Give me 15 mins, and I'll make your marketing impossible to ignore

        ## Topics and Main Speaking Points

1. **What good marketing actually looks like** — Marketing's only job is to make sales redundant by building desire before the prospect ever speaks to you
2. **Understanding your prospect's pain** — Focus on their problem, not your product
3. **Compelling offers vs. convincing arguments** — Why offers win every time
4. **Mistake #1: The Buried Benefit** — Talking about yourself instead of the customer's desired outcome
5. **Mistake #2: Jargon Overload** — Using insider language that alienates prospects
6. **Mistake #3: Claims Louder Than Proof** — Making promises without backing them up


If your business isn't growing as fast as you'd like, I can tell you exactly why: it's your marketing.

I've built over 2,000 funnels across more than 1,000 industries and generated over $7.8 billion in sales for my clients. I speak to thousands of business owners every month, and I see the same three mistakes over and over again.

But before I get into those mistakes, let me explain what good marketing actually looks like.

### Marketing Has One Job

Good marketing isn't about having the sexiest logo or the cleanest Instagram aesthetic. Marketing has one job: to make sales redundant. When your marketing is working, you've built so much pent-up demand that people are already sold before they talk to you.

Think about an Apple store. When you walk in, does anyone need to close you? No. The salespeople are order takers. Apple's marketing has created such white-hot desire that customers arrive already committed.

### Understand the Pain

To achieve this, you need to intimately understand the pain your prospects are experiencing. And before you say, "I've heard this before" — no, you haven't. If you had, your conversion rates would be through the roof.

Stop focusing on what you're selling. Focus on the pain your prospect wants to escape. Your product is really just a barrier between their current pain and their desired pleasure. If they could skip your product and go straight to the result, they would. So don't sell the product — sell the solution to the pain.

This is why so many successful businesses are started by founders who experienced the problem themselves. They know the avatar because they were the avatar. Like a fitness trainer who had a baby, gained weight, and then had to lose it — they know every little struggle.

Once you've dimensionalized that pain and shown your prospect that you truly understand them, you hint at the solution. You say: "You've probably tried intermittent fasting. You've probably tried keto. You've probably tried Paleo. And you still haven't lost weight. There's a reason for that — and I have the solution."

That's how you fan the flames of desire.

### Compelling Offers Beat Convincing Arguments

Bad marketing tries to win an argument with the prospect. Great marketing makes a compelling offer. A compelling offer is ten times more powerful than a convincing argument. When the offer is good enough, people don't need to be convinced.

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## Mistake #1: The Buried Benefit

Here's what most businesses do when they create ads or funnels: they talk about their company, how long they've been in business, their founders, and then list out all their features and services.

That's the sound of money being murdered.

Instead, think about where your prospect wants to be. What's the big benefit they unlock by buying from you? When you speak about their desired end state, conversion rates go through the roof.

People don't care about you, your company, or your products. They don't care about your brand colors or your logo. They care about themselves, their problem, and where they want to get to. That's it.

Your job with ads is to get people to raise their hand and say, "I have the problem you're describing."

Here's a quick test: count how many times your marketing says "we" or "our" versus "you" and "your." Eighty percent of your messaging should be about the prospect. Only twenty percent should be about your solution.

In the first few seconds of any ad, you need to:

1. **Show you understand the problem** — what I call "dog whistle copy." Specific words that tell your market, "This is for you."
2. **Show them the outcome** they can expect.
3. **Sell them on paying attention right now** — before they scroll to the next thing.

In my "Sell Like Crazy" ads, I kick the bruised knee of my prospect hard. My market is jaded from all the gurus in their feed. So I spend time putting a little vinegar in that wound. I say, "I know your problem. I know it intimately."

But I also pair that with a big benefit in the headline. Before they even watch, I frame a specific, intriguing benefit. For my market, the number one thing they want is hundreds of high-quality leads who show up ready to buy. So I state that upfront.

Then I unpack the problems. Running a business is hard — it's like sticking a ghost pepper up your ass and walking barefoot on a trail of Lego. There's humor, but there's also truth. I'm kicking the bruised knee while empathizing. I'm showing them I understand because I am them.

Then comes the solution. But here's the thing: skepticism is at an all-time high. The barrier to entry for starting a business is basically zero — an internet connection and a TikTok account. The internet is flooded with people who don't know what they're talking about. Prospects have been burned. They don't know if I'm different.

The only way I can prove I know what I'm talking about is to prove it in the ad. My marketing needs to be valuable on its own. I spend the first half saying, "You've probably tried this. Your life is probably like this. This is your pain. And you probably want this benefit."

Then I say: let me show you I can help you by actually helping you right now.

When you do this, click-through rates climb. Conversion rates skyrocket. You're answering the biggest question in the prospect's mind: "Is this going to work for me?" You're giving them a taste — proving the food is good before they commit.

That's mistake number one: the buried benefit.

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## Mistake #2: Jargon Overload

When most people create an ad, they think like an insider. Every industry has its own vernacular. But they forget what it was like to be the customer, and they load up their messaging with jargon and technical terms that alienate people.

You need to speak to your prospect like a fifth grader. Use language anyone in your market can understand. When I started doing this, my conversion rates shot through the roof.

You will never alienate someone by being too clear. The moment they hear one thing they don't understand, they skip. They're not going to burden themselves trying to decipher what you mean. Your message needs to be Sesame Street simple.

People make this mistake because they think sounding technical makes them look smart. But prospects just tune out. A true expert takes something complex and makes it simple.

Here's a hack: take your copy — whether it's an ad, website, or video script — and run it through the Hemingway App. It's free. It shows you where your language is too technical and gives you a reading level score. Keep editing until it's clean and simple.

Don't use industry terms. Use the exact language your prospects use. Go to Reddit forums, read comments on your ads and YouTube videos, look at Amazon reviews. Copy their words verbatim. Don't rewrite them. That's your market speaking.

The only way to improve conversion is to improve consumption. And the way you do that is by making your message easy to consume.

That's mistake number two: jargon overload.

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## Mistake #3: Claims Louder Than Proof

Most people think they can just sit down and make an offer. They claim a benefit and expect people to believe it. But the market is extremely jaded.

"Here's how to lose weight" might have worked fifty years ago. You can't even say "Here's how to lose 10 kilos" anymore. The market has heard it all.

Beyond providing value, you need to make sure the proof of what you've got is louder than the claims you're making. Marketers are all competing to scream their offers louder than everyone else. You need undeniable, undoubtable proof that you've delivered the benefit you're promising — hundreds or thousands of times.

When you show a testimonial, the prospect thinks, "Yeah, but that's a woman and I'm a man," or "That person's young and I'm old." So you bring up the next avatar. And the next. You pile on so much unquestionable proof that every doubt gets addressed.

If you're a marketing agency saying you can generate 100 leads or improve Google rankings, back it up with proof. If you're in property investment promising 300% returns, show me the receipts.

You can't just say it anymore. There are a thousand other people in the feed saying the same thing. The Facebook pixel knows someone clicked on an ad in your space, and suddenly they're flooded with competitors all shouting claims.

The one with the most proof wins.

When you fix skepticism by constantly providing undeniable proof — and by showing people you can help them by actually helping them — all the resistance to buy disappears. All the doubts around "I'm different" or "I've tried this before" get answered in the ad itself.

The thing holding people back from responding is that they don't believe you. So pepper them with proof throughout.

That's mistake number three: claims louder than proof.

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## The Bottom Line

Fix these three mistakes, and I promise you: your cost per lead will drop. Your customer acquisition cost will get cut in half. Your return on ad spend will double.