How can I make my marketing more effective? This was the question I got from the CEO of a family business yesterday, and I had to walk him through some of the basics to make sure he had those covered, and guess what, he didn't. So I'm gonna share with you today the diagnostic that I did with him in the hopes that you can make your marketing more effective. That's what we're gonna do today on this edition of the Inside BS Show.

Hey now, it's Dave Lorenzo. I'm the godfather of growth, and today we're answering the question, how can I make my marketing more effective? This is a question that I got from a CEO yesterday, and I asked him a couple of additional questions to get to the heart of the matter. Here's the thing.

Marketing is really simple if you don't complicate it yourself. So there's three elements of all good marketing. There's the message, there's the audience that receives the message, and then there's the way that you deliver the message to the audience.

Those are the only three elements there are in any good marketing activity. So you don't start with the message, you start with the audience, and you focus on the problem the audience member has that you can solve, and it's the problem that is the one that is causing the most pain. So in this particular CEO's case, this CEO was a financial advisor and he had a really good firm, and they were working with middle market folks, so exactly the kind of clients that I serve, so business owners whose businesses are probably doing five million to 150 million in annual revenue.

And those folks were challenged with protecting the money that they have from any type of exposure as well as reducing the amount of taxes they pay on a regular basis and accumulating wealth so that they have enough for retirement. So the financial advisor calls me and he says, we want more clients in the five to 150 million dollar annual revenue business owner range, that's who you work with Dave, how do I get those clients? And I said to him, what's the message you're currently using to reach out to your audience? And he said, well the message that works best Dave is you've got to put X amount of dollars away for retirement. And I said, okay, and what types of clients does that get you? He said that gets me corporate clients who are making about $200,000 maximum on an annual basis.

He said, and they have on average between 20,000 and 50,000 to put away into a retirement account and they do it on a tax deferred basis and it's really basic, it's really cookie cutter. He said, those are fine clients for us but we want clients that can put away 100,000, $200,000 or even more and that need more advanced forms of planning. And I said, the message that you're using to attract these folks is wrong.

The message that you're using is attracting the exact client you want. So if you're saying prepare for retirement, that's going to attract someone who's conservative, who's not taking a lot of risks, that's not an entrepreneur who's got a business that's doing 5 million to 150 million in annual revenue. The message for the entrepreneur that's doing 5 million to 150 million in annual revenue is this is how you maximize the opportunity in your business while still putting away the most money you can on a tax deferred basis.

The difference is subtle but it's important. Maximize business opportunity while hedging against taxes versus preparing for retirement while hedging against taxes. The business owner views his business or her business as the retirement vehicle.

The conservative person who works for a company understands that they have to set aside money for retirement. The business owner feels like reinvesting in the business is investing in their retirement. So what you need to do is you need to explain to the business owner that they should reinvest in the business but they also need to take some chips off the table on a tax deferred basis.

The message for the business owner is don't give the government a penny more than they deserve versus save for retirement. That's the difference. The business owner is a risk taker who hates government regulation.

The corporate person probably doesn't like the government as much as the average citizen who receives benefits from the government but they also are not a risk taker. So planning for retirement is the way for them to go. Two different messages for two different audiences.

Matching the message to the audience is critical and the message is focused on what the audience wants. It's so important for you to understand that your messaging is not based on what you want. It's based on what the receiver of the message wants.

Message to market match, message to audience match, matching that message and that audience member is critical to your success in marketing. It's one of the basics. It's foundational.

If you want more effective marketing, go to the people you're targeting, find out what problems they have and make your marketing focused on solving those problems or presenting your solution to those problems so that they see that you're the person that can help them. Message, audience and delivery. Those are the three elements of marketing, making sure that the message connects with the audience is essential.

How can you do that? Start with your best clients, ask them what they're currently experiencing, ask them why they work with you and then reverse engineer the message from there. My name is Dave Lorenzo. This is the Inside BS Show.

We are back here tomorrow with another edition of our show. Until then, here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.