On this week’s episode of SUCCESS Line, I answer one of the most common marketing questions entrepreneurs have: How do I find and then communicate with my target audience?
Almost all young entrepreneurs lack clarity around their position in the marketplace, and this week’s guest is no different. Craig is a young entrepreneur in Utah who, like me, got his start in door-to-door sales. But he has always loved coaching and teaching, and his dream is to become a public speaker and best-selling author. So how does he break through the noise and get his message out there? And how does he know who most needs to hear what he has to say?
Luckily, these are problems I have spent my entire career learning how to solve.
The genesis of all marketing comes from your answers to these three questions:
- What problem do you solve?
- Whom do you solve it for?
- How do you solve it?
If you don’t know your answers to these questions, stop everything you’re doing and get out your notebook.
Once you have addressed these questions, the next step is to transform your answers into your marketing. Not sure how? Read on for my top three tips to craft compelling and impassioned marketing.
1. Copywriting is selling through the written word.
For some reason, when people write copy for their business, they become boring, informational robots. But your marketing copy is not a news report; it is selling through the written word. Your copy should be persuasive, compelling, and exciting—not just an emotionless ticker of facts and data.
Think of how you would tell your best friend about an awesome new movie or restaurant. What language would you use? Whatever you would say in a real life conversation to sell something is what you should write in your copy.
And I’ll share with you one of our greatest copy-writing shortcuts at Brand Builders Group: Pain moves people. One way to make readers experience pain is to describe their life as it exists today in the absence of your solution. That is possibly the most powerful thing you can include in your copy.
When you can prove to your readers that you know what they’re struggling with and that you can articulate it, they will immediately trust you and your ability to provide a solution to their problem.
2. Don’t write to the world. Write to one person.
Whether you are doing a podcast, going live on Instagram, writing a book, doing a presentation, or copywriting, don’t write to the world; write to one person. Solve a real-life problem for one person and talk to them as if they are the only other person in the world.
If you do that, your material will be powerful, compelling, and visceral. It will hit every reader, listener or viewer as if you are talking directly to them because you are.
This goes back to the same mindset problem I discussed in my first point. When people prepare to go live or write marketing copy, they become news reporters and start broadcasting to the world as if they are on national TV. So many entrepreneurs think they need to sound different or more grand in their marketing when in fact it is the opposite.
Talk to one person as if you are having a real-life conversation and are solving a real-life problem. Your writing and speaking will be able to reach so many more people if you do.
3. Passion is what persuades.
In order to start a business or brand, you first need to connect to your passion, or your uniqueness. No matter if you are starting a nonprofit, selling a service, or launching a personal brand, the crux of it has to be the problem you’re passionate about solving.
- What were you put on this earth to do?
- Who were you meant to help?
- What question have you answered?
- What obstacles have you overcome?
That is your uniqueness, what you can do that nobody else can do. And that energy and fire is what we need to bottle up and use.
If you’re disconnected from your passion, you are not likely to become a top performer. You can make a living, sure, but you will not fully experience your potential until you’re doing something that makes you feel alive and alert.
Once you find the thing that fires you up, there will be no competition, noise, or comparing yourself to others. With passion, none of it matters. It is simply about finding your uniqueness and putting it out into the world in a way that can break through the noise and truly transform the lives of others.
The SUCCESS Line is no longer releasing new episodes on the SUCCESS Podcast Network, but you can still listen to the full conversation below.