How to Effectively Market Your Professional Services: 5 Key Strategies to Get Picked
Direct Answer: Effective professional services marketing is not just about getting attention. It is about building enough clarity, credibility, and trust that prospective clients understand what you do, why it matters, and why they should choose you.
If you are a lawyer, consultant, or other professional service provider, you have probably been told to “market more.”
But more activity is not always the answer.
For law firms especially, marketing is not simply about visibility. It is about reducing uncertainty before the first conversation.
Prospective clients are evaluating your website, content, reviews, professional profiles, videos, and increasingly, AI-generated search results before they ever contact you.
Your marketing should help them answer a few basic questions:
Does this person understand my problem?
Do they have the right expertise?
Can I trust them?
Are they the right choice for me?
Here are five strategies that can help.
Strategy #1: Identify the “3 A.M. Problem”
Clients rarely begin by thinking about your credentials.
They begin with a problem.
A parent may be worried about custody.
A business owner may be facing litigation.
An executive may be concerned about losing income or reputation.
The strongest marketing starts with the issue keeping the prospective client awake at night.
Instead of leading with everything you do, lead with the problem you understand.
That makes your message more relevant to both people and search systems because it connects your expertise to the questions clients are actually asking.
Do not just market the service. Show that you understand the problem behind it.
Strategy #2: Make Your Positioning Specific
Vague marketing creates hesitation.
Specific positioning makes it easier for prospective clients to understand whether you are a good fit.
Compare:
Vague:
“I help clients with legal matters.”
More specific:
“I help business owners resolve complex contract disputes.”
The second statement immediately tells the reader more about the lawyer's focus and the type of problem they handle.
You do not need to make promises about outcomes or timelines you cannot guarantee.
You do need to communicate clearly:
who you help
what problems you address
what kind of expertise you bring
why your approach is relevant
This clarity also strengthens your digital identity.
When your website, articles, videos, LinkedIn profile, and other content consistently reinforce the same areas of expertise, it becomes easier for prospective clients, search engines, and AI systems to understand what you are known for.
Strategy #3: Build a Simple Client Journey
Your marketing should make the next step obvious.
A simple system usually has three stages.
Attract
Create useful content that answers the questions prospective clients are already asking.
That may include:
articles
LinkedIn content
YouTube videos
podcast episodes
FAQ pages
search-optimized website content
Educate and Build Trust
Once someone finds you, give them enough information to feel confident continuing.
That might include educational content, reviews, professional credentials, case examples where appropriate, videos, or follow-up emails.
Make Contact Easy
Do not make someone work to figure out what happens next.
Use a clear call to action, straightforward scheduling, and an easy way to contact the firm.
The goal is not to impress someone with complexity.
It is to make the decision process easier.
Strategy #4: Build Consistency Across Your Digital Presence
Credibility is rarely created by one article, one video, or one LinkedIn post.
It develops through patterns.
If your website says one thing, your LinkedIn profile says something different, and your content covers unrelated topics, your positioning becomes harder to understand.
A stronger approach is to reinforce the same core themes across multiple platforms.
Your articles, videos, podcast appearances, professional profiles, reviews, and website should all contribute to a consistent picture of:
who you are, what you know, and who you help.
That consistency matters to prospective clients.
It may also help search engines and AI systems develop a clearer understanding of your expertise.
Think of each platform as another piece of evidence supporting the same professional identity.
Strategy #5: Avoid the Marketing Mistakes That Create Friction
Some marketing problems have little to do with the platform you are using.
They come from the message itself.
Being Too Vague
If your messaging could describe almost any lawyer or consultant, it gives people little reason to choose you.
Talking Only About Yourself
Prospective clients care about your experience, but they also want to know whether you understand their problem.
Make the client the center of the message.
Ignoring What People Are Asking
Client questions are valuable marketing research.
Use them to create articles, videos, podcast episodes, FAQs, and other content.
Failing to Follow Up
Many people are not ready to hire someone the first time they encounter them.
Staying visible through useful content, newsletters, professional relationships, and consistent communication helps maintain familiarity.
Why This Matters in AI Search
AI search is creating another way for prospective clients to discover and evaluate professionals.
That does not mean traditional marketing has stopped mattering.
It means your online presence needs to be easier to understand.
A clear practice focus, useful educational content, reviews, professional recognition, consistent profiles, and third-party mentions can all contribute to a stronger digital footprint.
The goal is not to manipulate an AI system.
It is to create enough credible, consistent information online that both people and technology can understand:
what you do, what you know, and when your expertise may be relevant.
The Be-Picked Perspective
Professional services marketing is not about chasing attention everywhere.
It is about creating decision confidence.
When your content addresses real problems, your positioning is clear, and your expertise appears consistently across your digital presence, prospective clients have fewer questions about whether you are the right person to contact.
That is the difference between simply being visible and becoming the trusted choice.
Getting found creates the opportunity. Building credibility is what helps you get picked.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most important part of professional services marketing?
Clarity. Prospective clients should quickly understand who you help, what problems you solve, and why your expertise may be relevant to their situation.
How can lawyers build credibility through marketing?
Lawyers can strengthen credibility through useful educational content, reviews, professional recognition, videos, podcasts, speaking engagements, consistent professional profiles, and other credible evidence of expertise.
Can professional services marketing help with AI search visibility?
Yes, indirectly. A clear and consistent digital presence gives search engines and AI systems more information about a professional's expertise, focus, reputation, and relevance to particular questions.
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A 3 A.M. problem is the urgent issue that keeps your ideal client up at night. It drives hiring decisions and should guide your marketing message.
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Focus on clarity over creativity. Define a specific problem, show a clear outcome, and repeat that message consistently across platforms to build trust.
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Clients hesitate due to uncertainty. Vague messaging and unclear outcomes create doubt. Strong marketing reduces friction and builds confidence.
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Andrew Colsky (00:12)
Welcome to Be Picked, the podcast for busy professionals who want to learn how to build and maintain a practice. I am your host, Andrew Colsky, and today we are speaking with Bob Dorris, who is a revenue and conversion strategist. So Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob Dorris (00:30)
Thank you, and we're glad to be here.
Andrew Colsky (00:33)
We love having people like you educate us about how we can build and sustain our businesses. So let me start off with this. Because we're talking to professional service providers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, people like that, they have small practices. They're very, very
busy. They have a lot of stuff going on, a lot of stuff on their plate. And now they got to do this horrible, horrible, terrible word marketing and getting themselves out there.
What has been your experience in terms of the issues that people like that need to be concerned about and how can they make their lives better?
Bob Dorris (01:12)
Well, yeah, marketing is a big issue. think that it's probably the biggest issue for most people. Everybody goes to school, learns their craft, and isn't told that they have to go out and market it. And the first thing to get in mind, or to
really internalize, is you're not in the business of doing the thing you do. You're in the business of marketing the thing you do. So you've either got to become a good marketer,
Partner with a good marketer, you know, but you've got to find a way to get it done because that is going to make all the difference and Marketing is it's not a it's not like an afterthought. It's got to be the main thought So
Having said that, what I would like to, if this is of interest to the listeners, what I'd like to do is to tell you the areas that basically there's two general areas you've got to think about.
Andrew Colsky (02:11)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (02:13)
Since
this is all about being picked, well, let's talk about how you get picked. So there's two areas. The first thing is the thing that you sell.
Andrew Colsky (02:24)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (02:25)
The second area is how you sell it. And that's generally the structure of what you sell. And for most people, that's going to involve a website either. It involves going from
where people first encounter you, which could be paid ads, it could be social media marketing, and then your website, and then your checkout page, and you you got different levels there. So there are many points, even if you have your offer right, there's many points along that flow where that flow can break, or it gets
Andrew Colsky (02:59)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (03:00)
constricted. All right?
Andrew Colsky (03:02)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (03:04)
So...
I will talk about first about the offer itself because that is probably where the most time should be spent and where I see most people messing up. It's probably the biggest thing that's the people
struggle with and then we'll talk about the structure, the funnel.
Andrew Colsky (03:25)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (03:25)
So with the offer, the thing that you sell
If I were to summarize, I'll start off by summarizing and then dig a little bit in. The biggest problem is having a vague offer.
Andrew Colsky (03:40)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (03:41)
Now I know that a lot of people watching this show have their small business owners, maybe their attorneys or whatever. I worked a lot with coaches and consultants, but I'm gonna give you an example of probably the one that really sticks out the most is the life coaches. So life coaches,
Andrew Colsky (03:55)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (03:55)
they talk about, I'm gonna make you confident, I'm gonna make you happy, right? That type of thing, that is vague.
Andrew Colsky (04:07)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (04:07)
How do I know that I'm happier after I've worked?
Andrew Colsky (04:09)
Hahaha!
Bob Dorris (04:10)
How do I know I'm confident? So if your offer, think about whatever it is, if your headline, if it's vague, if it's either one about you and not about the customer, or
Andrew Colsky (04:23)
Right?
Bob Dorris (04:24)
it's vague
if it is about what they get, then if it's vague, then you're losing sales right off the bat. You're really going to struggle.
So if we were to reverse engineer the process of what you do, I would say you have to, I take my break when I can tell that their offer is bad, I go back to step one, go back to the very beginning. And this can be painful for lot of people, because we're just so used to saying,
Let me be your attorney. Let me help you get over anxiety. know, all that vague, vague, vague stuff. So what are you actually selling? And you sell
Andrew Colsky (05:08)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (05:09)
something. If you want to be successful and not struggle the rest of your life, the rest of your career,
you've got to find a problem that you're solving for people that is, I call it a 3 a.m. problem, a bleeding neck problem. It's a problem that they have to solve.
Andrew Colsky (05:23)
Right, right.
Bob Dorris (05:24)
Yeah, not maybe, this is something you have to. That's why you can sell pain remedies from now until eternity. Because people, if they're suffering, they're in pain, they have to get over pain. If they have migraines, they have to get over these migraines. They have to, okay? So you've
Andrew Colsky (05:39)
Right. Right.
Bob Dorris (05:42)
got to look at what is it that you, what is the thing that your clients have to get past? For if you're a...
marriage counselor. Well you know they can't lose their wife or their husband. They've got to fix their marriage.
Andrew Colsky (05:58)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (05:59)
So you have to look for the 3 a.m. problem. You start with that. now, so step one, figure out the 3 a.m. problem. Okay you
Andrew Colsky (06:06)
Okay. Okay.
Bob Dorris (06:09)
haven't done that, go
back to square one. The next thing is you're not selling that fixing a 3 a.m. problem. You're selling the most desirable result that comes from fixing that.
Andrew Colsky (06:20)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (06:22)
So if you look at, let's take an example of, let's say the marriage counselor, that's the niche that I'm familiar with.
Andrew Colsky (06:34)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (06:35)
So yeah, I'm gonna do counseling with you. Well, what results come from that? Well, first of all, you stay married, yeah.
don't have to pay alimony, right? that one might even burn a little bit more, right?
Andrew Colsky (06:47)
Right? Yeah.
Bob Dorris (06:52)
Or your kids aren't going to be without a parent. Your kids don't have...
Andrew Colsky (06:55)
Right?
Bob Dorris (06:56)
So there's multiple results that come from fixing one problem, right?
Andrew Colsky (07:00)
Right, right.
Bob Dorris (07:01)
So
you want to list all the results come from fixing this problem and then find the one that is the most compelling.
And that's the problem you solve. That becomes
Andrew Colsky (07:14)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (07:15)
your offer.
Andrew Colsky (07:17)
So let me translate this into an example and you tell me if I'm following you. Let's say you were talking about sort of a marriage counselor here and so I'm thinking to myself, okay, maybe there's a divorce attorney who's listening to this podcast. And on one hand, they can be marketing themselves as, hi, I'm a divorce attorney, I do divorces. Pretty vague, pretty general, pretty, you know.
unspecific. The area where they could be marketing is do you want to make sure that you keep in contact with your kids if your marriage breaks apart?
Bob Dorris (08:01)
Yes.
Andrew Colsky (08:02)
do you, who gets to keep the house if we get divorced? These are the 3 a.m. problems that somebody is laying in bed unable to sleep because
They don't know the answer to that and it's causing all this anxiety
and it's causing them to really, you know, just ruminate about the problem and they're frustrated and they're confused and they're scared and they're lost. Is that kind of what you're saying?
Bob Dorris (08:31)
Yes, exactly. So you're not selling the thing you do. You are selling the most desirable result that comes from the thing that you do.
Andrew Colsky (08:43)
Right. I love that. Let me say that again, because I like that. You're not selling the thing you do. You're actually, in my words, you're selling the comfort that the problem has been resolved.
Bob Dorris (08:56)
Yes, yes, you're stopping
Andrew Colsky (08:57)
So in other words.
Bob Dorris (08:58)
your bleeding. You're yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (09:00)
Yeah.
Bob Dorris (09:01)
Now.
That could still be worded in a bit vague way. So I have
Andrew Colsky (09:06)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (09:07)
a couple of things that I really require that my offer does. So it's not just this result. Let's say I'm going go with something simple. know, lose 10
pounds, right? You're
Andrew Colsky (09:21)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (09:21)
a fitness coach or whatever or a nutritionist. You're gonna lose 10 pounds. Well, or lose weight. Okay, lose weight is a vague offer.
and maybe you're coaching or consulting, is, you charge $2,000, $3,000, whatever you charge, right? To lose weight. Well, yeah, I'm gonna lose, you know, five pounds over the next 20 years, right? So helping you lose weight is vague. Losing 20 pounds in the next 90 days is very specific.
Andrew Colsky (09:54)
Good point.
Bob Dorris (09:54)
So your result has got to be measurable.
It has to be not there. There can be no doubt if they pay you, they either got the result or they didn't. It
Andrew Colsky (10:06)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (10:06)
has to be measurable, right? And if it can be a metric like 10 days or by 50 % or something like that, perfect, right?
If not, then it has to be binary. Yes, I stayed married or no, didn't.
Andrew Colsky (10:19)
Right, right.
Bob Dorris (10:20)
Then it has to have a timeline.
Andrew Colsky (10:23)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (10:25)
So save your marriage in the next 30 days. Drop that 10 pounds or that 20 pounds in the next 60 days. Whatever it is, has to be measurable in a timeline. Now people, so when people hear that, they can future pace and go, well, yeah, don't wanna do the exercise or I don't wanna go through this counseling or talk to an attorney, but boy, my life 90 days from now is gonna look like this, right?
Andrew Colsky (10:53)
Right.
Bob Dorris (10:53)
You just
gave them clarity. You got rid of any vagueness in your offer. The test is, once you come up with your offer, it's a simple test. You give me X amount of dollars, I give you this. Is your audience going to jump on that or not?
Andrew Colsky (11:14)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (11:14)
If it doesn't fit that, you give me $1,000, I'll make you confident.
I don't know, will I be confident? You give me
Andrew Colsky (11:21)
You
Bob Dorris (11:23)
$1,000, I'm gonna increase your revenue by 50 % in the next 60 days. Yep, I can do the math and I know it's a good investment.
Andrew Colsky (11:31)
Right.
Bob Dorris (11:32)
So, or your
kids, you're gonna get to see your kids. me $5,000 and you're gonna get to see the kids in 90 days, I'll guarantee you're seeing your kids for the rest of your life, something like that.
You know,
Andrew Colsky (11:45)
Right.
Bob Dorris (11:45)
but it has to have those things built in, otherwise you slip back into the vague.
Andrew Colsky (11:51)
So as you're talking about this, I'm thinking of an example and I want to run it past you and get your thoughts on it. So someone is out there and they are marketing this vague offer. Give me $1,000. I'll make you more confident. And they find they're not getting takers and they try to figure out, why am I not, maybe I need to lower my price. So they start to lower their price and they figure if it's a lower price, I'll get more people.
and they lower their price and they're getting a couple more calls, but they're not really getting clients. And then they're like, well, let me lower the price or give us, give another special offer. So instead of them focusing on the problem, which is they don't have a specific offer, they're focusing
on, it's gotta be price. And then they start to lower and lower and lower the price, but they're offering something that is not tangible for the person to want to buy. Is that kind of part of what happens?
Bob Dorris (12:48)
Yeah, and so what comes, what are the results? Confidence, maybe my lack of confidence is my 3M problem. I'm so timid, you know. Well, what are the results that come from it? Well, maybe I was able to get a promotion at work, right? Maybe I was able to get the girl of my dreams, right? So.
Why not market that get that promotion at work? That becomes your offer. help you get promoted in the next 90 days, the next six months, something like that. Now people, that's the thing that they want. what you do is you take, this is all, everything in marketing is testing, if any
of our listeners don't know that. But you're finding the most desirable result that comes from making people confident, and that's what you offer them.
Andrew Colsky (13:37)
Got it, got it.
Bob Dorris (13:38)
The confidence
is only a mechanism to get there. As a matter
Andrew Colsky (13:41)
Right.
Bob Dorris (13:42)
of fact, the beautiful thing about that is once you come up with the desirable result you're getting and you find a different mechanism, maybe it's not increasing their confidence. Maybe it's bringing in some guy who is a expert at getting people promotions. You can change the mechanism anytime you want to, but you get known for the result that you're marketing.
Andrew Colsky (14:08)
Right,
Bob Dorris (14:08)
your methods change.
Andrew Colsky (14:10)
So becoming a, or really putting yourself out there as a niche specialist, but you become the go-to person for that particular issue. So how do you answer the question of the person, because I hear this all the time. I attend lots and lots of like business building type of meetings. And I hear these people with small businesses and they're like,
I mean, let's take business marketing, okay? And people will say, well, I have a business marketing company. Okay, well, who do you service? Oh, anybody that's needing to market their business. Well, but do you do restaurants? Do you do
professionals? Do you do stores? Anybody that needs it. Are they doing themselves a favor or a disservice by trying to be so broad that they don't have a particular offer?
Bob Dorris (15:03)
Yeah, yeah. And in there's a protocol I put people through who are doing this type of thing. We're trying to fine tune their offer. That would be, nailed it. That's the third step we do. Once we know what the problem is they're solving, the ideal result they're gonna provide, who are they gonna provide it for?
Andrew Colsky (15:25)
Okay.
Bob Dorris (15:26)
So yes, you gotta be a specialist. You can't be a generalist. If you're speaking to everybody, nobody hears you. But when you say that person, you call that person out by name or by their niche, they go, whoa, that's me, he's talking to me. So you have to define it. the fact that specialists, I, let me think, let's say I help people get over anxiety.
That's pretty vague, right? But I just help people get over anxiety. Well, if I CEOs of businesses doing over a million dollars a year to increase their stress, decrease their stress load by 80 % within the next 60 days,
Well, first all, that CEO who's doing over a million dollars a year goes, yep, this is for me. And boy, this must cost a lot because it's so specialized. They know me personally. They know my audience or
Andrew Colsky (16:28)
Right.
Bob Dorris (16:28)
they know my problem. So you're going to get people hearing you when you call them out. So
you have to call them out.
That's going to play into your marketing and when I talked earlier about structure, which I'll talk again about shortly, structure,
Andrew Colsky (16:47)
Sure.
Bob Dorris (16:48)
have to, your marketing, have to be getting your message in front of the right person. It
Andrew Colsky (16:54)
Right. Right.
Bob Dorris (16:56)
gets very expensive advertising to everybody.
Andrew Colsky (16:59)
Hahaha
Bob Dorris (17:01)
Now here's the thing, if you're, especially if you're doing organic marketing, you're doing social media,
Even though you call out somebody, you're thinking, well, maybe I'm going too narrow. People are worried about that. I can help everybody. Maybe I'm going too narrow. So maybe your content, when your niche is just these CEOs, right, that's the niche you've called out. But your contents, how CEOs get over anxiety, right?
Well, don't you think everybody else with anxiety is gonna hear your content and go, well, can you help me too? So you have to call somebody out, but you're pulling in from a broader top of funnel.
Andrew Colsky (17:44)
Right,
Bob Dorris (17:45)
And these.
Andrew Colsky (17:47)
Sorry, it just reminded me of something as an example. I took a CPR class. Somebody has a heart attack, gotta know how to do CPR. And one of the first things they taught us was, think about it. Somebody has a heart attack, they lay it on the ground. What happens? A crowd gathers, because everybody's gawking.
Bob Dorris (18:11)
Hmm?
Andrew Colsky (18:11)
You're
the one there saying, hey, I know CPR, let me go ahead and start, but you got to get an ambulance there. And what they taught us is never say somebody get an ambulance, because everybody's going to be looking at everybody else and assuming they did it. It's more specific to point to a particular person and say, you call an ambulance because you're being specific and targeting, and now you're going to get action.
Bob Dorris (18:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly the same thing. Perfect analogy.
Andrew Colsky (18:39)
Yeah, it just came to me and it's like, I don't know why, but I got to say this. So please continue.
Bob Dorris (18:48)
Hopefully the audience here is following the
structure here. So first thing we did was we defined a problem then we looked at the best result that comes from that. Most of our result a very specific measurable time bound result. And then
Andrew Colsky (19:03)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (19:04)
who are we providing this for? Now we've got all this information but now you've got to take it to market.
So
Andrew Colsky (19:09)
Right?
Bob Dorris (19:10)
that's where you may have heard of your marketing message. I think marketing messages are misunderstood and underutilized. So you turn that into a marketing message. For example, I help see...
I help CEOs of small businesses or CEOs of corporations and this audience and this audience to decrease their anxiety by 50 % in the next 60 days, something like that, without taking drugs, without these things they hate. Well, that is my offer. And I have to have that wording down. That becomes my source of truth.
I make my clients literally write that down and paste that up somewhere. And every message they put anywhere has got to be a piece of that, maybe not the whole thing, but a piece of it, or very, very slightly modified, basically it's gotta be that. And
Andrew Colsky (20:11)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (20:12)
here's the reason why.
When we don't do that, we don't have a single source of truth, one thing that we take out to market, when I'm saying take it to market, you're running into somebody at a party, say, I do XYZ, here's my marketing message. Your headline should be part of that. I help blank to blank,
Everything you do should be that. I helped one fellow who is a personal finance expert, and maybe there's people in your audience who do this, we...
started off with, we came up with the idea that he knows how to help people retire early. Well, because of my age, I'm thinking that's awesome. That's, that's what everybody wants, right? It's what I want.
Andrew Colsky (20:53)
Right.
Bob Dorris (20:54)
and if we didn't, he took that to market and found out that people weren't responding to it. Guess what they responded to.
His audience, and this goes back to the audience thing, why you have to define your audience. In my head,
Andrew Colsky (21:13)
Right.
Bob Dorris (21:13)
his audience was gonna be people my age, right? He was younger than me. His audience, the people he resonated with, younger too. So they didn't want to retire. They wanted to use his strategies to make more money while
Andrew Colsky (21:27)
Right?
Bob Dorris (21:28)
working.
So with the retirement thing, he had to take that to Mark to find out. And when they didn't respond, he started, they said, he asked him, well, what do you want? Oh, I just want, I don't want to retire. I want to make more money. Boom. He's the same guy offering the same thing, changed out marketing
message and took that out and now got feedback, got the data on that, that that converted better than the other thing. But if he didn't take that one refined message, he was throwing different
different messages everywhere,
Andrew Colsky (22:02)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (22:03)
you wouldn't have known what it was that people wanted.
Andrew Colsky (22:06)
Right.
Bob Dorris (22:07)
So once you know what your offer is, you got to turn it into a marketing message and that is set in stone until you have taken it to market and tested it and gotten feedback on it.
Andrew Colsky (22:17)
Right.
Bob Dorris (22:19)
So that's the initial stage. Now there's some other things that I highly recommend to
be picked, right? If
Andrew Colsky (22:31)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (22:31)
you are, maybe you've got that part together. Here's the thing. Again, I come from a world of people who are coaching and consulting and you know, kind of vague people. Well, how do you stand out against everybody else who's doing something similar to you?
Andrew Colsky (22:50)
Right, good point, good question.
Bob Dorris (22:52)
My recommendation is
that you have to differentiate yourself. My recommendation is you take whatever it is, whatever result that you help people get, you work backwards. I help them get this result. Well, you define your steps for getting people there. Let's say you create a nine-step program, right?
So you mark this down, I'm not saying carry it around your head, I'm talking about you write down the steps, you clarify it, you document it, you print it out so you see it, so your prospects can see it, everything else. Now you have a unique mechanism for getting people there. Your nine steps are going to be different than everybody else's steps. You name this as your protocol, your method, your system, right?
Now you're not just marketing you, you're marketing your system. And your system is unique to you. It's a unique mechanism. It's a new opportunity that other people haven't tried. People have tried. Whatever result you're trying to help people get.
Let's say you're a lawyer, well, they've tried other things. They've tried talking to their clients, talking to their wife, to see if she'll consider letting you see the kids. Well, they haven't tried your unique method.
They failed with other things. So you can't offer them a better version of other things. You have to offer them something new. So by turning what you do into a unique system, and you do that simply just by defining the steps that you're going to take them through anyways, you've created your own method, your own signature method, your own proprietary method.
that when you have a proprietary method, obviously you can charge more, you're specialized, nobody else has your method. So all you have to do is convince people that your method is better than other people's methods. And so you really differentiate yourself, you separate yourself. Plus, you're showing people that you've gone through the work of developing a signature protocol, which, you know, if you're not an expert, you couldn't do that, so you must be an expert, right?
Andrew Colsky (25:05)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (25:06)
And you're...
competition is saying, oh yeah, I can help you do that, just trust me. You make them look silly when you can show,
Andrew Colsky (25:14)
Right.
Bob Dorris (25:15)
you know, right, and you can show
Andrew Colsky (25:17)
Right.
Bob Dorris (25:17)
step by step by step, here's how you're going to get this result. And people go, wow, when we talked about clarity at the beginning, right, how you can't have a vague offer, well, this just makes how they're going to get the result even more clear.
Andrew Colsky (25:31)
Yeah. And you know, an interesting way for people to really kind of, get a good example of that would be if you're listening to this podcast, go on Google, search for whatever it may be. Maybe you're looking for a life coach. Maybe you're looking for a counselor. Maybe you're looking for an attorney, whatever it is you're looking for search for whatever that is and see what comes up. And you're going to find there's a lot of people that practice each of these areas.
But see what speaks to you. And I bet you the ones that speak to you are going to be the ones that follow what Bob is saying. The ones that have that uniqueness, the ones that stand out, the ones who have their own particular way of approaching this problem as opposed to just another attorney, another coach, another dentist, whatever it may be.
Bob Dorris (26:22)
Yeah, yeah. So there's so many benefits to that that I could probably spend an entire podcast talking about the benefits of doing that. But
I highly recommend taking what you do, turning into your unique system and selling that as a system that immediately differentiates you.
Andrew Colsky (26:43)
Right, right.
Bob Dorris (26:45)
I'm sure we are more than halfway through this podcast.
Andrew Colsky (26:47)
Wait.
Bob Dorris (26:48)
Maybe we segue it over into the structure of how you sell.
Andrew Colsky (26:54)
Yeah, let's do that and make sure we get it in.
Bob Dorris (26:58)
Okay, so this is hugely important. This is probably where I shine, although I definitely am able to help people define what their offer is and turn it into their own program. So the structure, you're starting with wherever people hear about you.
which may be an ad banner or wherever all the way through, you if you're using sales pages through your marketing funnel. Now there's different places where it's going to break down. What I do personally is I look for, there's always gonna be a primary place.
If you think of your marketing funnel as being a literally a flow and think of a pipe, right? Well, if a pipe is constricted tight in one place, that is what you've got to fix. And it may be constricted tight in a couple of places.
Andrew Colsky (28:00)
Right.
Bob Dorris (28:00)
But
if you go and work on your funnel somewhere down this flow, hopefully this is making sense, and
Andrew Colsky (28:07)
Yeah.
Bob Dorris (28:07)
you fix something like, maybe you fix the headline, right?
So that opened up, but this thing before it is still constricted. You can open this up all you want, you're still only gonna get so much flow. So you have to open up the first thing in the funnel that is constricted. And that changes everything else afterwards.
Andrew Colsky (28:29)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (28:31)
So there are, we can look at different points of your funnel.
but probably the easiest way to understand this. Everybody's probably heard of, ever heard of ADA? Attention, Interest, Desire and Action? Copywriting world, that's a big thing. attention, your people go through this. It's not just on page. They literally go through this from the time they see your ad. So if you think of attention as, are you even getting people's attention?
Andrew Colsky (29:06)
Right.
Bob Dorris (29:09)
So if your goal is, let's say your goal is to make, I don't know where your audience is at, but let, you know, a typical figure, people go, I wanna make six figures or $10,000 or something like that. Well, how many people are even seeing your offer, seeing your ad to begin with, your advertising? If there's not enough people seeing your advertising, if you're not getting enough impressions, if you're running ads or enough social media,
clicks or whatever people
see in your posts, you can't possibly meet your goal.
Andrew Colsky (29:41)
Right.
Bob Dorris (29:41)
So the biggest thing you can unconstrict, you can open up, is getting more people to see that.
Andrew Colsky (29:49)
Right.
Bob Dorris (29:50)
But if you're not thinking in these terms, you're going, there's just something wrong. You're going to jump in and start tweaking headlines that may be not broken to begin with an offer that may be not broken. Right. So taking this approach is this is where I people the most is saving time because you can spend endless time adding upsells downs doing all this stuff downstream of the funnel downstream of that pipe where that pipe is actually constricted. Right.
Andrew Colsky (30:16)
Yep.
Bob Dorris (30:18)
So.
You'll know if you're, if you're.
if your awareness, the attention is broken, if you're just getting low traffic, or if you're getting traffic, you got a lot of impressions, but nobody's engaging with it, nobody's clicking or whatever,
Andrew Colsky (30:40)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (30:40)
you have a problem at the attention stage. right? So then you go down
Andrew Colsky (30:42)
Right, yeah.
Bob Dorris (30:45)
to that funnel, AID, attention, interest, desire, action. So, interest.
So you got people clicking. So you know that part is, you know, I'm getting, if I'm running ads for anybody who doesn't know, doesn't do ads, know, typically if you're getting 1 % click through on rate on your ads, it's okay. It's acceptable. All right.
Andrew Colsky (31:06)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (31:07)
So if you're getting a thousand people a month hitting your sales page, clicking that ad and getting to your sales page, you're at least getting enough to know if things are working downstream. So interest, people hit your page, they click that ad, they hit the page, do they bounce off right away? Or do they stay on the page for a while? That's
Andrew Colsky (31:27)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (31:29)
the interest stage of your funnel, of your flow.
If they're bouncing off right away, then you probably have a bad hook. Right? Your headline is bad or the thing that got them to go there, your advertisement, your banner, whatever the thing that got them to go there is not aligned with what they see as soon as they hit that page. Maybe both are good. Maybe the ad was good. Maybe the headline was good, but it's not what people expected. They clicked this and they should see that exact same thing on that sales page.
Andrew Colsky (32:01)
Right.
Bob Dorris (32:02)
Right?
So there's many things there that could be broken or ways of knowing that's broken. Basically like say low watch time, they're hitting, they're bouncing off or they just get there and they don't interact on the page at all. You know, if you're using any heat map software, anything that's letting you know that people are, are,
on your page and they're doing some action, right? So you have attention, they have interest in the desire. Have they clicked or if you're doing something where people have to call you, are they calling you? Maybe their desire is there, right? They're staying on the page, they scroll down the page a little bit, but they're not clicking that button, they're not scheduling appointment to talk.
Andrew Colsky (32:48)
Right. Right.
Bob Dorris (32:49)
Well, that's another stage. And
there's many things that can cause that stage to break down.
Andrew Colsky (32:55)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (32:57)
And you go a bit further, action. So maybe you got them to click that button, book a call. Well, they don't show up for the call. So what was broken there? Or they get on the call with you, but, well, I got to talk to my wife or they, you know.
They don't convert for some reason, right? They don't take
action. So there's multiple things that can be breaking down at that point too that you have to investigate.
Andrew Colsky (33:31)
Right.
Bob Dorris (33:32)
So if you.
as compared to just jumping in going, let me fix my headline. Let me change my banner or my ad or let me change my, you know, what you said earlier was perfect. My price, my price must be too high. Your price isn't too high. You've confused people. Your offer was too big, right?
Andrew Colsky (33:55)
Right, right.
Bob Dorris (33:56)
So, you have to look at all these, at these things, but you don't just randomly look at them.
because you're going to a lot of likely to spend a lot of time downstream of where the problem is, know, fixing the offer or something when it was actually the ad or the audience, you know, before they even got to your page. And when you're spending time on that, you're taking away time from what from putting time into the thing that actually gets the results and that actually if you change that audience would have changed the results of everything downstream.
Andrew Colsky (34:29)
Right. Yeah, it's, mean, you know, just to sort of summarize the way I'm hearing it from you is that before you go and fix the problem, you've got to identify what the problem is or in legal speak, what's the issue. And, you know, I have been in so many corporate meetings where you have all these executives around a table and they're talking about, you know, why aren't people buying this product or using this service?
And they start speculating and, it must be the price. must be. And it's like, and I sit there in amazement. It's like, did you ever think to go out and ask the customer who's not buying it why
Bob Dorris (35:07)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (35:08)
they didn't pursue it? And it, it, it, it's like, you know, it baffles them. Well, but I'm the executive. I know what they need. No, you don't. You do not know
Bob Dorris (35:17)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (35:17)
what they need. They know what they need. And they're, they're
Bob Dorris (35:20)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (35:20)
choosing with their, their feet, or in this case, their finger and clicking someone else.
So it's important to identify, just like
you said, where in this pipe are you having the problem before you go and start implementing fixes, because you might be fixing something that's not broken.
Bob Dorris (35:39)
Yeah, and you know, there's a good chance the thing actually would have sold
Andrew Colsky (35:43)
Yeah!
Bob Dorris (35:44)
if you had fixed everything else before it.
Andrew Colsky (35:46)
Right, right. man, well this is really great information and I really appreciate it and we are actually over time, but it's just important to be able to hear
all of this. So before I close this out, let me ask you, is there sort of one final thought you have for our audience before we wrap up the podcast?
Bob Dorris (36:11)
Well, I would say review this podcast for sure.
Andrew Colsky (36:16)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Dorris (36:18)
And if you don't take away anything else, maybe start with your offer. As I told you before, the offer, if you're not going with something, if you're too vague in what you're offering, you're not going to do business. You've got to get very specific. But all of these things are very important.
If people want to reach out to me, talk to me about it, I can give you more direction.
Andrew Colsky (36:43)
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. This has been Bob Dorris, and we appreciate all the information you had to share. You can visit us at our website, www.bpicked, B-E-P-I-C-K-E-D.com, and you'll find links to this podcast and articles related to this information.
and all of our other podcasts and articles. Anything we can do to help you to build and maintain your business is what we're all about. So please join us on additional podcasts that come up each week and we wish you success in your business. And Bob, thank you so much for joining us.
Bob Dorris (37:22)
Thank you. And if I can help people, if they would like to reach me at BobDoris.com, that's D-O-Bob D-O-R-R-I-S, feel free to go there and we can chat.
Andrew Colsky (37:34)
Fantastic, thank you for sharing that. All right, we will see you on a future Be Picked podcast.