We all want to get found.
We’re all waiting for our big break and with it, our turn to step up onto the stage we know our work is worthy of.
Some people wait for their break to materialize, while some do everything in their power to work to make it happen, single-handedly if they must.
What many people don’t realize, however, is that without a solid foundation in place, even if you do get your big break, you may not be able to make it stick.
The Goal
It should probably go without saying, but the goal of exposure is not simply the exposure itself.
Sure, that 15 minutes of fame might have some perks, but most of us who are looking for greater exposure are doing so because we’re looking to increase our audience, to drive sales, email signups, or hoping that the people who find us engage and deepen their relationship with us in some other way.
So before you go chasing more traffic, more eyeballs, more fans, start by addressing your messaging and systems foundation and ensure you have everything in place to capitalize on that visibility when you get it.
Messaging
At the bedrock level of your foundation is your messaging around what you do and who you serve.
You need absolute clarity on this if you’re going to make the most of any new traffic, let alone a surge of it.
Hopefully, you know what your offer is, but do you know how to talk about it in a way that actually gets your ideal customers excited and ready to enroll in what you’re doing?
For that matter, do you know who your ideal customers are? Most people think they do, but when asked about the demographics and more importantly psychographics that define them, they come up with a pretty short list.
In order to be able to hone your messaging, you need to know how to talk to your ideal customers, and in order to do that, you need to know who they are. Try and answer questions like:
- What is the change they’re looking to make or problem they’re looking to solve?
- Why are they interested in making this change or solving this problem?
- Where are they currently at on the journey you’re proposing to help them along?
- What their beliefs about the process it will take to solve this problem?
- What have they tried before that either has or hasn’t worked?
- Have they invested time or money in the past to solve this problem?
- What’s keeping them from making the change on their own?
- What are the milestone steps in the journey toward the ultimate goal?
The more detailed a picture you can paint of your target audience and how you are uniquely positioned to help them, the more clearly you’ll be able to convey your value, pique their curiosity, and pull them into the outer reaches of your orbit, from where they can circle their way closer to your primary offers.
With your messaging intact, you can now be confident that you’ll be able to speak in a way that resonates with the people who find you.
But without systems in place to help keep your audience engaged and guide them on their journey toward their goal (and your offers), you’ll end up losing much of that initial interest.
Systems + Tools
No matter how great a website you have, how great a speaker you are, how engaging a personality you have, you’re unlikely to convert curious but fresh eyes into customers immediately upon discovering you.
Effective marketing is about relationship-building, and relationship building requires an ongoing conversation.
The primary goal then, for all new traffic, all new eyes and all new ears you get the attention of, is not to sell them on your offers immediately, it’s to take the lead on starting a conversation and invite them to join you.
This might be by literally scheduling a phone call with you, it might be by joining your Facebook group, Slack or Discourse channel, signing up for your email list, subscribing to your podcast or any other way you communicate regularly with your audience.
Once they’ve joined the conversation, you’ll be able to walk them through a defined customer journey, addressing the various challenges the average person encounters while tackling the problem you help them solve, helping them reach those milestone steps, and ultimately achieve their goal.
The first step is actually mapping out that customer journey, but once you have it defined, find a set of tools and systems that will enable you to walk a large audience through it without having to work individually with each one.
Have a clear set of entry points that you can direct people to, depending on where they’re at in their journey or the segment of your audience they represent.
Start a podcast or blog to share information regularly, setting up email auto-responder series that help leads start tackle various challenges from different starting points, automating as much content creation and engagement as possible, which is what we at Counterweight Creative help podcasters do.
Whatever your customer’s journey, whatever tools and systems you need in place to walk them through it, it’s essential to set them up now, before you get that big break in order to make the most of it.
Prepare Yourself
How many one-hit wonders could have had lasting careers if only they’d been prepared for the attention and a strategy to capitalize on it from the start?
There’s no guarantee that any of us will ever go viral, blow up, or be shouted out by Oprah. But it doesn’t take that kind of attention to make homing our messaging and setting up our backend systems worth it.
Being clear on who you help, how you help, and having a process to get your leads to their goal helps on both the individual level as well at scale.
Maybe it’s a few people a day who found you through organic search, maybe it’s a few thousand people who just heard you on the podcast guest interview you did, or people who just came across your Instagram feed for the first time.
There are dozens of ways both big and small that our ideal audience members can find us, and if we’re serious about serving them, it’s on us to open the door, roll out the welcome mat, and when they find us, greet them with a smile and say, “I see you’re struggling with that, here, let me help!”
Jeremy travels full-time, loves long-distance cycle touring, and will always look back on the day he finally saved up enough money to buy the Millennium Falcon Lego set as one of his proudest achievements. He believes that the way to grow sustainable businesses is by leading with heart, vulnerability, and helping your people be and become their best selves.
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