Is your message helping or hindering you? In today’s episode I share 5 tell-tale signs that it might be time for a message makeover.

Your message is fundamental to business growth – it’s a must have not a nice to have. So regularly assessing whether your message is helping you to achieve the goals and desires you have for your business is key. Because really good messaging is a remedy for so many of the challenges and – I believe – the mindset blocks we can face in business. 

So take a listen and see if any apply to you. 

Connect with me

On Instagram @hayleymaxwellwrites

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

Unearth Your Momentous Message Workshop on 11 November 2022
www.hayleymaxwell.com/messaging-workshop

Fiercely You Coaching

www.hayleymaxwell.com/fiercely-you-coaching 

One day Messaging Intensive

Email me at hayley@hayleymaxwell.com to find out more.

Free resource

Become Wildly Unforgettable
8 ideas to rise above the noise and claim your powerful position as a memorable and recognized expert in your industry. Grab it here: www.hayleymaxwell.com/wildly-unforgettable

TRANSCRIPT

5 tell tale signs your message needs a makeover

Well howdy howdy my friend, welcome to another episode of the fierce impact podcast. 

Lovely to have you here, it’s always such a delight to tickle your eardrums! 

Today I want to run through some of the tell-tale signs that your message needs a makeover (or in some cases a total overhaul.)

Because when you nail your messaging it has such a positive knock on effect in so many areas of your business and really creates greater focus, calm and flow in our business. 

So let’s jump into straight into the first sign that your message needs a makeover.

1. You’re not attracting the clients you really want to work with

This is one of the biggest telltale signs that your message needs a makeover is that you’re not attracting the clients you really want to work with.

There are a few reasons why this could be the case.

It might be that your message is too broad. And not specific enough to them. Because our message needs to be highly focused on the exact person we really want to attract. The deeper you can go, the better. If you try to speak to everyone (or as many different people as possible) you end up resonating with no one at all. This is why it’s far better to go deep than wide. 

It enables you to be really specific with your message and specificity is what will light people’s brains up and capture their attention because it immediately makes them think – Oh! That’s me. She’s talking to me!

If your message is too broad, in a bid to try and capture more people, it ends up being very generic and vague. And it doesn’t attract anyone, so it actually doesn’t work to do this. 

Another reason why your message might not be hitting the mark and drawing in your ideal clients could be that you’re making assumptions in your messaging about what they want, need, or aspire to. Rather than basing it on fact.

This tends to happen in the earlier stages of business when we’ve not worked with many of our ideal clients before and don’t have that experience and background knowledge to go from or you haven’t spent enough time researching, speaking to, and listening to your ideal clients. 

If you believe this could be the case. Then I want to encourage you to start doing more research. Speak to the clients you have had who you would like to clone and dig into how they felt before they came to work with you. 

Listen really careful in discovery calls. Ask questions that make your potential clients reflect on how they are feeling and what they are experiencing. What they are really seeking to achieve. Record those calls – if they turn out to be a great fit, transcribe those conversations and use those insights to inform your messaging.

Or it could be that your message is not sparking any sense of feeling or emotion. In you or in your ideal clients. Because as I regularly say, if you don’t feel your message. If it doesn’t motivate you, fill you with conviction, it won’t be as impactful when you deliver it. And your audience will pick up on that too. It’s also got to connect to your ideal clients at an emotional level too, so it’s got to be incredibly meaningful to them too. 

Ok, moving on to reason number two why your message might need a makeover.

2. You’re being ghosted after discovery calls

When you have your discovery call with potential clients, are they excited and ready to work with you? Have they already narrowed you down as the person they want to work with? Because your messaging has already done all the work preparing your clients – communicating who you are, what you stand for, what makes you the person for them, and how you will help them to achieve their goals and desires.

So your discovery call then,  isn’t so much about you ‘selling yourself and your services’ as it is you having a chat, getting to understand a bit about each other, seeing if there’s a fit. If the vibe is right. Because they’ve already made their mind up prior to hopping on the call that you’re the person they want to receive help from.

If this isn’t happening, and you’re finding that a lot of your calls are not eventuating into anything. That you’re either being ghosted or people are coming back to you and saying it’s not right for them.

If this is happening a lot to you, then you really do need to take a look at your messaging. And see what gaps you have from the point at which they come across you and don’t know anything about you, to the point where they are hopping on a call with you. You need to assess what parts of your message you need to communicate at the different stages of your customer journey in order to support your potential clients to make an informed decision about whether you are the right person for them before they get on that call with you. 

Moving onto number three.

3. Your business growth has stagnated.

If your business growth has stagnated, it could be that your message is no longer cutting through the noise and standing out in the way that it once did. 

Now I do want to caveat this and say there are many reasons why a business may stagnate. But your message could be one of these reasons. So it’s important to assess your message. 

It might be that even though your message was, once upon a time, quite unique and helped you to stand out. That now, there are many people in your industry who have a very similar message. Because there are definitely messaging trends that people jump on. Particularly in certain industries. 

Let’s take, for example, the life coaching industry and live your best life. And the whole vibe and visual imagery that often sits alongside that message – I’m positive you’re conjuring up what I mean in your mind. Someone on a beach, wind blowing through hair, standing on rocks with arms held high and open. 

Because remember – your message is also communicated visually – through your identity, your photography, the feeling you communicate and through the spoken and written word. 

What happens is when everyone has a very similar message, it ultimately erodes the effectiveness of your message. Because it becomes like wallpaper and blends in. 

So ask yourself could this be the case for you. Is the message that you’re sharing one that is now incredibly common? Do you need to work on your message and reposition it in a different light?

Another reason could be that your message worked previously, but over time you have shifted slightly and you’ve refined your ideal client, so even though what you are doing is broadly the same, there are some nuances with the clients you now serve. And so the message you initially created is not quite hitting the mark for the client you have evolved into. So maybe they need a slightly different message because it just doesn’t quite fit them.

So have a think about those couple of reasons and ask yourself whether either could be contributing factors in why your business has stagnated.

Ok, reason number four for your message needing a makeover is:

4. You don’t know what to talk about

This is something I’m hearing a lot of people talking about lately. Specifically in relation to people who want to increase their visibility through speaking. 

So starting podcasts, speaking on other peoples’ podcasts, reaching out to people about being a guest expert, pitching themselves for summits and events. 

And the thing that’s stopping them, is that they don’t know what to talk about. 

And it’s not that they don’t have anything to talk about, because they absolutely do. It’s just that it’s all jumbled in their head and they haven’t clarified and distilled their message. They haven’t worked on their messaging pillars to give them a clear idea of what they are talking about. 

Which also means they haven’t strategically determined what their speaking topics are. Or what their signature talk is. 

And this holds people back from putting themselves forward for opportunities that can really help them to expand awareness and recognition of their brand – your business – among the right people. To grow their audience.

So this is why it’s so important to work on your positioning and your messaging. Because it creates boundaries around what you are going to strategically talk about in order to position yourself in the space you want claim in your ideal clients’ minds. And this is part of what I do when working on clients’ positioning and messaging. Because then they don’t need to worry about not knowing what to talk about. They have all of their topics highlighted. They know what their signature talk is. 

And lastly – #5 which leads on nicely from what I’ve just been talking about is: 

5. You’re not showing up consistently

But more specifically, you feel like you don’t have the time to show up consistently. 

And the reality is, it’s not that you don’t have time to show up, it’s just that the whole process and preamble of you getting prepared to show up, to post or create content, consumes a huge amount of your time, because as per point number 4, you don’t know what to talk about. 

So this might look like you are scrabbling around for ideas. Maybe you’re scrolling and scrolling looking for inspiration. Maybe it always takes you a really long time to craft your content because you haven’t previously articulated your thoughts on it – so you’re always coming at things fresh. So everything takes longer.

So, what happens? 

You become very inconsistent in showing up because you can’t fit it into the hours you have with everything else you do.

So you put it on the back burner because each time you go to show up it takes up far too much of your headspace. 

And this has a ripple effect. You don’t know what to say, so you don’t show up, so you aren’t as visible, so you’re not increasing your brand awareness, you’re not increasing your recognition as an expert or authority in your industry, you’re not building trust you’re not allowing people to see you, and then enquiries and sales start to slow down. And so on. 

You get the picture.

So messaging isn’t a nice to have, it’s fundamental to business growth. It has an impact on so many areas of your business and you being able to operate efficiently and effectively. You being able to make the impact that I know you really want to make. 

And so if you’re listening to this and thinking uh, some of these feel pretty close to home. And you’re at the point where you feel like you need some help – I would love to help you. Because I do not want you to sit there struggling with your message. Because I know how transformation it can be, both to your confidence and your business.

Here are 3 ways you can work with me right now.

1. I’m running a live online workshop called Unearth Your Momentous message on Friday 11 November. It’s just $55. I’ve designed it to give you a process/ a roadmap to get everything out of your brain and then how to look for the themes and threads that form your message. We’ll get started working through some of the exercises during the workshop, so you can begin to make progress straight away. You won’t be able to finish it all in the workshop, because it will take longer than 90 minus to do this self-reflective work, but it will get you started.

All the details are at hayleymaxwell.com/messaging-workshop. I would love to see you there.

2. Number 2 is my 1:1 coaching container. This is a an 8 – 12 week deep dive

To help you break out of obscurity and reshape your business into a brand that fiercely represents you. With a focus on your brand positioning and messaging. So we look at what you want to do in your business (because so many people get to a point where they’re stuck not knowing what they actually want to do or where they want to go), what you want to be known for, what makes you different, what your message is, we look at defining your offer suite, developing your speaking topics and signature talk, refining your core communication channels – so that everything aligns with your new positioning and messaging so you can really showcase your expertise and the value you provide. All the details are on my website. 

3. And lastly is a messaging intensive day. Where we spend the day together working on and refining your messaging. I take you through my messaging process and help you to distill the message you want to be known for and your messaging pillars, content ideas, so that you get real clarity and have a clear path forward for your next steps. 

If any of these sound like what you need to kick 2023 off with clarity and confidence, then just get in touch with me and we can have a chat. See if there’s a fit for you. There’s no obligation. I’m not pushy. I just really believe that getting our positioning and messaging right is a remedy to so many of the challenges we face in business. Particularly around visibility and business growth. 

And there are so many women in business out there who are incredibly talented at what they do, they bring so much to their clients’ lives but who are hiding in the shadows as it were, because they don’t have the clarity and confidence to articulate what they do. And when they have their positioning and messaging sorted it gives them a whole lease of life – it’s like they have this conviction and drive and courage to get out there in a way that they haven’t before – which opens up amazing opportunities. 

Any way – that’s it for today’s episode. If you’ve got any thoughts or comments on today’s episode let me know. You can find me @ the hayley maxwell on instagram. Or come and connect with me on Linkedin. I’ve just started playing in LinkedIn again and I’m quite enjoying it in a way I haven’t before. So come and connect! 

And if you don’t want to miss any future episode hit follow or subscribe in your fave poddy player.

And until next time go forth and be fierce.