Ask Yourself This One Simple Question

By Stella Orange | Comments Off on Ask Yourself This One Simple Question

It’s like walking a tightrope.

Lean too far to either side, and you’ll lose your balance + topple.

This is what’s happening with a lot of businesses running online marketing programs out there.

You’ve got folks leaning so far to the commerce side of things, that their messages become rote. They talk about exciting stuff, but it all feels scripted and rehearsed. Even if it’s off the cuff. Their videos and pages all feel like it’s the same thing.

Make more money!
Breakthrough to making + being more!
Get rich like this!

And then you’ve got folks rebelling so much, you can’t figure out what on this good green earth they are promising as results.

Typically, these messages include words like:

Awesome
Spiritual
Kick Ass, Bad Ass

There’s a whole lot of synonyms for “greatness”… but not a whole lot of substance.

Well, I’m putting my foot down. Here are my rules of the message road:

1) Have a personality. Your savvier potential aren’t listening to your words, anyway. We are tuning into your energy, your vibe, your point of view. Share who you really are – you know, the person you are with your clients and friends. Say weird stuff – and then be able to back it up intelligently. The marketplace is crowded with really bad web design and cookie-cutter messages – but there’s only one you. Leverage that, mofos!

2) Understand what projects are appropriate for your level of business. For example, your first online launch doesn’t need 2 webinars and a video drip campaign. Keep it simple. One preview call and a string of well-crafted promo emails is great. Also, make sure you have a solid foundation before you launch – have you been sending a weekly newsletter with great content, and trained your list to click + engage with you?

3) Innovate or die. There are so many people coming up in the online marketing world who are saying the same things. This is why your PERSONALITY is so important. This is why your design sense is so important. It’s also why I want you to know the rules of messaging and crafting writing projects for marketing. So you can break them.

4) Let them see you having fun. It’s an open secret among my friends + clients (who run profitable businesses) that we’re pretty much scared a lot of the time. You up-and-coming business owners think you’re the only ones?! Nope – at each stage, you meet new bugaboos. What changes is your working relationship with fear. It no longer stops you. Or at least, not like it used to. You just get used to moving forward, no matter what.

Here’s the thing that IS different after you break through 6 figures, though – you get bored of doing the same thing. You know how to run a launch. But if it’s lost the thrill of your first time. Also, what happened before may not happen again – I know plenty of people whose launches went sideways. Argh!

The antidote? Ask yourself: what would be fun for me, in this project? A new friend and health coach just recorded a video of a rewrite of a Robin Thicke song… and her dancing around, waving bouquets of kale. I took some of my clients out to Montana last month for the Writing Intensive, where the tagline was “ride horses + drink whiskey.” A woman in the Writing Brigade set up a video studio in her home – green screen + all – and wore a lot of wigs to get her message across.

Fun is a secret weapon in these businesses of ours, by the way. It doesn’t mean you have to be funny, if that’s not really your thing. But aim to amuse yourself. This one of the simplest ways to stay loose and get your readers + viewers to say “I want some of THAT!”

I’m curious – what’s one thing you’ve done to change things up from “business as usual” in your business? Leave a comment!

Stella Orange is a copywriter who helps people put their work into words. For eight years, she wrote email campaigns that resulted in more than a million dollars in sales for her clients. In that time, Stella also taught popular marketing writing workshops to business owners on both sides of the Atlantic -- and a few in Australia and New Zealand. In 2017, Stella cofounded a creative and consulting shop offering a complete and slightly unorthodox line of business advising and marketing services. She continues to write copy and advise clients on customer delight, how to resonate with more sophisticated, discerning clientele in your marketing, and just who, exactly, your ideal clients are. Stella is the founder of Show Up And Write, a weekly writing group and writes a letter every two weeks or so (here’s the sign-up). She lives with the Philosopher and their two kiddos in Buffalo, New York, a fifteen-minute bike ride to the Canadian border.

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