Did you find this headline peculiar? Good, it was designed to be this way!
Now consider this: if the late Steve Jobs had made a case for pet turtles being the key to business success, the poor critters would have become an endangered species by now. If John Doe says it on LinkedIn, you laugh and move on.
Why am I telling you all this? To help you decide whether you should create an offer that requires educating your audience OR go straight for something that’s in demand.
Speaking of better businesses, please join me in welcoming today’s IPF partner, someone who knows A LOT about building a thriving business without burning out.
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“They want X but what they really need is Y”
I heard a variation of this from many of my peers and clients. It’s a dilemma I spent a lot of time solving for both my agency and this business.
I’ll give you an example from my agency work: in the early days, most of my clients wanted their content to rank in search engines so they could get organic traffic — that was it.
So I had to ask them “why” a couple of times until we got to the actual goal: sales. In B2B, it’s always sales and revenue.
Thus began the educating part: if you want to make sales, stop aiming for generic, short-tail keywords — they’re hard to rank for and they don’t bring you qualified traffic. Instead, go for long-tail, intent-driven keywords.
Think “wedding dress” versus “wedding dresses shop in downtown Dallas”. The first one isn’t just next-to-impossible to rank for, it’s also useless — whoever types it is more likely to be window shopping. On the other hand, someone who’s looking for a wedding dress shop in a specific location is very likely to buy.
In all honesty, I lost quite a few clients because I told them their SEO plan wouldn’t work and I refused to churn out generic, useless content. It worked out alright for me in the end because there were still a lot of people out there who understood both SEO and business goals.
But what do you do when your audience is completely unaware of the solution that would solve their problem? Should you talk to them about how pet turtles can solve business hurdles or sell them something they’re actively looking for even though it’s not as good a solution as the pet turtle?
To answer this question, ask another one:
Do you enjoy the reputation and clout of people like Steve Jobs or Seth Godin?
If so, you can sell whatever you want. I’m not talking about being worldwide famous — if you cater to a smaller niche, you don’t need to be featured in every possible media outlet. You just need to enjoy a lot of trust from your audience.
Meet that condition and they will be open to being educated by you. They will buy the turtle because you told them it’s the key to success.
Important note: this is not a carte blanche for you to sell crap. Yes, people will buy on trust once or twice but you’ll lose that trust very fast if you abuse it. This is your carte blanche to sell GOOD, innovative products, offers, frameworks.
Not there yet? That’s OK, you can still educate your audience
In fact, you should keep educating your audience, no matter how big or small your clout is. However, since you also need to generate revenue, here’s how to balance the two:
Option 1: sell a mid-tier offer that’s in demand, then pitch the “turtle”
Let’s say you’re a copywriter and most of your clients hire you for website copy. Written by you, their copy is VERY persuasive. The only problem? They don’t generate enough traffic to that website.
Since they already know and trust you, you can tell them that the world’s best copy is irrelevant if no one sees it. And you can upsell them to your strategy consulting service or social media writing services — so they bring in traffic to that great copy you wrote.
Option 2: sell something completely different until you’ve built a strong enough reputation to successfully educate people
I launched this newsletter and the consulting business around it two years and two months ago. Since I knew it would take time before people trusted me, I kept running my digital marketing agency.
The agency is still my main revenue driver (side note: my big goal for 2025 is to change that).
Want to know when I first felt certain that this business would make it? Roughly a year in, one of my strategy session clients told me “I don’t think this will work but I’ll do it nonetheless if you recommend it.”
I felt like Seth-goddamn-Godin when I heard that.
If you’re selling “pet turtles”, you need a lot of people to feel that way about you. So, in the meantime, focus on selling something “tamer”, like dog food.
Is this ideal?
Not really, no. When your focus is divided, it will take longer for your business to grow. But it’s the only way to make it (unless you’re a trust fund kid or have a sizeable war chest).
Resist the urge to add more “value” to an offer that doesn’t work
I see this a lot in the creator or advisory space. Sellers know it in their bones that they don’t have a solid enough reputation yet, so they try to compensate by adding extra “value”.
“Bonuses worth $15,000”, “build your entire business in a month”, “5 proven frameworks to fame and riches” — I’ve seen all of these and more out there.
They don’t work. And it’s unfair, I know.
As an expert, you know your framework is solid and worth a multiple 4-figure investment. But do they?
Consider this: your prospects need to trust you with their money AND with their time. High-ticket offers demand a lot of them, both financially and time-wise.
The more stuff you cram into a single offer, the more their trust dilutes.
So forget about complex offers that promise readers all the outcomes they’ve ever dreamed of. Offer ONE outcome and build up on it if/when needed.
This primer on selling chocolate-covered broccoli will help you sell “pet turtles” too.
One more thing before I sign off: your reputation is your most valuable asset — treat it as such. I wrote an in-depth issue on how to build and retain a stellar reputation here.
🔦 Community Spotlight
- My friend Robby Fowler just released his fast-track “Idea to Income” guide that helps solopreneur coaches, consultants, and fractional advisors take their course, program, or offer from idea to income in one week — without going it alone. The best part? You’ll validate your idea FAST—without wasting time or money. Grab your copy here!
- Are you on Substack or thinking about launching there? You NEED to grab my friend Ciler Demiralp’s Substack Landscape Report! She analyzed a whopping 75K substacks to identify operators’ behavior and hidden opportunities in the market. Get it for free here.
