Emotional leadership: How to treat your leads better than 98% of the internet

Do you want to attract leads that are as high quality (if not higher) as those you make in one-on-one and face-to-face interactions?

Then let’s talk about how to do that on your website.

First off, I teach my copywriting students about emotional leadership.

We don’t hear a lot of experts talking about this, but it’s important.

Especially if you’re in the “help people improve their lives” business.

We must make people feel the way they long to feel, when they hit our websites.

To do this, you need to be aware of three things: first, who your ideal client is. Second, your assumptions about them. And third, how they want to feel as a result of working with you.

Now, here’s the problem – most online business owners know how to write, but they don’t know how to write website copy that speaks to readers on these three levels.

So when they plow ahead and write their website, even if they are clear about exactly who they are writing to, they are blind to their assumptions about those people. (Much of it perpetuated by online marketing myths like The Magic Bullet, Instant Overnight Success, and Passive Income Without Much Work).

Let’s take this one step at a time. First off, your assumptions about your audience. A common (mistaken, widespread) assumption is that people must be struggling or in a lot of pain to hire you. (Hint: when you have this assumption, you will often attract people in emotional or financial crisis, instead of more sophisticated, grounded and confident buyers).

The other common scenario here is that an online business owner writes their website with a business mentor, who “looks it over”… but who’s reading (quickly) for marketability, not emotional tone.

As a result, you tend to end up with hurry-hurry copy that’s heavy on clichés and light on genuine personal expression.  (Hint: taking a little more time to look into how you say things in your website copy gives you confidence – and words — that you can turn around and use in sales conversations, talks, and blog posts).

But I digress. Back to your assumptions about the visitors to your website.

Writes legendary improve teacher Del Close, “we must treat our audience like poets and geniuses. Only then will they have a chance to become them.”

When I teach this to my students, I tell them to write to their readers’ “inner winner.”

Assume that you are writing to people who are already winning in life.

Specifically, I teach my students to avoid words like struggle, overwhelm, stuck and broke in their website copy.

Because words have power!

So if you use words like struggle, overwhelm, stuck or broke on your website, you will attract people who view themselves as in need of rescue or saving.  Not exactly your ideal client, right?

Consider this: within every target market, there is a subset of people who have a crisis orientation to life. They wait so long to take care of themselves… to address issues… to ask for help… that when they show up at your door – as a financial advisor, weight loss coach, healer, body worker, business mentor, executive coach – they are in end-of-the-rope mode.

We’ve all been there, right? When you’re in end-of-the-rope mode, you risk making decisions from fear, worry, scarcity, disbelief, resistance/defensiveness to being helped, and maybe even desperation.

Let’s be clear: End-of-the-rope mode is not where you meet your best clients.

Thankfully, within every target market, there is also a subset of people who – even when in their darkest moments – have a wisdom orientation.

People with a wisdom orientation have already learned certain life lessons that enable them to receive help, money and abundance for the things that matter, and approach you with a spirit of partnership, gratitude and knowing that you’re the one to help them.

These are the people to write your website to.

Hint: this group of people don’t just read your words; they feel the unseen emotions that your website emits. They are not interested in the promises of piles of money and instant success. They want quality. They want to catch a glimpse of your humanity, your personality, maybe even your soul.

They want an exclusive, high-touch experience that not everyone gets to have. They are sensitive to design.  And they are willing to invest more for all of these things.

Emotional leadership asks us, as business owners, to look beyond the commonplace marketing advice to  “touch their pain!” and “connect with their struggle!” – both of which lead to resonance with leads who have a crisis orientation — and work from a higher standard.

Namely, one where our clients come to us, not because they are broken or doubting themselves… but because they are already whole, see themselves as worthy of investment, and are called to more.

Yah, take that in.

What if you wrote your website from the assumption that everyone who came to work with you was already, in the words of Anna Kunnecke, an “epic f*cking badass”?

How would that change your business?

Your website?

Your bottom line?

The important thing to know here is that creating or updating your website to resonate with this slice of the marketplace doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Unfortunately, I’ve talked to business owners who believed that throwing money at the problem would deliver these gourmet clients to their online doorstep.

This is how expensive branding and web development packages are sometimes sold. Five, fifteen or twenty thousand dollars later (or more), the business owner is no closer to attracting these mythical unicorn-like clients, who pay you well, refer you to their friends, and implement your recommendations.

Here’s my proposal: save yourself thousands of dollars on website and brand development, and instead give yourself a month to get clear on your moneymaking message and bang out your web copy.

Take the money you would have spent and buy yourself a great haircut and a great outfit that symbolizes what my friend and client Susan calls “the life you want to have.” (Make sure you feel good in these clothes, and at the same time, dress Future You).

Next, get new, professional headshots.

(If you don’t understand WordPress, hire help or take Christine Gallagher’s upcoming Website Without Worry class – google it).

And then come write your website with me.  We do the Write Your Website writing lab live once a year, where we take a group of online business owners through the process of writing your Homepage, Services page, and About page, help you come up with your topic and title for your Awesome Free Gift, and make sure you nail your moneymaking message in the process. It’s way more fun than writing stuff alone, and I promise to fire you up about writing marketing in a way that makes your bits tingle… and gets the right people excited about working with you.

The next live Write Your Website lab start February 2016. For more information, sign up for our mailing list at StellaOrange.com.

 

Mighty thanks to 89studio via freedigitalphotos.neet for “Businessman Thinking” image