on who your ideal client is. Most people operate under this mindset of like, I can help everyone. And when you try to market to everyone, you market to really no one. It's so hard to cut through the noise because you're just blending in more than standing out. But if you really want to get good at your marketing, you have to define niche down. Find out who your ideal client is so that you can speak to them in a very transformational way.

0:05:42 - (B): Here's an example. Today I was speaking with a pressure washer who told me he's figured out that about 75% of his clients are actually the women making the decisions. So I said, well, that is a very good thing to note because now you can tailor your marketing towards the way the women talk about pressure washing, the way they feel about their home. You want to be able to resonate with your ideal client. And if you're trying to talk to a 50 year old man or a 50 year old woman, you'll probably talk to them a little bit differently about pressure washing and what it would mean for them.

0:06:19 - (C): Right?

0:06:20 - (B): So getting really clear on who your ideal client is is one thing, and then getting really clear on what their.

0:06:26 - (C): Pain points are and what their ultimate desires are. Number two is, are you selling your service or are you selling the transformation of your service?

0:06:39 - (B): That's the higher way to do this because you have to sell the outcome of using your service or your product, not the actual product.

0:06:50 - (C): People don't care about your product.

0:06:52 - (B): They don't care about your service. What they care is what your service or product means to them. And so often we get into a place where we try to market and sell the thing or the product or the service, but we forget to actually really tell them what that's going to mean for them. Now here's a thing that will help you here if you understand what limbic messaging is. Limbic messaging is the kind of messaging that stimulates the emotional and buying decision parts of your brain, but that you can only stimulate that when you speak clearly into the preframe of what things will mean for that customer because of buying your product or service.

0:07:33 - (C): That's what their ultimate desire is. So don't sell the product or service, sell the transformation.

0:07:40 - (B): You're no longer in the business of roofing.

0:07:42 - (C): You're in the business of selling roofing. All right?

0:07:46 - (B): So you have to make that shift in your own mind. You may want to be the best roofer, but the reality is you're in the business now of selling roofing. And so you have to master how to do that. That's the most important thing to your business.

0:07:59 - (C): Not all the other operational things that.

0:08:01 - (B): You might think of, location or products.

0:08:05 - (C): All of that's important.

0:08:06 - (B): But the very most important thing is learning how to master your marketing and sales.

0:08:11 - (C): Because without it, you will never have.

0:08:14 - (B): That path to bring your message to market, and you will never resonate. You will always struggle if you don't do that. So focus. That is the most important part. Most businesses, I feel, operate under this mindset that marketing is this necessary evil to doing business. And because of that, they want to figure out how to cut costs and how to get shortcuts and just hire someone to do it for them. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't put in the work to master it yourself.

0:08:42 - (C): One, because it's much better done by.

0:08:45 - (B): You in the beginning than someone else. And two, because you can actually call people out on their BS when they're not doing it right. You need to understand good marketing principles. It's imperative. Now, number three is you have to.

0:08:59 - (C): Have a great offer.

0:09:00 - (B): Foundationally, if you don't have a great offer, you're always going to struggle and no one's going to see the difference between using you and someone else but to your advantage.

0:09:09 - (C): Most people don't know how to create a good offer. So the way most people compete by.

0:09:15 - (B): Creating an offer is they think I got to discount my price. If I discount my price, I'll get more sales. That is actually the worst way to do it because number one, you're conditioning clients to view you by price and not value. Two, you're attracting the wrong type of clients to grow a business. Three, you're competing as a commodity, which is the only way to win, is to be the one that charges the least. There's always going to be someone who will be willing to undercut you. You're giving away your margins. It's making it harder to grow your business, a healthy business.

0:09:41 - (B): So the opposite way of doing this is instead of discounting price, compete with more value. And that ultimately is what people care about more than price. They care about convenience, quality and value. So if you can create an offer that conveys better value, you're always going to win. You're going to attract higher quality clients, you're going to grow your margins, you're going to grow a healthier business.

0:10:03 - (B): You're going to decrease your cost per lead because you're going to increase your lead conversion. There's so many more benefits and you can charge more. You can actually charge what you're worth.

0:10:11 - (C): Instead of competing on price. But the way you do this is very important.

0:10:17 - (B): You have to think differently than what everyone else is doing. If you're going to model everyone else, you're not going to create a great offer. You have to think about what makes you unique and what will resonate with your ideal client. So it takes us back to number.

0:10:29 - (C): One, who is your ideal client and what do they ultimately desire?

0:10:33 - (B): Find a way to create an offer and I'm going to give you three tips. Here's what I include in every offer. Number one, I include a very detailed feature to benefit or feature to transformation. This is going to explain what they're going to get so that they can get X result.

0:10:48 - (C): Two, you're going to talk about or.

0:10:50 - (B): Hit up an emotional benefit. What does it mean for them emotionally.

0:10:55 - (C): To go through this?

0:10:55 - (B): Because 70% of a buying decision will have emotion involved. If we forget to focus on what they're going to feel because of this, then we're missing a huge component of being able to move someone forward psychologically. And number three, we're going to add what we call a value add on. This is going to be something unexpected.

0:11:12 - (C): That we can add to this thing.

0:11:15 - (B): That will increase the perceived value or.

0:11:17 - (C): Experience that they're going to get with it.

0:11:18 - (B): Now, the great news is, even if you're a contractor and your first step to doing business with someone is get a free estimate.

0:11:24 - (C): That's not an offer, that's a call to action.

0:11:27 - (B): And it's a poor one because everyone says the exact same thing. But using that three point offer framework, you can actually create a real offer out of getting the free estimate that has higher perceived value. It connects to them emotionally and clearly articulates the transformation they're going to have.

0:11:43 - (C): Because of going and getting that estimate or moving forward with your business services.

0:11:48 - (B): So that is my tip into what I learned about going into anaphylactic shock last week. I'm so glad to be back with you, full of energy and health. It was a good experience to go through to understand what that could be like. But it also got me thinking a little bit deeper about what that means for businesses and the similarities we see.

0:12:11 - (C): With a lot of other businesses in.

0:12:13 - (B): Anaphylactic shock right now.

0:12:14 - (C): We can't just treat the symptoms, we.

0:12:16 - (B): Have to treat the root causes. Do that and you will increase your ability to attract higher quality clients and grow your sales like ever before.

0:12:26 - (Jared Erni): Thank you for tuning into the For Impact podcast where we're all about driving positive change through entrepreneurship. Remember, your impact matters and your journey matters. If you found inspiration in today's episode, please subscribe, rate and leave a review. Your feedback fuels our mission to empower impact driven entrepreneurs like you. You can stay connected with us on social social media and go to forimpactpodcast.com

0:12:59 - (Jared Erni): to take our impact marketing challenge. Keep pursuing your dreams, making an impact, and living life on your terms.