People Can't Buy What They Don't Know You Do

There is a point in business where you know your business so well that you can forget what it looks like from the outside.

You know what you do. You know who you help.

You know the problems your clients come to you with. You know the questions they ask. You know the transformation they are looking for. You may have talked about it hundreds of times.

So it's easy to assume others know it too. But they don’t.

Sometimes they haven’t had enough opportunities to understand what you do.

I see this happen with business owners who have been working hard for years. They have built services, products, programs, websites, social media pages, email lists, referral relationships, and all the other pieces that come with running a business.

Yet when I ask them what they want people to know about their business, they often give me an answer that is much clearer than what I can actually find in their marketing.

That’s when it starts to get interesting.

Because there can be a pretty significant gap between what you know about your business and what someone else can understand about your business.

You may be closer to your business than your customer is. Think about how different your perspective is from someone who has never worked with you.

You know all the pieces, why you created the offer/product, what makes your approach different, the experience and training behind what you do, the problems you can solve because you’ve been solving them for years.

Your potential client doesn’t have any of that context.

She may land on your website, see a Facebook post, hear your name from a friend, or meet you at a networking event.

She has a few seconds, minutes, or conversations to figure out whether what you do has anything to do with what she needs.

That means she isn’t starting where you are. She’s starting at the beginning.

This is one reason I encourage business owners to occasionally look at their own marketing from the perspective of someone who doesn’t already know them.

Not to critique every word and not to immediately rewrite everything.

Just to notice what is actually obvious to someone who isn’t inside your business.

Could she tell what you do?
Could she tell who you help?
Could she recognize the problem you help her solve?
Could she tell what she would come to you for?

Those questions can reveal a lot.

Knowing your business isn’t the same as being known for your business.

There’s another piece of this that I think is easy to miss. People may know you have a business without knowing what they should think of you for.

They may know your name.
They may follow you on Facebook.
They may see your posts.
They may even like what you share.

But when a friend says, “I need someone who can help me with this,” do they think of you?

That is a different level of familiarity.

Being known for something takes repetition.

Not the kind of repetition where you copy and paste the same sales pitch every Tuesday. I mean the kind where your message, your conversations, your content, your offers, and the way you talk about your work consistently help people connect your name with a particular problem, need, result, or type of help.

This is one of the reasons I don’t think business owners should be afraid to talk about what they do more than once.

You may be tired of saying it long before your audience is tired of hearing it.

You have lived with your message every day. Your audience hasn’t.

Somebody may see your post today and be hearing about your business for the first time.

Someone else may have noticed you six months ago but only now have a reason to pay attention.

Another person may have been following you for a year and finally have a friend who needs exactly what you offer.

You don’t know where someone is in that process.

So what feels repetitive to you may actually be what creates familiarity for them.

Sometimes we change the message before we’ve given it a chance. This is where I think business owners can get themselves into unnecessary work.

They start wondering if their offer is wrong. Maybe the website needs to change. Maybe the program needs a new name. Maybe I need to add another product to my line. Maybe they need a different niche. Maybe they need another platform. Maybe they need to create something new.... you see where I'm going?

And sometimes those things really do need to change. But before you start rebuilding, I think it’s worth asking a simpler question:

Have people actually had enough opportunities to understand what you already do?

Because those are two very different problems.

If people understand what you offer and consistently tell you they don’t need it, that’s useful information.

If people don’t understand what you offer in the first place, changing the offer may not solve the problem.

You may simply be changing something that didn’t need to be changed yet.

I’ve watched business owners do this over and over. They get uncomfortable with a lack of response, so they start working on the next version of the business.

But sometimes the next version isn’t what they need. Sometimes they need to get better at letting people see the version they already built.

Clear doesn’t mean pushy!

I know this can be especially uncomfortable for women who don’t want to feel like they’re constantly selling. There can be this feeling that if we keep talking about our offer, our service, or the problem we solve, people will think we’re being pushy.

Being clear about what you do isn’t the same thing as pressuring someone to buy.

If I tell you what I do, who I help, and the problem I help solve, I’m not demanding that you become my client. I’m giving you enough information to decide whether a conversation with me might be useful.

That’s an important distinction.

The goal isn’t to convince everyone that they need you. The goal is to make it easier for the right person to recognize that you may be able to help.

And sometimes that recognition happens much later than you expect.

Someone may read your post and do nothing. Then three months later, she has the problem you were talking about.

She remembers you.

That’s part of what consistent marketing is doing, even when you don’t get an immediate response.

You are giving people something to remember you by.

Before you decide you need more marketing, look at what people already know. If you have been feeling like you need more visibility lately, I would pause before automatically adding another strategy.

Instead, take a look at what people already know about your business.

What do people ask you about?
What do clients or customers regularly come to you for?
What do people refer others to you for?
What do you find yourself explaining over and over?
What do you wish people understood about your business without you having to explain it?

And perhaps most importantly:
When someone hears your name, what do you want them to think of?

You may find that the answer is already there. You may simply need to become more consistent about saying it.

That doesn’t mean every post needs to be promotional. It doesn’t mean every conversation needs to turn into a sales opportunity. And it certainly doesn’t mean you need to spend your life talking about your business.

It means you stop assuming that people know what you know.

You give them the opportunity to understand. Your business can be exactly what someone needs and still be overlooked if they don’t recognize what you do.

That’s not always a sign that you need to build something different.

Sometimes it’s an invitation to become more comfortable being known for what you’ve already built.

And before you change another thing, that may be worth noticing.

If you’re at a point where you know something in your business needs to change but you’re having a hard time seeing what deserves your attention first, that’s exactly the kind of conversation we can have in my 90-minute Momentum Strategy Intensive.

We look at your business as a whole, identify what is creating the most friction or limiting your next step, and determine what deserves your attention now. You don’t leave with another giant list of things to do. You leave with a clearer direction for your business and what you’re going to focus on next for the next 90 days. Apply here for more information