When your business’ messaging doesn’t align with your essence, something feels off. You, as the business owner, might feel it, although it’s often hard to pick up at first, especially if you’re an empath.

Your potential clients feel it too.

Your marketing is the way you connect with potential clients.

The words and images you use, the messages you send in your marketing, all combine to paint a picture of who you are and what it is that you do. It’s the way people get to know you, decide if they like your work, and ultimately if they trust you enough to ask you to help them.

You can find lots of marketing advice pushing certain formulas, that says ‘this is what a coach/healer/creative should look and sound like. Many people, often unconsciously, follow those rules and start adopting language and messaging that doesn’t feel genuine to who they are.

If your marketing language doesn’t align with your essence, you create dissonance. And that’s not what you want for your potential customers.

You want resonance.

Before I do a free marketing assessment, I’ll take a quick glance at the person’s website, along with a couple of blog posts or other communications. Then, once we’re on the phone, I’ll ask some questions - about her, her business, interests and passions, a whole range of topics. Sometimes right away I notice something that feels off. In some cases, the words she’s using in her marketing don’t really represent her, the real her.

People can sense inauthenticity, especially at the heart level. And your ideal clients can too.

It’s like being able to tell the difference between when someone laughs at your joke out of kindness and when someone finds it genuinely funny. They both sound like laughs, but there’s something about one that doesn’t ring true.  

So, how do you make sure your marketing messages are in alignment with your authentic self so you can better attract your ideal clients? Going into all the detail is well beyond the scope of one article, but there are a couple of quick things you can do right now.

Check your language

Buzzwords

Be a sleuth. Take a look at your home page or your latest email to your audience and check for buzz words. Buzz words often get to be popular because they’re unique and powerful, succinct way to transmit an idea. (Think “transformation.”)

Yet, if you use them too much in your copy, they come off as canned. Your copy can end up sounding boring and repetitive. Unoriginal.

Swear words

Check your four-letter words. If you find yourself using ‘badass’ ‘kickass’ or any other kind of ‘…ass’ adjectives in your marketing, or if you frequently use various iterations of ‘f*ck’ ‘unf*k’ ‘sh*t’ or otherwise) in your copy (loads of people do these days…) take a minute and ask yourself : Do I talk like this when I’m having a coffee with my best friend?

If your answer is yes, great!! Keep it up. Please, do not stop. Chances are your copy sounds like the real you. But, if like a lot of practitioners I see, you’re unconsciously picking up on someone else’s way of communicating, please stop. You copy doesn’t sound like the real you, and it’s creating a disconnect with your ideal clients.

Tired clichés

When you’re creating your messages and talking about the benefits of your coaching programs, do you rely on clichés? I doubt anyone’s talking about their process being ‘as easy as pie,’ but that doesn’t mean their copy isn’t being dragged down by catch phrases that don’t sound like something they’d normally say.

For example, talking about benefits like “live a more authentic life” or “follow your bliss” are vague.  Bringing in more specific, tangible wording gives the reader a better sense of what they might experience from your services. And, even more importantly, it transmits a sense of you!

Instead of “follow your bliss” how about “Experience a newfound love for your life as you watch it turn into everything you've dreamed it could be?” That is not only more specific it’s imbues much more about this particular coach.

Bring in More You

Once you’ve done a quick look at your language, another surefire way to bring more alignment into your marketing messages is to bring more YOU into your content.

Storytelling

Tell more stories. Invite people into your personal life by telling stories that illustrate the message you’re sharing. Or get riled up and angry about things that make you riled up and angry. Or gush in gratitude about the things that make you gush with gratitude. Post about your insights, encounters, the thing that happened to you on the way to the climate change strike.

Making metaphor

Do you love a particular activity or hobby? Look for opportunities to weave simple aspects of your favorite activity into your marketing copy by using metaphor. For example, say you love, love LOVE geocaching. Maybe the thing you love the most is how it stretches your limits (mentally and physically) and also leads you to moments of quiet and still. If you’re also a yoga teacher, you can talk about that as a similar benefit that you feel in your yoga classes. You can stretch the metaphor by weaving in examples and other parallels.

 Making connections in readers mind by using other metaphors helps them not only understand what you are saying in a creative way but helps them to get to know you better.

Taking the time to align your marketing messages with your essence strengthens your copy and helps your potential clients rest into trusting you and what you have to tell them. If you take a few minutes and check your language – avoiding buzzwords and using swearwords only if you do all the time in real life and then weave in some of your personality through story and metaphor, you’ll bring your copy to life and make it uniquely yours. There’s nothing more attractive than that.

Using marketing messages that don’t match the practitioner’s unique essence is just one of many reasons that coaches, healers or creatives might be having trouble finding clients. Some reasons don’t have anything to do with marketing; and almost none of them have to do with the practitioner’s talents and gifts. 

I want to help people learn where they need to focus their efforts to find clients and grow their businesses. Starting next week, I’ll be giving away 30 one-on-one assessment sessions to business owners who need more clients. The assessment is to help them understand what their business needs and where, how and why to focus their efforts next to get clients.  If you’re interested in learning more, watch this space, or sign up here. I’ll make sure you get an email with more information on October 1.

 Photo Credit: Natalia Y on Unsplash