I have the honor of guest blogging again on TyTribble today with a post on Copywriting Secrets for Blog Writers Part 1. I wanted to create a special follow up-post for you, my readers, to expand on my guest post and give you some additional copywriting tips!
The greatest benefits of getting a solid grasp on copywriting fundamentals can transcend through all areas of your business and relationships.
Becoming a better copywriter will make your presentations stronger and help you appeal more to the emotional hot buttons your prospects feel. You will become a better speaker and communicator in general. You can use your copywriting skills for motivating your network marketing teams.
And even outside of business, when you understand the psychology behind copywriting, these copywriting secrets can even help you get your kids to clean their rooms! And how about getting your hubby to fold the laundry, give the dog a bath, or… (I’ll just let you fill in the blank) if you make the “offer” in just the right way!
So here are some simple rules to help you perfect your copywriting:
Copywriting Secrets: 5 Simple Rules
Copywriting Secrets #1:
Write at a 5th to 8th grade reading level in your writing. TIP: Microsoft Word will allow you to show readability statistics and rate your reading by grade level. (It’s part of spelling/grammar check).
Use short sentences
Use short paragraphs
Use bullets and lists
Use easy words
Use a thesaurus to avoid using the same words over and over again in your copy.
Copywriting Secrets #2:
Tell a story in your writing
Short stories that involve the senses are best!
Take something in your real life and relate it to your business. Think of the parables you’ve heard as a kid. The stories always related to a desired behavior, belief, action, etc. –”The moral of the story.”
TIP: I started off Ty’s post with a limerick…but that may not always be the best option!
Copywriting Secrets #3
Write for ONE person not for everyone. In your writing think of someone who is like the person you want to appeal to with you post and write your post for them.
What are their hot buttons? (Find them! Push them!)
What are their worries or fears? (Bring them up!)
What problems do they have? (Solve them!)
Copywriting Secrets #4
Follow the AIDA formula:
Attention: Get your readers’ attention with a great headline and introduction paragraph
Interest: What’s in it for them? Capture their emotion and share what negative will happen if they don’t do what you want them to do.
Desire: Get them to visualize themselves having what they desire and show them that you hold the key to getting what they want.
Action: Tell them what you want them to do, be specific and give them a reason to take action NOW. (Use scarcity, incentives, bonuses, etc.)
Copywriting Secrets #5
Build trust by being believable
Tell the truth
Don’t hype or embellish
Use specific numbers, not generalizations when you’re referring to statistics, results, and data
Use testimonials to add credibility
Be consistent
Over-deliver on your promise
Have a rock-solid guarantee
This list is just the tip of the iceberg in a very in-depth topic, but they have helped to demystify the secrets of great copywriting for me. I hope they help you to.
Please check out the post I wrote on Ty Tribble’s blog for more copywriting secrets and tips on writing captivating content for your blog. I think you’ll enjoy the post.
Oh, and I almost forgot! I have a free gift for you…
The Clever Marketer Copywriting Secrets Cheat Sheet!
I gave Ty’s readers a Clever Marketer Copywriting Secrets Cheat Sheet with 111 magical copywriting words and 25 bucket brigade phrases to help your writing be more engaging to your readers, to optimize the HEO (human emotion optimization) and to get more readers to opt into your free offer!
Psst…pass it on! Make sure to download a copy for yourself and share it with your friends on Facebook, twitter, and your subscriber list! Here’s the deal, it’s yours to freely share as long as you don’t alter it or sell it!
P.S. Remember to check out the Copywriting Secrets for Blog Writers Part 1on Ty’s blog. Oh, and if you would leave a comment sharing your favorite copywriting secrets for me over there, I’d be so grateful!
Hi and welcome friends from my guest blog post on TyTribble.com! I’m so glad you made it through cyberspace safe and sound! I have your free gift for you…in fact I have several free gifts for you to thank you for stopping by!
111 Magic Copywriting Words to help you spice up your blog posts and draw your readers into your content and into action!
25 Bucket Brigade Phrases for you to use in your blog writing to help your blog posts flow and keep your readers anxiously awaiting your next word!
And to make it even better…it’s yours to share! I know you are a “Go Giver,” so I’ve given you rights to share this copywriting secrets cheat sheet with others! You can tweet it to your Twitter followers, give it to your Facebook friends and, share it with your subscribers, so they can be a clever marketer too! All I ask is that you don’t alter or sell the copywriting secrets cheat sheet…okay?
I have also written a copywriting secrets for blog writers part 2 that contains 5 rules to follow for writing great copy you will love! The benefits of these 5 copywriting secrets can transcend through all areas of your business and relationships. Discover why it’s not just about captivating blog content!
P.S. Don’t forget to share the copywriting secrets cheat sheet with your fans, followers, friends, and subscribers!
Could social media tribes be the secret to success for network marketing online? If you’re looking for high quality, targeted traffic to your website, it certainly can be! How about the power of your network marketing tribe, are you leveraging the power of teamwork with your up line, side lines, and down line to push to the next level in your business?
“TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More”
“Teamwork makes the dream work.”
You’ve probably heard these two quotes previously, but if you’re not taking them to heart and surrounding yourself with social media tribes and your network marketing team you are missing out on some powerful alliances.
I received a card today in the mail from my up line and there is a quote on the front of it that says: “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” Helen Keller
It really got me thinking of the power of having a tribe, a community of people who you can connect with to really have a much bigger impact than you can by yourself. As network marketers we have several tribes we can be a part of.
Social Media Tribes:
If you’re building an online business you’ve probably heard about the social media tribes to help you syndicate your content online.
Tribes are groups of people who are in the same niche who are all creating an alliance to help promote each other and promote each others’ content through social media. This helps us to get new visitors and new eyes on our blogs and videos and really help us build our business.
I have really been active in a couple of tribes recently and noticed a huge increase in my business in a lot of different areas.
Benefits of Social Media Tribes:
New traffic to your network marketing blog
Pushing yourself to create excellent content. Your content has got to be top notch if your tribe is going to want to share it!
Get new ideas and learn.
Surround yourself with positivity.
Surround yourself with successful people. We are the average of the 5 people we surround ourselves with and being a part of a tribe has really helped me to better myself and I hope that I’ve helped to better them as well.
Your network marketing teams are similar to social media tribes!
Network marketing teams create the same type of environment that social media tribes do. There are a lot of people who don’t fully utilize the power of their up line, side lines, and down lines within their network marketing team.
One of the neatest things about network marketing is that we all come into the business with different strengths and different passions. And by working together as a team we get to leverage everyone else who is a part of the team.
I don’t know if this is unique to my company, (I suspect that it is not since network marketing is really an elevated profession to be a part of,) but being friends with your side lines, supporting your side lines, can really help you in growing your business.
Even if it is not directly growing your personal organization, your side lines are just like your social media tribe; they are there to help you play a bigger game, push you to reach your goals. It’s a way to have some healthy competition and a way to really leverage your business and be able to reach out and help more people.
Please remember the quote, “alone we can do so little, together we can do so much” and think about the areas in your business and life where you can create a support system for yourself where you are held accountable, you are pushing your comfort zone and growing. Where you are supporting others and taking the focus off of yourself so that you can really stretch to the next level in your business.
If this brought you some value, please share it on twitter and Facebook! You’re on a do-follow blog, so you’ll get some link love as a thank you from me if you leave a comment!
P.S. Please share in the comments: Are you involved with social media tribes and if you are, how have social media tribes helped you in building your business?
We are in the home stretch of our personal branding for network marketers series and today we focus on ways to monetize your marketing and bank your brand!
We focused in the last post on creating a simple marketing funnel and product to give away free as an incentive your readers to join your list. Now we’re going to continue to build out your marketing funnel to get some money coming in from all this personal branding work you’ve done!
How do I make money with this product I just worked hard to create, if I’m giving it away for free?
Your goal should be to use your free product to get your readers “in the door” so you can follow up with additional helpful products solving other problems they may have.
I mentioned in the last post: Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Marketing Funnel & Products that the next step (after creating your free offer) would be to offer something small to your subscribers to purchase that will help them learn how to buy from you without a lot of risk.
Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Almost Free Products
Your reader has now raised his/her hand and said…”Yes, the risk of giving away my email is worth the bribe.” They are in the buying mode. Your next step is to create a one time offer on the thank-you page to a low priced product!
This could be something in the $7 to $47 range depending on your niche and what they’re willing to spend. (Tip: For some reason “7′s” are a powerful number in marketing and you’ve probably seen a lot of products ending in 7 when you were exploring your niche! Go with the flow here…this is not somewhere you want to be different! )
This doesn’t have to be hard and don’t over-think this step.
Here are some things you could offer for sale on your thank you page:
A coaching session
A physical version of your free product, CD, DVD, Workbook, Etc.
A selection of your best blog posts or articles
An eBook
A trial to your membership program like a cd/newsletter of the month
A low priced affiliate product (although I’d hold off on this if you have something of your own to offer.)
Offering something for purchase will enhance personal branding for network marketers because it will set you apart from most network marketers who are not doing this!
You want to catch your readers when they’re excited to get your offer and it’s fresh on their mind. You can also continue to drip this information on them and the value of your low-priced offer through your email follow up if they don’t purchase right away.
Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Tips for a successful low-risk one time offer:
It should relate to your free opt in offer, enhance it, or compliment it
Load on the bonuses and to make the offer irresistible! Oftentimes, your customers will buy something because of the bonuses! (I know I have!!!)
Link the low purchase to a trial of a membership program (this will give you great continuity or residual income)
Give them a reason to take you up on your offer NOW:
Offer it at a one time only discount. Maybe it’s $27 if they buy right now, but $47 if they buy in the future.
Place some scarcity on this offer. Maybe it’s only available for a limited amount of time or maybe some bonuses are only available to a certain number of customers.
Personal Branding for network marketers goes beyond your image and your blog!
Offer so much incredible content and value that your subscribers/customers will feel foolish if they don’t take you up on your offer! Personal branding for network marketers goes way beyond image and your blog! Everything you offer enhances or detracts from your brand and it’s important that everything you do online exceeds your follower’s expectations!
Overcoming the fear of failure in the minds of your customers:
We’ve all purchased something and then felt buyers remorse after doing so. I know I’ve been there at times and I’ve kicked myself for buying it…when it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. That buyers remorse creates a fear of failure in the mind of your customer, and you must over come that.
Give them social proof by sharing testimonials from your other customers who have loved your training (you might want to give your course to some of your colleagues and have them write a testimonial for you.)
Give them an incredible guarantee. Most people won’t take you up on it, but knowing that they can get their money back will increase the number of subscribers who become buyers.
And I said it before…pile on the value with bonuses. They don’t have to cost you a lot more money, but they can really help your readers get over their fear of failure!
Remember to keep in mind your ultimate goal!
Everything you offer your readers has to be relevant to your ultimate goal, so know what it is before you sketch your marketing funnel out!
Do you want them to join you in your network marketing business?
Do you want your free product and low priced product to pre-sell your coaching, consulting, or your membership program?
Do you want your free product and low priced product to build your list that you monetize with affiliate offers?
Key point to remember: Don’t wait for your entire personal branding for network marketers and your entire marketing funnel to be created before you start marketing and branding yourself! Build your list NOW! Implement what you’ve learned about personal branding and continue to plug away at your marketing funnel, enhancing it as you go. Remember to keep adding more expensive offers to the back end of your marketing funnel and giving more and more value to your customers!
I hope you have enjoyed this series and learned something new! Please, if you have an opinion to share, please comment below and share it on twitter and facebook! You’re on a do-follow blog, so you’ll get some link love as a thank you from me!
P.S. Recapping the Personal Branding for Network Marketers Series:
Attention men, does my blog offend you because it’s branded to help mompreneurs and WAHMs? Since I’ve been talking a lot about personal branding, I thought it was a perfect time to ask you all what you think! (I’ll still be talking about monetizing your marketing in regards to personal branding for network marketers in my next post.)
I know a lot of men are reading my blog and I just read a post by my friend Steve Nicholas who talks about how I may be cutting my audience in half by branding my blog around mompreneurs and WAHMs.
Is focusing on mompreneurs and WAHMs cutting my audience in half?
The quick history “her-story” behind me, and clever marketer is that I am a mompreneur and work at home mom exploring other ways I can market my network marketing business from home using social media and clever marketing strategies. I’ve entered the internet marketing arena and found it to be a very effective way for me to reach other people for whom my business is a fit. The majority of my target audience in the beginning where mompreneurs and WAHMs, because those were the social circles I was apart of at that time.
Focusing on mompreneurs and WAHM’s made sense to me mostly because a network marketing business offers women a flexible schedule to earn a full time income working around their families schedule, and it gave them unlimited income potential while working from home. I also chose to focus my blog on serving mompreneurs and WAHMs because they are part of a growing market that is interested in network marketing and building online businesses.
The growing marketing trends of mompreneurs and WAHMs:
I see statistics everywhere, but just this weekend in my local paper there was an article sharing that women are getting into business at twice the rate of men, and 61% of women use the internet vs. 55 % of men. The Huffington Post that said that there are more women on twitter and women tweet more than men. There was a recent white paper called women on the web reports that women spend 30% more time participating in social media than men do. And the Direct Selling Association says that 82.4% of direct sales businesses are owned by women.
I was mentored by two very successful marketers when I was starting to get online were both mompreneurs and WAHMs and who continue to weave their families into their blog posts and business lessons. One of them has continued to brand herself as the “mompreneur” and the other one has shifted more toward “entrepreneur,” although it’s evident in her marketing that her family is her #1 why.
The Niche Debate: Comparing marketing to mompreneurs and WAHMs to marketing to baby boomers. There is a lot of buzz around marketing to specific demographics like baby boomers for instance. Other marketers decide to focus on generation X, Y or even college students because they are part of that demographic themselves. Does marketing to baby boomers cut out half of their audience? Maybe, but if that’s their niche, is it just a clever marketing strategy?
I just sponsored a new business builder today through my internet marketing efforts. Ironically, or maybe not so ironically, she’s a woman. I have yet to reach her by phone to find out if she’s a mom and what about my marketing appealed to her.
As is my goal, my blog and my internet business has grown and the exciting “accidental” result of that is that I’m finding now that a lot of my readers are men!
I asked Steve in the comments on his blog, “I wonder if my blog were strictly clever marketing tips, would seem out of place talking about balancing an internet marketing business with a family? It’s not the most frequent thing I write about, but it is something I write about on occasion as lessons in my family relate to something in my business.”
Would occasional posts for mompreneurs and WAHMs seem weird on a non “mom” branded blog?
In the last month or so, my blog posts have shifted more toward the marketing side of things, but being a work at home mom, and empowering other mompreneurs and WAHMs to do the same thing is something I’m very passionate about. I find that balancing my business and my family has kind of an ebb and flow. From time to time my family demands are higher and other times my business demands are higher. I’m sure my writing follows that cycle.
I love that I can relate to the issues that other moms building a business face. We have similar challenges balancing our families, homes, and businesses and there are times I write specifically to the mompreneurs and WAHMs out there. We know and understand what each other is going through and we “get each other” when those conflicts come up between family and business. I’ve spent over 12 years building businesses from home and the past 5 years within the network marketing industry and I’ve learned a lot about balancing my work with my family. I feel that what I have achieved in working from home is the fulfillment of a dream of mine and one I share with a lot of other women and there is an underlying current that connects us as moms.
But that being said, it doesn’t mean I want to avoid helping men and dads achieve the same dreams, and I certainly don’t want to lose half of my audience if the message I’m sharing adds value to them too. I love you guys and I have gained so much value from you with all the great ideas and content you share in my comments!
As I was thinking about this, I realized that although it’s important to stay true to who I am as part of my personal branding strategy, being a mom is only one part of me. It’s an important part and something that defines me in my role in my family, but so does the role of being a wife, daughter and a sister, and I don’t brand my blog around those roles.
So I ask all you mompreneurs and WAHMs, WAHMen (work at home men) and Dads, and all of my readers without kids, what do you think?
Please help me out by sharing your thoughts in the comments below and get your friends involved in the discussion through twitter and facebook.
Do you think my business would benefit if I tweaked my brand to sharing social media and fun, clever marketing strategies for everyone or should I continue to focus on mompreneurs and WAHMs?
Are you enjoying your personal branding for network marketers journey? I so hope so. It’s an exciting process and simple changes can really enhance your personal brand and make you stand out from the crowd as the leader that you really are. I don’t think that anything brands you as a leader like having your own product does and that’s what we’re focusing on today!
Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Marketing Funnel & Creating Your Own Products!
Just to recap before we dive into the content today, so far we’ve found a niche, created our unforgettable personal branding style, and discussed the yin/yang of affiliate products when it comes to personal branding for network marketers. When we’re done with this journey, you’ll be an expert at personal branding for network marketers and you’ll be able to establish yourself as a trusted adviser in your niche and make money with your brand!
The Marketing Funnel and Why It Is an Important Part of Personal Branding for Network Marketers:
Your marketing funnel must be designed to guide your readers through your process of helping them get more information from you. It’s the map on how to do business with you and how you are going to help them through their struggles and solve their challenges.
A marketing funnel can contain as many “steps” as you wish but I suggest you start off small and continue to build it bigger and better as you grow through your personal development, add new skills to your resume, and gain insight and experience in your niche.
The first step of your marketing funnel is to give away something of value to bribe your readers to opt into your list. You want to build reciprocity with your readers, by giving them something of huge value so they WANT to give you their email address and information! And when you consider how full our in-boxes are, and how overwhelming email can get this gift must be awesome!
Remember this free gift is branding you as a network marketing leader and there is a of strategy that goes into it.
You want to being with the end in mind and know what you want this free offer to ultimately lead your subscriber to.
You want it to be your BEST content so that your readers get a taste of the value you can bring them.
You want it to show your skills and your unforgettable style.
You want to over-deliver on their expectations and give them something that they can put to use now in their business.
If you show them results right away with your free gift, think about how that will enhance your personal branding!
The Shortcut to Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Creating Your Product in 3 Simple Steps
RESEARCH: Figure out what your market needs by using the research you’ve already completed to choose your niche and make a list of the challenges your market faces.
What problems would your target market pay someone to solve?
What do other products in your niche lack in information?
Are they lacking in support?
Are there related topics that are not being addressed?
Think about the products you’ve purchased. What do you like about them?
What products have you purchase that really appealed to you?
What products have you purchased that left you still having questions?
What could be done to improve upon the products you’ve purchased?
Would they be better suited to a different format like video, audio, or text?
OUTLINE: Make a list like a 7 secrets, 5 tips, etc. that solves your niche market’s problem. (Don’t try to solve everything for them. Focus in on ONE major problem they face and solve it.) Fill in your outline with supporting information.
CREATE: This is the fun part! And there are numerous ways to create your product. I suggest you figure out what you are most comfortable with, what your strengths are, and what you would enjoy most. (Remember to stretch your comfort zone too, though…okay?)
Options for creating your product
Write a special report with your tips or secrets
Record an audio talking through the 7 secrets or 5 tips
If you’re not comfortable doing this, have someone interview you and ask you questions for each of your tips
Record a video of your 7 secrets or 5 tips
If you’re not comfortable with video, use a PowerPoint presentation and a screen capture video instead
Use an audio if it’s easier for you. You can always add slides to it with a free program like windows movie maker
Hold a live training and have it video taped, you could then strip the audio from it, and have it transcribed for 3 products in one!
Remember that the same content in a different format can have an increase in perceived value to your customers. For example: video ranks higher than audio, which ranks higher than text in the mind of most people.
Creating your product in a couple of different formats can also help your readers who have different learning styles and or who like to take in information in different ways. For example someone with a commute might enjoy an audio download, while someone with an ultra busy schedule might like to skim a transcript.
Ways to add value to your product so that it’s irresistible to your readers:
Have the audio or video transcribed (now you can offer the transcript or use the transcript to create a workbook!)
Pick out the highlights and create a quick start checklist, list of resources, tips sheet, etc. to help your readers.
Pick out your favorite tip and expand on it for a bonus.
Offer your skills and expertise as part of your product, like a free coaching session.
Offer a free follow-up tele-seminar for your subscribers only.
TIP: Don’t make this difficult and don’t doubt the value you have to offer! Even if someone else has already created a similar product to what you’re going to create, you’re going to teach it in your “style” and that cannot be duplicated. How many math teachers have you had in your lifetime? Did some make it easier than others?
Congratulations! You’ve created the first step in your marketing funnel! You now have something that you can use to entice them to join your email list.
Hooray! That’s great, but where does the making money with my personal brand come in? How do I make money with a product I’m giving away for free?
The next step of your marketing funnel would be to offer something small for you subscribers to purchase that will help them learn how to buy from you without much risk…but I’ll save that for another day.
If you enjoyed this post, learned something new, or have an opinion to share, please comment below and share it on twitter and Facebook! You’re on a do-follow blog, so you’ll get some link love as a thank you from me!
We’re almost to the finish line…the end is in sight! Remember to stop by tomorrow to discover the next step in your personal branding for network marketers journey: monetize your marketing and bank your brand!
We’ve been on a journey of personal branding for network marketers this past week, learning how to make ourselves stand out from the crowd of network marketers online, how to leverage our personal style and use it to attract people like us who will become raving fans, subscribers, and future business partners. But…I’ve kept the best part for last. How to Make Money with Your Brand. And that opens up the debate of the Yin-Yang of Affiliate Marketing when it comes to personal branding for network marketers.
If you’ve not read the previous 2 posts they do lay the foundation to today’s post. You can read them here:
“So, How Does Personal Branding for Network Marketers Make Me Money?”
The greatest thing about creating a personal brand and using it to leverage your skills, talents, and gifts to help others is that you’re building trust and relationship with the people who are following you and establishing yourself as a credible authority in your niche. Having a consistent brand and strong marketing sets the foundation for earning money in your home based business.
If you’ve followed my steps in my 1st post on personal branding-finding a niche, you’ve explored some sites like amazon, eBay, Google and social media and you’ve discovered what products are already on the market in your niche. You’ve read through the comments and the reviews and discovered where the books, products, and information that are already on the market, are not meeting the needs of your followers and you know what things about these products that your readers value. You’ve probably also gotten an idea of the price points that other marketers are targeting.
Now it’s time to sketch out a marketing funnel of products that you can offer to your list of raving fans to help them solve these problems and challenges they have. These can be your own products, affiliate products, or a combination of the two.
Personal Branding for Network Marketers: The Yin-Yang of Affiliate Marketing:
The tendency of most network marketers online is to jump right into an affiliate product.
There are some benefits to affiliate marketing:
It’s easy
You can leverage someone’s knowledge, time, experience, and marketing
In just a few clicks to copy and past an affiliate link into your marketing messages.
You can also use an affiliate product to ‘test the waters’ with your market and see what types of products they are attracted to and purchase.
Affiliate marketing allows you to offer complimentary services and products to your list.
The con’s of leveraging an affiliate product (especially at the beginning of your marketing funnel) are:
You’re trying to build a list and not all of them allow you to capture the lead (look for ones that allow you to capture a lead if you decide to use an affiliate product)
The affiliate product does not position you as an expert and trusted authority in your niche
You’re giving your new lead to someone who is probably more experienced, and better at persuasive marketing. They’ve already build their marketing funnel and will continue to market to YOUR LEAD and develop relationship and trust with them.
The biggest reason against affiliate marketing early on in your marketing funnel is that you’re branding someone else!
The Solution to Personal Branding for Network Marketers is to Create Your Own Product that Brands You and Follow Up with Affiliate Products in the Future.
My preference is to create some simple products and services to offer that will brand you and your signature message and use affiliate products to offer additional resources for my list, after I’ve developed trust and relationship with them.
Personal Branding for Network Marketers: The benefits to having your own product…
It makes you a credible resource and leader in your niche
It allows you to leverage your time…create it once and get paid over and over
It’s inexpensive to create a product but has a great potential return on income
You can leverage your product to build your list and use it as incentive to your list of business prospects
You get to keep 100% of your profits
Having your own products makes you a credible resource and leader in your niche.
It gives you something to trade with other marketers in a joint venture
It can lead to speaking engagements online and offline
It can act as your “business card”
It can allow you to have your own affiliates promoting for you
Certain types of products can lead to recurring residual income for you: such as a membership, coaching, or consultant program.
“Yea, but isn’t that hard? I mean, wouldn’t it take a long time and wouldn’t I need to know a lot in order to create my own product?”
Creating your own product can be super easy and you can start with what you know right now! In my next post, I’ll show you how to sketch out your marketing funnel and create your own information product in 3 simple steps!
If you enjoyed this post, learned something new, or have an opinion to share, please comment below and share it on twitter and facebook! You’re on a do-follow blog, so you’ll get some link love as a thank you from me!
And remember to stop by tomorrow to discover Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Marketing Funnel & Products!
Added 8-24-10:
p.s. Continuing the discussion on personal branding for network marketers: yin – yang of affiliate marketing:
I love that there are some great discussions regarding the benefits of an affiliate product to help beginners learn some of the basic traffic generation, SEO, and building a list. Those are essential skills that every marketer must master and there are a few great programs out there to help you learn how to do that and earn some affiliate income at the same time. For some marketers this is a great choice in the beginning. There are benefits to it as I addressed in my post above.
When it comes to personal branding for network marketers, using an affiliate product can sometimes dilute your brand and hinder your list building efforts. When you balance out the commission, in trade for your lead, it’s not always worth it.
Tips to help you maximize the effectiveness of an affiliate product or system without minimizing personal branding for network marketers.
Choose a product that allows you to capture the lead and build your list
Create a supporting product as an irresistible offer and place your affiliate offer on your thank you page
Create some additional value to the affiliate offer to give your prospects a reason to sign up with you instead of someone else promoting the same offer. ie. a 30 minute training or webinar explaining how to use the system and sharing your favorite shortcuts, or a 15 minute consultant where you personally review how they have used the affiliate product or system and give them suggestions on how they can get better results.
Get creative and brainstorm things you could offer that will add value and help your leads get the results they are after…that will help you establish credibility, trust, and a relationship with your readers.
You have enough value to offer right now that can help someone, and by sharing that value you’ll be branding yourself as a leader in your niche. Having your own product does not minimize the importance of learning how to generate traffic, create awesome content, and building your list. But remember that as you learn and grow your business, all those tips, tricks, and skills you gain brand you as a better leader. And you always need to be on the look-out for ways to set yourself apart from your competition and give your followers a reason to do business with you instead of someone else!
By all means, leverage whatever you can, but don’t use an excuse like you don’t feel like you know enough to be successful, as your reason for not creating an information product. Every 4th grader is a God in the eyes of a 3rd grader. Find the third graders in your niche and help them. They’ll become your best raving fans, prospects, and customers in the end. And that’s our goal when it comes to personal branding for network marketers!
Personal branding for network marketers is a process to make yourself unforgettable to your followers, readers and prospects so that they don’t forget about you as soon as they click off your page!
In our fast paced, attention deficit world with thousands of network marketers building their businesses online, you’re doomed to failure if you blend into the crowd!
In my last post I shared how to get your branding off to a great start by Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Find a Niche, and today I’m going to share with you 2 more personal branding tips for network marketers so you can be unforgettable in every way!
You know who you are, what you do, and who you help, so now it’s time to create your signature style that makes you stand out from the crowd! This personal branding stuff isn’t fluff…it’s the key to building a list of raving fans and followers who will eventually become your prospects and business partners!
Personal Branding for Network Marketers
Step 2: What’s Unique About You?
Making yourself unforgettable in every way:
What is your style? Formal or informal?
What is your personality type? Outgoing or introverted?
What are your quirks?
What are your hot buttons?
What is fun about you?
What makes you memorable?
What are your distinguishing physical traits?
What is important to you?
Why do you love what you do?
Why do you want to make a difference for your target market?
Why have you chosen to build a network marketing business? (Think beyond your immediate needs of time/money and think bigger here: making a difference in this world kind of a why!)
TIP: Take the things on this list and play them to their fullest potential. This is what will make your personal brand attractive to others in your target market! Turn up the volume a little bit on these things so you are interesting and you are noticed. Use your stage voice in your marketing!
Personal Branding for Network Marketers
Step 3: Create Your Signature Style!
Standing out and being unique: You’ve got the look:
What look and feel are you going for in your marketing? Decide what it is, and carry it throughout everything you do.
Pick colors that suit you and carry them throughout your online sites: blog, Twitter, YouTube, etc. (Think of Tiffany’s little blue box, McDonald’s golden arches, and Google’s primary colors for examples of the branding power color can have!)
Pick a photograph of yourself that you like and use it everywhere. This is your “logo!”
Use your signature as part of your branding to build trust.
Make sure your newsletter looks like your blog and sounds like you!
Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Your signature message
Incorporate your style, quirks, and passions into your marketing messages, blog posts and videos.
Use keywords in your social media profiles that will help your target market find you!
Play in the same playgrounds your target market does!
Have a signature message that is branded personally to you.
Are you all about having an abundance mindset? Carry that theme through your marketing.
Are you all about having fun in your work? Show it in your marketing.
Are you more subtle, serious, and quiet as a person? Don’t pretend to be someone outgoing and silly! Be yourself. People who are like you will be attracted to you!
Personal Branding for Network Marketers: Your consistent brand
Be consistent in your brand throughout your marketing.
Be consistent in your marketing, don’t stop and start. (Absence does NOT make the heart grow fonder in business!)
Be dependable to your readers and followers.
Be consistently connected to your readers and followers socially on your blog through your posts and in the comments, in social media, and in your newsletter.
TIP: Be Yourself. There is only one you. “Every time you suppress some part of yourself or allow others to play you small, you are in essence ignoring the owner’s manual your Creator gave you and destroying your design.” Oprah Winfrey.
Personal Branding for Network Marketers & Duplication:
But what about duplication? Isn’t that essential to success in network marketing?
Personal branding for network marketers can get confusing when we’re constantly hearing duplicate, duplicate, duplicate for success in this business. You are not your company or your products, and your brand shouldn’t be either. You are not your opportunity. You are not your up-line, sidelines, or down-line. Your personal brand is not a place where being duplicable is allowed!
Duplicate successful systems, not “style!”
Closing thoughts: Don’t forget that when you are incorporating a personal branding strategy in your network marketing business, you have to give people a reason to follow you, a reason to like you, and a reason to trust you. The best way to do that is to be uniquely you and offer exceptional value to your audience!
Please tweet, post to facebook, and share your thoughts in the comments below! You’ll get a little link love as a thank you from me!
Are you blending into the crowd of network marketers online or are you someone who stands out and gets remembered? I’m going to share with you 3 branding tips for network marketers to help you be unforgettable! Today, I’m focusing on personal branding step 1: research a niche.
What is a personal brand?
Think of your personal brand as being your way of expressing and communicating who you are, what you do, who you serve, how you help them so that you can attract the people to you who are a fit for what you offer. It separates you from everyone else who offers a similar product or service (i.e. everyone in your network marketing company regarding your products and everyone in any network marketing company regarding your opportunity.)
You’ll hear a lot of marketers talking about a “You Inc.” business model but sadly, so many marketers are marketing in a way that they are branding the “guru’s” instead of themselves.  Don’t let that happen to you. Let’s design your signature style so that you stand out from all the other internet network marketers online and attract your own following of raving fans and prospects.
Personal Branding for Network Marketers Step 1: Find a Niche Market
Personal discovery & market research will allow you to be able to market with integrity, within a niche that fits your passions, and in a voice that attracts your ideal clients.
Questions for personal discovery:
What are you passionate about?
What do you enjoy doing?
What are your special hobbies or interests?
What can you easily lose track of time doing?
What are you gifted at?
What are your strengths?
What comes easily to you? (Natural talents)
What do other people tell you that you’re great at?
What are your core values?
What do you believe in?
What are your convictions?
Where can you make a difference in the world?
What opportunities have you been given to leave a legacy type of impact on our planet and people?
TIP: The better you get in touch with yourself the better you will be able to reach your market because you’ll be sharing a message that is congruent with your passions and beliefs. We all know “belief has a sound.” When you’re marketing from a place of conviction in what you’re doing, you will be much more attractive to your ideal clients.
Questions to define your target market and ideal clients:
Who would you like to help?
What are their characteristics and traits? You need to be ultra specific here! Describe their current job, situation, family, right down to the car they drive if you can get that detailed!
What are their struggles?
What do they worry about at night? (It’s probably not how to get your awesome product!)
What are their fears?
What are their frustrations?
What do they crave and desire?
What do they hunger for?
TIP: Think of the lyrics of the song by Nat King Cole: “That’s why darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable thinks that I am unforgettable too.” You want to be so connected to your target market that they feel like the person in this song. Your target market wants to be understood, to be heard, and to be served in the way that they are honored for who they are.
When your readers know who you are, what you do, who you help, and how you help them they will like you and trust you and will naturally help you spread your message to your ideal clients! Your newsletters will get forwarded, your blog posts tweeted, and your videos will go viral.
Questions for market research: Is this a good niche to focus on?
Now that you know what your passions are, who you help, and what their struggles are, it’s time to figure out how you can best help them and to discover where your market is:
Magazines -Â if there is a magazine in your niche, chances are it’s a good market to explore
eBay- look at categories and sub-categories for market research, see what types of information and products are selling and which ones are not.
Amazon – look at book categories and chapters within books, read the comments and reviews of the more popular books in your possible niche
Google – Google suggest is an awesome tool for market research, and will help you brainstorm new areas to look within and new keywords to search. Also, are their paid ads within your niche? You want to know that there are others making money in this niche!
Social Media – search.twitter.com, Facebook Groups, and read through questions in the forums in your niche
What are people talking about? Think about the pain and struggles of your target market while you are reading the comments in product reviews on forums, book reviews in amazon, twitter searches, etc.. What do people like about these resources, and what do they not like? How does the book or product meet their needs and where does it fall short?
Now take all the information about your niche and your self that you’ve gathered up to this point and, figure out how you can help your ideal clients solve their problems.
What can you help them with?
What knowledge do you have that can fill in the gaps for them?
What makes you different from these other marketers and authors?
What sets you apart: Unique Selling Proposition
TIP: Make sure you choose a niche that fits YOU at your core being, otherwise you’ll be frustrated trying to reach your market if you’re not connected to them at a deeper level than wanting to make money.
Researching your niche and defining your ideal client will help you to have integrity in your marketing. You will be able to market authentically, from a place of peace knowing who you are and what you’re here for. This will also help you market with substance, not fluff, because you will be leveraging your strengths and be fueled by your passions!
The goal of personal branding is to establish know like and trust with our readers and there are a lot of factors that play into this, but there are two things you can do to subconsciously increase the know like and trust your readers feel when they’re on your blog.
2 Keys to Establish Know, Like, and Trust in Your Personal Branding:
Your Photograph and Signature: Your photograph makes you a real person and helps your readers to get to know you and like you, and your signature establishes trust.
When you’re trying to build an online business, it’s important to be aware of the fact that people will naturally be skeptical of you. Not having these two essentials will subconsciously make you seem untrustworthy. They don’t know you, and we’re raised from childhood to be wary of strangers. But by adding little things like your photograph and your signature to your blog, you can subconsciously help your readers to trust you.
Use your photograph in your personal branding to build know, like, and trust:
Having a nice photograph of yourself gives your readers an instant feel for you, your personality, and it increases your like-ability.
Photograph: Personal Branding Tips:
Use a clear photograph that shows your face. Don’t use something too far away where your face isn’t clear and don’t use a photo of your kids or your pet.
When you’re trying to brand yourself choose one or two photos and use them on all your social media accounts to keep it consistent.
Go to gravatar.com and set up an account so your photo shows up on the comments you make on other blogs.
Use a signature to enhance your personal branding and create more know like and trust:
Your “John Hancock,” your autograph, your signature, whatever you want to call it is special for many reasons:
Your signature is unique to you. Duplicating your signature is next to impossible. Think about 20 kids in a classroom all being taught how to write by the same teacher…no one does it just the same, and our signatures develop over time to become unique to us.  It takes an expert to duplicate a signature, and even then it can be proved to be forgery by handwriting analysis.
Your signature makes something yours. Every paper you turned into school and every card you’ve sent to someone you love, had your signature on it. We signed our names to our toys (think of Andy in the Disney Toy Story movies) engraved them into our tools, and some people carve them into trees and picnic benches to prove that they were there! There are restaurants who brand themselves by allowing people to sign their walls.
Your signature expresses who you are and what you believe in. Think about signing a petition or signing your name to vote. It says that you’re putting your name behind something!
Your signature makes something valuable. Fans will scramble and fight to get the autograph of their heroes, a baseball with a signature on it is 1,000 times more valuable than a baseball. A signature on artwork makes it priceless, and books with the author’s signature become collectible!
Your signature makes something legal. Think about ever contract, check or receipt you’ve signed.
Your signature builds trust. Think about the four points I just made. All of those things are related to building trust with you. Having your signature on your website makes your readers believe you’re real, you’re not phony, you stand for something, you believe in the message you’re sharing.
Signature: personal branding tips:
You can write your name on something and scan it in as a photograph.
You can choose a font you like as your signature.
You can use a digital signature like I’ve done with my signature above. I created it and linked it to my photograph to help me with my personal branding. You can do this for free at: mylivesignature.com (affiliate link) and you can also have your signature animated for use on your blog, on websites, and in your videos for a small fee.
Subtle changes in your personal branding strategy will make the difference in building trust with our readers and using a photograph along with a signature is a simple way to enhance your personal branding results in your online marketing.
If you enjoyed this post, learned something new, or have an opinion to share, please comment below and share it on twitter and Facebook! You’re on a do-follow blog, so you’ll get some link love as a thank you from me!
The little things can make all the difference to your readers in establishing know like and trust with your personal branding.
Get Your FREE Clever Marketer Kit & Discover How to Create 7 Streams of Income in Your MLM Network Marketing Business!
Download this free audio and discover how to add 7 streams of income to your MLM network marketing internet business.
Kit Includes a MP3 Audio, Transcript, Quick Start Checklist, Blog Review and 15 Minute Laser Coaching Session. PLUS BONUS 100 Free Premium WordPress Themes!
Praise for Heather C. Stephens from other Clever Marketers:
CleverMarketer.com was recently reviewed
in the MLM Blog Code bonus webinar:
Ann Sieg:
"You provide so much value in this blog, right now. It's over the top."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ty Tribble:
"...the content is frankly, amazing."
"I would recommend you read this blog, by the way. It's a great one and one that you can certainly learn a lot from, as Heather's obviously a student of different people out there who are talking about this kind of thing."
"Everyone subscribe to Heather please, the content is really good!"
I have the honor of guest blogging again on TyTribble today with a post on Copywriting Secrets for Blog Writers Part 1. I wanted to create a special follow up-post for you, my readers, to expand on my guest post and give you some additional copywriting tips!
if you make the “offer” in just the right way!
Ana @ Targeted We... (3)
Karen Newman (2)
Mavis @ Attractio... (2)
Robert Strong (2)
Steve (2)
Susanna Hess (2)
Wayne Wu (2)
Amy Mengarelli (1)
Ding Neng (1)
Jennifer May (1)
Recent Comments