From the desk of Razvan Rogoz
Dear friend,
When it comes to launching your products or services, there are two schools of thoughts. The first one is follow your passion, doing exactly what you feel like doing. The second one is to come with a highly specialized positioning, something that nobody in the market is offering. Neither are true or very valuable, as I’m going to explain below.
Let’s start with the most common advice – follow your passion. This is a good advice. The reason I’m in this niche now, helping self-improvement entrepreneurs is my decision to follow my passion first even if I’m in a less profitable market compared to before. However, your passion must provide commercial value to your marketplace. If your passion is something that nobody is willing to buy, then you have an hobby but not a business. You know what is another passion of mine? Video game development. I am not very keen on playing video games but I enjoy coding and building interactive stories through video games. However, as my skills are not at the level where I can do this competitively, it is just a hobby and not a business.
At the end of the day, I understand that you’re doing this to help people but you still must provide something people are willing to pay for. This means that your passion must have a monetization component and must fulfill a need in the marketplace.
The other approach is to take a laser focused positioning. This is where you look at what everyone else is doing and you come with something that nobody did before. In all honesty, this is worse than the first because originality doesn’t really translate to good marketing. The key of the game is to be appealing and offer value, not to be unique for the sake of being unique. In my case, I’m serving self-improvement entrepreneurs and this is a lot more specific than being a copywriter in general but if I were to serve someone that nobody else serves (copywriting for chicken farms, as an example) I would simply not have any clients.
So there is a balance. On one side, if you’re too general, there’s no value proposition as you’re everything to everyone and nobody sees the benefit in paying for what you’re offering. This is why we have NLP trainers, fitness trainers, CBT trainers, self-image trainers, communication trainers and so on. They have their niche. On the other hand, if you go way too narrow, then your market will be too small to sustain operations.
So what should you take? That’s up to you. Start by where your heart is. Yes, I will proclaim loud that I believe in doing business for profit purposes but I’m also going to say, louder, that I must believe that what I’m doing generates at least ten times the value for those around me and that I love my job. So in your case, ask yourself what you love to do, in this field and then ask yourself who you can help by doing this.
Take a look at your market and then try to go more narrow. Try to position yourself in a semi-specific manner. You don’t want to be the one in the world expert on a topic (unless you actually are, in which case, good for you) but you don’t want to be the guy or gal good at everything either. People are far more willing to buy from a person that does only NLP training as opposed to someone that does NLP and public speaking. It is simply a matter of authority, doing one thing and doing it well is better than being a jack of all trades, in the coaching field at least.
This is not something you just get right away. It takes time and effort to find a good positioning. Your positioning can be more than your niche. I know a psycho-therapist who positioned herself as one of the few people that does Skype calls. Another life coach positioned himself as a guy that is very enthusiastic, his energy level is always very high, he talks with passion, it is energizing to have him around.
This is why I’m saying positioning is more of an art than science. It is about creating a clear identity in the marketplace, even if it is not unique. You can cater to men, women or both. You can use NLP, CBT or both. You can do only online sessions for convenience and a good price or only offline sessions for a premium price and a premium, exclusive experience. You can have a direct, no BS approach where you talk from a very masculine position (it works very well with some markets) or you can have a more feminine, indirect approach to your products and services. You can help people with their relationships or with their money problems, you can help people change beliefs or uncover obstacles in their mindset.
The number of permutations is very high and it is similar to putting together an outfit. You want the pants to fit with the shirt and to fit with the shoes. What you don’t want, I assure you, is to blend in the crowd and not be noticed. After all, no matter how good you are, it doesn’t help a lot if people don’t notice you and don’t come to you. Keep in mind here that just as with picking an outfit, if everyone is over the top, just being normal and applying common sense can be a strong positioning. It is just relative to whatever is happening in your marketplace. Ten years ago, most coaches were wearing suits, perfect smiles, coming with a corporate like attitude to the marketplace. Who came with a laid back, casual attitude could stand out with ease. Now everyone is coming with that attitude like this is not a business but a hobby, so a bit of formality can go a long way.
The final element when it comes to your positioning is to be congruent with it. If you’re the kind of person that is always smiling, always making jokes, always joyful, then it makes no sense to position yourself as the serious, high profile, high caliber corporate trainer. Yes, there’s more money in that niche and more opportunities but it is not you and it will be a role, not a positioning. A positioning is taking who you are and building a market persona, not playing an actor. It would be a shame to spend 40 – 50 hours per week pretending to be someone who you are not.
So what positioning should you take?
I can help you reach that point, as this is a process in which you need to do most of the work. I know what works, the most common pitfalls but while other areas of marketing are very flexible, I strongly believe that when you’re selling yourself, you should be yourself. Even if yourself is not picture perfect, remember that you’re not running for office. My attitude of being profit oriented and quite temperamental pisses some people off and even makes some hate me. That’s okay though – because it also appeals very well to other people who are committed to helping people while at the same time understand that this is a business and not a charity. I can play the role of myself best and this is what you should do too.
So what now?
As a copywriter, I’m in the position to write you the copy that positions you as that expert, in your niche, that positioning that is congruent with whom you are. As a consultant, I’m in the position to help you understand how you should position yourself. I’m profit oriented so if you feel this offends you, then please don’t apply for a complimentary needs analysis call. I’m talking a lot about things like ROI, lead generation, conversion, profit, cash-flow and not much about intangible things as the love for people and how you’re going to change people’s lives. This doesn’t mean that I don’t care about them, it means that my role is to help you with things you don’t know, not what you know. Your bottleneck is business wise, not vision wise. You know why you’re doing what and I know that you’re an angel for many people through your biz.
This is why I’m helping you and not stockbrokers, investors or business opportunities, where most of the money would be for someone with my skills. I’m helping you because I believe in what you’re doing and I’m doing something great for the world by helping you sell. I’m helping the healer of souls and minds heal more people, by persuading people to act in their best interest. So, as full disclosure – I’m focusing 90% on the business side of a self-improvement business and you must feel comfortable with this.
I’m gifting you a complimentary 30 minute call to understand your needs. In these 30 minutes, I’m going to ask you many questions to understand how I can help you achieve your goals. After these 30 minutes, we can work together. Fees start at $50 per 30 minutes for consultancy and for sales letters, the fees starts at $1500.
Click Here To Book Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call
Use the link below to secure your complimentary 30 minute call. I only have a few spots available each week and regretfully, I can’t accommodate any other requests apart from those in my calendar. I’m currently helping several people, writing a book, designing a course, getting a new specialization and fully empowering someone to follow her dreams so my time is extremely limited.
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Thank you,
Razvan Rogoz
The Self Improvement Copywriter