12 Sales and Marketing Mistakes That Keep You From Making Money in Your Business

Hey Friend!

Let’s talk about 12 sales and marketing mistakes that keep you from making money in your online business. To be honest, there are hundreds of potential mistakes you could be making when it comes to sales, marketing, messaging, connection, and trust. All of these things create what I like to call a leaky sales funnel. But we don’t want a leaky sales funnel! We want to create an air-tight, water-tight funnel that brings people in through the podcast, puts them through the nurture, and pops them out a happy, thriving customer with an incredible testimony on the other side! 

So let’s tackle some of the largest, most prevalent problems I see when it comes to my students’ and my listeners’ sales and marketing mistakes that keep them from making money…so you don’t make them!

P.S. If you need help in this area, you will want to join Podcast to Profit. Inside Step 5 where I tell you how to sell your offer, I have a bonus called “How to Audit Your Sales Funnel”. You get a complete, comprehensive masterclass on how to fix your leaky sales funnel. Get excited about that if you’re coming into my 6-month mastermind program for podcasters over at podcasttoprofitmastermind.com, or you can check out any of the other courses and any of the other ways I can serve you at stefaniegass.com/school.

All right, friend…let’s dive in!

Testimonial

I am so excited to share the results of when I was in Podcast to Profit this year!

I’m Kara. I have a podcast called “Money and Mental Peace” where I help students get scholarships and pay for college without student loans. My downloads increased over the last 6 months of P2P by 80% in less than half the time it took me to get that far! I also booked 15 clients and sometimes had almost $1,000 months of income. I ranked in 20 countries, and I’m now sitting at a top 1.5% podcast in the world, sometimes even ranking in the top 10, top 3, or even top 1 in some countries at various times.

If you’re on the fence, you need to go check out Podcast to Profit!

Just in case you didn’t believe me, Podcast to Profit is the most amazing, incredible program, and I am so proud of it! These incredible success stories we are hearing are many because people are seeing really big results just like Kara who shared that she was able to see 15 brand new clients, increasing her downloads by 80%, ranking in 20 countries, becoming a top 1.5% ranked podcast and so much more! Again, all the details for my program for podcasters are at stefaniegass.com/podcasttoprofit.

All right…let’s get into this!

Not Making Money in Your Online Business? Here Are 12 Sales and Marketing Mistakes You May Be Making

I will tell you right now you are probably guilty of 1, 2, 3, 6, or even 12 of these mistakes. I know I have personally been guilty of all of these at one time or another, and sometimes I find myself guilty of them even now.

Becoming an incredibly intentional salesperson takes effort and practice, but it is something you can grow into. It is a skill you can learn, but it does take a lot of focus, and it takes something I like to call data over drama. (That’s actually not mine; I borrowed it from another leader.)

Allowing yourself to look at the data around why your sales funnel might be leaky, what you can get better at, and then taking the actions to foster that growth, to practice, and to be willing to fail forward in your sales journey is going to make you better. It is going to make you land more for your person. It is going to make you more relatable and authentic, and at the end of the day, it’s going to make you more money!

So, grab a notebook and pen, and jot these down. We are going to roll through the 12 major sales and marketing mistakes I see that are keeping you from making money.

Mistake #1: Lack of a Clear Value Proposition

What do you do? What problem do you solve? If I was to play some Jeopardy music, could you answer those questions in that span of 30 seconds? You have a problem if your answer is no.

If your customers can’t quickly understand the value you bring them and the problem you solve, they are not buying, and you are not making money! That is the #1 point of clarity you need to get. You must have clarity if you want your business to grow and flourish.

Lucky for you, that’s the first thing we do inside of Podcast to Profit. We spend a few weeks on it, and we get crystal clear on your value proposition.

Mistake #2: Ignoring Your Ideal Avatar

Often, I see my students building a brand around what they think they should do, what they think they are good at, or what they want to become. That last one is usually what I see: “I want to become a business coach, so I’m going to be a business coach for people, even though I myself don’t have a successful business.”

No! Failing to understand your ideal avatar’s actual need — their actual number one problem, their preference, their wants, the things they desire — will result in you completely missing the mark!

You don’t want to create a brand of business and a vision around what you think it should be. You want to create it around what your ideal avatar actually believes their reality to be — what they are actually googling and looking up on the internet, and what they believe and are speaking out of their mouths about the problems they are facing.

Again, this is something we cover inside Podcast to Profit, or if that is not in the cards for you, go to your ideal avatar and get with them. Ask them those deep questions and figure out what it is they believe they need. Be sure not to ignore the things they are saying! That’s your million-dollar path, your million-dollar tip: take the words your ideal audience is saying and utilize them. Build everything around that.

Mistake #3: Inconsistent or Unprofessional Branding

This looks like having something you bust out yourself when you’re not that great at graphics.

Look, I’m raising my hand. I am so guilty of this: trying to duct tape everything together in the beginning because I wanted to save a few bucks. I’ll be honest with you. I spent hours and hours and hours, and months and months of my time, and probably way more money trying to duct tape the things together than it would have just cost me to do it right in the first place!

This is something that holds you back from making money. When people land on inconsistent branding, maybe something that is confusing — this thing says this over here, this thing looks this way, and nothing is cohesive, nothing is professional — people are going to be dissuaded from buying because they are going to judge you based on the professionalism of your brand.

Sorry, not sorry. You came here to find out why you’re not making money, and why your marketing may be missing the mark, and this is one of the biggest marketing mistakes.

Mistake #4: Ignoring SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Podcasting Keywords

If your business doesn’t appear in search engine results, especially in Apple Podcasts, you are missing out on a ton of potential listeners and future clients! Podcast to Profit has a full podcast SEO and keyword training for you to learn how to make your podcast found more easily and organically within the searches.

Mistake #5: Poor Website Design

I kind of touched on this marketing mistake when I talked about inconsistent branding, but having a busted website is hurting you!

Now, do you need to have a website if you’ve just started your podcast? No! But we are going to build one together inside Podcast to Profit that is simple, professional, and clean. You will follow my website formula, so your website feels like a menu.

Having a cluttered, confusing, or handmade website — it can drive your clients away. They are going to judge you based on the cover of the book, you know what I mean?

How many of you have driven by a restaurant and you think, “I don’t want to eat there. The paint is chipping, the door is hanging off one hinge, and there’s a couple of homeless folks outside. Let’s move to the next restaurant.”

That’s what happens when people want to work with you because they hear how amazing you are on your podcast. They want to book the coaching call or check out the course — and then they get to this website that is actually a deterrent! We do not want that to happen!

So, stop wasting money and time trying to make it yourself. Come and take Podcast to Profit, and I’ll teach you exactly what goes on your website. I’ll hook you up with an awesome template from my graphic designer there, and you will have an easy-to-navigate, simple, beautiful, visually appealing website… that will help you secure sales so you can start making money!!

Mistake #6: Lack of Content Clarity

What are you talking about on your podcast? Is it specific and pointed to your micro-niche?

This is going to help establish you as an authority. They’re going to look at you and believe you have that edification, that expertise to believe in you, to know you know what you’re talking about. But if you have this thing talking about marriage over here, and then this talking about kids, and then you have a faith episode, and then you have one talking about your favorite shoes — you lose the clarity around your content and your person loses interest. Get super-niched and dialed in!

Mistake #7: Not Utilizing Email Marketing

Emails are so important!! I dissuade my students from using social media, but I encourage them and persuade them to use email marketing. It is super affordable, highly engaging, and highly opened; and no algorithm is keeping you from getting read. Email is a deep connection point, and it allows you to be front-of-mind when your person is scrolling their inbox deciding what they want to be doing right now. They see your email pop into their inbox, and they decide, “Oh, I want to go listen to her podcast”, “I want to check this thing out she sent me”, or “I want to read this beautiful little love note she shot me”.

If you do not build an email list, it’s going to cost you, not just potential engagement and connection, but potential dollar bills. When we nurture our list, we have people who are really radically excited to buy.

Let me prove this to you: in our last live launch, our email marketing sequence brought in $120,000 in revenue. Our email marketing did that!

So, you want to learn how to have email marketing that’s next level? It’s inside Podcast to Profit.

Mistake #8: Mismanagement or Overuse of Social Media

Next on the list of marketing mistakes is consistently posting a hundred million things and wasting your time on social media knowing that only 1% of your actual followers ever see your stuff. Or having a really strained social media strategy. Or if you’re going to be on social media having no strategy, just posting random things about your kids, etc.

If you’re going to use this highly addictive tool:

• Be very careful, but…
• Be super strategic in why you’re using it and how you want to use it.

One of the tips I give my students is this: if your house is the podcast (which it should be for all my students), everything else you do and market to points back to the house. So, if you put something on social, it’s going to point back to the podcast. It’s going to point back to the one place you know you are going to be for the next decade.

Be mindful of mismanagement of social media because that can hurt not just your heart, mind, and spirit, but also it can hurt your sales.

Mistake #9: Neglecting Analytics

One very critical thing I teach inside Podcast to Profit is what we track, how we track it, and then how we use the information in our metrics. We do this in the key performance indicators sheet I provide you and teach you how to use.

• How do we use that information?
• How do we do more of what’s working?
• How do we stop focusing on what is not working?
• How do we get really serious about the statistics?

Without tracking and analyzing this, you don’t know what’s working and you don’t know what’s not working. This is critically important if you want to grow in your sales game.

Mistake #10: Failing to Test and Iterate

Specifically when it comes to marketing, this is an ongoing process. We’ve got to test different strategies, analyze results, and make adjustments. Sometimes we have to slightly modify pricing or modify the promise we are talking about when it comes to your coaching offer or your course offer. Some of my students and I end up tweaking their titles of their offer.

Not making money? We’ve got to test, and then we have to iterate. The first time you put something out into the market is probably not going to be the only time you modify that offer. You’re going to redo and revise as you learn more about what your person wants, needs, and is saying. This is critical for those of you who want to level up your sales and get more students or clients.

Mistake #11: Inaccurate Pricing

I often see people come into Podcast to Profit, and they have one of the following scenarios:

• They have too many offers.
• They have a tiny offer (which is hard because you have to sell thousands and thousands of your offer to make a dent).
• They have this really high-ticket, expensive offer (which is fine once you’ve grown your business to a level of demand that supports that level of pricing).

There is a very beautiful sweet spot and strategic place in which you should price first your coaching offers then your course offer or your program offer. If you fail to land within this sweet spot, you could be overpricing or underpricing and losing sales to competitors or simply because you haven’t reached that level of demand. Inaccurate pricing can definitely hurt you and keep you from making money.

Mistake #12: Not Building Trust

You have to connect with your listener who is going to become your future buyer.

So how do we build trust?

• We show up consistently on our show.
• We pour out, we teach, we serve.
• We are focused on the right content — the content our people actually want to listen to and hear. We have testimonies and reviews.
• We have a professional website that looks like we have it going on.
• We have good messaging and marketing.
• We are authentic, credible, and trustworthy.

If you have all those things in your favor, people will be much more apt to buy from you!

That also is in alignment with the way you sell: selling in an inviting, open-hearted way. There is a whole sales and marketing strategy I teach in Podcast to Profit around selling with soul. I have nine different ways we sell based on buyer psychology. I even give you the templates and the scripts of how I sell on the podcast so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and struggle and stammer. You can just follow along with the template and insert those keywords and key phrases that your business is all about to help you really sell in a trustworthy way.

Wrapping It Up

There you have it! Those are the 12 major sales and marketing mistakes I see that are keeping you from making money in your online business.

Want to come fix all these mistakes?

You know where to find me: inside Podcast to Profit, my 6-month group coaching program for podcasters. You get biweekly coaching with me, weekly coaching with my team, a group community, breakout groups with other people who are running the same race as you, back-office trainings, templates, tutorials, how-tos, scripts…everything you can imagine to help you be successful as a podcaster who wants to be making money in an online fashion, right from their show. This is it! In alignment with God’s will, biblically based, all of it beautifully packaged together into this amazing program — this sprint in your business will help you take your podcast to the next level! We have payment plans, and it is such a beautiful opportunity for you to grow.

If you want to apply to the program, come on over to podcasttoprofitmastermind.com, and I hope to see you inside!

I pray this blesses you!

Xo,

Stef

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