249: Why Nobody's Buying (It's Not Your Product)
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Stu McLaren
4.9 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you ever watched somebody fall in love with what you're selling, say they'll be back, and then never actually come back? The problem isn't your product. The problem is you're not giving people a reason to buy today.
I got reminded of this in the most unexpected way: my daughter's birthday. Marla had a list of birthday freebies on her phone. Starbucks, Sephora, Booster Juice. She dragged us to every single one. And at every stop, the rest of us bought stuff too. A free drink turned into snacks, skincare, smoothies. She was a walking case study in how a small reason to come in turns into multiple sales.
In this episode, I break down three types of promotions you can run all year long, the one ingredient that makes any promotion actually work, and why running promotions isn't gimmicky, it's the most helpful thing you can do for your customers.
In this episode, you'll learn:
* The three buckets of promotions: seasonal, annual/signature, and unique story-driven
* Why a promotion without a deadline is just a nice thing to read about
* How I went from saving electric bike posts for months to buying two bikes in one night
* The reframe from my friend Barry Baumgarner: "Sales is service"
* A simple assignment you can run in the next 30 days
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* Website: https://stu.me
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* Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me
* Membership.io: https://membership.io
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have you ever watched somebody absolutely fall in love with what you're selling? |
| 0:03.6 | And they are pumped, they're excited about it, they say they'll be back for it, |
| 0:08.3 | and then they never actually come back and make a purchase. |
| 0:11.4 | Whether it's stale sales, unpredictable revenue, or the same promotions that just stopped |
| 0:15.9 | working months ago, the problem isn't your product. |
| 0:18.8 | The problem is you're not giving people a reason to buy today. |
| 0:23.0 | And I got reminded of this in the most unexpected way through my daughter's birthday. And if you |
| 0:28.3 | stick with me for the next few minutes, I'm going to walk you through three simple types of |
| 0:33.3 | promotions that you can run all year long, plus the one ingredient that makes every promotion |
| 0:38.4 | actually work. Let's get into it. Welcome to marketing your business. I'm Stu McLaren, |
| 0:43.2 | co-founder of membership.io, and author of predictable profits. Now here's the truth. You are one |
| 0:49.1 | great marketing idea away from transforming your business. One strategy can be the difference between |
| 0:55.1 | struggling and thriving between a business that drains you and one that fuels your life. |
| 1:00.5 | Every episode, you're going to get specific tactics you need to build your audience, |
| 1:04.7 | attract more customers, and scale your business all without the burnout. These are real |
| 1:09.5 | strategies, real numbers, real behind the |
| 1:12.3 | scenes. Buckle your seatbelts, my friend. Let's go. Okay, let me set the scene for you here. So, |
| 1:19.6 | it's my daughter's 15th birthday. And right away, she had a list of things that she was looking |
| 1:26.2 | forward to doing. Of course, we have the family |
| 1:28.8 | moments in the morning, you know, the presents were out, the balloons are all up, and my wife does |
| 1:34.0 | an amazing job of kind of setting the scene. That's her jam. But Marla had an agenda. She had |
| 1:39.6 | things that she wanted to do, stores she wanted to go to, and it all centered around her birthday. |
... |
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