Why Your Content is Driving Customers Away

The reason that you’re posting all the time, but nobody’s responding and you’re not getting any clients out of it. Is because you’re feeding your audience broccoli when all they really want is mac and cheese. It might be why no one’s biting. And trust me, I am a professional mac and cheese eater so I know for sure.

Look, I know how this goes. You post and you work so hard, you create content and you write emails, and you’re so excited to post it because you’re like, okay, this is really good. Or maybe you even like. Is this it? I think I did it right. Right. But then nobody bites, and you’re so frustrated because you’re like, but this content is really good. Like, what do these people want? What do I need to say in order to get them to respond? It’s super frustrating, but I think I might know what’s going on and today we’re actually going to fix it really quickly for you.

So I made this mistake back in 2015 when I worked as a corporate attorney at a big law firm, and they decided for the first time ever to host an annual baking challenge for the firm. So it was optional to sign up for it, but I signed up and I decided that I was going to make healthy brownies. So the day came and they laid out the table outside under this big white tent in the parking lot of the firm.

And we all got to put our submissions out with a little tag about what it was, but without our names so that there could be anonymous judging and I was convinced that my healthy brownies that were probably gluten free, almond flour, only avocado oil, they’re probably dairy free. Like they were just free.

Right? They were free brownies. So I put them out there and I literally thought they were amazing because I think from my perspective, I was thinking like, given what these brownies do and don’t have in them, they are incredible, right? And you can eat so much more of it. So like more brownies. Yay, win. Okay, so I thought this is a huge selling point to these brownies.

So I put out these brownies. Everybody else of course puts out their completely, you know, white flour, white sugar, white, everything treats that were all freaking delicious and everybody from the firm goes around and I’m just watching with this like depressed look on my face as everybody goes, takes like one bite of my brownie and puts it down.

And I was like, wow. I really thought that I was going to speak to them. But looking back. Here’s how I would’ve done it instead, I would’ve made my brownies exactly the same way, because that was true to me. It still is true to me and the way that I eat and you know, the kind of ingredients I keep in my house, and I like to cook. So I’m always experimenting with how to make traditional things a little bit healthier and all that good stuff. And I just would’ve marketed them completely differently instead of me leading with, look at all the things that these brownies don’t have as the like leading marketing messaging.

I would’ve just given them a really cool name that probably didn’t tell people they were healthy at all. Then later I would’ve just told people, oh, by the way, they don’t have any flour in them and here’s why that’s important. Or, I used avocado oil when you know, this is the, typically people are using butter or you know, something like this.

The thing is people don’t even know, like what do you, when you say it’s gluten-free or it’s made with almond flour. It’s like, you know, people, like my husband would be like, what’s a brownie normally made with, like, he doesn’t know, right. That’s not his thing. So when I’m leading with that as the benefit, I can understand why not only does it turn people off, ’cause like, nobody wants to be healthy. They wanna eat a brownie, but also people don’t even understand the benefits that I was trying to sell them.

So here’s how that relates to your business. Here’s what I see is happening. You are really smart. I know that not just because you’re here, and I’m not saying that you’re smart because you listen to my podcast.

I literally know that my audience is very, very smart. You all are on the ball, like you’re the people who do it right. You know what you, you always wanna know what you don’t know. You get your stuff together, you cross your T’s, you dot your i’s and then dot ’em twice, right? That’s how you are. I know that, and I know for sure that you know a lot about what you do.

You’re an expert at what you do. I also know, though, if we could sit down for coffee that you think that you need to show everybody how good you are at what you do, and that you deserve to be here, and that you’re really passionate about your subject matter. Because I know that you’re really passionate about your subject matter.

I know you’re probably also really frustrated that there are a lot of people in your space who don’t know what the heck they’re talking about. I know you feel like your space is crowded, and so you have to make yourself stand out with your expertise. But here’s the thing, it’s putting people to sleep, right?

People have not come to you, or they’re not looking for someone like you because they want to become your profession. So, for example, people don’t come to me because they want to be a lawyer. They come to me because they wanna stop waking up in the middle of the night. Worried that they’ve done something wrong or they didn’t do what they didn’t even know about, that’s going to land them in trouble later.

And so I am just a vehicle to resolving that anxiety. I, I’m the salve right? I just smooth it over and I make it better. Right? Just like people are not coming to you unless you’re teaching people how to do this, they’re not coming to you to be an accountant, to be a, a physical therapist, to be a, a finance expert, you know, any of these things.

They’re coming to you in pain and they want their pain resolved. They wanna get better. And if your content isn’t landing right or if it’s not getting people engaged, if they’re not sharing it, they’re not commenting on it, they’re not taking in the next step with you. Right?

I just talked about that two episodes ago in episode 2 41, about depth over dopamine marketing. If people aren’t connecting enough with you because of the kind of content, It might be because you are leading with the broccoli when people really just want the mac and cheese. So we’ve got to learn how to stuff the broccoli in and make sure they don’t even know that there are veggies inside.

And you and I can secretly know that people really need their veggies and it the fiber and they need the vitamin K and the this and the vitamin C and all of these. We, you and I can know that, right? And it’s like a little secret between me and you that you’re like, but they really need to know why broccoli is so important. You are right. You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. That is just not. The way to market your business if you want to get more clients.

Okay, so then what is the way to get clients instead, how do we lead with the mac and cheese? Let’s get into it. First up, off the bat, we need to figure out what your mac and cheese is.

AKA. What do your people really want? What are they lusting after? What are they chasing after? Is it freedom, stability, confidence. Clarity, predictable results? There’s all kinds of things, right? Just like I was saying before, people don’t come to me because they’re like, oh, I’m just like dying to get a contract.

No, they wanna make sure that they get paid on time, but even I can take that a step further, like. What does it mean if people want to get paid on time? They want predictability and consistent revenue. So like every time you even come up with a desired outcome, take it one step further. What do they really want?

What is it that they’re chasing after? In order to know that, I do think you need to be pretty clear on what their pain is because once you understand what their pain is and what’s really bothering them. Then you will be able to really tap into what they want instead.

Next up, we’re going to layer in the tips, which in this case is the broccoli, right? It’s the educational component. Because yes, we now know what they really want and maybe you’re right, there are some tips. There are some things that they need to know, like they need to know if you know they need to eat more fiber. For example, what the benefits are of eating more fiber. You then have to drink more water if you have increased fiber intake. That movement helps with fiber, like all the benefits, all the things that detoxification, that fiber does. You know, all the things that is where you get to stuff all that broccoli stuff between the noodles, which is what they really want. So it’s about talking to them and starting off your content with what they really want layering in those tips. The broccoli in between the noodles, which is what they want.

The next thing I want you to do is season it. Any good mac and cheese or lasagna or whatever is seasoned very well. So you season and layer as you go. So you’ll keep talking to them in their language, always reframing things from the perspective of what the desired outcome is for them, not the the method that you’re trying to teach them or the tip that you’re trying to teach them, but I want you to layer things in as you go.

Especially depending on who your audience is, you can layer in depth and complexity and nuance and all this kinda stuff depending on who you speak to. I have one customer I’m thinking about in particular, who’s like a, a Instagram famous registered dietician who only focuses on hormones and her client base is the most like scientific techie like gets into the data weeds group of people that I’ve ever seen, because from my perspective, from a marketing perspective, I would typically look at her content and think, oh, this is way too much. This is information overload. Right? It’s way too much stuff. It’s very technical. There’s so much detail, and I basically feel like I have become an RD by the time I’m done reading each one of her posts and typically speaking, that is not great marketing.

However, in her case, and I’ve talked to her about this before, she knows her audience. That is how her audience is. But if you’re doing that first and then hoping that people are gonna like get it, that might be where the disconnect is.

All right. The next step is now looking at the proof that you’re getting around you. Like, is this thing working? This episode is proof for me of kind of how I put this into practice. So I know for example, what I really know is that you need to speak your customer’s language and speak more to them and like what they’re feeling and what they want to hear versus what you want to say and think they need to hear.

But an episode that I titled like, How to Speak to Your Customer wouldn’t get your attention because from your perspective, the po the problem is not learning how to speak to your customer. You think the problem is that no one’s responding to your content or no one’s biting on your offer. And I know that the reason that’s happening is because you’re not speaking to your customer.

But do you see how that would be me leading with the broccoli and not the mac and cheese? You just wanna know how to make more money more consistently online. That’s it. You wanna build an audience full of the right people who actually want what you sell. Period, right? So I don’t need to teach you or lead with the teaching of this is how you have to speak to your customer.

But hopefully you can go back and see in this episode how I’ve essentially snuck that in in between layers. I’m actively working right now on shifting my content or zhuzhing my content, at the very least, from being more method first oriented like method and teaching first to desire first, and that speaks more to people and how they’re feeling and what they’re experiencing right now.

It gets them to open my emails, to watch my YouTube videos, to listen to my podcast, which then gets them to buy because the more exposure they have to me, the more they can connect with me, the more they also hear about. The Ultimate Bundle® and my legal templates or my Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business free training, right?

So the more you hear about things, the more you’re gonna be like, okay, now I’ve actually consumed this content. We’ve created a deeper connection because if you go back and listen to episode 2 41, on depth over dopamine, depth is really important to create that connection, to make the future conversion into a customer, you’re going to actually take action. Right?

So that’s more of what I’m working on kind of behind the scenes. And even in today’s episode, I originally had like a different conception of this episode of what I wanted to, I was thinking like you’re teaching them too much. Like that’s what I wanted to lead with and just be like, sometimes I see people doing like information overload on Instagram, and I think you’re trying to make them into mini yous, you know? But I thought, let me reframe, retool this episode to be more desire first versus the method.

Okay. Last but not least, I’ve got a quick two minute challenge for you that I want you to do. This is your homework for the week. I want you to come back and tell me how it went. I want you to free write one piece of content. Even if you don’t think of framing your content this way, at first, just free write. Like if you have an idea, even if it’s an educational tip, like even if it’s something you wanna lead with or a, a news story that you wanna talk about or some kind of client testimonial or whatever, create one piece of content. I don’t care if it’s long form or short form.

I then want you to take two minutes to go back through and mac and cheese-fy it.. So now that you’ve figured out what your mac and cheese is, I want you to go back and maybe that’s tweaking the title, maybe it’s tweaking the hook, that opening line that you start out with, that opening line is key.

If you open with the desire and talking about what you know people want and the desired outcome, there’s a a much higher chance that they’re going to continue to listen to or read this thing than if you led with what you just think they should, know, and you jump into teaching mode. Maybe it’s even the overall angle and tone.

So set a timer for two minutes. Let’s just start with outlining a piece of content, the kinda rough sketch of what this thing’s gonna look like, so that then you go back and mac and cheese-fy it, it before you solidify. Film the content, write the content, do whatever you have to do and get it posted.

So I want you to reply to my email. If you don’t get my weekly email, Sam’s Sidebar. Make sure you go down in the show notes below. Sign up for my free weekly newsletter where I give you legal and marketing tips to sustainably grow your online business and let me know how it went. I wanna know if this episode was helpful to you in helping shift that framework. Um, I hope it was. I know that this method has been super helpful for me. Well, with that, I think I’m actually going to go make some sort of healthy mac and cheese stuffed with a lot of veggies for dinner, but I will market it to my husband, Ryan, as some like delicious, creamy, gooey mac and cheese, and I just won’t tell him.

All right, I’ll see you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.