When your marketing and outreach aren’t yielding the results you want, a common mistake is to try to change everything about the marketing at once — you scrap your launch or your entire funnel or your system for bringing on new clients and you start from scratch.
For example: You send out an email to your community about a new program. The email leads readers to your sales page, and you don’t make too many sales.
No matter what business you’re in, and no matter what your business model is, you need a compelling message to be able to successfully attract ideal clients to buy your offerings and products.
I call it your Sacred Message.
Your Sacred Message is a core and essential part of all your marketing strategies – your message should permeate & inspire any home pages, sales pages, articles, Facebook posts, brochures, enrollment conversations, etc. (my message is all over THIS newsletter edition!).
Without your Sacred Message, your marketing will have a hard time enrolling new clients.
And even more important than that – when you’ve crafted a Sacred Message that is really aligned for you and your business, it becomes the central tenet of your offerings, your business philosophy and attitude. In other words, it’s at the core of everything you do and are in your business.
I believe that your Sacred Message is so important that the women I teach receive hand-held guidance and self-assessing worksheets with provocative inner wisdom questions to be able to craft the perfect message that is fully authentic to you. That’s because in order to be as effective and magnetic as possible – your Sacred Message needs to come from your soul and from the depths of who you are.
Your Sacred Message isn’t simply a business tool. It’s a marker of who you are as a person and how you show up to serve those you’re meant to serve.
I also teach that your Sacred Message can change as you change (but not too, too often for branding’s sake!). My own sacred message has evolved over the years – it has been a beautiful, living entity that has reflected my own passions, priorities and intuition at each stage of my business & personal growth.
But, I remember the first few years of my business when I didn’t really understand that a strong, clear and authentic message was required to be able to build a loyal community and attract ideal clients.
My marketing fell pretty flat – for example: I would write beautiful, inspirational newsletters and web copy (I love to write), and I would get the feedback that it was actually inspiring my readers…and yet they weren’t really buying my services. Or if they did, they weren’t really 100% clear on why they wanted me to help them and with what (which was not a good thing, because it made them much harder to coach!).
Since then, I’ve learned quite a bit about how to create a Soul-Centered message and how to use it strategically to inspire AND sign on ideal clients.
Here are the 3 Essential Components you want your Sacred Message to contain:
I call this your Soul-Centered Vision. It’s an idea or concept you are so passionate about that you are willing to scream it from the mountaintops for everyone to hear. It’s a big dream you want realized in the world.
It’s the "why" behind your business and your business’s offerings and services. For example: Your Soul-Centered Vision may be that all the world’s girls know how to eat healthy, or that animals are important beings that have feelings, or that all women love and value themselves, no matter what.
Your Soul-Centered Vision is the inspirational component of your Sacred Message.
Your Unique Brilliance is the unique combination of talents, skills, gifts, quirks, and personal learnings you bring to your work in order to bring about your Soul-Centered Vision.
It’s the "how" behind your business and your business’s offerings and services. It can include anything from your love of cooking, to your history as the survivor of abuse, to your storytelling skills, to your sense of humor, to your passion for editing and correct grammar.
Your Unique Brilliance is the component of your Sacred Message that alerts prospects to the tools you’ll use to help them.
This is your Ideal Client. I recently wrote about a very important perspective on the Ideal Client, that you can find here.
Your Ideal Client is the "who" you’re meant to serve in your business. It’s essential that you are fully clear on who your Ideal Client is in order to have an effective Sacred Message. If you don’t know who you’re serving, it’s really hard to outreach to them effectively and create supportive programming for that person.
Your Ideal Client is the component of your Sacred Message that lets your prospect know you "get" her and are here to serve someone just like her.
Now that you’ve got the 3 Core Components of your Sacred Message, get to work!
Where can your marketing materials be tweaked to accurately communicate the "why", "how" and "who" of your business so that aligned prospects will focus in on you and your services?
Oh my goodness – we just ended the Get It Done Project, and it was SUCH a POWERFUL day!!!!
Hundreds and hundreds of folks on the lines all day long getting their biggest project done!
I made this video (you’ll see I am so pumped!) about it, and about the VERY SPECIAL TIME SENSITIVE offer I made at the end of the day.
***To access the offer (do it by midnight 12/8!), go to: www.soulfulcoach.com/yoursacredbusiness.php
big hug,
Joanna
You could dye your hair green. Get tattooed all over. Soup up your car so it bounces and shoots out sparks as you roll down the street.
All of these are sure-fire ways for you to get noticed. But if your goal is to gain in prosperity, abundance, and soul-centered visibility for your career or personal project, they probably aren’t the best way to get the kind of attention you crave!
If you’re a writer, a teacher, an entrepreneur, or even just looking for a positive change in your life, creating a strong plan for visibility is essential to your success. Without one, you’re likely to earn less, perform work you dislike or find unsatisfying, and fail to receive recognition or acknowledgement in the areas that matter to you.
I know that you’re passionate about what you do, and you’re good at it. But sometimes you are in the position where the clients aren’t there, or the agents aren’t there, or the press isn’t there, or the prospective employers aren’t there. And it looks like they’re not coming.
You know what happens next: you start beating yourself up, or judging yourself, or feeling victimized or in despair. You feel you just can’t do it, or you can’t get it right. It’s easy to get paralyzed and just stew in these negative thoughts!
The best way to protect yourself from this situation is to take action! And for you, the best action is to create a visibility plan that is effective, soul-centered and powerful.
If you follow the five steps outlined below, you’ll have a roadmap of how to create the visibility you need to get noticed for the incredible work you do.
5 Steps to Visibility
1. Plan in advance: Plan out at least 6 but no more than 12 months in advance so that you have time to prepare, time for contingency, and time to re-work any new ideas into the mix. Make sure your plan is not merely written on paper, but also woven into your work calendar and personal schedule.
If you don’t plan in advance, you’re going to find you’re always rushing to catch up, or two days too late for that conference application, press release submission, networking event, or community email.
2. Make it personal: When sharing your message, don’t assume or guess at what people might want from you. Instead, speak or write from what is true and authentic for you and who you are. Also, speak directly and personally to your audience.
When you reveal your real self through your marketing, and when you speak directly to your audience, your message is far more powerful than any “corporate-speak” that may seem professional, but is cold and impersonal.
3. Play to Your Strengths: There are so many awesome visibility tactics out there: newsletters, email, video, in-person workshops, social media, networking meetings, blogs, audio, referral programs, podcasts – this list goes on and on. No need to be cookie-cutter at all! Choose the methods that work best for you.
Choose those strategies that make the most sense for you and your soul-centered project. For example, if your newsletter and blog are your biggest visibility channels, but you just hate writing and it takes you hours to write a paragraph – choose a different channel! Or, if you’ve been mainly focusing on social media, but you’re the type of person that folks are immediately attracted to when they meet you in person, go to more networking events or do in-person presentations. The most effective visibility strategies are the ones that match how you show up best as well as how your ideal clients HEAR your message best.
4. Partner up: You can’t bring your big message and vision to the world alone. There is not one single person (unless they’ve already reached Oprah status) who has so many people in their sphere of influence that they can attract in visibility without creating partnerships and joint ventures.
Partnerships are one of the best visibility tools out there. When you enlist other individuals, organizations and businesses to help promote you and spread the word about your project, your ability to reach your ideal client increases exponentially.
5. Engage in Persistent and Consistent Action. P.C.A can make the difference between a successful plan and one that fizzles out.
Consistent Action = taking at least 3 actions towards your visibility strategies each working day. If you aren’t taking consistent action, then even the best-laid plan in the world isn’t going to work. Think about it in terms of a farm: you need to water and fertilize your crops regularly in order to generate a bountiful harvest.
Persistent Action = following-up. I know – for some of you, this is the “F” word of marketing. This is so important. Often times folks don’t “buy” or “connect in” on the first time you connect with them, so follow-up is 100% necessary in order to reach your visibility goals.
Homework: Now that you’ve got the 5 Soul-Centered Keys for Visibility, take the time to sit down and outline YOUR plan – in writing!
I’m gearing up for another trip to NY in a week, but before that I have been enjoying the incredible Spring weather & energy, and one of my favorite forms of art: theatre. Jon and I, along with some friends, saw a wonderful production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? last weekend. Wow, what an intense 3 hours.
You’ll notice that in today’s newsletter, I’m recommending events from THREE amazing women – it’s rare that I’ll highlight 3 in one newsletter, but each of these women and each of these events are so fantastic that I didn’t want you to miss out.
I love to promote women, businesses, and events that I find valuable and think the Soulful Coaching community (YOU!) would love. It’s one of the things that gives me great pleasure, and I’m thrilled that I’m able to share other women’s tools of movement, growth, and healing to so many.
Speaking of growth tools – check out last week’s article – all about taking your website to the next level!
With love,
Joanna
When you take a look around the web today, it can seem like everyone has a gorgeous, amazing website. It can make you feel very pressured to create a fabulous website for your business or project too!
You never want to act out of pressure.
However, if you sense that it’s time to create a new website, or improve your existing one…that’s great, because a well-created website can make a world of difference in your inflow of prospects.
But where to begin?
What do you include in a website? What’s important and what’s unnecessary? What about graphics? Or video? Or downloads? There are so many variables to consider, it can get overwhelming fast!
If you are just terrified of or feel unprepared to have a website, rest easy: you don’t need a perfect, fancy website in order to be successful in your soul-centered project. If you’re ready to create your website or to uplevel the one you already have, great! Let me walk you through the process step by step.
Elements of a Soul-Centered Website
Before you get started, my number one recommendation to you is this: keep it simple.
Once you start to make your website complex, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed. When you get overwhelmed, more often than not, you just stop working on it or you beat yourself up. This is not helpful! Remember, entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be plenty of time to add and make things fancier. Here are the real essentials:
HOME PAGE
This is the main page that people will land on when they visit your website. The best use of a home page is to identify who your ideal clients are, to address your clients’ needs and visions of success, and to let them know how you’re the bridge to that success.
OFFERING PAGE
BIOGRAPHY PAGE
Important Additional Elements
How familiar is this scenario: you set out to do something, and when it doesn’t work out after the first or second attempt, you decide that you’re not good at it, you’ll never learn how to do it, or it’s not for you? Here are some stories like that which I’ve heard over the years (and I’ve heard hundreds of others like these):
Do these situations resonate with you?
If this is an experience you’ve had, you are going to find it very difficult to create success for your soul-centered project. When you easily give up hope or enthusiasm for something you really, REALLY want because your vision didn’t become reality immediately, you are giving up at the EXACT moment to be forging ahead.
Instead of viewing your attempt as exactly that: simply, one attempt that did not work out, you create a story about yourself. The story usually sounds something like these:
The truth is, it’s your ability to follow up and follow through that will help or prevent you from accomplishing the things you want to accomplish in life – not your abilities, or even your circumstances!
The F-Word of Business
Does the thought of following up with a colleague, client, or vendor feel so uncomfortable that it’s practically a bad word? Do you worry that following up means you’re desperate, aggressive, or too "salesy"? Sooo many business owners quail at the thought of having to follow up that I sometimes think of it as the f-word of business!
But in truth, followup is critical to your success. Try to think of it like in tennis. When you’re playing to win, it’s not just about where you make impact with the ball that helps it go where you want.
You also need to make sure you’re paying attention to your follow-through with your racquet upwards and outwards, to really guide that ball toward your target.
So much good comes of following up.
Not long ago, I had a client who applied for a teaching position and never heard back. She assumed she never got the job. I encouraged her to call and follow up, and it turned out that literally hundreds of people had applied, and not a single resume had been looked at yet. The person on the phone pulled my client’s resume from the stack as a result of her call, and she ended up getting the job.
Learn how to follow through from a pre-schooler!
I am often reminded of the value of follow-through just by observing my daughter, Penina. As most pre-schoolers do, Penina has a zest and curiosity for life, and wants to do everything for herself. However, it is a rare instance that she accomplishes her goal on her first attempt.
I’ll give you an example: last week, Penina was figuring out how to maneuver herself around a local playground’s climbing structure. I watched as she tested out which foot to place on which slat and which hand to grasp which bar with. Just as she was about to reach the top, Penina lost her balance, slipped down a rung, and banged the side of her head. I raced over to make sure she was okay. She was a little scared and cried for a minute or two. But then she did the most amazing thing: she pushed out of my arms and went directly back to the climbing structure to complete what she had set out to do.
Penina was able to persist and complete her goal because she didn’t judge herself for not achieving full success at her first attempt. In fact, I believe that the challenge is what made it more interesting for her!
Don’t Hesitate; Don’t Fear
Many times, one of the biggest issues that trips you up is when you wait too long to follow up out of fear. You wait weeks and weeks, so that if you ever do get around to making that call, the opportunity window has long since closed. With a prospect, you want to wait only a few days, at most, before reaching out to follow up.
A major step towards success and satisfaction is to be able to let your passion, enthusiasm, and interest for your project or goal be bigger and more powerful than any story you create about your small-ness or your inability. Don’t let one or two failures deter you from achieving success with your ideas, opportunities, relationships, and projects!
Remember, almost no one can do things exactly right on their first try. But don’t let that get in your way! Keep tapping into your curiosity, working at it, working at it, and tweaking your strategy (and maybe get support and help) until you achieve success. You can do it!
So here’s my homework for you:
Make a list of every prospect, partner, and opportunity that you haven’t followed up with over the last 3 months, and…get in touch with each of those people. Invite them to a conversation with you. See how you can follow up to achieve your goals.
It’s been a meaningful week for me – my daughter had a 5-day hiatus from school for parent-teacher conferences and then President’s Day.
Even though Penina is only 4-years-old, I love it that her school has regular parent teacher conferences.
It’s an opportunity for me and Jon to "qvell" over how well she’s doing, but also, it’s an opportunity to be reminded of how learning and achievement takes place: step by step, with forward movement and occasional setbacks, and over time.
This is so important, because it mirrors the journey of an entrepreneur as much as a budding preschool reader. It’s a great reminder not to get frustrated when growth doesn’t happen as quickly as you’d like.
It’s also a great reminder that growth happens best when you have a mentor, some good instruction, and someone to believe in you – whether your 4 or 74.
If you’re feeling like you need some of this right now, I hope you’ll join me for a very special teleclass I’m hosting in two weeks.
With love,
Joanna
No matter what you’re wanting to gain visibility for – your next new program, your book, your private client offerings, your clothing line – it’s VITAL that you market yourself and your offering in one way or another.
And, whether you let people know about your stuff via your website, blog, social media, prospect calls, inquiry letters or presentations, you want to make sure that you are incorporating an effective strategy into your marketing. If you aren’t using a strategy in your marketing that really connects you and your target audience, then chances are you’re having a lot of trouble attracting in new clients, new publishers, new boutiques to sell your clothing line, etc.
Today I want to share with you a highly effective and easy marketing formula I use and teach all of my students and clients. I use it every single day in my own business, whether I’m writing web copy or giving a teleclass or speaking with a prospective client.
The thing that makes this formula so effective is that it allows you to connect fully and deeply with your ideal client/target audience. After all, the key to good marketing is about making an authentic, intimate connection with your prospects.
Let me walk you through this foundational marketing formula step by step:
1) Connect your prospect to what’s missing in her life: Your prospect/target audience is looking to you to help fill a void or bridge a gap in her life that she can’t fill herself. For example, if you’re a health coach, your ideal client’s void might be that they are exhausted all the time, or that they feel terrible about the way that they look. The best way to connect in with this person is to let them know, through your copy and words, that you get it. Instead of avoiding the pain they’re in, gracefully name it or ask them about it.
2) Connect your prospect to what she wants for her life: Once you’ve made space for your prospect to see what’s missing for her and how it feels, you want to get her really connected to the possibilities that could open for her. By doing so, she’ll not only feel even more connected to you and that you understand her, but she’ll also then be in a position to get excited about making a change in her life. So, to continue the example of the health coach, your ideal client might want to feel energized or beautiful or active or in full well-being. No matter what marketing avenue you are using, you want to really activate your prospect’s vision and create the space for her to get excited about possibilities for her health and well-being moving forward.
3) Let your prospects know how you can help them get from where they are now to where they want to be: Now that you’ve really helped your prospect understand what’s missing for them currently, as well as what possibility they envision for their life, it’s time to get really clear and specific and tell them how your product or offering can help them get from where they are to where they want to be. You’ll want to talk about or list all the ways that you can help them specifically.
4) Make a powerful call to action: This is the final step. It’s the step that so many leaders and entrepreneurs skip over, and it is so, so important. You want to clearly and confidently invite your prospect, potential publisher, potential buyer, etc. into a next step with you. Perhaps the call to action is a connection call or perhaps it’s an invitation to buy your service or join your newsletter community or to have lunch with you. Whatever it is, state the invitation clearly with as much detail as possible.
There you have it! I’ve given you the quick, down and dirty version here. There are, of course, many more details to consider and add in, but you’ve got the structure now.
