The most challenging obstacle a new brand faces is How to Come Out of Nowhere. Many of you here today are probably a lot like most of my clients. You have an expertise, a truth, an invention, a book, or a workshop inside of you that you know could help so many people, and would make a huge financial difference for you and your family if you only knew the right things to say, at the right time, to the right people. And it feels a little scary, quite frankly. The stakes feel high, because putting your own brand out into the world is taking something that you’ve, until now kept close to your chest—Your own desire for a greater future. You’re at the beginning of your hero’s journey with building your brand. There’s risk involved. The stakes are often high. But the reward that awaits you, should you successfully accomplish your mission, is a greater future for you and your family. The life of an entrepreneur is certainly not for the faint of heart!
But can you see how powerful and universal the desire is to live into a greater future? Every brand is born with the purpose to fulfill a promise for a greater future! The reason we sit down, get busy and build a brand is to create a greater future for ourselves, we have a dream and a brand will helps us carry that dream into the realities of others, and when that promise of a greater future is kept to THEM, to your ideal individuals, and then kept again and again year after year for every person who encounters your brand, then you’ve built a brand that can Come Out of Nowhere.
How to Come Out of Nowhere is such a prevalent question on the minds of entrepreneurs, that I began offering a How to Come Out of Nowhere workshop, where we help you brand like the Top 1% even if no one knows your name. So to answer your question, I’d say How to Come Out of Nowhere is definitely the most challenging obstacle a new brand faces, and as far as the best way to overcome it? Well, obviously there is no quick-fix, one-off sort of answer to that, otherwise I wouldn’t need to lead an entire workshop on the subject…but to distill it for you, the best way to Come Out of Nowhere is to secure free word-of-mouth advertising by using the power of branding. Did you know we’re 50x more likely to buy from word-of-mouth advertising? If we know, love, and trust the person who recommends a product, we’re 50X more likely to buy it over all competition. We often accept our friend’s recommendation, and look no further.
The secret to securing word-of-mouth advertising is, in a nutshell, by securing brand loyalty. And now we’ve come full circle right back to your brand fulfilling the purpose for which all brands are meant to fulfill again and again and again: The promise of a greater future. A customer that is receiving the consistent emotional experience of your brand’s promise being kept again, and again, and again, will sell your products and services for you, because they love feeling like the hero in their own journey with your brand. Everytime they share your brand with another person, they get to feel like they are an important part of something that is going to make someone else’s life better.
[BONUS] What makes people decide to buy?
Well, we’ve already talked about how the decision to buy is emotional, so to answer that, let’s start by looking at the most common obstacles to buy. The reasons people give for not making the decision to buy. The four most common obstacles to buy are: Time, Money, Ability, and Peer Pressure. Time would be like, “I don’t have time to use this product, I’m too busy to take this workshop, It’s going to take too long to get the results…right? Time-related obstacles. Money is maybe the most obvious of the obstacles, “I can’t afford this. I shouldn’t spend that…” Ability is along the lines of, “I’m too young for this, too old for this, too short, too tall, too lazy, I don’t know if I can see this through..” and then there’s peer pressure which is like, “What will others think about me if I buy this product, or if I align myself with this brand?” Customers often encounter a combination of these obstacles to buy when making purchasing decisions, but for each brand there is ONE obstacle to buy that is the most prevalent for YOUR ideal individuals. Your job as a brand is to identify which of these obstacles looms the largest for your ideal individuals, and then use your brand to do what I call: Valuing Every Vulnerability.
An obstacle to buy is in essence a fear, and the decision to buy is emotional. Valuing Every Vulnerability is how you help your ideal individuals overcome their fears, their obstacles to buy. It’s all about identifying your ideal individual’s most prevalent obstacle to buy and then addressing that vulnerability head on through an inspirational story that helps them imagine themselves living into the greater future promised by your brand.
Thank you so much for joining me! Keep treating these articles as a masterclass for becoming an Inspiration to Millions with Branding and be sure to follow me on FB and YouTube so you don’t miss a single thing! And as always the way to becoming an Inspiration to Millions starts with our motto: Love What You Do and Love How You Do It.