Market Research: How to Perform Better Research for Your Brand

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I'm going to make a pretty big claim right now and say that ideal customer work can make or break the success of your business. And there are a lot of different reasons for that. I'm going to cover those in today's blog and I'm also going to share with you how to conduct better market research. 

We no longer needed to get on the phone with individual people every 90 days. We don't always have the time and the capacity for that. Now I'm not saying that that's not a good strategy, but there are other more effective ways to do ideal customer research that is actually going to help you in the long run with your marketing. 

There are two things that we do really well over here at Brandmerry and that is helping you build a personal brand around you and your story and teaching you how to market very effectively, to have incoming leads for brand awareness, and ultimately converting them to paying clients. More income, more impact. That is our goal. 

And both of those categories rely on ideal customer research. 

I know you've heard about the ideal customer avatar. You might even be at a place where you're like I'm so sick of this work. I get it. And I hope that at the end of this blog, you're feeling revamped, re-energized, and you have a new strategy to get the feedback and the information that you need to totally elevate your branding and your marketing. 

So why is ideal customer work so important?

Well, at the end of the day, you have a business. You're selling to someone and you better know who the heck they are or they're not going to buy from you. As I've mentioned, ideal customer work plays a role in both branding and marketing. 

So from a branding side, we want to focus on ideal customer work to really understand who your customer is at their core. Understanding what their big problems are, their struggles, their goals, their aspirations is incredible information.

You can even use ideal customer work to find out what social media platforms they're hanging out on, where they get most of their information and other people that they look to for advice in your industry.

The branding work and ideal customer work can help you set a very strong foundation for your brand and your business moving forward.

Once you know who your ideal customer is, it's much easier to craft your offer to serve them at the highest level.

You can craft better messaging, which has got to play a role in your website copy and your marketing. You're also able to better understand emotional branding, which I talk about in this video right here, where I share a little bit more on how we make our audience feel and the connection that we create. 

In addition to that, one of the things that play a huge role in branding is the art of storytelling. And in order to tell great stories as a business owner, you've got to know who you're telling those stories to. It's not enough to just share stories to share stories. We want to share stories that are going to motivate our audience to take action, aka buy our product or our service.

So from a branding perspective, ideal customer research is so important because it's going to set the foundation for everything that you're going to create in your business. 

From a marketing perspective, it's all about content. 

When you're thinking of content, you want to make sure that you're thinking of content that not only attracts new people to your community but also moves them through the client buying journey. 

I talk about that entire journey, that entire process in this video right here. 

It's really important that you understand that your content is there to not only let people know who you are, build that brand awareness, pull them in and attract them, but ultimately connect with them, leading to the sale. 

It's so important to understand who you're talking to and ultimately who your business is for.

KEY ELEMENTS TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER

I want to share with you some updated strategies for doing your ideal customer work. But before I do that, let's talk about some of the key elements that you need to understand about your ideal customer. 

TIP #1: IDENTIFY DEMOGRAPHICS

I recommend that you start broad and then narrow it down a bit as you go. 

So this stage is all about the demographic. These are the things that you know about the person that you ultimately want to work with or who your product and service are ultimately for. Depending on where you're at in your business, you might have more information about this individual or you might have nothing. 

At this stage you want to think about the individual people who AREN’T the right fit for your brand, ultimately starting to narrow it down.

One of the ways to do this is to focus on things like demographics. 

What do we know about this person? 
Is this person just graduating from college? 
Is this person a working mother? 
Who is this person?

And I'm not recommending that you have to focus on men or women or mothers or not mothers, but those are some of the things to start considering.

What do you know about the individual that you want to work with? The offer that you're ultimately creating, who is it really designed for? 

This information is going to help you narrow it down from everyone, which is not an ideal customer, to getting a little bit more specific. 

TIP #2: ANSWER THE TOP QUESTIONS

Then the next thing you want to do is answer a few top questions.

• What is the problem they are facing now?

Every single business has to solve a problem. This is actually part of the niching down process.

If you don't solve a problem, you're going to have a really hard time selling anything. And just so we're clear every product, every service can solve a problem. It's your job to figure out what that problem is and narrow it down really specific to your ideal customer.

So let's say that my target market is new moms and I sell a program that teaches you how to tidy up your house. The problem is that new moms don't have a lot of time in their schedules. They're tired of a messy house. It's overwhelming. It's weighing on their shoulders, not speaking from experience at all. And they want to understand better strategies to keep it maintained if you will. Keep their sanity. 

So the problem is that they want to be able to tidy up their home in a limited amount of time. And they don't understand exactly how to do that. 

Every single thing comes down to a problem. 
What is the problem that your ideal customer is facing?

• What are their struggles with that problem?

How are they feeling about that problem? Where are they now? 

This is incredibly helpful with marketing because it allows you to connect with your ideal customer and allows them to feel seen, heard and understood. 

• Where do they want to be?

So they've got these current struggles, they've got these pain points, they have this problem. What do they ultimately want? 

If they resolve this problem, what does life look like for them? Do they suddenly get to make their eggs in 10 seconds and stop cursing every morning at their pan that keeps sticking? 

You want to understand what the core problem is, where they are now, and what those pain points and struggles are. 

How would they describe that to you and where do they ultimately want to be?

• What are the specific obstacles in their way?

Why haven't they solved the problem yet? Why haven't they done it on their own or with another product or service? What are some of the things that they're specifically looking for that they haven't found? 

Another thing that you can start to explore is the objections. 

I find that these are incredibly helpful for service-based entrepreneurs. If someone hasn't solved their problem just yet, they probably have some obstacles standing in their way. 

What are some mindset pieces that they have? Maybe they think they don't have enough time to do the work. Maybe they think that they don't have the energy or the capacity to take on something else. 

What are those objections? These are incredibly helpful when it comes to selling your product or your service. If you can understand these obstacles and the objections your ideal customer is going through, then you can use that in your marketing.

So these are just some questions that you can start to organize the research that I'm about to give you my favorite tools for, into these little categories. 

This is going to help you with your branding and your marketing overall. 

MARKET RESEARCH STRATEGIES

So let's now talk about some of my favorite ways to do market research. 

Number one is a free tool that not enough people know about that is incredibly powerful. When you think about your own life and your own customer journey with different products and services, where do you turn when you need something? Google. 

We all go to Google. It is a database of information.

And the free tool that we love to use is called Answer The Public. 

Answer the Public

What Answer The Public does is it takes the information from Google and it categorizes it into questions and into sub-categories. So you can go on to Answer The Public and type in an ideal customer that you know you want to work with. 

You can type in a core problem. 
You can type in your industry. 
So you can start as broad as you want. And then it will divide it up into a bunch of different webs. 

Let's say I type in brand photography. I am a photographer and I want to sell brand photography and I want to better understand my ideal customer and what they're looking for when it comes to brand photography. 

I can type in brand photography and then it's going to show me all of the top questions and searches related to brand photography.

With each of those, you can actually click and it'll open up another tab and show you the Google searches. It'll show you the most popular blog posts, the most popular websites. And you can start to do a little bit of research. You can get as granular with it as you want, but what this is really offering you is information on what your audience is asking. 

This can go back to what they are struggling with? 
How are they phrasing their problem?
What outcomes do they ultimately want? 

Answer The Public is an incredible, helpful tool and it's free with a few searches every single month. So you can definitely use it to your advantage.

YouTube

YouTube is a search engine platform meaning that people are turning to the platform to look for solutions to their problems. 

You can use YouTube's basic function by typing in brand photography. We'll just run with this topic, brand photography, and see what YouTube is suggesting auto-populates.

This can be incredibly helpful for finding some of the top searches within your industry. 

Further than that, you can start to explore some of the top videos and look at the comments section, see what people are asking and if it's a really popular video and you're seeing that it has tons and tons of views, that's probably a top struggle that your ideal customer is dealing with. 

So not only looking at the topic for the video that has a bunch of views and saying, “Wow, okay, this must be something that my ideal customer is struggling with if everyone's watching this,” but also exploring the comment section. 

This can be incredibly valuable for grabbing specific language that your audience is using.

Pinterest

To piggyback off of YouTube, another search engine platform that we like coming in at number three is Pinterest. 

Oh, I just love Pinterest so much. As a marketer, it's a freaking goldmine. 

Pinterest uses a very, very similar feature because it's a search engine where it will auto-populate with the most popular searches. 

So if you're going in for brand photography, you type brand photography in the search bar, Pinterest will help you out and tell you the top searches for brand photography.

It'll just kind of fill in those keywords. Again, another incredibly helpful way for you to start to get content ideas and information from your audience.

Amazon

The next one uses another popular platform that we're all familiar with and that is Amazon. 

Look, no matter how you feel about Amazon, it is where people are buying their books. So one of the things that I started doing really early on in my business was starting to explore book reviews. 

Finding books that were related to my industry. Now I totally understand this might not work for everyone. With all of these, take the ones that will best serve you and your industry and run with them. You don't have to use all of them, but this is a really helpful one especially if your industry typically has very specific topics and books related to what you do. 

So let's say I am focused on marketing. I can go to Amazon, type in marketing, and choose the book option from the dropdown.

This is going to show me all the top marketing books. I'm going to look for the ones that have the most reviews because that's where the information lies. 

I can then go to that book, I can read a little bit about it. 

What was the general idea of the book, scroll down and start reading the reviews. Now the positive reviews are nice, but what you really want to focus on are the negative reviews. 

What did people say? 
Did they say it was too simple? 
Did they say that it didn't answer this question? 
Did they not like it because of X, Y and Z? 

This is going to give you more information about what your audience is looking for and a possible gap that you can fill in your content creation.

Community Forums

The next one is all about community forums. Now I'll be honest with you, I don't use this one very often, but I've had a lot of clients who find success and use them for themselves. 

The community forums, Reddit is a great example of this, where you can go type in a specific topic, whether it's a specific problem that you've identified for your ideal customer, your industry as a whole, or something that you specifically do. 

Personal branding would be a great example for my business. Type that in and see what people are talking about. See what types of questions individuals are asking. This is a really helpful tool for getting very specific language for your ideal customer. 

In addition to that, and one of the platforms that I'm a little bit more familiar with and comfortable with is Facebook groups. 

Now, I am not suggesting that you go into every Facebook group and you just start asking random questions. Exhausting, outdated. We don't need to do that anymore.

Facebook has a search function, so you don't have to do all of the outward postings and choosing a cute pic for attention. We just get to go into the Facebook group that we know is full of our ideal customers, go to the search bar, and start typing in very specific keywords related to the things that you offer, your industry, your problems and see what questions come up. 

Whether that's a single post or actually in the comments. I have found gold mines in Facebook groups before.

In fact, and I'm going to be sharing with you, how I map out 90 days worth of content, that video is actually coming out next week. One of my favorite places to find content ideas are Facebook groups. 

Survey Your Audience

The last one I'm going to share with you is really helpful if you already have an audience. Now, you don't have to have a huge audience. You don't have to have thousands of email subscribers or fans on Instagram or whatever you use to classify an audience for your business. Although I recommend that that's your email list. You can have 10, 15, 100 people. It doesn't matter. 

This tool is really helpful for getting really specific information from people who've already said yes to your brand. And those are surveys.

Every 90 days-ish, I will put together a survey for my audience and ask very specific questions like:

What are you struggling with right now?
What is the number one problem that you're facing?
What are you looking to do within the next 90 days?
What would you love from me?
If I could create one piece of content that would help you, what would that piece of content be? 

And that's incredibly helpful for getting specific feedback from your audience, making open-ended questions so you can get very specific language and then using that to create your content moving forward. 

Conclusion

So no matter which one of these options you choose, I hope that you see that there is so much information waiting for you on the internet. 

The biggest thing I want you to remember is that we’re focused on getting specific language from our ideal customer. 

It's not enough to assume what our audience is saying. We really want to use the words that they are using to describe their current struggles, to describe their problem, to describe where they ultimately want to be. 

That is going to help you with your marketing. 
It's going to help you with your messaging. 
It's going to help you with your consistent income as a business owner. 

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.

How to increase your engagement on social media

How to increase your engagement on social media

September 11, 2019

PREFER TO WATCH, INSTEAD OF READ? I’VE GOT YOU BOO.
SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH A QUICK VIDEO!

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I know how it feels to spend tons of effort and energy to come up with content for social media, write the post, choose a picture and then hear freaking crickets.

I’ve been there too and it’s not a great feeling.

Let’s just remove the stigma around this and make it clear, everyone experiences this! Even established entrepreneurs will have this happen from time to time, but over the years I’ve come to find some core pieces that improve not only my overall engagement, but also conversions.

After all, it’s not just about likes, it’s about sales if you’re running a brand and business, so before we dive into the three tips, let’s talk about engagement. 

Please know that we don’t care about vanity metrics here. Engagement isn’t just about likes and hearts, those are great, but it’s more about comments, direct messages and my personal favorite link clicks. 

All of which you can monitor and I encourage you to pay attention to. So even though your post might not have as many likes as Suzie, please don’t get discouraged, what we care about is true fans and conversions (plus, you can buy likes online so it’s a shady metric).

Tip #1 - Your Brand Messaging

Often times when we start posting content online we’re just “posting to post” and it’s totally not your fault. You’ve been taught that you need to post daily, sometimes multiple times a day, in order to stand out. As a result, we’re just whipping up content without a clear strategy in place - that’s where brand messaging comes in.

You want to create strong Brand Messaging for your brand and business as a whole, BEFORE you start creating content. This is going to allow you to create high-value content for your audience that connects to your brand as a whole. 

For instance, if you take time to create a list of all the things your brand provides your ideal client and how it benefits them (this is huge) then you’ll be able to create content containers and individual content that relates back to that.

For instance, if I know one of my brand messages (a consistent message across all my products and services) is around storytelling and how to use storytelling to standout on social media and create a profitable brand, then I can create storytelling as a container for my brand and create a bunch of ideas under that one thing.

This does so much more than just allows me to create content, it makes sure that everything I create connects to the overall purpose of my brand. Everything goes back to what I do, why I do it and how it benefits my audience.

Having a clear messaging strategy is key when it comes to increasing engagement and views online because it allows you to become known for very specific things, you’ll build a community around it and again it plays on the benefit, so you know that what you’re creating will benefit your audience and as a result they will be more likely to engage.

Tip #2 - Bring Your Story to Life

A fundamental piece of connecting with your audience, which will increase engagement is sharing parts of your story in a relatable way. 

Some of my most engaging content has been when I talk about how I live full time in a trailer, how I work with my son, things we’re doing behind the scenes as a family that travels full-time and that’s because your audience doesn’t just want to be bombarded with sales, pitches and tips and tricks. Sometimes they just want to be inspired or feel like they aren’t alone.

When you start sharing parts of your story it’s important to keep a few things in mind. 

1. Always ask yourself, “Is this valuable to my audience? Why?”

2. Pay attention to your metrics. See what people are responding too and create more content around that.

Tip #3 - Ask for Engagement

Seems so easy doesn’t it? But we often miss this step. If you want people to engage we must give them the opportunity to do so. I know you’re on social all the time, but your audience might not be and they might not instantly think to comment or click or DM. You can simply say things like, “Give me a heart if you agree” “Drop an emoji if you needed this today” “What would you do in this situation?” “What additional tips do you have?” 

Something so simple can make a big difference in inviting your audience to engage with your content.

My biggest tip for engagement online is paying attention to your brand. Making sure you’ve taken the steps to create a strong core for your brand so that things like social media content, emails, sales pages, etc work the way you want them too. I’m sharing my 3-step method in my free masterclass and you can join us now. 

Sign up for The Build a Better Brand Method at brandmerry.com/brandmasterclass

Please share your biggest takeaways from this blog post and how you’re going to implement this information in your own business!

P.S Don’t forget to join me for my free masterclass at brandmerry.com/brandmasterclass

P.S.S. Are we connected on Instagram? No? Well lady what’s happening here we’ve got to fix that. Come hang out with me on my favorite social media platform. Follow for inspiration and send me a DM to know we’re connected.

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How You Can Sign 3 Clients in the Next 30 Days

How You Can Sign 3 Clients in the Next 30 Days

11/22/17

The doors to Roadmap to Freedom are open, and the biggest objection I receive is that women tell me it’s not the right time because they can’t find clients.

So today, I want to help you move your business forward so you can sign 3 clients in the next 30 days. Before we dive in, I want you to know that you’re not alone; it’s scary to invest, I’ve been there and so many of my clients have been there too.

To support you in feeling amazing about your next investment (because investments are necessary in your business) you need to stop downplaying your business.

Stop downplaying the services you offer.

The second you dive fully into what you do and take your business seriously it will take off.

Now, let’s get into these tips.

1. What you're currently doing that isn't working:

Inconsistent promotion

Your very inconsistent with what you’re offering and how you’re sharing that offer with your audience. If you want to sell, you have to be consistent with your promotion. Your audience needs to hear it 7x on average to take action.

Not clear on offer

It’s not that you don’t know what you offer, but you’re not clear on why your offer supports your ideal client - why they need that offer right now. I want you to know your offer so well that you could sell it to your mom or someone who’s definitely not your ideal client.

Don't fully know your audience

When it comes to selling, you have to know your ideal client like they are your best friend of 25 years. You have to know what they’re struggling with, present your offer in a way that fixes that struggle and gives them the desire to buy.

No urgency

If someone thinks they can sign up later, why would they sign up right now? There has to be that urgency. This can look like special pricing, special bonuses, cart closing, etc.

2. It's not working because…

• Your audience thinks they can just take action later.

• Your audience isn't hearing about your offer enough. I want you to put your offer our there at least 7 times. Research shows people need at least 7 touchpoint before they join.

• Your audience can't see the benefit. Everything you create needs to be benefit driven.

3. What you need to do:

• Become clear on your offer and how it supports your audience AND you need to write down the RESULTS they will receive if they follow what you’re offering them.

• Create a plan to consistently promote your offer. How are you going to show up and consistently promote that offer? How many times per week? Where are you going to show up? How are you going to present your offer? You need to be talking about your offer at least 3 times a week. At least.

• Add urgency to your offer. You’ve got 30 days to sign 3 clients. That means your offer ends in 30 days period :)

4. 3 Actionable Tips

1) Offer an assessment for your business

Assessments work because your audience is coming to you, and you get to show them what it’s like to work with you.

2) Use video to promote and encourage DM's

Live vide is an excellent way to connect with your audience and talk about your offer, give guidance and encourage people to message you.

3) Create a free offer direct to your paid offer

This is for the action takers. By this stage, you should know your paid offer so well, so now you can create a free offer that leads them to the paid offer.

You have all these big desires for your life and right now it feels like you are being pulled to something more than your current story; your current situation. This is just the beginning for you. We go over all this and way more in so much more depth in my program Roadmap to Freedom.

Just like you I had a desire to...
• Leave the 9 to 5 life for good (goodbye to a life of shoulds)
• Travel the world and not have to ask for permission to make it happen
• Work from a laptop, wherever and whenever I damn well pleased (yes, vacation, but more importantly next to my son while he plays)
• Exceed my 9 to 5 income without having to sacrifice the life I had created + live a life greater than I had ever imagined before

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY I WANTED TO DO IT ALL WITHOUT HAVING TO SACRIFICE THE VERY REASON I STARTED MY BUSINESS IN THE FIRST PLACE...my desire for freedom.

Roadmap to Freedom

Roadmap to Freedom is a 6-month group coaching program for the new female entrepreneur who is ready to launch an online business that allows her to make money on her own terms.

I HAVE TO ASK...

↠ What would it feel like to have all those missing pieces laid out for you? 

↠ To be able to pick and choose the ones that work best for you, your life and your business? 

↠ To have the support to ask questions & brainstorm having someone who has been exactly where you are now helping you dig deeper than you could ever do on your own? 

↠ How would it feel to create a life that allowed you to work with location independence; to travel, to take off when needed and not ask permission? 

↠ How would it feel to have the time to do the things you truly enjoy; to go to yoga, to spend time with your child to go on dates with your husband? 

↠ How would it feel to have financial freedom to be able to pay off debt, to be able to live a life that doesn’t revolve around paycheck to paycheck?

All of this is possible for you, and I’ve got the roadmap to support you in making it into a reality.

If you are feeling that pull for more, for something different, I encourage you to learn more about the program or join here: https://www.brandmerry.com/freedom

Head over to my Facebook Page and be sure to like and comment on the video while you are over there to help more people see this information ↠ https://www.facebook.com/brandmerrycoaching/videos/964729903735847/

And as always please share and comment on this blog post, I love connecting with you!

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#1 Strategy to Inspire Your Audience to Take Action

#1 STRATEGY TO INSPIRE YOUR AUDIENCE TO TAKE ACTION

Today we are talking about being the mirror. Let's think about a mirror for a second. We look in a mirror, we see what's happening right back at us. This is what needs to happen with your audience and your ideal clients. Because here's what happens a lot. We find ourselves on a hamster wheel. We find ourselves in this cycle. It's a routine. It's what's been expected of us, what society says we should be doing over and over and over again.

I don't know about you, but it's really hard to step off of that hamster wheel when it's what you've been doing your entire life. I struggled with this so much when I was working basically every 9 to 5 I've ever worked where I knew that there was something else that I was supposed to be doing, but I didn't really know what that was. And what I was doing was safe. What I was doing felt like it's what I should be doing. It was what society told me I should do. It wasn't miserable. I was never miserable in my 9 to 5. That's not always the case, right?

It just didn't feel 100% amazing. But, I was stuck. I was stuck on this cycle. I made money. I wasn't completely miserable. I didn't have a horrible life. It took a moment, the birth of my son, to pull me off that hamster wheel and basically shake me and say, "Okay, now's the time to do something different. You're actually not 100% happy. Let's change things up a bit." Not everyone has those moments.

Not everyone has a life-shaking moment in their life. It is your job to say to your clients, "You're not 100% happy. You'll tell me that. But then it's easy to go back to the same pattern over and over again."

So what do you we do about it? We show up and we talk to our client as the mirror. We really talk to them and walk them through, "Hey, you're feeling like this. You don't want to feel like this anymore, right?" And you can do this in such amazing ways, through live streams, through trainings, through video series, through webinars, through blogs, through YouTube videos, that you really want to talk to your ideal client and in a very loving way, shake them out of their reality                                               

This doesn't work for everyone. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and say that every single person that you present this to in a livestream or every single piece of content that comes out, people are going to see. But the women, or the men that you desire to work with, that are your true ideal clients will resonate with this.

So there's a couple things that I do to make sure that I really set up being the best mirror as possible.

#1 ASK YOUR AUDIENCE

I'm a big freaking believer in market research. I love market research. I love it because it gives me so much freaking content, it's insane.                                              

I love to ask my audience, "What's going on right now? What's your number one struggle with branding? What's really bothering you about working your 9 to 5, right now? If you can change one thing, what would it be?" These are just three examples of questions that you can put out there.

#2 PRESENT TOPICS ABOUT THE STRUGGLE

Start using those things as topics for your content and your livestream, so that way you're really pulling your audience in with the things they said they're struggling with. You're holding up a mirror and saying, "You really don't have to do this any longer." And the really cool thing about being the mirror in the entrepreneur world, is you're not only holding up the mirror and saying, "You're struggling with this. It doesn't have to be this way." You're also showing them what is possible, which leads us to number 3. 

#3 SHOW WHAT IS POSSIBLE 

When I was stuck on the hamster wheel, and when many of my ideal clients are stuck on the hamster wheel, it's hard to see what's possible. We can dream, a lot of us dream big. Entrepreneurs are really good at dreaming. But sometimes it's really hard to put ourselves into those dreams. We can say, "Oh, I really want to leave my 9 to 5." But if I were to ask that woman, "Oh, when are you going to leave your 9 to 5?" "Well, I don't know. I don't know if it'll ever happen."

It is our job as experts in our industry, it is our job as entrepreneurs, to make them see that it is possible for them. The same goes if you're in wellness. If you are a health and wellness coach and your ideal client is someone who's really struggling to lose weight and they need to lose weight because of their health, but they can't get rid of the old patterns that they've grown up with. The way that they've eaten their whole entire life. The way that they've looked at fitness their whole entire life. It is your job to say, "There is another way. I can guide you. This is what's possible for you. Here are some really cool, small changes that you can make." And have them start stepping off the hamster wheel.

The last thing I'm going to share with you about being the mirror is that this works really well for pricing. I hear a lot from my community that they get people on the phone that are super excited that say, "I can't afford it. I can't afford that right now."

If you make your audience understand that the way that they are living, the way that they are doing things, is not going to continue to work for them, that they are going to continue to keep feeling the way that they are feeling, that there is another way, and they can choose to make that decision, it's amazing how easy it is for people to suddenly find the money if they want it bad enough.

So again, continuing off of video one, as you can probably see, it's still about connection. It's still about showing up for your audience, speaking directly to them. Being the mirror in their current situation, showing them what is possible and presenting your beautiful offer or package to them as a way to change it. I know that's what first coach did to me. I know that's what I've been fortunate to do to so many women. As you go into everything that you're creating, think about being the mirror, being the reflection to your ideal client and your audience.

IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE ENTIRE VIDEO WITH SOME BONUS TIPS WORKED IN YOU CAN DO SO BELOW!

The #1 Strategy to Inspire Your Audience to Take Action Become a content machine and attract your target audience with my content calendar and #1 strategy here: http://bit.ly/ContentYoutube In today's video I want to introduce you to one of my favorite marketing strategies; Be the Mirror (aka The #1 Strategy to Inspire Your Audience to Take Action) So often we build a community of individuals, show up in groups or email our lists and despite every effort on our part, people won't take action.

Head over to Youtube and be sure to like and comment on the video while you are over on Youtube to help more people see this information ↠ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F1892KwjQg

And as always please share and comment on this blog post, I love connecting with you!

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Michelle Knight is a Branding and Business coach for female entrepreneurs who are struggling to gain visibility and traction to take their business to the next level. She works with her clients to dive deep into their story so they can create a brand and message that positions them as an expert and allows them to create their desired income to free up time in their schedule for what matters most. Learn more >>

How to Attract Your Dream Clients Through Emotional Branding

Today I'm going to teach you the single thing that has to be present in your branding in order to attract those amazing dream clients and to make money in your business.

I'm talking about emotion.

WHY IS EMOTIONAL BRANDING SO IMPORTANT?

People buy based on emotion. In fact, a Harvard study reported that, “Emotion is what really drives the purchasing behaviors, and also, decision making in general.”

Emotion is the #1 decision-maker when it comes to making a purchase decision, so if you’re solely focused on the logistics of your offer and aren’t going a level deeper to connect with your audience you’ll miss out every single time.

If your social media posts are falling flat, look at emotion.

If your offers aren’t selling, look at emotion.

If your sales calls aren’t ending in a sale, look at emotion.

It plays a role in everything you create so the first thing you need to do is identify which emotions you want to portray through your brand.

Because by having a strong emotional component to your marketing and selling efforts (i.e. your brand overall) you’ll be able to attract the right people and repel the wrong ones - leading to better conversions and brand loyalty overall.

So how do you attract your dream client through emotional branding?

With these steps of course!

LEAD WITH EMOTION

In a recent Youtube video (which you can watch below), I shared how to sell in your business without being salesy and how an important key to sales was based on trust and connections with your community. One of the top ways to do that is to always lead with emotion.

Think about the last time you cried, you were happy, you were sad. We are drawn to emotions. So we want to play on this and pull people to our brand by making them feel something.

Now maybe you're like, "Okay, how's my brand suppose to make people feel something?" I get that question a lot. But it's really easy. And what's really fun is that most of the time it comes from the aesthetics.

Your aesthetics are like the sprinkles on top of a solid foundation (aka the branding cake)! This is what instantly pulls your audience to you, stops them mid-scroll and hooks them in a sea of information.

You have 15 seconds to do just this and that’s why emotional branding is so important.

**If you want some help setting a strong brand foundation, you need to watch my free on-demand training where I’ll teach you my signature Build a Better Brand Method! I’m sharing the exact steps needed to build a strong foundation for your revenue-generating business.

IDENTIFY THE EMOTIONS

I love to pull emotion through the aesthetics.. It's probably my number one place; through the type of font that you choose, through your colors, through the type of messaging that you have on your website, through the type of videos that you create.

There are all kinds of different ways that you can really get this emotion across in your branding. But before you can get there, you have to first identify what those emotions are. 

Start with your story. You always have to look inward when you're creating your brand.

After you've really looked inward at your story, start to think about your audience.

How do you want to connect your story to your audience?
What do you want to make your audience feel when they see or hear your brand?

This is really important. How do you want to make them feel?

ACTION STEP: Choose at least five words that can be used as your brand emotions. These brand emotions can help you again create your entire brand, all of the aesthetics, the colors, even the fonts.

When you start focusing on what your audience fells, everything inside your business changes!

WHY THIS IS SO IMPORTANT

Every day we're scrolling and scrolling and scrolling online. The average time someone spends on a website is 15 seconds. So imagine, if you don't grab their attention within 15 seconds, they're gone.

Potential clients, money, right? Gone in what could be 15 seconds. Probably even faster, if we're scrolling through our phones, so you really want to capture them by making them feel something. Great photos capture them, but copy is what converts!

So I love to carry those emotional feelings over into my copy. When I write a piece of copy, I want my audience to say, "Oh, man. That made me really think."

Or, "Oh, that really inspires me."

Or, "I want that too."

Start identifying how you want your audience to feel. Not necessarily just the action you want them to take, although important, but getting down to the root of how you want them to feel.

Something we're all really good at is saying, "Hey, buy this program. This is doing this. Sign up here. Join me here." But what we miss out on is why your audience should care, why your audience should join you. How will that make them feel? Why your audience should tap to learn more? What will they learn? How will that better them? How will that make them feel?

Start really thinking of your people as people and start carrying that over into your branding. I promise you when you start incorporating the emotional aspect to your branding you are going to start seeing consistent clients coming in.

You become irresistible to your audience. I like to say bold and captivating.

A bold, captivating and money-making brand sounds really good to me.

And it all starts with the emotional side of your business.

NEXT STEPS

Another layer of Emotional Branding is the use of story in every single piece of your business. From your brand mission to brand aesthetics to the content you create and the programs you offer, story is the key.

Story allows you to continuously connect with your audience, making them feel seen, heard and understood - which is so important.

And to top it all off, posts with story are 22x more memorable than ones without.

If you’re ready to take the next steps in building a brand that stands out on social media, creates high-value content for your audience and build a community that leads to a revenue-generating business…

…I’ve got a free class just for you!

Inside this free class you’ll learn The Build a Better Brand Method.

WATCH THE FREE TRAINING

P.S. Have you tuned into The Brandmerry Podcast? Every week, I’m releasing new episodes with my top tips for branding and marketing your business. You can find it now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

If you prefer to watch this content, you can do so below!

Branding: How to Attract Your Dream Clients Through Emotional Branding Watch my FREE 3-Part Video Training on creating a Bold, Captivating and Money-Making Brand: http://bit.ly/3parttraining-Youtube Learn more about Your Brand New Adventure: http://bit.ly/BrandAdventure-Youtube In this video I'm sharing the single most important piece of branding.

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.