Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Art of the Online Business podcast, where we uncover the secrets to unlocking the full potential of your online business. 

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Melissa Harstine, a customer insights strategist who helps course creators close the gap between what they want to say and what their audience *actually* needs to hear before they’re ready to buy. As a result, ideal clients convert faster and the course, program, or membership continues to grow. Melissa has worked with clients like Jordan Gill and Content Bistro and brings a unique blend of empathy and strategy to her work, leading to fresh solutions that make an impact.

We’re going to dive deep into the world of communication and discover the magic words that can turn your online audience into loyal customers.

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• Learn more about Melissa on LinkedIn

Rick Mulready:

All right, what’s up, my friends? Welcome to today’s episode of the art of online business podcast. Rick here I want to tell you a quick story to start this episode off. So it was, I don’t know what month it was exactly, but it was the middle of 2015 and I remember I was sitting in a Starbucks. I know it’s Starbucks. For those of you don’t, who don’t know, I am a total coffee snob and Starbucks is a complete last resort, but I do enjoy working in Starbucks. I love to work in coffee shops and Starbucks is great to work in. But anyway, I was in a Starbucks. It was in San Diego here and I was. It was in Carlsbad, san Diego, and I was gonna be doing Skype calls with some of my students of my program. Back then, I had a flagship course teaching Facebook ads for online Business owners and it was called the FB Advantage, and so I decided to have conversations with five of my quote-unquote best customers and I remember having those conversations, getting off those calls, and I was like that, like what took me so long took me a year and a half to have those kind of conversations and it was. I got the, the, the data and the insight and the information I got from those calls was amazing and it gave me ad copy, gave me email copy, gave me sales page copy. I built stronger relationships with people and it allowed me to improve my course. So many different benefits from those conversations and I definitely might remember like why did I, why did I wait so long to do that? Well, I Bring this up because my guest today, melissa Harstein. She is an audience and messaging strategist and she helps course creators close the gap between what they want to say and what their act, what their audience actually needs to hear before they’re ready to buy. And when your audience hears what they need to hear, ideal clients are gonna convert faster and your core sales are gonna grow as a result. And so if you’re seeing performance in your funnel sort of consistently dropping, or if you’re doing the same kind of launch over and over and you’re noticing a decline in performance of the funnel, oftentimes it comes down to Messaging, and the messaging disconnect is something I see with so many people I work with. Even people who have very successful businesses on you know and on their terms comes down to messaging, and Melissa is an expert in this and she helps you figure out when the breakdown is what the gaps are and what to look for when there could be a Messaging breakdown, and then what to do about it. And she’s gonna share interview questions to ask the how many questions to ask what the whole process is when she works with clients. Whether you want to do this yourself or Work with Melissa on this sort of thing her website, by the way, as Melissa Harstein comm. H-a-r-s-t-i-n-e. And at the end of this episode she gives you her voxer. So please, voxer, and let her know that you heard her here on the podcast. So, without further ado, let’s go hang out with Melissa.

Melissa Harstine: 3:31

There we go there you are.

Rick Mulready: 3:33

Hi how are you doing great? How are you?

Melissa Harstine: 3:36

good.

Rick Mulready: 3:38

Yeah, it’s what’s that? Where are you located?

Melissa Harstine: 3:41

um in Kansas, um Kind of near Kansas City, in a small town. So I don’t know if you or your family watched Gilmore Girls, but I tell people that it’s kind of like stars hollow with like this really quaint downtown, but also like the quirky neighbors that are sometimes a little bit too friendly, you know and just yeah, all the fun festivals. We’ve got the tulip festival coming up in a couple weeks, but that’s cool, that’s awesome. How about you?

Rick Mulready: 4:06

I am in San Diego. Okay gotcha and has been raining a lot.

Melissa Harstine: 4:12

Yeah, it’s been raining here too. My allergies, like I feel, like I’m I hope I don’t run out of breath because I’m just yeah, congested with that.

Rick Mulready: 4:19

I hear you. Yeah, I’m almost afraid of what the spring is gonna be like here because we’ve had so much rain, which is very abnormal for here, yeah, so Thanks for coming on here. I’m excited to have this conversation. Yeah, I’m really excited about it, because messaging is like I sigh, because Even, as you know, even for you know quote seasoned online business owners it’s like you can’t even describe. I’m like they, like you can’t even describe, like what you do and how you help people.

Melissa Harstine: 5:03

You know I talk you talk around it.

Rick Mulready: 5:05

Mm-hmm and I’m always like yeah, so yeah, do you have any questions about anything before we go? This is like you and I sit down for coffee perfect yeah easy. I mean, I have the notes in front of me. Just be just from. I’m just setting up some recorders here, but like I don’t, you know, I don’t have 10 questions in front of me.

Melissa Harstine: 5:34

Okay, perfect. Yeah, I know you have a pretty conversational interviewing style because I listened to your show quite a bit and I, oh, thank you. Yeah, and I feel like the way that you approach business and just your values and the way that you talk about things like messaging and knowing your audience are just so aligned with my Own that I yeah, it’s gonna be a really great conversation.

Rick Mulready: 5:53

Awesome, awesome, cool. All right, let me hit to that. And then this cord keeps bugging me in the back and we’ll get that going, and then we’ll get this going. Okay, cool, All right, any other questions for me?

Melissa Harstine: 6:20

Do you have someone editing this afterwards?

Rick Mulready: 6:22

or is it just going to be?

Melissa Harstine: 6:23

one long take Okay.

Rick Mulready: 6:25

So, like you want to start, stop whatever you need to do, you might, I’ll probably do that as well.

Melissa Harstine: 6:33

Okay, perfect. And then like oh, wait a minute.

Rick Mulready: 6:37

If you swear, that’s okay too, we’ll just bleep it, because I think that it has as much of an effect with the bleep.

Melissa Harstine: 6:45

Yeah, I don’t normally swear unless I’m having a really really, really bad day. So we’re good.

Rick Mulready: 6:51

Just throwing that out there. If you want to go for it, and yeah, we’ll just dive in.

Melissa Harstine: 6:58

Okay, sounds great.

Rick Mulready: 7:00

Melissa, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

Melissa Harstine: 7:03

Hey, I’m doing great. I’m joy, joy to be here.

Rick Mulready: 7:07

I I’m I’m fascinated by when I when I first learned about what you do, I was super fascinated because, at number one, I think that this is so needed, as we were talking about before we hit record, this is one of those things that is just like. It’s super frustrating, because when I have conversations with with online business owners, many, many times they are very successful, whatever success means to them in their business, but yet when you ask them like, well, what’s the promise of you know whatever, or how do you serve people, they almost like talk around it and not specifically able to answer that question. And so we’re going to be diving into all those types of things here today, but in your words, I can read what I have on my screen about you, know you and what you do, but I want to hear from you, and my audience would love to hear in your words what it is that you would actually do for people.

Melissa Harstine: 8:06

Yeah. So I’m a strategist and I help people who have courses and group programs really dial in their audience message fit, and so what that means is that a lot of times after you know your course is growing, you’ve launched it several times and it’s really hard sometimes to see the ways that your audience is shifting or changing right, because there’s always these things happening, whether it’s just your audience is preference or a little bit different than they were in the past, or your course is growing or just like in the marketplace as a whole. You know we’ve seen a lot of changes between like 2020 and 2023. And if you’re not aware of those things and then adapting your message to kind of fill in those gaps, you know it’s really easy to just come off as like really out of touch with your audience if your messaging isn’t there.

Rick Mulready: 8:56

So do you have? So how do you, where do you come in to sort of help online businesses with that sort of thing?

Melissa Harstine: 9:06

Yeah. So let me let me share a story about a time. Sure, I really saw the impact of what can happen when an entrepreneur doesn’t have their audience message fit dialed in. So a few years ago, I was working on a with a client who had a program that taught people how to become gardening coaches, and so, you know, things looked like they were going pretty well on the front end. She had like 9,000 leads, but those leads weren’t converting into sales and, like the, the conversion rate was something like 1.3%, right, and there was clearly a problem somewhere in the funnel. And her first thought was like okay, I’ve launched this several times, like maybe we just need to update the copy, maybe it needs a refresh. You know, she reached out to someone to redo that sales page and that webinar script, but there was still this like deeper underlying issue that needed to be addressed. And that’s what I really discovered when I was doing these audience research interviews for her, talking with customers and prospects, because what I saw was there were now two different audiences coming into her funnel, which she didn’t realize. So audience A was interested in improving their gardening skills and maybe they had just kind of started about, you know, selling one or two of the things that they were growing. But audience B was really interested in the business side of things. Right, they happen to enjoy gardening, but they’re like, wow, what if I could like make a career out of this? You know what if I could leave my job as a teacher and start coaching other people, you know, on how to become better gardeners? And so it was really clear that, like one of those audiences was a lot better fit for this course. So, with like, with these recommendations and these insights that I gave my client, she was able to do a couple of things to really improve her results in future launches. Number one was she switched to an application funnel which led her like better pre-qualified leads at the beginning. Number two is that she was able to funnel those that first audience that wasn’t a great fit into another offer she had that was more about the gardening skills. And then, number three, she was then able to really like improve her sales page messaging so that it spoke to like that one best customer and really got inside their mindset. And so like that was like such an aha moment for me because, like I said, I see our audiences are always shifting and it’s just really hard to see from inside the business. And so when we can really be aware of that and get our get things kind of realigned, our funnel, the entire funnel, top to bottom, is just going to perform so much better.

Rick Mulready: 11:40

How did? Did you, were you, did you have these realizations? As far as, like realizing that there were two audiences actually, you know, were they signing up, for it sounds like she had a webinar.

Melissa Harstine: 11:53

Correct, yeah, she had a five day challenge that then went into a webinar.

Rick Mulready: 11:58

Oh, okay, is this evergreen?

Melissa Harstine: 12:01

It was a live launch that she did multiple times a year. And so really, the key clue that something was happening with the challenge was that she, like, like I said, had like 9,000 leads but then only like 30 people, I think, signed up for the webinar, but of those 30 people, like 30 people joined the course. I mean, it was like a crazy number, right. So there was clearly something happening at the beginning, and so we had a hunch that maybe there was two different audiences, but we didn’t really know for for sure, and that’s why we dove in and did these audience research interviews to like confirm this is actually what’s going on.

Rick Mulready: 12:37

So for something like that, you know what? What pops into my mind is I’m sure her copy and her messaging was speaking to the coaches, but yet people like, but obviously there were other people like we, we, what, yeah, like I don’t know. I’m having such a hard time articulating what I want to say about that, because it’s like we often think well, isn’t it obvious, like, who this is for? But there’s, as you mentioned in this great example, there’s obviously a disconnect. Do you know what I mean? Like how, it’s almost like, how could we be more obvious who this is for?

Melissa Harstine: 13:20

Yeah, exactly, and I think that there’s even though it’s hard to see from inside your business like there’s. There’s really three symptoms that you might be noticing that are indicating that you know, maybe your messaging isn’t resonating with people like you think it is. You know, maybe you are attracting more people that aren’t that right fit, and so one of those signs, you know, is what I mentioned before that you’ve launched it several times and your conversion rates are dropping. Your funnel isn’t performing the same way. The second sign that there might be an audience message fit issue is that you’re seeing an uptick in people who are joining your course or program and after they’re in the doors, you’re like, oh my gosh, this is not the right fit. Like these people need a lot of extra handholding or support. Or, all of a sudden, I’m getting these messages like, hey, this isn’t what I expected. Like I thought this was going to happen, I thought it was going to get these results right. Like there’s this gap somewhere before they ever get in the doors. And then the third sign that I kind of see is that you know, simply, it’s like it’s 2023. Like we’ve all noticed how much the market has changed in the last few years and if you haven’t, you know, looked at your audience message fit recently. There’s probably a disconnect somewhere in there.

Rick Mulready: 14:33

Yeah, so all right. So I want to kind of go back to to this example, that that you shared here, and just sort of look under the hood on a few different things there. The she put an application into the funnel. Was this was? Was this a high pre, was this like a high ticket program? Or where did the application come in and how much was the program?

Melissa Harstine: 14:57

It was. It was a, I think at the time it was maybe around a twenty five hundred dollar offer.

Rick Mulready: 15:04

OK.

Melissa Harstine: 15:04

And so it really was just to figure out like, who are these people serious and are they like, are they the people that are willing to possibly make a career change or add a new revenue stream to their existing business to really like get the most value out of this program?

Rick Mulready: 15:21

Got you OK. So where did the, where did the application go in the funnel?

Melissa Harstine: 15:27

That I don’t know, because that piece of the project was after I had finished my engagement with her.

Rick Mulready: 15:33

Oh, ok, ok, Because, yeah, I mean, yeah, twenty five hundred is quote higher ticket, the way that I look at it. But I think it’s fascinating that they put an application into that funnel to weed people out. But imagine it gets put at the beginning to be able to weed people out and then there’s some automation that you could do, because you said that you know you were that this person was able to funnel people into another offer if they answered a certain way. Automation could kick that, you know, kick off a, you know them over into a separate funnel. Now, when you do this sort of project for people, who are you speaking to? Are you going out and finding, like, are you look at these just people from their audience, existing customers? Who are they?

Melissa Harstine: 16:33

Yeah. So it’s kind of a mix of people and it changes depending on the project and kind of what we’re trying to learn or what our hypothesis are that we’re trying to prove or disprove. So it’s usually a mix of current customers and then prospects. You know whether that’s someone that has filled out an application or, you know, sent to DM on social media, like you know, raise their hand in some way. Sometimes, you know, we’ll talk to people that are just completely, like, fairly new to the business. But we’re doing that because we’re trying to like compare you know what are people thinking along the way, maybe even how is there there, how have their wants or needs changed since the last time we did this round of interviews and talk to them? Right, you know, I know that you mentioned on a recent podcast episode, rick, that you noticed that a lot of your people were really interested in AI right now, and so you were thinking about creating this new lead magnet to, you know, meet that need and kind of tap into that. You know, hot topic and like that’s the kind of thing that you can learn when you’re doing these types of interviews on a regular basis and just being aware of what’s going on in your audience’s mind.

Rick Mulready: 17:43

Hmm, I love that. So when you’re compiling, so what’s the best way to sort of process that information that you learn? So if you’re getting on Zoom having, I would imagine it’s a fairly quick call, maybe like 15 minutes. Is that sufficient time?

Melissa Harstine: 18:03

Generally 30 minutes just to make sure that we can really dive deep.

Rick Mulready: 18:07

OK, and then once we, once we do that sort of like what do we do with that information at that point?

Melissa Harstine: 18:15

Yeah. So the next step is kind of analyzing and coding the information to look for trends, and so a lot of like the categories that I’m trying to pay attention to are things like what are the common pain points, what are the common desires, what else have they tried to solve this challenge? What are their hesitations or objections, or like where is their friction in the buying process? You know, with customers, like what are the actual outcomes that they’re seeing? And then, in addition to kind of like those messaging categories I’m also looking for like so usually what happens is, before we even do those interviews, there’s some kind of a I do an audit of their current marketing assets to kind of start to figure out like where are these gaps at? And so that’s kind of in the back of my mind is like OK, we have these holes that we’re needing to fill, and what those holes are can look different, you know, for everybody. But I’m trying to like pay attention, because identifying those gaps allows me to give feedback to my clients so that they can make strategic decisions for the future, instead of just like guessing and not really being sure what, what their audience is thinking or where those holes are.

Rick Mulready: 19:27

Gotcha. What’s an example of a gap? If you’re looking at the different marketing assets you have these conversations with people then you’re looking at the different you know marketing assets. What’s an example of a gap that might exist?

Melissa Harstine: 19:38

Yeah, so one of the most common ones I see is that there actually ends up being kind of two different audiences, where one is, you know, let’s say that your offer is targeted to beginning course creators, but the language that you’re using is speaking to more established course creators, right, like I saw that recently with someone where they had an analogy on their sales page that said you know, this offer is more cost effective than hiring a CMO, like a chief marketing officer, right, but a beginning level course creator is not ready for a CMO. You know what I mean. And so, like those are just like little things where if you go in and tweak your sales page a little bit over time, you may not even realize that that one line is out of out of alignment, but it can, like you know, if you’re the reader going through that page, it can kind of throw you for a loop, like wait a minute, I thought this was for beginners. Like this doesn’t make sense, I don’t understand this.

Rick Mulready: 20:32

Yeah, interesting, I got you OK, so that makes that makes sense. And what’s coming up for me too, as we’re talking here, is this is one of those things where it’s great to get an outside set of eyes on this, because we are so close to our business that we often are missing these things. And, like you mentioned before, we start banging our head against the wall when you know conversion rates are declining and we’re like, oh, let’s just blow everything up and start fresh, when in fact you know it, but it’s. It might seem like a big tweak, but it’s really kind of like just tweaking because you’re listening. So this is where I had a thought will come and it’ll come to me in just a second. Okay, now I have another question that just popped up, so the other one will come back to me. So let’s just say that we start integrating. You know, like the example that you just mentioned, messaging more towards the oh. Oh, you know, I see a gap over here. We’re targeting or we’re speaking to more advanced course creators, or what have you? All right, so let’s change that. How much time are you giving, you know, to test this new messaging, or is there a set time or a number of people going through the funnel. Once you’ve made these changes, where do you see? What do you generally do with that?

Melissa Harstine: 22:07

I’m gonna pause again, sorry Cause that is also beyond the scope of the work that I do with my clients. Sorry, so I’m just doing like the strategy piece of like going in auditing their current assets, looking at, like, doing the customer interviews and then providing the strategic direction for their next steps.

Rick Mulready: 22:25

Gotcha Okay, okay, cool, so I can go back to one of the other questions.

Melissa Harstine: 22:29

Yeah.

Rick Mulready: 22:31

Okay, so with that so you’ve identified, you know, a gap or several gaps in somebody’s business you will deliver this sort of package, I guess, of information to them, to your client, and at that point is generally the next step for the client. If it’s like kind of a major, like all right, you need to overhaul your messaging here. I mean, are people at that point hiring a copywriter to do this or working with their existing person, or what do you generally see with your clients?

Melissa Harstine: 23:06

Yeah, a lot of times they’re either, as you mentioned, hiring a copywriter or if they have someone on their team who’s able to go and run with this and make these changes, and so sometimes it’s straightforward, you know, maybe there’s just a few tweaks that need to happen to a sales page, but other times, you know, I was working. Let me just share a story to explain this. Last year I was working with Jordan Gill and at the time you know she was really focused on one core offer, which was her Denny Day program. That taught people, you know, how to create a VIP day, you know, which is like a four, like a eight hour, four figure offer, and she had been selling that for a couple of years. You know the messaging was working really well Replace your monthly retainer with a VIP day and work like four days a month, something like that. But all of a sudden they noticed that they were attracting a different type of client because they were getting more visible and more people were just kind of curious and coming to check her out. These people already had VIP days right when they came into the program. So she’s like, if they’re not wanting to learn how to create a VIP day for the first time, like what is it that they’re wanting to learn? Cause we need to kind of like shift our messaging to meet these people, this new audience as well. And so that was really where I dove in with these interviews was to understand, like, what this second audience was wanting and needing. And so kind of two different things came out of that. One was that the thing that they shared with the existing audience was they were really looking for kind of this life first business, this freedom, this flexibility, like in a business model that would allow them to do things like read all the books on their shelves that they didn’t have time to read. But then the other piece of it, you know, is they didn’t have all of like the systems and the marketing, like parts on the backend to really be able to sell and deliver their VIP day effectively. And so what Jordan and her team did with this knowledge is they went out and tested a bunch of different things, a bunch of different messages, you know, tried to link some new offers to see, you know, what people were responding to, and at the end of the day, this was kind of independent of the work I did with them, but they’ve ended up making an even bigger shift in their business over this past year, where they’re now focusing really on those people that are wanting that life first business, that are wanting, you know, more than just showing up trading. You know time for dollars and that’s so there’s. It’s been like these insights were part of a bigger change that’s been happening inside of their organization.

Rick Mulready: 25:35

Is that the messaging that is framing the same offers that she had, or, like, is it different? Do you happen to know if, like, there are different offers?

Melissa Harstine: 25:44

Both. So they’re using it for their existing offer, the done in a day program, and they also have started using it for this new like the make your mark conference that they’re having in September. So kind of like this umbrella brand positioning statement that they’re using for all of the different things in their business right now.

Rick Mulready: 26:03

Gotcha okay. So once we get on the call with them, what types of questions are we asking?

Melissa Harstine: 26:10

Yeah. So you know, I’m usually doing like 10 to 20 interviews to really dive deep and understand what’s going on in the audience’s mind and, like you know what’s what they’re thinking. Some of the top questions that I ask are take me back to the day when you first started thinking about learning more about gardening. What was happening? And the reason that I’m asking that question is because it’s really diving deep into the customer journey and the thought process that got them to where they are today and like brought about that realization like, oh, I might need a course or a program or an offer like this. One of my clients actually found out that her messaging was very seasonal. So you know, when I was asking her clients this question, they had actually heard her speak at a conference and were sold on the solution right away. They’re like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, I need it. But they didn’t buy at that moment. What happened is, you know, they went back to their busy lives and fall was a really busy season for her niche and the back end of their business was just a hot mess. And that was when they were like, okay, I need this, I need, I can’t keep running my business like this. I need this course to help me, teach me how to get my systems dialed in. So that was when they purchased and so, because my client knew that, because we’d asked this question, she was able to create an Instagram campaign in the fall, to really drop seeds and speak to her audience when that particular pain point was most weighing on them. Gotcha.

Rick Mulready: 27:37

Did you use drop seeds intentionally right there, that was a good pun. If you did not for the gardening, you were dropping seeds. What was that question again that you asked like to begin the customer journey?

Melissa Harstine: 27:49

Yeah, take me back to the day when you first started thinking about fill in the blank, what was happening.

Rick Mulready: 27:57

Gotcha okay. And if it is a current customer, are you treating it sort of like a case study where it’s sort of like before, during and then? Where are they now?

Melissa Harstine: 28:16

Yeah, that’s generally the flow of the interview questions that I’m asking over the course of this 30 minutes, you know, starting with something like that, and then, you know, I might say something like what did you find most intriguing or surprising about this course? Because that kind of realizes, you know, it reveals things that are like sparking curiosity in them, that are making them want to learn more, or things that like really stood out when they first got in the course. I also love to ask questions like give me an example of something that you’re able to do now that you couldn’t do before, because that’s going to be revealing the transformation that they’re receiving inside your course, and then that helps you then go and talk about that transformation if it’s trending, you know, in your copy and your content, you know. And then the last question that I always love to ask when I’m doing these interviews is is there anything else on your mind that you’d like to share with me today? And a lot of times people are like oh no, I think we covered it all, and then they end up going on this huge rabbit trail. That is like some of the like most juicy content that I’ve heard the entire time we’ve been doing this interview. You know, this thing that they think is not important is actually really, really valuable, and so just giving them the opportunity to speak freely is so, so great.

Rick Mulready: 29:29

Yeah, I would say too that you know from you know, in repeat that again, I would say too, like from a copy perspective, you know, add copy, sales page copy, email copy, landing page copy. You have their words that they’re using and so everyone’s like, well, I don’t know what to write, Well, like that’s it, use their words that they are, that they’re using. Do you ever talk to anybody who maybe that example that used before you know the gardening and they do the challenge and then a webinar and so forth, and they go through the entire launch but don’t purchase. You ever talked to to those people?

Melissa Harstine: 30:16

Yes, I think so. I’m trying to, I’m trying to bring one to top of mind, but yeah.

Rick Mulready: 30:20

Yeah, okay, because I always encourage, you know, our members and accelerator. Like, hey, if you, if, if you’re doing a promo, if you’re doing a launch and somebody signs up for it and ends up not purchasing, then just simply ask them. And I, you know, I want to continue to improve how I serve you. Could you, you know, reply to this email with just one sentence on why you chose not to enroll? You know, be huge help with that sort of insight. So you do. You do try and get on the phone or on zoom with those people too.

Melissa Harstine: 30:52

Yes, and I think, you know, one of the biggest roadblocks to people to course creators who are trying to do this on their own, is that they reach out to people and they don’t get a response right, especially if it’s just like a random email. But I think it really is possible to have these deeper, longer, one to one conversations If you frame the invitation correctly. And so what I always recommend is, you know, making it very personal the fact that you know you were the person I was thinking of, that I wanted to talk to. You know, let them know it’s not going to be a sales pitch. You’re not going to be trying to sell them something at the end. I think that’s one of the reasons that there’s always resistance when people you know are invited to get on a call. And then another thing I like to do is just share maybe three of the questions that I’m planning on asking them so that they kind of get a sense of like okay, like this is what we need to talk about. I can prepare a little bit, but I don’t have to over prepare. You know, it kind of puts people at ease and then, especially if it’s, you know, a non customer Like, I recommend that you offer some kind of like an incentive or thank you for their time, because that’s also a really easy way to get more people to say yes and do these calls with you. So it could be, you know, something like a gift card. It could be that you’re making a donation to charity and their name or, you know, maybe offering them a 30 minute consulting session or like one of your low ticket offers, as a thank you gift.

Rick Mulready: 32:12

This is my next question. You just answered it. So, yeah, do you incentivize people to do it? It’s your personal, you know. It’s your personal forum, open forum, you know, for people to voice. I love it. This is something that I like. This is something clearly not enough people do, and I will tell you. I remember back in was the middle of 2015. And I was sitting in a Starbucks here in San Diego. I remember it very clearly. I had one course it was called the FB Advantage, and I had a main offer back then teaching Facebook ads and I decided to set up I think I set up five back then it was Skype. I had five Skype calls with people who I considered quote, unquote you know my best customers at the time and I just asked them questions and, like I got off, I was like why did this take me a year and a half to do? This was amazing insight. And not only that, but you’re also building that stronger relationships with people and I was like holy cow, this person cares about what I think. This person is taking the time to you know, hear feedback from you know what a lot of people think, which is not the case, but little me, you know it just goes a long way in building relationships to.

Melissa Harstine: 33:42

Absolutely. You know, it’s amazing how many times I asked that. That last question, you know, is there anything else in your mind? People say exactly what you just said, like I’m just so honored. You know that this person, would you know, ask me to share my thoughts. I don’t, I don’t know if I was helpful, but I just love them, I love everything they’re doing. You know, like, like you said, it’s really solidifying that relationship and that connection that you’re having with your audience.

Rick Mulready: 34:04

Yeah, I love it. So I just kind of want to recap here. So if somebody is seeing a like a decline, for example, in their stats, in their funnel stats, whether it’s evergreen, whether it’s you know, several launches that people are doing, whatever that might be, if there’s a steady decline Could be that there’s a disconnect on the messaging and, by the way, melissa, I’m so glad you’re bringing up that seasonality, because that is something that we overlook so easily but yet totally it like the needs changed at the needs change for for most people in different parts of the year, and if we’re not speaking to that and having the right conversation at the right time, like they might be like, just like you said in that example, they might be like Alright, yeah, I want this, but not now, I want it in, you know, september or what have you. So if we’re seeing a decline in stats, a performance of our funnel, our launches, if our you know, maybe it’s our we have a lower landing page conversion rate, for example, or if we’re seeing people come into our program and we’re finding that, wait a minute, these aren’t, this is not who I intended this for, why did they get here? That’s another sort of red flag like we need to look into this, that messaging could be the issue. So then, if you’re seeing those things, great idea to have conversations with current customers, with non customers at this time. Maybe people who have gone through the launch and decided not to enroll get their feedback, and then it’s a. What do I do with this feedback? Do I need to, you know, change the entire Z? And having that insight is invaluable and, as you’ve been mentioning here, will increase conversions as a result. The last question I thought of here for you is how often are you having these conversations?

Melissa Harstine: 36:05

Yeah, you know this work is never really one and done, because what I see a lot of people, a lot of online business owners, doing is when they first launched their offer. They may do these customer interviews right To just make sure that the thing that they’re creating is what their audience needs, but there’s always these shifts happening right. So we need to like be really talking with our customers, whether it’s a minimum of every six months, you know, maybe every 12 months, you know. I recently worked on a project with Content Bistro and they had launched one of their courses two years ago, and in that time, there had been a big shift in the market where there’s like a lot more competition, and so when I’m doing these customer interviews, the thing I kept hearing over and over is that I don’t understand how this course is any different from what I’ve already purchased from copy hackers or from funnel. Gorgeous, right. And so that was like my main recommendation to my client is, when you go in and update your copy, you’ve got to like clearly differentiate your offer and like what is setting it apart from these other programs that your audience has already considered or is already taken, because that value is not clear anymore in their minds, and so we were able, again through the interviews, to figure out from the customer’s perspective what actually set this program apart from the others. And so in this case you know it was like that this course was a lot more holistic. It looked at how all of the different pieces of copy that they’re writing are working together versus the other courses that they had taken. You know was maybe just I’m gonna teach you how to write a landing page or a sales page or an email sequence right? It didn’t look at that holistic strategy, and so I think that launch is happening next month, so I don’t know the outcomes yet, but I know that that was like such a having that insight was a key piece that they used, you know, in kind of revamping their messaging.

Rick Mulready: 38:00

Interesting, interesting. And one more question. Okay, last question. I’m gonna ask you the same thing that you ask the people that you’re speaking to on the phone or on the on Zoom. I keep seeing the phone. For some reason, I don’t know, but you dial up on the phone. Did we miss anything? Is there anything else that we missed in this conversation that you think that we should definitely talk about?

Melissa Harstine: 38:26

That is such a great question, and so now that I’m on the other side of it, I feel so on the spot it’s hard yeah. You know, I think that, sorry, am I gonna, I’m gonna rethink my rethinkers for a minute.

Rick Mulready: 38:45

I’ll put you on the spot.

Melissa Harstine: 38:47

I know, give me just a sec. I had something I wanted to say and I’m trying to find it in my preparation document here, but I may just let it go. Ah, okay, sorry, now I’ve gotta get the right screen back up, all right. So last thing I would love to share is just that when you are doing this work and digging in to understand what your audience is thinking today and, like, where there may be gaps between you, know what they want and what you’re currently saying or what you’re offering, it’s gonna position you as the clear solution and like that is so important right now, when there’s more competition than ever, there’s more courses out there, right, like, if you’re making it easier for your customers to say absolutely, like, heck, yes, like this is definitely for me, you know, that’s gonna go a long way in helping you increase your conversions, your sales, your impact, and so I think that the course and program creators who are not doing this work, who are kind of ignoring these shifts that are happening in their audience, are gonna be left behind and out of touch.

Rick Mulready: 40:04

Yeah, I’m so glad. This is exactly why I wanted to have you on, because this is such an important topic that I see this is a gap as we use that word earlier for so many people and, like I mentioned before, we’re so close to our stuff that it’s very easy for us to miss these signs and figure out, hey, what’s actually going on here, and I love having these conversations as one of the best things that we can do. Like I said, when I first did it the year it happened in my business, I remember just you know succinctly, like why did I wait so long to do this? So if people wanna connect with you, melissa, they’re like wait, sign me up. I wanna work with Melissa and have her do this for my business. What’s the best place and what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Melissa Harstine: 40:52

Yeah. So you know, if you’re noticing these signs that we’ve talked about today with your maybe your conversion rates are dropping after you’ve launched a few times, or your people are just joining the program and aren’t a great fit. That’s definitely something that I can help with. So you can connect with me at melissaharsteincom or you can send me a message on Voxer at mharstein.

Rick Mulready: 41:14

Be careful what you wish for, melissa. I’ve had people give out their email or they reach out to me later. They’re like holy cow. Your audience is amazing. I got inundated with messages. So what is your Voxer? Again?

Melissa Harstine: 41:27

It’s mharstein.

Rick Mulready: 41:29

H-A-R-S-T-I-N-E Correct. All right, you all Vox. Melissa, let her know that you heard her on the podcast here. Careful what you wish for, melissa.

Melissa Harstine: 41:40

I love.

Rick Mulready: 41:40

Voxer, all about it. Thank you, Melissa, for coming on here. I really appreciate it.

Melissa Harstine: 41:44

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Rick Mulready: 41:46

Hey, if you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to the podcast here. If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, just click that subscribe button so that you don’t miss any episodes here on the show. If you’re listening on Spotify or what have you, click that follow button so, again, that you don’t miss any of the episodes I’m putting out here on the show. Also, it’s still super helpful and I would very much appreciate if you took literally 20 seconds to do this. If you haven’t already, leave a quick rating and review for the show over on Apple Podcasts. I read all the reviews, let me know what you think, let me know what your feedback is on the show, and thank you so much in advance for doing that. As always, I don’t take your attention lightly, so thank you so much for coming and listening to the podcast here. Appreciate you, my friend. Until next time, be well, I’ll chat with you soon. I’ll see you soon.