The Importance Of Marketing The Most Lucrative Brand: YOURSELF
The Importance Of Marketing The Most Lucrative Brand: YOURSELF
There is a saying that goes, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fight for nothing.”
Truer words have never been spoken, especially if you’re in the business of running your own business.
There is much at stake when you’re a business owner. A whole new ball game, compared to being an employee working in a corporate setting.
Instead of being a follower, you’re now a leader. Instead of getting paid at a fixed date of the month, you might now be responsible for paying people, putting food on their table.
With the stakes being that much higher, being extra hungry for success comes only naturally for business owners that have “taken the leap” and are working on their own terms, out of their own pockets.
Everybody wants to be at the top on the pecking order, but the air is thin up there and only a few survive.
In order to reach the pinnacle of entrepreneurial stardom and financial freedom, you will have to stand out from the rest.
By “you”, I actually do not mean your company, or the services it provides.
I mean, literally YOU.
YOU need to be your own star product.
Your very own “best-seller”.
You need to sell yourself, before you start selling anything else. And make sure it’s completely “sold out”.
Super-star Me
I believe most business owners understand the importance of marketing. Most of them will pull out all the stops and milk all social media platforms for all its worth, flooding the net with their company’s brand and what it brings to the table.
One thing that most of them encounter however, is that they are not exactly getting their effort or their ad money’s worth.
Very slow web traffic, unqualified leads, a lot of time spent on meeting up with prospects who end up being reluctant to spend because of uncertainty and skepticism.
Out of ideas… and things to take it out on.
What exactly are you doing wrong?
The answer is plain and simple: every successful brand needs a brand ambassador.
Like all household names with their celebrity ambassadors, everybody wants to associate a brand with a face.
There will however be no need for preening and pouting with tons of makeup in front of cameras for six hours. No need to flash that million-dollar smile of your until your jaws ache.
Lucky for all of us, there is no need to be a celebrity to sell your own brand. You just need the confidence and charm of one.
Being One With The Masses
Not having the “star power” of a celebrity ambassador pretty much means you can’t expect to generate millions of dollars in sales just by virtue of your good looks.
This means that you will have to adopt a different but equally effective game plan: you have to reach out to them and win them over with your “inner beauty”.
What kind of “inner beauty” are we talking about here?
I’m talking about how you can appeal to the people you want to reach out to, by being one of them, and being sensitive to their joy, their pain, their wants, their needs.
Let them know that they’re not alone, you feel them, and you can help them.
Inner beauty: Not to be taken as literally as this gentleman here.
Each set of clientele of any specific industry have their own reasons why they are paying for that particular service. And by reasons I mean a woe, a concern, an end goal, with your service/product contributing to the solution.
Everybody loves a coming-of-age story. One that they can relate to, with feelings evoked that they can resonate with. You need to be the storyteller your target demographic needs.
No Killer, All Filler
Here at Wordplay we deal with clients and prospects from all walks of life. Before our ‘intervention’, they appear to be doing the right thing with the marketing of their product.
I have had real estate agents put up pictures of the properties they’re trying to sell, tuition centers putting up their End-Of-Year exam packages, investment companies giving out free seats on their Facebook pages.
Why is it that they still feel like they need to engage in our services then?
Simple: because the results are not speaking for themselves. Conversion is not optimized. Albeit the right marketing channels, the content put out just lacks the “killer blow”.
It is so easy to just drop information like offers and discounts. However enticing they might seem to some people, the fact of the matter is most of us get lost in “filler content” like these. You’re simply not telling them WHY they need your services.
Always make sure you have enough substance to abuse. Metaphorically, of course.
This is easily the most common mistake obscured under all the right intentions we see in most of our clients and prospects. And this also happens to be where we work our magic, with our tried and tested, industry-proof branding formula.
Wait A Minute, How?
How does the process of creating an effective brand ambassador begin, you might ask. This is, in a nutshell what a client gets once they leave themselves in our good hands:
– We Pinpoint The Target Demographic
Based on our qualification and analysis of client’s personal profile, we will single out a demographic target that is most suited to his/her character or age group.
This first step is crucial, as it paves the way for penetration of a different demographic moving forward.
– An “Image Overhaul”
Instead of being a generic and blatant sales-generating machine, we apply and impart to our clients tried-and-tested techniques to inject a little bit of a “personal touch” to what they’re selling.
We make sure the target audience knows that you’re a friend first, and a salesperson second. Clients will be educated on buyer psychology, and to think and feel from the consumer’s perspective.
You’ll be surprised how a little empathy goes the extra mile in closing a sale.
– “Storyline” Creation
Based on the demographic pool that we’ve picked out for you, we will create an account of someone going through the same phases in life as the target audience (ie. their goals, desires and concerns) to prop up the sales copy.
The “main character” can be yourself if you’re equipped with the relevant experience, or someone else.
Creating a scenario and a story that most of the target audience can reverberate with essentially means we are talking to, or talking about the people our client wants to sell to.
Marketing mediums our tailor-made content will go on: landing pages, websites, Facebook Ads, and even Facebook video ads.
– Unique And Ground Breaking Closing Techniques
Once a lead-generating brand ambassador with a story everyone wants to hear is born, you WILL expect a sudden influx of leads. Money making opportunities you will do well to capitalize on.
A training session where you get to unlock the well-guarded secrets of controlling the minds and buying behavior of your prospects will be conducted… so get ready to close and close and close.
– Campaign Assessment and Maintenance
We understand how everyone loves to be on the receiving end of “extra-mile” service, and that is exactly what we provide. Service beyond the service.
Periodic meet ups will be scheduled with our clients to study the statistics of the running marketing campaign, with every aspect from the target market down to the cost-per-click pored over in painstaking detail.
Changes and tweaks to fine-tune the performance of the campaign will be made where applicable.
Having meetings like these weed out any unjustified expenditure of marketing monies, which in turn leads to bigger profit margins.
And for clients who are so bowled over by the results and decide to work with us on a long-term basis (you’ll be surprised by how many do):
– Campaign Innovation To Sustain Niche Domination
It will come as no surprise to any that with great success, comes great scrutiny. Scrutiny inevitably leads to market rivals who will “swiping” the winning formula and using it as their own.
There have actually been instances where Wordplay’s sales copies have been literally lifted from our clients’ pages, with the only varying exception being the names and services.
It is true, our copies are winning formulae that have been “stolen” and converted into wholesale templates. But guess what, we’re not really complaining. 🙂
The reason why we’re not really complaining, is because we already have made advance plans for our retainer clients to stay one step ahead of the game.
Instead of recycling the same sales copies that would already have been milked to death by rivals using it as templates, we provide brand new marketing and sales angles that we can kick into motion the moment figures start dwindling.
Doing this ensures that things stay fresh, and unique selling points stay unique, and our clients continue to dominate their niche.
Note: Do feel free to visit our Wordplay website (www.wordplay.sg) if you want to read some of the testimonials from our “success stories”.
Putting the “I” In Branding
It is pretty evident, from what I’ve shared so far that being an ideal representative of your own brand is extremely fundamental.
Most business owners make the mistake of being too focused on selling the brand itself, they forget to give themselves an identity to build consumer confidence with.
Take it from me, personal branding has changed the fortunes of many a prospect that have become our clients and are still our clients.
Our simple suggestion of branding themselves first, before putting their product out there, has opened their eyes to a world of money making opportunities they have never dreamed of having on such short notice.
Coupled with our expert execution, they have gone on to make in months what would have been made in a year… or more.
Wouldn’t YOU like to be a role model to like-minded people out there – AND get paid for it? To be an influence and an inspiration to all the prospects your steady flow of leads are bringing you?
I’d be a fool to say “no” actually, but to each their own!
I know being a brand ambassador is not just a switch you can flick to easily transition into that role. Without the know-how and the do’s-and don’ts, one might just struggle to make a breakthrough.
Don’t be worried though, this is where we step in and shake things up!
You will be granted an all-access pass to all the inner workings as well of course, and when all’s said and done there will only be one thing left to do:
Congratulate you on joining the E.B.A.C.
The Elite Brand Ambassadors’ Club!
A toast: from one brand ambassador to another.
Anyone can be a member of this esteemed club, to be honest. It’s all a matter of opportunity. And lucky for you dear reader, this opportunity is currently staring at you right in the face.
Your move!