Written by: Michelle Mazur, Ph.D., Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
“What do you do?” That question induces panic even in the most seasoned business owners. How do you sum up all that your business does in just a few sentences that make people want to know more?
Even if you get their attention, how do you lead them to become clients? The answer: you need to create a brand message that builds an argument for your work and persuades strangers to become clients. How does that work? Here are fours steps to begin translation your ideas into a message that sells. Step One: Focus on Why Your Idea Matters to Your Audience As a business owner, you know why your idea matters to you. The idea energizes you and you could talk all day about it to anyone who listens. The issue is you don’t know why your prospective client should care about what your business offers. How do you make them care? One of my favorite tools for this comes from a company called XPLANE, it’s called the Client Empathy Map. It’s how you identify what your client is doing, hearing, seeing, and struggling with. The Client Empathy Map helps you identify what problem you solve for them and the role your solution plays in their life or business.
Step Two: Communicate how Your Business & Idea is Different from Your competition
Before you can make an argument for why your business matters to people, you need to get your audience's attention. Let’s face it, the Internet is a noisy place. Attention spans are dwindling. It’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the competition. There’s more competition every day. The father of integrated marketing, Don Schultz, believes that anyone anywhere can copy anything your business does. Except Schultz believes there is one thing that is unmistakable and uncopyable and uniquely yours in your business ‒ and that is how you communicate with your audience and your prospective clients. To communicate your difference while getting people’s attention, create your own 3 Word Rebellion. I developed this framework to encapsulate the change you want to create in the world with your message. This is your “Start with Why.” “5-Second Rule” or “Four Hour Work Week.” The 3 Word Rebellion gathers your audience, helps them take action, and then encourages them to share your message with others. It also leads the right people to work with you to experience that change in their lives. It’s simple and powerfully persuasive. This message may take time to create but it’s a way to communicate your idea that matters to your audience while encouraging them to be the messengers of your message. Ready to get discover your 3 Word Rebellion? Grab a free chapter of my book and get started now. Step Three: Layout Your Process
Once you’ve grabbed your audience attention, what do you do with it?
This is the time to revisit step one and demonstrate how you understand their problem and how it impacts their lives or business. The next step is to show them how you’re solution solves their problem. This is the core of how you translate your idea into a message that sells. As business owners, we tend to get wrapped up in the details of how we deliver sour work. We talk about all the great features that we are excited about and the level of detail that makes are prospective clients snooze. Instead, create:
A model (e.g. Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle from Start with Why)
A framework a structure that leads to a result(e.g. Mike Micahlowiz’s Profit First)
The phases of your process that leads to results (e.g. 3 Word Rebellion’s four phases of creating a one-of-a-kind message)
Now you might be thinking, “what I do is customized to each client” and that can be absolutely true while still giving your clients a high-level framework.
Giving clients a structure like this breeds trust. They know what to expect from your work and your business. Plus, it allows your clients to quickly and easily understand the work you do.
Step Four: Give Them a Reason to Believe in Your Idea
If you want to create a message that sells ideas, you need to give your prospective clients and customers a reason to believe in your work. The purpose of this is to show them what is possible when they work with you. What outcomes could they experience? What’s possible for them if they take the leap with you? Yes, I’m talking results but I want you to deliver the full picture. Too many times we hear that the only results that matter is a number or an event. The tangible results like how much money they made, time saved, or the TEDx talk they landed. Results are intangible as well. More confidence, more consistency in showing up or feeling more secure (to name a few).
The key with relaying intangible results is to tell the story around it to make the intangible concrete.
Creating a message that sells can be a struggle, but it is worth it. Once you follow these four steps and translate your idea into that message, you can use it over and over in your marketing, sales and PR efforts.
Ready to translate your big idea into a one of kind message, grab a free chapter of my book the 3 Word Rebellion to get started today.
Michelle Mazur, Ph.D., Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Michelle Mazur wants to know what ticks you off. Working with brilliant business owners who are shaking things up (but having trouble talking about it), she combines the tools of successful social movements with the qualitative research skills she earned in her communications PhD. By getting clear on both what they stand for and what they’re rebelling against, she helps her clients craft a powerful, captivating message that has audiences flocking to hire them and are desperate to spread the word.
The author of three books (including the newly-released 3 Word Rebellion) and the host of two podcasts: the Rebel Uprising & Duped the Dark Side of Online Business. Michelle has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. She founded Communication Rebel® in part because she thinks nothing is more heartbreaking than watching someone who could change the world fail just because they took thirty, rambling minutes to explain what they do. She knows that having a clear and captivating message is the key to reaching the people you could help the most, in a way that is powerful and feels effortless.
