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Lesson Info

Craft Your Messaging Using Customer Awareness

Crafting your messaging using customer awareness, so that you can get a variety of messages out there, a variety of touch points, get them in a variety of channels, so that they're all aimed back at that lead generation offer, so that then those people are all aimed at your paid offer. Alright, so we're gonna craft multiple messages to attract as many of the right people as possible. So again, we're going back to our friendly, handy dandy little diagram here. Moving from brand awareness to lead generation to conversion. We've done conversion. We've done lead generation. Guess what, it's time for brand awareness. It's very predictable here. So this is what we're going to focus on. And the reason we need brand awareness, the reason we need to spend a lot of time, and a lot of energy getting people to associate our brand, our company, us, with the problem that they have, the itch that they're trying to scratch, is you have to introduce yourself before you ask for a date. There are way too...

many folks out there, and this includes asking just for email addresses, there are way too many folks out there who try and make a proposal before they've actually even introduced themselves. No more proposals before introductions. (laughter) No more. It's every time you see an ad in your Facebook feed for a webinar, and you have no idea who this person is, what this brand is, you have never heard of them. Sure it sounds good, but are you really gonna sign up for it? You've gotta be a very trusting and adventurous person with a whole lot more time on your hands than I have, to sign up for something from a company I've never heard of. Or that you've never heard of. And so that's what we're really talking about here. It's actually putting in the work, to make the rest of your campaign so much more effective. If all you do is focus on lead generation and making an offer, lead generation and making an offer, you're really doing a lot more work for a lot fewer results. If you generate the energy, and the association, and the brand awareness phase of your campaign, then your lead generation offer is gonna pay off more, you're gonna get more qualified leads, and those more qualified leads are gonna turn into more customers. So again, you want the right people to associate your brand, or you, or your company, with the problem they want to solve. The itch they wanna scratch. That low level pain and anxiety that they feel on a regular basis. Our job is to bring those two things together, so that when they think, I gotta scratch, I gotta scratch, I gotta scratch, they think I need Ainsley, I need Aleia, I need Lynette. That's what we're trying to do with brand awareness. And so for that, that means we're looking at the unaware, and problem aware, part of the spectrum. We're 100% focused on the itch that people are feeling at any given time. We're 100% focused on the problem that they know they have. I guess you can't be 100% focused on both, but you understand what I mean. And to do this, to really maximize our lead generation offer, and maximize the number of people we can get into the solution aware and then product aware part of the spectrum, we need to do a fair amount of work. And so our chart starts to look like this. Where brand awareness is not a one time thing. It's a many time thing. So going back to Lisa's question, lead generation may happen once in your campaign, or it may be focused on just one offer, but brand awareness is many pieces. It's a blog post, it's 10 blog posts. It's a Facebook Live, it's 10 Facebook Lives, It's an Instagram post, it's 10 Instagram posts. It's an interview, it's 10 interviews. So this is very simplified. I don't want anyone to think you do four things before you get to lead generation. Please do not do that. Do many things, many things. This is why you're blogging week in and week out. This is why you're podcasting week in and week out. Whatever it is that you're doing on a regular basis, that's part of brand awareness. When you break your 12 months of the year down into campaigns, maybe that's six campaigns, maybe that's 10 campaigns, maybe that's three campaigns, you start to see how the stuff that comes in between those offers, needs to be brand awareness for the next offer you're going to make. So those campaigns go from being really just a short period, where your cart is open, for instance, or where you're accepting new clients, or where you have a brand new product for sale, to actually being weeks or months long, as you do the heavy lifting of brand awareness, over a longer period of time, and channel all of that energy into lead generation, and actually making an offer. Does that make sense? Does that sort of clarify why it is that you're doing all of this marketing all the time, that you don't know what's going on with, at any given time? This is why. This is the point. That the more you do that heavy lifting of marketing, the more energy is then channeled into lead generation, and into actually turning prospects into buyers. Now I also mentioned with Aleia that this whole campaign needs to tell one story. So for Aleia, it's about not dropping the ball. For Lynette it was about replacing scrapbooking stress, with creative confidence. That's the story they're going to tell. So the whole point here, is that all that heavy lifting you're doing in this area, is channeling people toward that headline, that hook, the end of the story, the climax of the story, that you're going to have in the conversion part of your campaign. Alright, so this is the setup. This is where the action gets real good. And that's the climax. That's where things actually come to a head. When they need to make a decision, am I going to move forward with this, am I gonna fix this, am I gonna solve this problem? Or am I gonna let it go? Now, the good news is, this heavy lifting, you've done a lot of it already, or at least you've got the foundations of it already. Where do you think that is? Oh, it's in your building blocks. So I want you to look through all of your building blocks. All of them. They are all fair game. And find at least 10 ideas for content or social posts. And 10 is on the short side. Maybe look for 15, maybe look for 20. The only requirement in these content ideas, is that you can somehow make them a part of that story, so that you're able to tie it back to the offer you're going to eventually make. Which brings us back to Aleia. You ready for this? I'm ready. Okay. So now we need to go, be thinking about your building blocks. And we're gonna think about, are you a blogger, are you a podcaster, what's your sort of main content jam? I've done all of that. I've done blog posts obviously. Podcasting for a couple years. I do livestream. Periscope before, but now Facebook live. Great. Yeah. You are a pro. I'm down for it. I love it. Did you pick up some stuff from Lacey in terms of repurposing? Were you already doing that? Yeah, you know, I do it. I need to do more of it. But I'm a big fan of repurposing. As a systems person, I would imagine that you are. (laughter) Okay, cool. So let's look through some of your building blocks, and just come up with some blog post ideas, or podcast ideas, that are gonna lead people back to this idea of never dropping the ball again. So that's our goal. Goal, never drop the ball again. That's where every story that we create has to end up. Everything we setup has to end with the customer being like, yes, I am never gonna drop the ball again. And I am all over this systems school offer. So let's start with building block number one. Okay. What is they're experience right now? What's that itch that they're trying to scratch? They're spending too much time on admin and backend tasks, that's one thing. Okay. So a blog post idea might be three ways to spend less time on admin. Okay. They're wearing too many hats. That's something that I hear a lot. So it'd be kind of along that line, but I don't ... How about, how do you solve the problem of not wearing too many hats? Or is it a matter of organizing things? In terms of what my thing does? Yeah, for you. It would be automating certain things, so that they don't have to do them anymore, basically. Like in terms of following ... A lot of it is cutting out follow up time. So, following up on payment, following up on contracts, things like that, so we could cut down the amount of times you have to follow up. A lot of clients find themselves, clients or customers of mine find themselves chasing payments. So how to stop chasing payments. Outsource without hiring? Yeah. Ooh. Outsource without hiring. Alright. You can spend more time on the good stuff. That's a really long headline, but sometimes that works. Alright. Next, what's another itch that they're trying to scratch? They're afraid of getting it wrong again. They've tried something, they've dipped their toes into either hiring, or trying a system out, and it didn't work, and they're like, it's too much time, I don't want to try anything else. Great. Why your system failed. Okay. Another one. From building block one, or anything? Let's go to building block two. What's the real problem? The real problem ... The real problem is that ... I'm trying to think of this concisely. A lot of times people are going after what's sexy when it comes to systems, so they're thinking about the sales page, and sometimes they don't even have an email list to capture the emails that they have, so it's getting a good foundation in place. And I don't know how to say that, but, because almost everybody has some type of system- Right. That they're using in their business for something. Oh, okay. So how about, the secrets of identifying the systems you already have. Yeah. Like a common thing I'll run into is people will jump to the webinar phase, but they're not signed up for Mailchimp or anything, so they don't know what to do with the emails that they get from the webinar, and it's like, okay that's great, Right, right. but you need something else. Yeah, so maybe something like, fill the gaps in your business systems. It's a little more solution aware, but I think it works too. Cool. How about something from objections? So building block eight. What is an objection that people have to putting systems into their business. Takes too much time. Okay. So they think it's gonna be really time consuming, and so they don't have time to ... They don't feel like they can take time out of what they're doing already, to setup something that they may or may not understand. So like, three quick ways to systemize your marketing. Okay. They also are afraid of how expensive it's gonna be. So, they feel like, without even knowing sometimes, they feel like they don't have the money to put systems in place. Okay. They just assume it's gonna be expensive. Why systems are so cheap. (laughter) I might be losing steam. (laughter) Okay, how about some of the alternatives? What do people do instead of investing their time and energy into building systems in their business? They keep doing it themselves. They do everything manually. Okay. Why you should quit doing everything yourself. Another mistake is that people often hire before they have any systems, and so they'll get a VA, or an assistant, and everything's just a mess, and they can't delegate properly, because there's no process in place for anybody to follow. Why your VA isn't paying for themselves. Ooh, I love that one. You should use that. Yeah, I probably will. (laughter) Tonight. (laughter) Cool. So, this is such a great example too, because nowhere in here is there anything about systems. Right. Systems is the answer, not the question. The question is, I can't afford my VA, or my VA just ... Why is my VA not working out? Or, why does this feel like I'm still doing so much more work than I should be doing? Yep. That's the question. The answer is systems. So that's kind of another way to think about this too, is what are all the questions that your solution is the answer to. That's a great way to fill in the unaware, and the problem aware side of the spectrum. All of these things could be pieces of content that you put out over the next three weeks, before you go to launch sales school. And all of these, that's probably not what I would suggest, but all of these could have a call to action, to that webinar. Right. So what I would do instead, just to clarify, since I said that is, maybe the first half of these, you just put out kind of over the next few weeks, kind of casually. Maybe you put one of them on Medium. Maybe you put one of them on Huffington Post. Maybe you put one on Forbes. And, you kind of distribute these so that you can start building that brand awareness a little bit more. And then you save some of your favorites, the ones that are the best setups for that lead generation offer. You save them for a concentrated period of time, when you're really starting to channel energy toward the lead generation. It might be just a few days before. I personally find that we get the best results out of webinars when we only promote them for three days. Yeah. So I might go boom, boom, boom, with three posts in a row. Three emails in a row. Three big Facebook posts in a row. And then have that all have the call to action to your webinar. The webinar then leads to the offer, and you're done. Also, all of these could be repurposed. I kind of set them up as blog posts, but all of these could be repurposed into podcast episodes, Facebook Lives, Instagram posts. Maybe you take one of these, and you kind of piecemeal it out in a series of Instagram posts. Be so easy to do. But now you've got all of these different ways you can reach people who are experiencing different things, but all need the same solution. Here's someone who's spending less, or spending too much time in administration. They're doing spending too much time on the stuff they don't like in their business. That's one particular itch they're trying to scratch. Another customer sees things in a different way. They've got a VA who's not worth the money they're spending on them. That's another problem. Let's see. Another person is so confused as to why they keep dropping the ball on marketing. That's another problem. It's another question that your product is the answer to. And so just right there, we've tripled, perhaps, the number of people who are aware, or interested, in what it is that you're offering, and we're hitting it from a bunch of different angles, so that as many people as possible, are going to see that lead generation offer, and realize that the solution to their problem is systems school. Make sense? Yeah. Does that make sense with you guys? Alright, cool. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, so let's look at this in a few different ways. So, we got that. Actually, questions. Any questions about what I just did with Aleia? Yes. So I'm a wedding photographer. So people are aware that they need a photographer for their wedding. So, the focus could be solution and product, but how do you provide value without just being like, just talking about yourself? Yeah, so, I would focus on objections and alternatives. So that's building block number eight. I would also focus on your brand story. So that's right guide, right offer. Is that block five? It's a lot of things to keep track of. So right guide, right offer, that particular building block. Focus on that. And I would think about, what are all of the challenges that people face when they're trying to choose a wedding photographer? So even though, yes, all of your customers are essentially solution aware, because they know they need a wedding photographer, the evaluation phase of choosing a wedding photographer is wrought with difficulty. Yes. It's like, do I hire my nephew, who got that DSLR last year for Christmas, and he's taking okay pictures. Or do I hire a photographer that shot my mom's wedding, with the 80's, with the poofy sleeves. Or, do I hire that wedding photographer who's got the most amazing Instagram ever. And so really picking apart the evaluation phase, as actually being ... Thinking through evaluation, almost in the same way that you think through unaware, in that they don't know what the right kind of wedding photographer is. They don't know what the right pictures are gonna look like for them. Not everyone falls into that category, but if you wanna spread the reach of your brand, that's the direction you need to go. So, rethinking unaware and problem aware, as thinking about people who don't know what kind of photographer they want. What kind of outcome they want in their images. What results they're really looking for. And educating people on that process, and where your business fits into, where your particular style, your particular perspective, your particular approach, falls into that process of getting the result they want. Okay? Okay. Yeah, any other questions? Yeah, Lisa. Just super quick on the ... I really liked how you said put a bunch of blog posts out, say on guest post sites. Is the call to action, for her, would that be to get the guide, maybe? And then the second set of posts that you said are the juicy ones, that she might put out right in advance would be to get the webinar? Yeah, I think that would be a great approach. So just to clear up. Because if you're doing something further out, you might have a different call to action then like, come to the webinar in two months, or a month later? Or, sometimes you just put out great content because it's great content. And people just land on you. Yeah, and you make sure you pixel the heck out of those people. Okay. Right, that's one way to do it. So just driving traffic and then retargeting. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Exactly. And yes, getting an email address from people is the, if you're not using Facebook advertising, or some sort of advertising like that, getting that initial easy email address, is the old school retargeting, right? Where that's where list building comes in, it's essentially with your whole list, you're retargeting them to a specific offer, when you ask them to take action on a lead generation offer. But, if you do have, if you are okay with spending a little bit of money on some advertising, something that can be really effective in terms of brand awareness is actually not including a call to action. I mean, it's a little tricky. But that's the further out stuff, right? And then getting down to the wire, there's that specific funneling in on the actual call to action. Yeah, and even to go a little bit further on that, when I'm thinking about that down to the wire time, where I'm really trying to build energy very quickly, I am trying to attack the problem from as many different angles as possible. So I will purposefully choose a kind of solution aware headline, a problem aware headline, an unaware headline, and so I'm really trying to spread the love there, so that as many people are opening those emails, or clicking those links, as possible, so that I'm getting that full range of perspectives, targeted back to my lead generation offer. Great. Cool. I know we've got a couple of questions online. Wanna bring those up? Idreamofjennie says, if my product is for two groups of people, brides or wedding guests, and I'm trying to tell one story, should I separate this into two campaigns? Yes. Jennie, yes, you absolutely should. There's no way that your brides and your wedding guests, are going to have the same building blocks. They don't have the same needs, they don't have the same questions, they don't have the same pain points. And if you tried to talk to both of them at the same time, it's gonna feel really watered down. You're just not gonna be able to get into that specific detail that you want to have. There may be some exceptions to that, but I feel pretty strongly though, that's probably two separate campaigns. It may even end in two separate ways of positioning your offer as well. So even if you have one offer, you may position it differently for brides, than you would for wedding guests. Next one. Kristen says, with channels like Facebook, Instagram, etc., how do we make our heavy lifting reach further when it feels like no one is seeing what we do? So, posting more often, posting more engaging content, even if it just engages one or two people, and that's one or two people more than you normally have, is really important. And so the ideas that we came up, to go back to this idea, if instead of just posting snapshots or links on Facebook, you actually post a piece of content, or a section of a piece of content, you're going to get more engagement. More people are gonna click read more. More people are going to engage with the image that you associate with it. More people are gonna like it. More people are gonna comment. Again, even if it's only one or two more, that's one or two more than you had before. But the point of that is, that every time you get a boost in engagement like that on Facebook, Facebook actually rewards you. They start thinking about your brand, as a brand that's good for them. Because what they want is people seeing things in their newsfeed that they're going to engage with. So the more you post engaging content, even if it's little bit by little bit, you're going to see a boost in reach. Of course the other way to approach this, is through advertising. And I know that that's, that can be a sticky subject for a lot of people, and I know you might say, "Well I don't have the money to advertise." With Facebook especially, five dollars can go a long way. 10 dollars can go a long way. And when you are amplifying content like this, with Facebook advertising, you're amplifying content that has a purpose of actually driving revenue. What I don't wanna see anybody doing, is advertising content that doesn't have a purpose of driving revenue behind it. Even if that revenue is two or three steps removed, you're still moving in that direction. Don't just amplify something that is a cute picture, or a blog post you're really proud of, if that blog post doesn't have a purpose behind it. So part of actually planning out your marketing campaigns like this, is you better know how to apply advertising when you want to apply advertising, or when you need to apply advertising. Because now, Aleia knows that if she wants to write a blog post called Three Quick Ways to Systemize your Marketing, that she can put 10 dollars behind that, 30 dollars behind that, 100 dollars behind that, because the more people who see that post have become brand aware, that she helps people systemize their marketing, or systemize other things. And those people then can either sign up for that free guide like Lisa mentioned, or she can retarget them with an ad later on. And so in this brand awareness phase, what you're doing is building an audience you can come back to. You're warming them up. A couple times people have thrown out the phrases cold traffic versus warm traffic, or cold audiences versus warm audiences. Cold audiences simply mean their not brand aware. They haven't associated your brand with the problem that they have yet, because they don't know that those two things are connected together. They haven't seen a blog post that you've written. They haven't listened to your podcast before. Heck, they probably haven't even seen your Facebook page. That's a cold audience. You need to warm up that audience, and a warm audience simply means, that the person in that audience associates your brand with the problem that they have. And so they're much more willing to pay attention, because when they see your face, your logo, the name of your company, they're thinking, ooh, this person is helpful to me. This person is someone I wanna pay attention to. This brand is a brand I wanna pay attention to. So I wanted to make that distinction. But, in terms of advertising and brand awareness, our goal is to warm people up through that cycle, so that by the time they get to the conversion phase, by the time they ever see your sales page, or get on the phone with you for a sales call, they are red hot. It's not just a warm audience. It is a hot, hot, hot audience. Okay? Any other questions before we start to wrap up here? So what you just said sparked something in me, and that is, so right now a lot of my leads, I'm getting them through advertising, I just have their email. So, I've been trying to warm them up through a series of emails. I can point them to my Facebook group, but if they decide not to do that, do you have any other effective ways of getting more content in front of them if I just have their email? Email them more often. Okay. How often do you email them? I've started to do three times a week. Oh good. Yay. (laughter) That's not the answer I was expecting. Well, no, it was uncomfortable for me. I bet it was. And then I've also heard that two of those three should be sales emails, but I'm getting that that shouldn't be. No, no. (laughter) No, one of my copywriting mentors, Joanna Wiebe, who's the founder of Copy Hackers, I believe her rule of thumb is for every four content emails, you can send one pitch email. Now, that doesn't have to be four, then one, four, then one. It could be 16, and then four. Okay? If that makes sense. Did I do the math on that properly? Okay good. So yeah, so you might have a whole month's worth of warmup content, and then go into a sales campaign, where you're selling, selling, selling, selling the same thing. But that's what your campaign arc would look like. Now, if you are emailing three times a week, so, and especially with the kind of thing that you're offering, there's a good chance that the sales cycle is actually shorter than you may be anticipating right now. One mistake people make is actually waiting too long to sell. And so you wanna think, how short can I make that sales cycle? How quickly can I walk people through, from unaware, to problem aware, solution aware, to product aware? How quickly can I answer their objectives, contrast my solution with the alternatives, tell them why I'm the right guide, or this is the right offer? For you, quickly may be three days. For someone else it might be three months. So there's no right way to do that, but I think that's something everyone should be considering, is how short can my sales cycle be? Instead of how long do I need to be nurturing people, which has been sort of the prevailing way people have talked about sales campaigns in the past. What I see, with the kinds of businesses that I work with, and the kind of members we have at CoCommercial, is that they have drug this nurturing sequence out for eons, before they ever make an offer. And then they wonder why no one's buying. So, with this, with this system that we've been walking through over the last day and a a half, you can start to see, alright, these are the important pieces. I need to hit this piece, this piece, and this piece, and then I can sell. And I would encourage you especially, since you're emailing three times a week, it sounds like you've got a great sales funnel setup already, how can you optimize that sales funnel so that your sales cycle, your campaign, is as short as possible, but still extremely effective. What you may want to look for, or what you wanna try for, is to actually shorten your campaign, and increase your conversion rate. How awesome would that be? Yeah. (laughter) I'm not saying it's definitely possible, but it's absolutely something I would experiment with. Great, thank you. Okay, yeah, absolutely.