Create A Creative Business That Celebrates Your Ideal Life
Today’s episode is sponsored by my free downloadable PDF checklist – How To Create A Highly Irresistible List Building Freebie And Attract Your Perfect Customers The Easy Way! Stop guessing what your ideal audience wants and start filling your email list with ‘Buy Ready’ people actively searching for your digital products, online courses, artwork, workshops, retreats or 1 on 1 client services!
You can download your free copy today at: getpaidforyourcreativity.com/irresistiblefreebie-checklist
Episode 019 Show Notes:
If you listened to Episode 018 of the podcast, I introduced 3 Questions You Must Ask Yourself Before You Create Your Profit Driven List Building Freebie and why that’s so important, if you didn’t, I highly you stop listening to this episode of the podcast and do that first so you’ll be better prepared for what I have for you today.
In that episode, I talked about why it’s super important to give your ideal customer avatar a QVW (quick valuable win) immediately after they opt-in for your freebie and why your freebie must accomplish this if you want to properly position your paid offer.
Why it’s important especially in the beginning stages to focus on getting clear on ideal avatars top of mind problem, the one they most want to have solved and knowing how to language it which I’m going to go into greater depth on this episode of the podcast.
Up until now all of the episodes in this series has been primarily focused on showing you why it’s important to have a highly irresistible freebie (ie. your lead magnet) to connect with your audience, grow an email list that leads to sales and creative and financial freedom.
Just in case you missed those earlier episodes let’s do a quick recap to get you up to speed
In episode 015: Ultimate Guide To Creating An Irresistible List Building Freebie (part 1) I shared
* What is an Irresistible Freebie?
* What makes a Freebie Irresistible?
* The benefits of having an Irresistible Freebie?
In episode 016: Ultimate Guide To Creating An Irresistible List Building Freebie (part 2) I shared
* How I added over 600 plus new subscribers to my email list in less than 30 days
* 15 Totally Irresistible Freebie Ideas!
* I even gave you a complete list of inspirational ideas in my Ultimate Guide to Creating An Irresistible Freebie Blog Post
Then in episode 017, I did a pretty extensive interview on how to Fill Your Email List With ‘Buy Ready’ Leads Using Quizzes and Assessments with Pet Behaviorist Daniele Largo
So episodes 015, 016 and 017 are what I consider “the what!” and that’s why I decided for episodes 018 and 019 to focus on the ‘who’ (who your ideal customer is and how you best serve them) and why (getting this right will ultimately determine your success)!
It’s so important to get this right from the start and that’s why I’m devoting this week and next weeks episodes to what I feel is frequently the most overlooked part of the Irresistible List Building Freebie making process.
Knowing who your ideal customer is, why your freebie must speak to them and how it’s going to position them into becoming what I call, “Buy Ready” leads.
It’s really sexy to get excited about the “what” meaning the deliverable, for example, after listening to episode 017 with Daniele Largo you might have become super inspired to create a quiz or assessment. Or maybe you’ve been writing an ebook or designing a mini-course, or thinking about launching a Facebook group. But not so fast!
First, you want to get clear on the specific audience you want to speak to and more specially the problem or desire that audience (ideal customer avatar) wants and is actively looking for a solution before I get into that I want to talk about what inspired the focus of this episode.
We few weeks ago I participated in an online training by James Wedmore of the Mind Your Business Podcast called Nail Your Niche (I highly recommend it, I’ll put the link to it in the show notes, it’s around $300 and worth every penny, it’s not an affiliate so I’m not being paid to recommend it)
And in that training, James taught a simple framework for choosing a profitable niche and I’m going to share just a little of what I learned from him with you.
But first, I want to quickly review the benefits of choosing a profitable niche
Benefits of choosing your niche
- Determines your highest skill set, one that’s based on your greatest passion and how you talk about yourself.
- Helps you get clear on who is struggling with the problem, issue or desire your skillset is most qualified to solve
- Forces you to get focused and clear on the specific issues so can more easily create content that would appeal to them like Irresistible List Building Freebies and other valuable content like blog posts, podcast interviews, and what you post on social media
- Ultimately shapes your paid product or service, how you write copy for it and how you talk about it and you deliver it
Questions from James Wedmore’s Niche Training on identifying your niche.
- Who do you serve?
- How you serve them?
- Who Specifically You Serve?
- What problem Specifically do you Solve?
- How Specifically You Serve Them?
- Why Specifically you?
- Where are they right now?
Your answers are a great place to start before you create your Irresistible List Building Freebie, so you could ask your audience (if you have current clients or students) or research online Where are they right now?
For example, if in your research you uncover that the majority of your ideal avatar says “I’m struggling with the confidence to paint watercolors without ruining my canvases” then that could be the focus of your freebie.
As a matter of fact, you could actually use that comment in the title of your Irresistible List Building Freebie.
I’ll talk more about this in greater depth how to craft an attention-grabbing headline in episode 020 of the podcast, in the meantime try your hand at crafting one using this sample template, keeping the following formula in mind, never forget episode 015, your ideal customer wants two things,
1. The thing they want, and
2. To avoid the thing ‘they think’ that’s getting in the way of them having it.
Nailing the answer to both of these in your headline will make your freebie stand out.
Here’s a headline formula that really works and a few examples
How to get (result) __________, without ________
Here’s another iteration
____ (fill in with a number) ways to get __________, without ________
“How to Confidently Paint Watercolor Landscapes (That Look Realistic & Don’t Look Like Cartoons)”
-or-
“3 Quick Ways to Confidently Paint Watercolor Landscapes (That Look Realistic & Don’t Look Like Cartoons)”
So again, stay tuned for episode 020 of the podcast where we’re going to do a deep dive on how to write attention-grabbing headlines that make your freebies speak directly to your ideal customer avatar.
Lastly, I want to talk about the big lie that stops creative entrepreneurs from choosing a niche. It’s this falsehood that says, if I choose something, (ie. if I’m known for something) I can’t change it.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Here’s the deal, your niche isn’t solely about your title, or what you call yourself.
It’s about the problem you solve and the solution you provide and your ideal customer’s willingness and ability to pay you for your product or service.
Your niche is the exact solution you provide to a specific and defined audience that has the desire and the means to pay for your product or service.
Once you define what your greatest skill set is, shift your focus away from ‘You’ to ‘Who’ needs and has the means to pay for what you can deliver you’ll be well on way to defining your ideal niche.
Too many people myself included become way too caught up in needless worry over choosing the “wrong niche” the primary reason (I refer to as the big lie) is “what if I choose the wrong one?” Or, worse, “What if I’m closing off opportunities to serve and sell my product/service to a wider audience if I niche myself down too far?”
For the sake of example, let’s say you teach acrylic pouring. More specifically you teach furniture designers how to apply acrylic pouring techniques to their designs.
If you created an online course specifically for furniture designers that want to learn how to apply acrylic pouring techniques to elevate their designs so they can sell their pieces for a higher price, would you be cutting off other audiences (ie. non-furniture designers) curious about learning this technique?
No, someone interested in this specific style of painting could still sign up for your course.
Does this mean you’ll have to adjust your curriculum to accommodate other audiences? No, not unless you want to or you could create different iterations of your course for different mediums.
The bottom line: You’re not married for life to a niche, you can change it or apply an established niche to different audiences. It’s your business, it’s your life, it’s your call!
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