Kat Millar

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5 Fun Ways To Create A Powerful USP & Stand Out Online

Are you clear on what makes you different?

Having a USP (unique selling proposition) helps you stand out online and differentiates you from your competitors.

People searching for a solution online are often overwhelmed with options. They want to quickly be able to identify why you’re different to your competitors, so they know why they should choose you, as opposed to another business.

Your USP is what makes your business stand out. At its core, it should quickly answer that question that your potential clients have in their mind, which is “What makes them different from other options I’m looking at?”

Understanding your USP is crucial to guide your marketing decisions.

I like to think of your USP being the sweet spot between what your client wants and what you are really good at.

A really compelling USP should be memorable. And it should be specific and tangible. It shouldn’t be, “We deliver fast service” or “We have a high-quality service.” That’s very vague and general.

You want it to be specific, so it’s your offer, your way of teaching, your methodology, framework, or formula that makes you different.

It should also be focused on what your ideal clients value because there’s no point in being unique just for uniqueness’s sake.

It needs to be something important to them so they truly care about it. And it’s more than just a slogan and a compelling tagline. It’s something that you incorporate into every area of your business. You show your uniqueness and craft your message around that.

So here are 5 fun ways to create a powerful USP and stand out online…

1 –  Unpack Your Uniqueness

To unpack your uniqueness, think about the things that you do that other people struggle to do, but you do it really naturally and really easily.

At the moment I’m working with a client and we are working on crafting their webinar and building a framework around it. She couldn’t believe how easily I could come up with a framework, because it comes effortlessly for me.

What are the things that you can do easily, that come effortlessly to you because you’ve done it for so long? This is part of your unique brilliance and your genius zone.

People pay really good money for people who work in their genius zone. People are born with talent and gifting’s, but  your USP also includes your mastery of an area, your skill acquisition,  time and effort  you’ve put in to learning.

There’s a difference between being gifted and talented, and actually being masterful at a skill because you’ve honed it and unpacked it. You’re not just brilliant at it, you’ve unpacked that gift and you’ve developed it.

What kind of things have you really developed that other people haven’t developed? Also think about what your friends, family, clients and people that you know would say you’re really great at?

Unpacking your uniqueness is finding what makes you who you are. Then think about your personality. Not everyone wants to work with certain personality types. Just your personality can be enough to differentiate you from other people.

Your USP doesn’t have to be some really crazy thing that no one else is doing. For me, I’m a combination of practical business skills and strategy, and also mindset and spiritual. So these are things I’ve combined in my business that made me a little bit different.

I only ever teach what I do. Some people are just learning, teaching, then learning and teaching, but they are not actually applying it and getting success before they teach other people.

I think about my background as a teacher and a trainer for 6 years. I was a teacher,  trainer and assessor. I was a lecturer in business and fitness, so my training background is part of my USP.

I have an ability to run full-day workshop online and this makes me a little bit different to some people that don’t have that background. So think about what work you’ve done in the past and think about different combinations of things that you’ve done that are different.

The very first person who taught me presenting had a copywriting background.  He used to be a copywriter and he pulled that skill set into his presenting skills and it was a really unique combination. It was actually why I signed up for his program.

So think about the work you’ve done in the past 10 or so years. My background is as a weight loss coach and personal trainer, so now a lot of my clients are in wellness and it’s part of my USP.

I understand the process of transformation. I can really help a lot of people who work in the health, fitness and wellness industry, because I’ve worked in it myself.

I have a client who runs a gym in Melbourne, and I’m helping them work through their whole sales process, because I’ve worked in a gym for so long. My skills used as a trainer in a gym apply to business.

I have an understanding of mindset and breaking through limiting beliefs, which come up in business all the time. I used to train world champion bodybuilders, so I understand resilience and the entrepreneurial mindset of having to push through when things are hard.

Think about your gifts, skills, your area of brilliance, your personality, and other unique traits you hold.  These are what make you a little bit different. These are part of what makes you unique and they form your USP.

2 – Dig For The Difference

Digging for your difference is really about defining how your program is different. Your USP defines your uniqueness, and then you have to dig for the difference, which is why people will be attracted to your program or offer.

What is it in your program, or in your offer, or your service that could be a little bit different? Maybe you include some finished components, so you’ve done work for them already.

I do that usually as a bonus, where I might do a “done for you landing page” for my clients or some “done for you copywriting”.  I also offer lifetime access to my modules for my online courses, and that’s something that not everybody offers.

When you think through the components of your offer or your program, what are some things that other people don’t offer? Maybe you’re really good at making things very clear and step-by-step. Or perhaps you’re very good at organising your knowledge and taking someone through step-by-step.

Maybe your program has one-on-one components, because you’re still a small business and small enough for it to be really personalised. This is something that makes me a little bit different. I’ve learned from multi-million dollar companies and I’ve invested lots of money in them. I’ve learned a lot of strategy from them.

But my business is still at a point where I can be personalised, so people don’t just become a number and get lost in the crowd.  I can have a really small, specific mastermind of a few people so that there’s lots of personalised support from me.

Another reason why my program is different, is that a lot of programs give monthly group coaching calls. And I decided to make my group coaching weekly, because I just really wanted to provide that level of ongoing support.

So you might think about what your program looks like in terms of the level of support you give. You may want to do daily texts for people.

When I was working as a weight loss coach, one of the motivational things I came up with, was that I would text my clients a motivational text every morning.

The very first course I did was in MailChimp, my online CRM. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, my clients would get an email. I had Monday Motivation, Winning Wednesday and Friday Feast. I would email my clients a YouTube link, or a recipe, a motivational quote, or image.

This was a 12-week program so I  created 36 emails for it. People just loved receiving these motivational, inspirational things in their inbox. So think about what you can do to make yourself a little bit different.

Something I do in my program, is I have a manifesto. When I used to do live events, I would laminate a manifesto and put a little chocolate and a few different things in a gift pack on the chairs, so when people came into the boardroom, there was something a little extra there.

When I was running a business speaking group, I created a card and superimposed the person’s face over a TED talk speaker. I did it on Canva. I put their face on that person’s body, and it was like them delivering a TED talk and I put a caption, “This is going to be you one day.”

These cute, fun, and quirky things are part of the culture you are building for your community. I run an inner circle community which is a small, private Facebook community and I’m in there answering questions every single day.

I know that’s different because a lot of programs don’t have the course creator actually answering the questions every day. They get admin people to do it. And I may not always do this, as my business grows, but right now I can do this, so this is another point of difference I offer.

3 –  Pinpoint Your Promise

Pinpointing a promise is like you’re making a pledge to your clients.  This can be implied, not just spelled out in your USP statement. You want to think about the result of what you are going to promise your client.

Give an outcome in your promise. An example is, “If you follow these steps, you will get this outcome.” Or it could be, “If you follow this formula, you will get this result.”

I did a challenge a few years ago and it was a $10K challenge that the guy promised. It was such a clear promise. He promised if I did his steps, I would make $10k.

It takes courage and boldness to have a strong promise like that, but it’s absolutely worth thinking about. If your promise has any type of number or dates within it, like, “Lose 5 kilos in five weeks.” People absolutely love these.

A friend of mine has a promise of, “Book 3 discovery calls in 48 hours.” This has got the number and the dates, so it’s super powerful.

4 –  Comb Your Competitors

Combing your competitors means looking at what your competitors do who are above you, and then implementing that. Look at 3 different businesses who are above you at the next level and model them.

Don’t copy. Look at the language they use because they’ve obviously done a lot of research. If they’re quite ahead of you, they’ve really done a lot of research, so look at what they’ve done differently.

Then look at what you can do to bring something different or better.  Ideally, do something better. If you’re just starting out now, look at how you can beat them. Use the fact that you’re smaller because you can use being small to your advantage.

Being a smaller business means you can provide personalised support and service that a lot of big companies can’t do because they’ve grown so much. They can’t do one-on-one anymore because they’re just too busy. Use what you’ve got and play to your strengths.

I’ve got a new client in Utah and she’s fabulous. She’s got 3 different target markets. She’s a real estate agent, and we were talking about how she will find the language that each 3 target audiences use.

My suggestion was to choose 3-5 Facebook groups to hang out in every single day for 7 days. Spend a good 10-20 minutes there each day, reading people’s comments and questions, and she will get a good feel for what people want and how to use their language.

5 – Start A Story Bank

Your stories are really what makes you unique. Your unique stories are valuable and they are yours, so start a story bank.

Open a Google document or spreadsheet, and think about your ideal clients. Think about their 3 biggest pain points and problems. Then think about a time in your life where you had these problems.

I decided to group it in decades. So from 0-10 years old. 10 to 20 years old etc. I know this sounds crazy and you probably are thinking why things from childhood can be relevant, but you can take learnings and wisdom from these experiences.

Say for example, when you were 9, your mum left or you moved overseas. Share the wisdom you have drawn from that experience. It doesn’t have to be directly related to your business. Then think of 3 instances from each decade from your life that relate to the pain points your target market experience.

Your combination of stories and experiences really makes up your USP. If you’re 45-years old, you’ve got 5 decades to draw from. That’s 15 stories you could have.

They could be turning points or an emotional experience where you had some kind of pain or problem that potentially is going to relate to your ideal client.

One of the things that led me to push to build a business is, I remember seeing my Dad be so diligent and going to work every single day at the same company for 40 years. But he left that job with no intellectual property.

I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to have a legacy that I build. I want to create something that’s mine. I don’t want to pour my heart into someone else’s business or company.

When I was a teacher for 6 years, I was teaching someone else’s curriculum and that really bothered me, because I wanted to be teaching my own content. These types of stories are going to help your unique selling proposition.

I have a client in Ukraine. I met him when I was living in London and he connected with me 10 years later. He is adopting a new daughter. He said he needed a coach and he wanted to work with me. He has a beautiful team of people who are growing his company with him.

We’ve just gone through this process of defining his USP. It started off as a community dedicated to impacting orphans, so it was all about orphan care. His heart is to help orphans because that’s where the sex trafficking trade thrives, when orphans are released and don’t have family support.

Then we were looking at another community that was wider and broader called, Journey For More. They are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. We were toying with the idea of going more specific or whether he should go broad to make his community broader.

We decided on something in the middle, “Live Your Fullest Calling By Contributing To The World’s Most Pressing Needs.” We found this in-between space, where it’s all about everyday people wanting to contribute to a cause that is one of the world’s most pressing needs.

It’s a beautiful example of how we need to craft and think about where we’re at in our journey, what types of clients we want to attract, and how we want to be specific and clear, but also open it up so that you can really grow and expand as well.

So that’s 5 fun ways you can create your USP and stand out online.

I recommend you share your USP on social media, in emails, and in other places you show up online, such as if you are interviewed on a podcast or Facebook Live video.

You don’t just want to create your USP and put it in a drawer or in a folder. You want to consistently be showing your uniqueness.

Take the time to think about your uniqueness and why someone would listen to you over someone else. And then keep repeating that same message.

You might feel like a broken record. I do sometimes, but repetition is the mother of skill and it’s one of the key ways that people get to know your brand, messaging, and what makes you unique.

Want help defining your USP and uniqueness to stand out?

I offer a free discovery session for first-time people who want to take their business to the next level, so if you need help, please don’t struggle alone. Reach out.

Apply for a free strategy session here

Chat soon,

Kat

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Content That Gets You Likes Vs Content That Gets You Clients

There is a big difference between content that gets you likes, and content that gets you clients.

And it’s not just the dollars that come with gaining clients. I have discovered 3 simple tricks that will make your content 100% more compelling.

Content that gets you likes may be interesting and entertaining. It might be a little educational.

But there are depths and layers that we can add to our content, which inspires people to actually take action as a result of reading your content, and this is our ability to influence through our content.

Influence is the ability to inspire someone to take action to get more of what they want. To influence someone, you have to go deeper into their subconscious mind.

Lots of people are producing content, creating videos and getting themselves out there online now, but not many people have a solid, consistent, client database and income.

Success is not about just people liking and commenting on your posts. The most successful people actually aren’t spending all this time on social media checking likes and checking comments.

The most successful people are too busy servicing their clients to worry about that.

Once you know how to create influential content that is compelling, your whole world expands and opportunities open for you.

It doesn’t mean you’re better, it just means that people position you and see you differently. More people contact you to speak on their podcast or in their Facebook group. That’s what happened when I shifted my live events online.

When I was started shifting all my events online, I had many invites to speak to various groups and on podcasts. This was because I was consistently showing up.  I was willing to consistently show up with content that influenced.

I challenged myself to not just create ‘How To’ content or ‘Step by Step’ content, but to go deeper into people’s subconscious mind, because that’s how you influence. When you understand the drivers below the surface logic, then you can get more people booked into your calendar for strategy sessions and discovery calls.

Influential content is crafting your words in a way that makes people want to take action, and take that next step towards actually working with you.

Whenever I put out a new blog or a new video, or send a new email,  I’ve really crafted it and thought about the how to make it compelling and influential. Typically people reach out to me and book into my calendar or webinars, or they contact me privately.

Crafting influential content works. You don’t have to have 1000’s of people on your mailing list, you just need to know how to influence people.

When you have developed the skill of influence, people will reach out to you for PR opportunities and for joint venture opportunities.

You will find the whole world opens up to you and it’s not by chance. It’s because you know how to arrange your words in a way that speaks at the subconscious mind.

It’s about knowing how to awaken desires within people, to make them want to learn more, and motivate people to move away from their pain.

Credibility doesn’t come from just having knowledge. They say knowledge is power, but it’s actually only potential power. Credibility comes from getting people results.

When people want to succeed, they seek advice from people who get results and who are further along in the journey than themselves. It’s not just about teaching something to people, it’s about your ability to communicate your value so that someone wants to follow you because you get results.

1 – Influential Content Is Conversational And Natural

Influential content needs to be conversational and natural. People want simplicity and they want something they can understand easily.

People are influenced when they trust you. Who do we trust the most? We trust the people closest to us. We trust certain family members, our friends, our partner, our close peers.

If we’re not being our natural selves, our content can sound formal, when we wouldn’t speak that way with our friends or family if we were chatting over a coffee.

When you create content, you need to speak to your clients as though you are speaking to a trusted family member or friend.

We also do this when we get on video. I look back at my first Facebook Live and I cringe! I was so unnatural. It’s not easy to be yourself when you get a camera in front of you.

When things are not natural and they are hard to read, or when you sound like a robot, your readers lose interest quickly and they scroll on by. So you want to write like you’re just sharing to a friend and write in a conversational tone.

That is what makes it influential. We are more influenced by our friends than we are by a marketer online, or by a business person online.  We’re influenced by the people that we trust and the people that are closest to us.

Forget what you learned in English, in terms of things having to be in perfect grammar. When you write as you speak, your writing is going to be more influential and you’re going to be ahead of most people,  so keep it casual.

2 – Influential Content  Speaks To The Subconscious Mind

There was a study done by Harvard, that shows that over 90% of our buying decisions are made by our subconscious mind. When you think about buying, it’s all about influence.

When you buy something, it’s because you’re influenced in some way by the colour, shape, the words or the sound. Something influenced us to buy it. So if you want to influence people,  the most essential business skill you can have is to be able to speak to the unconscious mind.

We do this by understanding the real drivers of human behavior. It’s not logic. It’s connecting with the pain, desires, values, shadow values, beliefs, and things that go beyond our logic.

For example, status is one of the 7 desires that I spoke about in the last training. The need to increase our status by something we buy is a strong driver. People are asking themselves if what they are buying will increase their status.

Other drivers could be the appearance of intelligence, looking smart, appearing powerful, being wealthy, or it could be something altruistic, like doing kind deeds. If you want to influence people, you need to understand these subconscious drivers of human behavior.

When we purchase something, we often aren’t thinking logically. It’s like doing a bungee jump. You don’t think through it as though you are going to get different benefits of it. You don’t think through the pros and cons of doing a bungee jump.

When I decided to do a bungee jump, I wanted to feel the thrill and the freedom of throwing myself off a bridge. I wanted to feel brave and courageous.

It wasn’t a logical decision. It made zero sense to throw myself off a bridge. My Mum was absolutely mortified and said she wouldn’t throw herself off a bridge if someone paid her $500 million!

But yet, I chose to jump, even though it made no logical sense because it actually is not logical.  It was so scary. There were not many benefits. But I was driven to do it.

Influential content speaks to the side of someone that’s driving them, the side where they’ll find the money, they’ll find the way, they’ll find the resources that they need to make it happen.

If I think about the programs that I’ve invested in to teach me with my business, the most expensive one was $17,000.

I had no money at the time and I had 3 credit cards full of debt. I think now that it was such an illogical decision to put myself in another $17,000 worth of debt, but I didn’t think of it like that. I thought of it like an investment into my future.

I’m so glad I wasn’t logical because that was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever invested into. It gave me an NLP certification which absolutely changed my life and the way I think about myself and the world. It gave me a life coaching certification, speaker training certification, and a business certification.

I have seen a massive return on investment because I’ve made way more than $17,000 back from that investment. It was illogical, but it felt right, because the person who sold it to me influenced me, because he pushed on those values. He helped open my future vision of myself to be a successful business owner.

So too,  you can deliver content that goes straight to those core needs. And remember, it’s about emotion, not logic. When you learn to speak to the subconscious, it transforms your content completely.

3 –  Influential Content Speaks Directly To A Person’s Pain And Desires

Influential content speaks directly to a person’s pain and desires and this is how we wake up the emotions. You really need to know your ideal client and speak directly to them.

You can’t expect people to be influenced by your content if you don’t understand them. And you’ve got to speak their language and know specifically what pain areas they have.

What are their fears, frustrations, and struggles in their life right now? Then you need to articulate their pain to them exactly in a way they would say it.

We used to get taught paraphrasing. When you’re having a conversation you do open listening and you paraphrase back to the person what you heard and you repeat it back exactly how they said it. So if someone said they want to get rid of a muffin top, you wouldn’t say, “Oh, so you want to get toned obliques?”

You would repeat back using their exact language.

You’ve got to use your ideal client’s exact language. And to do that, you have to get to know your target market. And you do this by having lots of conversations with your ideal clients. I’ve done hundreds of free sessions with people who are ideal clients so I could learn their language, their pain points, and their desires.

So there you have it, the difference between content that gets you likes, and content that gets you clients.

Want help to grow your business?

Business is too hard to do alone.

If you need help to get more right-fit clients, free up more time and create a profitable, lifestyle-friendly business that you LOVE, I’m offering a free 45-minute next-level business strategy session, where you’ll get clarity and a clear action plan.

I’ll walk you through a roadmap to show you exactly what you need to do and personalise it to suit you. 

Apply now for your free next-level strategy session

 

 

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How To Share Your Value Online, Without Feeling Like You’re Bragging

When it comes to sharing your value online, do you worry that people will perceive you as big-noting yourself or bragging?

We’re aware that it’s not really acceptable to brag about ourselves!

But we’re also mindful that we need to be sharing our expertise and credibility to promote our business.

So how do we share our experiences and value, without coming across as though we are being boastful?

In this video, I share 3 ways:

1 – Show, Don’t Tell

As an entrepreneur your job is to express your worth by organising your knowledge and offering it to the world. This may be uncomfortable for you, because it involves showing people how you can help them and being confident in it.

It means not being afraid to be seen and heard, not being afraid of having a voice and having an opinion. You are  far more valuable than you realise. You’re probably earning way less than you deserve.

No one is going to come along and demand that you realise your worth. That’s up to you. And you won’t last in business long if you don’t! 

If you want to help more people you’ve got to be clear on your value and you’ve got to let people know about it.

I love what renowned marketing expert Frank Kern says: “The best way to show someone that you can help them is by actually helping them:.

If you want to share your value – ask yourself how much value you are ACTUALLY giving to your people?

Not just intermittent value, but consistent value where you are showing up regularly to help your followers.

Does your audience feel they can really trust you to keep showing up?

Can they rely on you not being here today and then gone tomorrow?

Are you just re-posting other people’s content, or are you deliberately crafting something from scratch that will genuinely be helpful for people?

A lot of people don’t want to give all their secrets away and you don’t have to either.

However, you can give away so much of your knowledge and valuable content and people can still want to pay you. They need more than just information.

Even though I give a lot of free knowledge away, people still need a personalised roadmap to help them through their business journey, and there is only so much you can get out of my free posts, blogs and videos.

Eventually you need to get eyes on your business and have someone help you create a clear roadmap that will guide your business into being all that you planned it to be.

Putting yourself out there requires courage, effort and consistency. It requires you to be loyal to your followers and to the people who are watching your life. It means sharing your opinions and sharing your unique feelings, even though your opinions might ruffle some feathers.

Marketing is about targeting the right people and being willing to not attract everyone. Leaders and influencers are not afraid to repel some people, when the right people are drawn to them.

You see this on YouTube all the time. As the likes go up, the dislikes also go up.

If you are going to attract some people, you are also going to repel others. It’s the nature of online business.

If you’re struggling to get clients right now, it’s probably because you haven’t shared enough value, or communicated your value well to your audience. You have a genius zone that other people need and don’t have.

The more you know your value, the more you’ll be able to communicate your value. So some of it actually comes down to valuing yourself and your self worth. It’s really about backing yourself.

You need to back your work ethic, back your ability to help people and back your program. Put your program on a pedestal, not yourself. And this is how you can share your expertise and your brilliance, by really talking about your program. Your program is not just something you’ve created, it’s a part of your core being that you’ve poured yourself into.

Most Mothers wouldn’t reject their child or put them down if someone complimented her child and called them pretty. She probably wouldn’t say, “No she’s not”. She created that child, so she would hopefully accept the compliment and respond with a thank you.

It’s the same for a program you’ve created.  You don’t have to say you personally are great, but you can say that your program is excellent because of how you have invested what you’ve learned, your experience and your soul into it.

You can share how you’ve spent a long time creating the program and within it you share your knowledge in an easy to follow, step-by-step process. Instead of elevating yourself, you elevate your signature system that you’ve created.

2 – Have A Balance Of Strength And Warmth

There’s an amazing book called ‘Compelling People’ by John Neffinger and Matthew Kohut.  They did some research on compelling people who have a very large audience.

What they found is that compelling people have two important traits – strength and warmth. Compelling people have a balance of strength and warmth, where they have found a sweet spot of balance between these two traits.

Showing Strength

Strength is that directness and confidence that holds conviction behind it.  When you are in the presence of someone who is very powerful and very strong, you feel an energy exuding from them. It makes you trust them.

Strength is such an important part of showing your value. You’ve got to be strong and confident in your conviction and certain of who you are and what you offer. Strength is also about competence.

When you are confident in your competencies, you know that you have expertise and can deliver results. Strength is shown in your certainty, confidence and competence in what you are offering.

Showing Warmth

If you have strength but you don’t have warmth, you come across as too direct and hard. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum. If you’re too far on the strength end of the spectrum and don’t have warmth mixed in, you come across as direct, hard, unlikable, not relatable and intimidating.

People will think you are powerful, but they won’t want to get in close proximity with you. You become scary to people. So your strength needs warmth to balance it out.

Warmth is having empathy, understanding and having the ability to listen. It’s all about the connection. It’s conveying your humanity, being relatable and vulnerable. People often think that vulnerability lowers your value, but it actually increases it.

If you want to have compelling copywriting, you want to have a good balance of strength and warmth. Take the time to assess yourself and ask yourself where you sit on the strength and warmth spectrum. Even ask some people close to you for how they experience you to be.

If you’re really strong, think about how you can turn up the warmth a little. It could be smiling more, telling stories or sharing your experiences and bringing vulnerability into your personal stories when you’re sharing your value.

If you’re more on the warmth side of things and you’re really good at relating with people, building connection and showing empathy, then maybe you need to push your strength side a little. You may need to be more assertive and tell people how you can help them, and share about the consequences of them not changing.

3 – Evoke Emotion

The language and words we use in our content can evoke either fear or desire and you want both of these within your content to create compelling content. Compelling content evokes the pain that people are in and it pushes on their pain points.

There are 7 pain points that people try to avoid, and I go deeper into these in my upcoming webinar.  Your clients are feeling pain in some of these areas and there are words and language that we can use to help them avoid their pain and remove them from the trajectory they are on.

There are also 7 main desires that humans have, that are solved by service-based businesses like coaching and consulting.

With both pain and desire, you’ve got to be thinking how you can express your value and also move people emotionally, because it’s not just about sharing content. There’s so much information out there, we can Google anything, anytime on our phones. It’s not just about sharing information.

It’s inspiring people to act. That is what valuable content is. Valuable content is not ‘3 tips’ or ‘3 secrets’ or ‘3 methods’.

It’s about using story and emotion to push on pain points that invoke emotion and desire that inspires someone to act.

When you are creating your content, really think through the language and the words that are going to bring the pain or desire feelings to your readers.

When you inspire someone to take an action, even a really small action, they attribute that to you, and they’re like, ‘Wow he moved me. He didn’t just entertain me, he educated me and helped my belief to shift so I see things differently now’.

And that is what valuable content does. Valuable content is about showing and not telling. It’s about having a balance of strength and warmth and it’s about showing value and evoking emotion.

If you would like to know how to do this, I’m unpacking it all in my upcoming, free webinar, on Thursday, 18th February.

I recently ran a 1-day event, where I delved deeply into the art of creating compelling copy.

I shared my ‘Compelling Copy Formula’, and unpacked the psychology of influence, which enables you to understand at a deep level how to inspire people to take action.

I received so much great feedback about it that I decided to run a FREE LIVE online ‘best-of’ evening event with the highlights that people loved MOST!

If you want to avoid being drowned out in the sea of noise with the masses online, and you want to understand how to create compelling content and get my actual step-by-step formulas, then this webinar is for you.

I’ll be unpacking how to write influential copy and how to utilise power words and phrases that move people towards you.

I’m sharing how to communicate your value in a way that people get to know, like and trust you, so you can attract new clients FAST!

Learning how to write influential content has the potential to change EVERYTHING for you.⠀

Want help to grow your business? 

Business is too hard to do alone.

Do you need help to get more right-fit clients, free up more time and create a profitable, lifestyle-friendly business that you LOVE?

I offer a free 45-minute business strategy session, where you’ll get personalised guidance, direction, clarity, and a clear action plan.

I’ll walk you through a proven business growth roadmap and personalise it to show you exactly what you need to do to hit your financial and freedom goals. 

This is only for people who are ready and committed to change.

Apply now for your free strategy session with Kat 

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3 Instant Tweaks To Make Your Content More Compelling

If you want your content to connect and resonate with your audience, there are some key elements it needs to have.⠀

The COOL thing is, creating compelling copy is a learnable skill. And it’s actually really simple when you know how to do it.

In fact when you learn the predictable patterns, it almost seems like magic!

But it’s not magic. It’s simply knowing the proven formula.

It’s knowing the right things that you can tweak and change, so that your copy becomes compelling, engaging and attracts the right people.

If you want to make your copy more ‘poppy’, it’s about taking bland, boring content and making it stand out.

It’s doing a copy makeover to make it influential – so that people take action, and are inspired to work with you.

Creating compelling copy closes the gap from where your ideal client currently are, to where they want to be.

So here are three hacks to instantly make your copy more compelling.

1 – Push On Pain

In order to move people to action, we want to push on people’s pain points. I know that sounds a little bit horrible and harsh  but pain motivation is twice as strong as pleasure motivation.

People are twice as motivated to avoid pain as they are to move towards pleasure.

We can’t ignore this truth.

To move people to action, remind them of their pain, and the painful consequences that will occur if they don’t change.

The trajectory that we are on in some areas of life is often leading to MORE pain, but we try to ignore it.

Think about someone who smokes a pack a day. In order to keep up that habit, they have to shut the door on the little voice that tells them they need to change or else suffer the consequences.

Reminding people of the trajectory that they’re currently on is not causing more pain; you’re revealing the truth.

7 painful triggers that motivate people to act include:

Avoidance of…

  • Danger
  • Fear – e.g. emotional fear like fear of rejection, loss, failure, fear of not being good enough.
  • Doubt
  • Complication
  • Uncertainty
  • Boredom
  • Loss

These 7 things are triggers that people will take action to avoid.

So if you think about your offer and your content, how can you start to use these things in your content?

How can you push on your ideal clients’ pain points in your content?

When it comes to buying products or services, people are constantly asking themselves is going to increase their status or decrease it.

How can you show someone that if they don’t take action, their status is going to be decreased?  It’s super powerful, but it takes a little bit of thinking through.

When you take the time to really craft your copy and content, make sure that your content is engaging and compelling.

Making your content engaging and compelling drives people to take action and move towards you faster, so you can close the gap quicker than you can think.

If you write a content post that has these pain elements in it, you will find people wanting to book into your calendar straight away, get on a discovery call with you, and potentially sign up to your signature program offer. So this stuff matters.

I know this sounds like hard work, and it does take time to craft your words so they will move people to take action, but it’s so worth it. It’s a skill that anyone can learn and it’s actually quite simple, when you know the tweaks and formula, but there is some work involved.

A really compelling post can make you a lot of money.

This is why copywriting is one of the highest paid professions.

Over the last 10+ years I’ve been crafting marketing wording to attract clients. I’ve tested and proven the copywriting formulas that work. And I know from experience, when you craft your words correctly, your income will increase!

2 – Develop The Desire

Here are 7 desires that motivate humans:

  • Desire for love
  • Desire for freedom
  • Desire for increase
  • Desire for speed
  • Desire for ease
  • Desire for status
  • Desire for pleasure

If you think about all the services and products in the world, most fall somewhere under these 7 desires. The desire for freedom is desiring freedom from pain, freedom from emotional turmoil.

People want things faster, better and easier.

We can incorporate these desires into our content to make it more enticing and more appealing.

And you don’t need to be a master copywriter to do this.

You just need to know these things so you can start thinking through how you can take a piece of content and make it pop. Here’s a piece of content for a fictional company that I’ve made up.

This will give you an example of adding different elements that focus on desire:

Original copy:

‘Functional Fitness is one of Australia’s leading gyms, with a wide range of fitness classes.. We are proud of our instructors and state of the art equipment. We’re passionate about our revolutionary approach, and take great pride in our classes that are second to none.’

This has some fancy language and it’s a typical features based piece of copywriting.

The problem with this basic copy is that it’s not talking about what’s in it for the reader and it doesn’t include all these desires.  So, I’ve added some desires of added status, speed increase and ease.

Tweaked copy:

‘When you join Functional Fitness, you’ll find the most cutting edge classes that you’ll love coming back to. The instructors you will meet are super supportive, they will be there for you every step of the way, to help you achieve your goals. You’ll find our spaces fresh, vibrant and fun, so you can start feeling fitter, faster.’

You’ll also notice in this tweaked piece of copy, I used the word you, your or you’ll 9 times. The first piece of copy had no usage of these words, which is common with people’s copywriting. People want to hear what’s in it for them, not what you are doing for them.

In the tweaked copy, I push on status, so I say the classes are ‘cutting edge’. I also push on speed, so I mention people can get ‘fit faster’. I want to focus on ease so I mention the spaces are ‘fresh, vibrant’ and ‘fun’.

3 – Elevate The Emotion

We all have triggers for our emotions. We buy based on emotion, we justify our emotional decision and back it up with logic. There are some power words you can use that trigger an emotional response.

In my workshop this Saturday, I’ll be going through a full list of power words, but today I’ll share a few to get you started.

The first example is a headline:

BEFORE – ‘3 Ideas For Healthy Lunches’. You might make some content like this is you are a health coach. It does the job, but is pretty boring and bland.

I’ve changed this copy to add a little bit more of the pop…

AFTER – ‘3 Nearly Instant Cures For Boring Healthy Lunches.’

In this one statement, I’ve made it less boring, because no one wants boring. I’ve added speed by saying ‘nearly instant’. I’ve changed the word ‘ideas’ to the word ‘cures’,  because everyone wants a cure to something.

This is a simple example that shows you just how easily you can take some words and just make a headline pop. Did you know your headline is 80% of the value of your content? If you get your headline right, you will get people clicking through.

The second example:

BEFORE – ‘How To Be More Effective At Copywriting.’  This is fine. It does the job. But just adding a fine tweak we can make it pop.

AFTER – ‘Surprising Ways To Be Uber Effective With Your Copywriting’.

People love surprise. They love novelty, actually the brain loves novelty. The brain also loves curiosity, so using the word ‘surprise’ hooks people in.

The third example:

BEFORE – ‘I’ll show you how to set goals, and make sure they happen.’

AFTER – ‘You’ll pick up my unique goal setting formula (and then you name your formula), so you can finally achieve the results that you want.’

When you name things and make them a formula, a roadmap, a blueprint, a method or pillars, you’re organising your knowledge and you’re putting a framework around it.

This adds curiosity and people want organised, structured knowledge.

When you structure and name your packages well, it’s no longer just tips, it’s an actual, tangible thing. The internet is full of tips, people don’t need more tips.

When you create a formula or a roadmap and name it, you tap into emotion.

Here’s an example for a baby sleep coach:

BEFORE –

‘I’ll show you how to create a successful bedtime routine’, you can use: ‘Learn my proven strategies for a successful bedtime routine, so you can finally enjoy a tear-free story time every night.’

AFTER –

Here we are evoking emotions, which is avoiding the tears every night.

Using the words ‘every night’ is pushing on the desire for increase.

So you can see, it’s just little tweaks, but when you understand the formula to writing compelling copy, it makes a huge difference. In this example, I’ve pushed on pain, developed the desire and elevated the emotions.

Another thing that I’ve done here, is add specificity. I’ve made it more tangible so you can visualise it.

3 Copywriting Traps People Fall Into…

1 – Not Having A Formula

A formula helps you put all the pieces together and joins the dots. When you have a formula, your business can change, really fast and people will start reaching out to you and wanting to work with you.

2 – Not Having A Strategy

You need a clear content strategy or you will waste hours labouring over words.

3 – Not Having Certainty

Not knowing certainty or understanding the best methods and layers that come into the psychology of influence and how to move people towards you, can leave you and your business behind.

As a business owner, the most useful but underrated skill that you can learn is the skill of writing compelling copy if you want to get more clients and grow your business. And the coolest thing is copywriting is a skill that can be learned.

For the last 10+ years I have been crafting copy and have developed a formula that has been proven to work. I use this formula with my clients, and they get fantastic results fast.

Want help to grow your business? 

Business is too hard to do alone.

Do you need help to get more right-fit clients, free up more time and create a profitable, lifestyle-friendly business that you LOVE?

I offer a free 45-minute business strategy session, where you’ll get personalised guidance, direction, clarity, and a clear action plan.

I’ll walk you through a proven business growth roadmap and personalise it to show you exactly what you need to do to hit your financial and freedom goals. 

This is only for people who are ready and committed to change.

Apply now for your free strategy session with Kat

 

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The Old Way Of Writing Copy Is Over

The old way of writing copy is over. There is a new way of writing copy (marketing words) that focuses on:

– People over product
– Connecting with your right-fit people
– Adding genuine value

The aim of good copywriting is to have an impact and effect on people that inspires them to take action.

If you’re a coach or consultant, or you have a service or program that you want to sell to more people, it’s super important that you know how to inspire people to take action.

Some people say to me “What exactly IS copy?!”

Copy is a funny word, isn’t it? Some people don’t like the word, as it can feel kind of intimidating.

All of us – if we have something to sell that’s going to help people solve their problem – need to know how to use our words to link people to our product or service.

There’s a gap between your service or product, and the person who needs what you’re offering.

That’s what copy does – it closes the gap.

Different pieces of your copywriting have different goals.

For example, your social media posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram and your emails usually have the goal to bring people a step closer towards you, until you eventually make an offer to what I call your ‘right-fit person’.

If you think about social media posts for example, they are not generally designed to completely close the gap. Social media is meant to be social. It’s about building relationships and connections with people. So they’re meant to be more educational and conversational.

Other copy includes all the words on a landing page or your website, where people come to read about your product or service. This is usually a sales page with an order form that has a button that people click to buy your product or service.

The ‘buy here’ button closes the gap all the way up.

Compelling copy focuses on connecting you with your ‘right-fit people’.

There are people who are the right fit for you. And there are people that are definitely not the right fit for you.

The job of your copy is to attract the right people – the people are those who align with your energy and with what you have to offer.

The Old Way: Professional
The New Way: Conversational

The old way of writing copy was super professional and cheesy. Cheesy doesn’t work anymore. People don’t want that now. People want authentic, friendly and conversational copy.

Ineffective copy is often what’s letting people down in their business. Learning to write copy is a skill. And all skills are learnable.

You can learn it and get better at it and you can start to see a difference really quickly. You don’t need to do a two year degree in copywriting to actually make an impact. It’s the little tweaks that can make a big impact.

You don’t have to completely change your writing style. You just need to follow proven formulas and structures that work. And then you infuse your personality into writing your copy.

The challenge is: People assume that they’re good copywriters because they are good at their subject matter. Being a subject matter expert doesn’t mean you have specifically leaned the skill of copywriting.

There is a lot of freedom and creativity that you can infuse within the copywriting formula, but there is a structure and guidelines to writing content also.

You don’t start to play any game without having the right guidelines or without knowing the rules.

You wouldn’t play a game of soccer or even play a game of chess without knowing the rules, so it’s important to learn the guidelines.

When you’re learning an instrument, there’s certain notes that work well together, like C,E and G, that make a nice sounding chord.

Certain notes don’t work well together, like playing C and D, because their sound together does not work well.

It’s the same with copywriting. There’s a big difference between writing about how great your product is, and writing to influence or inspire someone to buy.

Breaking Old Copywriting Myths

There are copywriting myths relating to the old way of writing copy that we need to lay down in order to pick up the new way of copywriting.

Imagine being in an English class and handing in an essay that was written similar to how we write a social media post or email today. It would get an immediate fail!

The new way is different to the traditional way we write. One of the reasons how we write has changed, is because we are so bombarded with information now. We don’t like reading big, long sentences and long paragraphs.

People don’t want to hear old-school, colloquial and traditional language now. No one wants to read posts with long, hard words that you have to get your brain around.

We’ve trained ourselves to follow the path of least resistance, so we need to be able to make our copy simpler.

Big, fancy words is the old way of writing. The new way is conversational.

It’s more conversational, creative and friendly. It’s fun and playful, showing your personality.

There’s been a real shift away from typical, perfect grammar.  It’s now about actually understanding how the human brain learns and absorbs – the ”buttons to press’ through your copy and what inspires people to take action.

The New Way Of Copywriting

The new way of writing copy is understanding how to make people feel something and be moved.

Dale Carnegie says when you’re dealing with people, you need to remember that you’re not dealing with creatures of logic, you’re dealing with creatures of emotion.

It’s important that we think about the reasons that people take action and the reasons that people buy. People buy to fill emotional needs.

Some Reasons People Buy:

  • For popularity or status
  • To be recognised
  • To feel loved
  • To increase our time or increase our money
  • To save money, save energy and save effort
  • To be healthier – physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually

We buy for a whole lot of reasons and we need to understand what is driving human emotions. Napoleon Bonaparte says there are two motives to action: self-interest and fear. It ties in with pain and pleasure.

When you don’t understand this, you’re just writing traditional copy that is beautiful writing, but it’s not moving people to act. This does not work nowadays. It’s not going to close the gap and bring people closer to you.

It’s the professional versus the conversational. It’s about knowing formulas and structures, and knowing the rules of the game, but also being able to infuse the rules of the game with your personality.

Find Your Own Voice And Use It

Finding your own voice is a great way to call in your right-fit people.

You can do this by to find and use your voice to repeat your key messages over and over. Then repeat these messages throughout all your different social media channels, like your LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

These are different platforms, but the way you speak should be the same, because you are the same.

Your voice should be the common thread through your emails, your website and your social media posts. Your voice needs to be cohesive through all your copy, because that’s when people trust you.

The only way really to find your voice is to write a lot. It doesn’t come by thinking about it. It doesn’t come by reading about it.

You can read so many other people’s posts, but you will not find your own voice by consuming other’s posts. You find your own voice by sharing content consistently.

I was talking to a client today and we were discussing a famous leadership author John Maxwell and the reason he can write so many books is because he sets a timer and writes for 20 minutes every day.

With copywriting, it’s about writing freely and not stopping and getting stuck in perfectionism.

It’s actually allowing yourself to just get good at the craft by getting out there and doing it, getting feedback and self-correcting.

The Old Way: Method
The New Way: Outcomes

The old way of copywriting was to focus on the method of change, so that was always method focused. The new way is outcome focused, so it’s method versus outcome.

I often find people are talking about their method of transformation. They are talking about the interventions they do, or their limiting belief busters script, or a particular diet or exercise plan.

This is their methodology. The problem with that is that people don’t buy the method, they want to buy because of an outcome.

An example I encountered once was where a guy asked me to help him to change his marketing, because he wasn’t getting anyone signing up for his event.

He was running an event on how to use the kettle bell. A kettle bell is something that you use at the gym.

He had a poster and the title he used was, ‘Respect The Bell’. He had a big picture of a kettle bell. What was his problem? He was selling the method, not the outcome.

No one sits at home and thinks that they need to learn how to respect the kettle bell. But many people do sit at home and think that they need to lose weight and get fit. They think that they want to drop a dress size.

I see this all the time where people talk about their features and their methodology, rather than speaking about the outcome. We need to connect what we do with what the client is looking for and then close the gap with your copy.

Don’t make the mistake of selling your method before you’ve really imparted the vision and painted a picture of how awesome someone’s future can be.  We’ve got to sell them on the outcome.

Your copy needs to create a scene where your ideal client can see themselves.

An example is: ‘It’s Monday morning, you open your laptop and you are fully booked with clients. You are living your dream. You know this because you have learned exactly how to write compelling copy…

…You’ve followed a formula and your right people are engaging with you and booking into your calendar. People are giving you great testimonials about how much you have helped them.’

This is the power of using someone’s imagination rather than just focusing on your method or focusing on your product.

The Old Way: Volume
The New Way: Finely-Crafted

In the old way of copywriting, volume mattered. The new way is to create finely crafted copy that hits the target.

When I was working in London I had a business coach, and I remember sitting in a cafe with him once and him asking me what my goals were for social media.

At the time I was working in a gym and I wasn’t really doing a lot of social media. He encouraged me saying I had to get out there on Facebook more. Facebook was relatively new at that point.

And his goal for me was to post 3x a day. But I was already so booked up with clients.

People often ask me how often they should post.

It comes down to the quality of the post and how much time you have to create effective content.

When you’re busy and successful, you just don’t have time to be doing volumes on social media.

For example, this week I’ve got 23 clients. I don’t have the luxury of being able to sit there and pump out social media content.

It’s not about pumping out volumes of posts to stay top of people’s minds. It’s choosing quality over quantity. You want to be top of someone’s mind because you’re actually giving value, not because you’re constantly in their feed with bland copy.

There is much greater value in crafting three great posts a week, over doing six sloppy, half thought through posts. When you take the time to think about your ideal client and what they’re going through and how you can help them, people will want to share it.

When I craft my content, people often private message me and say that I’ve really impacted them and they book into my calendar.

You could buy a really cheap bottle of wine and you’d get five or six big glasses out of this cheap bottle of wine.

Or you could just have this one really expensive, beautiful glass and you can just enjoy it and savor it.

You need to have this type of thinking around your copy and content. People will start to view you as genuinely giving value to people.

You’ll get a reputation of providing quality to people, whether they are a paid client or not.

Are you struggling to attract new clients with your content?

Would you like to know how to write more compelling copy that gets people taking action towards being a paid client?

I’m holding a free online workshop on Saturday 6th of February, called  ‘How To Attract New Clients With Compelling Copy’.

I’ll be sharing the words to use to influence your right-fit people, power words, the words to avoid, and the words trigger resistance in people.

I’ll also be sharing a proven compelling copy formula that can save you sooo much time and confusion, and so much more.

You’ll learn the formula and skills to watch your income and impact transform in 2021!

Find out more about the event here

See you there!

Kat

 

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