Mass market and premium market require opposite communication strategies; always design from the ICP's perspective; franchises sell the dream of entrepreneurship.
The aspiring writers market is a mess!
In the latest marketing campaign (which I wasn't involved in), the ads that performed worst were the ones
pushing "I'll help you write your next novel," while the ones that worked best looked like they came
from a publisher: "You've written a novel but you're not happy with it? I can help!" (people thought
that was a publisher offering to publish the novel...).
Looking at competitors, we noticed they lean into this: they don't sell "learning to write", they sell the
implicit promise of getting published (through publishers they work with) or at least some visibility (an
interview on a channel with a few thousand subscribers).
Because aspiring writers don't want to learn to write: they want to get published, "feel" like
writers, or figure out how to make money from writing. Almost nobody actually wants to improve the craft.
Competitors are playing a volume game, targeting as many people as possible from this audience with
an ego-driven desire for visibility.
Our product doesn't work that way: it appeals to a small fraction of that crowd, the fraction that wants
to learn how to write.
(And to be clear: the competitor approach isn't wrong, it's just different.)
Talking it through with a more experienced friend, he pointed out that while competitors are playing
the mass market game, we need to think like a premium market.
The mass market sells to everyone, has to move large volumes to survive, doesn't have to be
perfect (quantity >>> quality), and above all, in its communication it must try to be appealing and
inclusive.
The premium market sells to a niche, has to charge high prices to survive, must be perfect
for that niche, and above all, in its communication it has to filter out those who don't belong by
making clear who it is NOT for.
What was driving our CAC up was target ambiguity: the marketing was selling to the wrong people.
To fix it, we emphasized that this is a year-long program, and more importantly, that it is NOT a course
on writing style, nor a course on getting published.
We don't have results yet, but this positions the product in a premium niche (fewer clients, higher
budgets) that competitors aren't fighting for.
If last month's lesson was "Find your target within your clients," this month's lesson is
"...and once you've done that, figure out whether you're mass market or premium market."
The most important opinion about your product is not yours, it's your ICP's.
I'm helping a brand whose target audience is tired of being sold products: they usually don't work, many are
nonsense, and they all promise things they don't deliver.
We were creating the slides for the sales webinar and got stuck on the very first one: the slide that
introduces the brand.
I wanted it sales-oriented: show client results, establish years of experience, make the case that this
is the right solution.
The counterargument was that this would spook the audience ("another guy selling snake oil...") and that
a more biographical, Wikipedia-style slide with basic background information would feel safer.
So we had two options on the table:
The question was: which one is right?
The right answer is: neither.
The right question is: what would the ICP want to see?
Our read is that they want to see competence without arrogance, and sector experience (not just as a coach)
in a way that builds trust.
Meaning: they don't care about biographies, and they don't want to be sold the usual "only I can solve
your problems" spiel.
So we let the experiences speak without turning them into a résumé, showing that the person behind the
product has lived through every problem their customers face, and that it was exactly that journey which led
them to build this business in the first place.
It's hard to say whether this single choice moved the needle on conversions.
But even if it didn't, we did the right thing: we started from what the ICP wanted.
The franchise sells the dream, but "the learning is not included."
I go to a gym that is part of a large chain with hundreds of gyms across Europe and I've trained at two of
them.
In both cases, the managers didn't have great business acumen: they don't upsell (the franchise
sells supplements and a board game. Yes, a board game.), they don't do marketing (they rely on the
franchise's campaigns), and they don't manage effectively (no gathering customer feedback, no analyzing which
classes are actually working...).
In short: they don't really manage the business.
They don't dig into problems, look for solutions, or test what drives sign-ups and what doesn't.
I had some idea of how franchises work, but reading through what it actually takes to open a location, I
realized that essentially all you have to do is put in the money.
You don't find the location, you don't choose the equipment, you don't think about the launch
marketing...
It's opening a business without the fear of entrepreneurial risk.
The risk is still there, but they don't worry about it, because the franchisor handles everything.
Essentially, franchises sell the dream of becoming an entrepreneur to those who would struggle to do so on
their own.
There's no need to learn marketing, identify a target audience, study the market, figure out
positioning, or structure an offer...
(By the way, it makes sense: they want to make it as easy as possible to open locations, so they
minimize friction in every way possible.)
The cost of becoming an entrepreneur shifts from the hard work of learning to a financial
one: the franchise fee.
Nothing wrong with that, just don't buy business courses from someone who opened a franchise gym...