You may relate to being multi-passionate and having your fingers in many pies.
Many creative entrepreneurs hate to be tied down, which is completely understandable. You got into this business to have the freedom to choose where your heartfelt aligned towards in any given moment. But, what happens if you have a range of offerings which target very different people?
Case study to paint a picture
For example, maybe you coach women through personal challenges, but you also do work with corporate organisations, and maybe you train other coaches or instructors in your industry or do supervision work as well and maybe you also have a side-hustle selling your artwork or creative projects. Plus, you’ve also got that card deck aimed at pregnant women you made while you were pregnant – which was years ago now. Right there, we can see quite a few different audience groups.
What’s the problem with having a range of ideal clients?
You might be thinking ‘the more the merrier’ and that it widens your pool of potential clients. That is true in one sense. But, then we come to the issue of how to describe what you do on your home page, or in an elevator pitch.
When you do so many things that solve so many different problems, your overall message tends to become quite watered down out of necessity.
In an effort to encompass everything, you have to start describing things very broadly and generally. As a result, neither the women who need personal coaching or the HR companies hiring a corporate trainer or the people looking for artwork or the pregnant woman looking for affirmations feel particularly spoken to or understood. So, the message may not hit home as hard. There is no question that a very specific niche can grow your sales. Would you want to work with a general graphic designer for your branding, or a branding specialist? Being a specialist in your specific offering definitely increases your perceived value. It also makes marketing really easy, because you have a really clear picture of who you are helpig and what they need.
Cost of marketing
Another thing to consider if you want to have multi-passionate offerings is how it will affect your overall costs. If you have different ideal clients/groups you’re targeting, you really need tailor-made landing pages for each group, to segment your site. This is a fantastic way for you to still funnel them down an experience which feels specific and made for them, which I use for many clients. You’ll just need to factor in that you need more pages now and your overall website is getting larger and the costs are increasing.
Social Media
Social media also can get more challenging. Imagine if you had a lot of diverse ideal client groups. Not every post is going to feel relevant to me as the follower, so I might get frustrated I’m seeing something that is not helpful to me.
I’m targeting lots of different audience groups, now what?
1. Try to find your common thread
Work out if there is a common thread between your passions that you can string together to create a cohesive message. If there isn’t one you can find, you may want to consider making separate websites for each client group.
2. Choose a primary focus
For a lot of clients, they probably have one main offering/group of people they are targeting that are their bread and butter clients and the majority of their income. This makes sense to keep as the primary focus on the home page and the messaging. If doing corporate speaking is something you only get asked to do twice a year or if no one is buying those pregnancy affirmation cards, then they are probably going to sit more in the background of your site.
3. Look at cross-pollination opportunities
Ask yourself: is this an opportunity for cross-pollination? Would your coaching clients enjoy your artwork and it would make sense to feature it? Would your training/supervision work make you look more credible with your coaching clients? Is anything undermining your core focus and sending the wrong message? For example, I’ve had some clients running businesses in more traditional fields i.e. medical, that want to offer some more unrelated soulful offerings. You have to ask yourself if it will enhance or undermine.
4. If you want to hold onto it, but it doesn’t fit, create a separate site or landing page
I know it’s more money and work, but if it’s undermining or diluting your brand, you have to ask if it’s worth keeping it on your site. If the offering is not of high enough value at this stage to make that investment, what you could do is create a landing page on your current site, but not link to it anywhere in the menu/main pages. Then you could run Facebook ads or whatever marketing you want to do to that landing page, without it disturbing your main site’s message. Or alternatively, you may want to use the branding process to do a ‘spring clean’ of your offerings and clear out anything you’re not really getting booked for or feeling aligned to.
I hope this helps you on your journey! Changing up the status quo in your business is never easy, but sometimes it’s necessary for growth.
If you want someone to support you through developing a new or refined brand strategy, I would love to help you. Email me at emma@soulstirringbranding.com.au
