Does your brand feel ineffective or inauthentic? Are you having trouble connecting with your clients as a coach, consultant, or entrepreneur? The challenge may be your messaging.

Messaging is a tricky business.  Conventional thinking dictates that if we want to encourage people to do business with us we need to demonstrate why we are the best person for the task at hand. While this approach may work in some contexts, and for some folks, for the majority of emerging small businesses following that path does not lead to success.  The reality is that many small business websites lack a compelling message for one main reason: their sites are focused on their expertise and why a customer or client should purchase their product or service instead of on the client. Seems counterintuitive, right?  

Here’s the truth: Rather than telling your story in your messaging, you want to invite your clients and customers into a story--their own. How do you do this? You communicate as the guide and not the hero in your messaging.

 Let me break this down.

Your brand is based on you—on “your who” and “your do” as I like to say it. Your brand should be focused on the brilliance you bring to the table, as the graphic below illustrates. Absolutely!

But your messaging is a different story. As a coach, entrepreneur, consultant, or small business, your clients and customers are looking for your help, not as their savior or hero but as their guide. They need to be the hero in the story of your communications. Not you. They don’t care about your story, they care about their own.

 Here’s where things can get confusing. We’ve all seen those stellar brands and coaches out there who sell themselves all over their website. Look at the web presence of Marie Foleo or Amy Porterfield for instance. Their sites are mesmerizing, all those cool photos of them blown up larger than life, all the ways their success is showcased on the page. As a coach stumbling on a site like that it is easy to have site envy. We want to be like Marie or Amy. We are drawn to their success. So we think if we replicate a similar strategy on our website that it should work, right? But it doesn’t. Why? Because a Maria Foleo or Amy Porterfield is the exception. They are hugely successful and have lucrative brands, businesses, and a following focused on their brand of brilliance. But they didn’t start out that way. They built that.  As a new coach or consultant, you are not near that level of success though you sure can aspire to it! In the meantime, you have to convince your target audience that they need you, that you get them, that you can help them. And you do that via your messaging, which needs to focus on them, not on you and your credentials.

I know some of you ladies reading this right now want to push back on this. You’re shaking your heads, ‘No, she’s wrong!” I get it. I get that you know you have so much to offer, that you are called to this work, and you assume your prospective clients will just know that off the bat when they see your amazing photos of yourself. But it just doesn’t work that way. The Marie Foleos and Amy Porterfields of the world have a leverage you don’t have yet—they have a brand reputation that is highly valued in the marketplace. Their names are household ones in the business space. They have a track record and accolades they have built over time that speaks affirmatively to their expertise. In short, their brands are powerful, compelling, and well known in the marketplace.

Your brand, however, is still emerging. Maybe, you haven’t even built it yet. And that’s ok. That’s your leg of the journey right now. And in that leg, you achieve success by communicating to your target audience in a way that connects to them emotionally and practically. It starts with knowing that you’re not the star of your messaging, your prospect is. And you demonstrate that by focusing on them in your messaging.

Sorry ladies. That’s the reality, as inconvenient as it is.

Look for Part 2 of this post where I break this strategy down even more. Until then, abound in your brilliance, friend!