In my experience working with service-based business owners, there are usually two reasons why their phones are not ringing off the hook. Both are simple fixes that just require some focus and attention.

Visibility & Messaging:

Visibility – What are your distribution channels? How can people find you? Through social media channels, blog, podcast, networking, email marketing? How can people find you and know that you exist?

A fancy way of talking about increasing your visibility is called brand awareness. In marketing terms, this is the called the "top of the funnel". A quick explanation of the funnel, or the customer journey is that at the top of the funnel, the widest part, is where people come into contact with your brand. They might find you on social media, they might meet you at a conference or networking event, they might get your newsletter forwarded to them from a colleague. So think through how you’re putting yourself out there for people to find you. It’s literally the introduction of your brand. They’ll make a decision to continue to give you their attention or not. So, a first impression matters. How people feel when they come into contact with your brand the first time is a powerful moment. This is all part of your brand awareness strategy.

The visibility issue is this: There are people out there who really want your help. You really want to help them. They don’t know that you exist, and you may feel like no one is looking for you because you’re not seeing the inquiries flying in.

Visibility & messaging solve this problem. We’ll talk about messaging in a moment, but when we talk about becoming visible, it can bring up all sorts of fears and doubts, especially if you're not USED to being visible.

Solo entrepreneurs especially find that their brand is larglye made up of them, of their expertise and their knowledge so when marketing their material, they’re largely marketing themselves. This can feel really weird and bring up all sorts of uncomfortable thoughts.

As a culture we’ve been conditioned to not self-promote. To not think of, or speak of our selves with high-regard because it’s arrogant. Talking about yourself with high-regard is bragging. Don’t be a self-promoting braggart.

So no wonder we’re worried about showing up in a video on social media. We’re supposed to play small, stay quiet, and “LET THE WORK SPEAK FOR ITSELF’. Let me tell you, that is a loaded phrase.

This phrase keeps people hiding behind a narrative that's conditions us to play a smaller game.

One that tells us to “Stay quiet. Keep your Head down. Get to work.” It's meant to keep the disruptors from disrupting. Your work may speak for itself, but if nobody knows it’s an option for them it doesn’t say much.

Create a brand awareness strategy that allows people to see what it’s like to work with you, about what could be possible for them by working with you.

Your offerings have real value. Your ideal clients are ready for you. There are human beings out there who dream of living a life that has been influenced and affected by your work. The desire to reach these people must supersede your fear, worry, or insecurity of marketing and becoming visible.

Your desire to want to grow your business, work with more people, and level up your own skills has to exceed your fear of being seen. One cannot grow a business in secret or without sharing facts about how you help people, or what it's like to work with you, or the results people get when they work with you. So there’s your pep talk on becoming visible. Overcoming the self-doubt and insecurity around putting yourself out there and letting yourself be seen is step one.

Now let’s talk about messaging.

The messaging issue may look like this: I post to social media regularly, I send out my email newsletter, I write a monthly blog, but I’m not getting any leads. No one is calling.

In this case you have established your distribution channels, but the content you're putting on those distribution channels may not be resonating with the people who are seeing them.

Client story for you: I provided a marketing strategy plan for a woman who is a life coach. She helps other women through a very specific life event. When we reviewed her existing material, I noticed that she was talking to her ideal clients as if they were in the middle of their journey. In the middle of the buffet line, if you will. I suggested that she change her messaging ever so slightly so that she was addressing these women as if they were at the beginning of their journey. As if they were just getting their plate at the beginning of the buffet line. This makes a world of difference. Often times, starting is the hardest part, isn’t it? If someone sees the courage, can bear witness to the fact that you’re embarking on something, how much more validated, heard, seen, do they feel?

This is one type of messaging pivot that can make all the difference in the world. Let’s talk about what good messaging looks like and how it applies to your differentiation:

Your story is your biggest differentiator. Your story matters. Why you do what you do, who you serve and why, what drives you... these factors are why people hire you rather than someone else. They’re your biggest points of differentiation.

What got you to this point and why you keep going are two things that cant be competed against.You have zero competition and it's the main reason why people choose to work with you. Nobody can do what you do in the way that you do it.

Strategy Session

In my strategy session we spend a significant amount of time talking about the reasons why you started your business, what you did before entrepreneurship, what your intentions are for the future growth you're looking for, why this line of work matters to you, why your ideal clients matter to you, and more. More often than not, there’s so much below the surface… Many of my strategy session clients get emotional at one point or another in our meeting. Nearly every single one. It's because it's incredibly personal. It can be therapeutic. It's always inspiring.

These clients leave feeling motivated, excited, renewed, and confident because they see how their story plays such a big part in their future success. Leverage where you’ve come from, what you’ve been through, why you do what you do.

Aside from your story, think through the deliverables of working with you, then post about that. Think through the objections future clients may have. Speak to that. Think through their worries, fear, and doubt. Address those.

The most important part of your strategy is your message. Gotta get that piece right first.

I want to speak to differentiation for a minute. Especially if you’re one who is in a saturated market.

I’ve worked with a lot of real estate agents. Not one of their marketing strategies are similar. They may have similar distribution, but their brand (the way people feel about working with them), why people would choose to work with them? Completely different. Why? Because they have different strengths. One agent that I’ve worked with has a background in merchandising and customer service. That’s a big draw for a certain audience. Another agent is a financial whiz and can speak to complex investment strategies and that is a big draw for his ideal clients. Can both of these agents write up a purchase and sale agreement? Yep. How they get to the point of writing up the purchase and sale agreement is totally different.

And my last riff on messaging:

A confused audience doesn't buy because an unclear message doesn't convert. It’s your job as a leader to explain your area of expertise in a way that they can understand so that they can apply it in their life in a meaningful way.

Skip the jargon. Break complex ideas into what it really means and why it matters. Have you ever explained your area of expertise to your kids or to your parents, or to non-industry related friends? Folks who have no idea about your line of work are great people to test messaging on. They may not be your ideal clients, but they can certainly show you where you’re relying on industry jargon or tribal know age to explain a concept

So in summary, the two factors getting in your way of bringing in more leads are visibility, your distribution channels for bringing your free, valuable, problem solving content to your ideal audience. And messaging, what you share on those platforms.

If you’d like specific, customized help putting together a visibility plan or put in fancy marketing language: a brand awareness strategy, and if you’d like some help developing your messaging and creating the content plan around what you should be sharing to make a bigger impact, reach out by emailing me and we’ll set up a consultation to give you some tips to apply immediately, and if you’re a good fit for a strategy session we can talk about that too.

Your homework for today is to think through your pipeline. Do you have the amount of consultations, leads, and prospects that you’d hoped for? If not, if you want more, then review the ways that your audience is able to find out about you. Think about that through their eyes. There’s plenty of statistics on this if you google the market stats of your ideal clients. Next, consider your messaging and how it could be improved to resonate with more of the people with whom you’d like to be of service.

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Thanks for being here,

Kelly Smith

@willowandoaksolutions​

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