4 Wins #271: You Redesigned the Site. They Compared You on Price Anyway.
4 Wins, Issue 271
===
Intro
---
[00:00:00]
Robby Fowler: If you've ever thought that a sharper website, a longer services page, or one more credential would finally get strangers to buy, I wanna push back on that today because the three fixes most experts reach for first, prettier, longer, and better, they rarely close the gap They make you look more professional, and they train buyers to compare you on design, features, and price.
And last week, we talked about producing the work versus selling the work This week, why those upgrades can sell less, not more. I'm Robby Fowler, and welcome to issue 271 of The Four Wins, where each week you get something to try, apply, ponder, and relate to. Let's jump into this week's issue.
Win #1: Something to try
---
Robby Fowler: Win number one, something to try. At some point, you decided you're too busy and too dissatisfied with Twitter to tweet or to X or whatever you do, so you hopped on board with Mastodon, maybe Blue Sky. Problem solved, until your alternative feeds became just as noisy as the conventional feed you abandoned.
If your greener pastures have gone [00:01:00] blister brown, try Sill.
Sill: Surface popular links from your Social Networks
---
Robby Fowler: Sill is the perfect way to gain back the benefits you loved about social media without you having to be on social media. So Sill watches your BlueSky and Mastodon feeds to surface the most popular links gaining traction among the people you already follow. So you can see what's resonating among the people that resonate with you without you getting roped in to social media.
Win #2: Something a client recently asked
---
Robby Fowler: Win number two, something a client recently asked. We're in part two of our series, Why Nobody's Buying What You're Best At, and here's the challenge: I'm really good at what I do. I've got clients, I've got proof. So why is nobody buying it? So this week we're gonna look at three fixes that most experts reach for first and why none of those actually close the gap.
So last time we saw how producing art and selling art are actually two very different skills. What happens when any expert, that's whether you're an experienced [00:02:00] consultant, perhaps you're a medical specialist with all of that training a- and expertise, or you're a founder and you have this wealth of knowledge, is you tend to turn that skill and bake it into your marketing.
So if we keep with our artist metaphor, you do what a great artist would do, what a great artist is great at. You do things like upgrade the lighting to show the subtleties of the art, or you reframe the artwork with a sleek frame that removes any distraction and puts the art front and center itself. Or maybe you add more festivals, art festivals, to get your art in front of more audiences, and this makes total sense as an artist.
For you, the expert, you're gonna reach to three very similar fixes. Here's ones I've seen. The first one let's call prettier, and that is you're going to say, "Something's not working," so you redesign your website or maybe you sharpen the speaker deck. The second thing that you'll go to is make something longer.
So [00:03:00] you're going to highlight more standout features that, that are a part of your service or your offering or your specialty medical practice. You're gonna add more details. You're gonna just make sure, hey, let's make sure they really understand how amazing this thing is. And number three thing that you'll tend to turn to to fix the problem is to add credentials or certifications or maybe more verbose testimonials.
And you've probably tried one of these things, and it made things look better, but it didn't make things sell any more. Well, why is that? Here's the reason. Each fix leaves prospects comparing your design or stacking your features that you loaded in there against your competitor's features or matching your credentials to someone else's credentials.
Now, does that sound like something exciting for your prospect to do? Heck, no. Nobody wants to be doing that kind of research, which is why prospects default to one thing that they do care about and they do know, and that's pricing. They're gonna start shopping you based on [00:04:00] pricing, and for any of us that are in the expert space, that's a big oof.
That's not what we want to do. We don't want to be commoditized. So the problem that all three of those fixes share in common is if you remember back to where we started, making art and selling art are two very different skills. So every one of those fixes that you naturally reach for as the artist is an attempt to get better at the first skill.
That's the craft. When the gap lies in the second skill, that's this, the ability to actually go sell the art, not just produce it. So in other words, most fixes just actually fixate more on the thing you're consulting or your service or your specialty medical practice does. That's where we tend to fixate, not on what it produces for your prospect.
Next time, shut up about the art.
Win #3: Something to think about
---
Robby Fowler: Win number three, something to think about. Now, here's a slight variation on a quote by Adam, and I'm gonna probably butcher his last name, Mastroianni, I think. [00:05:00] I know I got the Adam right. But he said this, " Being ignorant of the forces shaping marketing does not exempt you from their influence--
Speaker: it,
Robby Fowler: it places you at their mercy." So in his article, Adam was arguing it's against the claim that reading books is actually on the decline.
So his original quote was not talking about marketing. It was referring to societal shaping as a whole, that society has steered us away from being readers, and he pushes back against that. But I think his observation applies to the subset or the topic of marketing as well. And so we'll talk about that more in win number four next.
Win #4: Something personal
---
Robby Fowler: Win number four, something personal. Now, warning, this is a little longer than normal, but I think that it's worth it. When it comes to the forces shaping marketing, I'm not observing anything that I know you haven't already noticed. From the mouths of clients or colleagues, the signal is clear. We gasp, "Mercy," but our call seems to fall on deaf [00:06:00] ears.
So Permit me a detour to make my point. I'm reminded of January 6, 2013. It was 11:00 AM, and through a crazy set of circumstances, I was riding in the back seat of a Chevy Equinox. That's their, like, mid-size SUV. I'm Driving with a Diet Mountain Dew nestled between his legs was a state trooper.
And now there had been a tragedy, and so we were driving the hotel's courtesy car to drop off a college football player so he could go meet with his family as a result of this tragedy. My point is not to draw attention to the tragedy or the circumstances surrounding it, but rather the speed. You see, we were flying down the highway.
More disheveling still, th- uh, we're in a Chevy Equinox. We are not in a state trooper's SUV. We're not in any sort of officer's car. There are zero markings on the car. There are no sirens or lights, just your average Chevy Equinox whizzing past traffic plus fifty [00:07:00] miles per hour over the speed limit.
It was actually very surreal, and I remember jotting this note down in my Evernote on my phone way back when. Seventy-three miles to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, at eleven twenty-seven AM, and then a few minutes later, arrived at twelve oh two PM. If you do the math, that's averaging about a hundred and twenty-five miles per hour.
And yet, a mere twenty minutes into that ride, a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour subtly became the new seventy miles per hour. Unnoticeable, filtered out like the background buzz of fluorescent lighting, and it's that background buzz that I want to foreground just for a second. When it comes to your own marketing, have you stopped to consider who's actually in charge?
Who's chasing who? Who's leading? So consider this. An algorithm shift happens on a significant marketing channel. Maybe it's LinkedIn's three sixty Brew that unveiled earlier this year, or Instagram adds something like an [00:08:00] add interest profile feature to your Instagram profile. And like the whiplash jerk of a wooden rol-roller coaster, those new rules demand a new approach from us.
The platform rewards whatever that new approach is. It rewards this and no longer that. So we hashtag here, and we trim there. It's really an absurd what-came-first-chicken-or-the-egg paradox. So TikTok would introduce a new category of shorts because they notice people are bouncing from longer video content.
So video length becomes their ideal customer's pain point, if you can call that a pain point with a straight face. But lightning strikes, right? So other platforms quickly follow. YouTube and Instagram quickly reposition their platforms and their algorithms to start rewarding shorts. You and I, as founders and those that have to market our business, we get caught in the flash flood of those changes, swept up in the current.
So here we are under pressure to write what feeds the feed, to show what shows up, [00:09:00] to share what garnishes a reshare. On one hand, this has long been the way that media has worked. So I grew up in the era of network television. I remember when the hospital drama ER hit, and it seems like with- within less time than a commercial break, all of the other major networks start to scramble, and they copy and paste.
When scripted dramas like ER start feeling predictable, then you cue MTV's reality TV. So in other words, someone breaks ranks based on a perception or an intuition about what the market wants. That's the supply portion, and when that hits, then demand joins the party, right? So everybody jumps on board, and you give people what they want, right?
When in Rome maybe The Matrix. It's this yin and yang equation that goes on. But in the world we live in where social media marketing plus SEO plus the onslaught of AI plus whatever else is out there [00:10:00] that's being unveiled, it just seems traditional supply and demand for us as founders and marketers has really shifted to supply demands.
So somehow our own lack of attention spans have turned on us. They've become the drill sergeant demanding attention, and we're left to fall in line like foot soldiers. So here we are as founders, as marketers trying to grow our business, and we whimper, "Mercy," like the old game of Mercy. We say things like, "Man, I'd be just fine if this all disappeared and went back to the world of Stranger Things."
Or we say, "Man, I'd stop all of this in a heartbeat if I could." Those are the kind of confessions we make quietly to ourselves and to one another. And yet we consume all of this stuff like consumers, and then we have to create for it like captors, failing to recognize whether we're actually putting gas in the machine or being chewed up by it.
Now, while I do have some thoughts on this, I certainly don't have a magical [00:11:00] solution, but I at least take respite in the fact that I'm trying to pull my head above the marketing trenches long enough to notice like, "Hey, we're clocking 125 miles an hour. Are we all cool with that?" Now, any consultant worth their salt knows that you can't create the solution until you've identified the real problem.
And any marketer knows the first stage of customer awareness is making sure that your market is problem aware, aware that this problem exists. And that's all I want to do now is at least raise this up in front of us. And so if I'm striking a nerve that you've felt that pressure to produce to feed the machine, then I want you to wave off the Novocaine and reply back.
Let me know. I believe there is a way forward where we might more intentionally pursue a healthier path and still grow our business. And I'd love to host a conversation probably in the next two weeks where if you're interested, we can discuss what would something like that look like, a healthier path [00:12:00] forward?
So again, reply back. Let me know. I'll put a link in the show notes where you can let me know that. And in the meantime, feel free to use some questions that came to my mind as a prompt for you to reflect on this for yourself. One question would be, how aware am I that this is even going on around me?
How participatory am I? How much am I contributing as a cog to the wheel? Just keep feeding the machine. And am I comfortable with that? Kinda being the foot soldier that feeds the beast. Another question might be, what level of pressure do I personally feel as a founder or a business owner or a marketer to follow lead?
Or do I really feel if I don't do that, if I don't play along, then I risk being left behind? What level of pressure do you feel there? And lastly, how do my own habits when I'm wearing the consumer hat and on these different platforms consuming content, how much do my personal habits when I'm the consumer align with m-- what is [00:13:00] ideal for me when I'm the founder or marketer, the one having to produce that content?
In other words, how much do I consume versus how much do I really want to create? And do those line up? Does the left-hand consumer, the one taking all this in, know what the right hand is doing, the one that feels the pressure to constantly feed the machine? I'd love to have a conversation about that together.
Again, I have some thoughts. I don't know that there's a magic solution, but I think it would be worth our while to have the discussion. In the meantime, keep building a life-giving brand.
Work with Robby
---
Robby Fowler: I help founders of service businesses and specialty medical practices and experienced consultants build the strategic foundation their marketing has been running without, so that every tactic, every hire you make, every dollar you put in finally starts to pull in the same direction. If that sounds interesting to you, there's a link in the show notes on how we might work together.
Go check that out, and let's have a [00:14:00] conversation.
Subscribe
---
Robby Fowler: Make sure you hit the Subscribe button below so you don't miss another issue. They come out every Friday. See you next time.
