Enhance Your Core Values Messaging

Hey everyone! 

I hope your Halloween was fantastic! I am spending some time with my nieces and watching them come to life in their costumes literally makes me so happy! As I was traveling out here to California, I was making a few messaging tweaks on an upcoming business model shift of my course rollouts. This got me thinking about how important it is to optimize our messaging to represent our core values!

In our October The Friday Society Membership training we discussed messaging optimization in serious detail so I wanted to cover a few of those highlights here. 

With so much content on social media, Google, and emails, it can often feel overwhelming, and confusing, especially if a business has not articulated their brand purpose effectively. That’s why it’s so important to have thoughtful and concise messaging so our clients understand what we are saying and what we are trying to convey with our calls to action. 

When I think about messaging, I like to break this down into four different parts. 

Part 1: Focus Your Message

Do you remember the exact moment when it dawned on you that you needed to start your own business? This moment is your core truth in business. At some point, we had a realization that we knew we could do things differently and make an impact in a deeper way. Then once this voice got so loud that you had to act on it, perhaps it started to manifest by you leaving a corporate job or moving away from a former business partnership. 

The Core Values of Forever Friday Consulting

Personally, when I was at SoulCycle, I had this intuitive knowing that what I was seeing in terms of marketing was not aligned with my values. I truly believe that all small business owners need access to affordable marketing strategies to grow their business.

Working at a big brand where it almost felt like we had to keep marketing ‘secrets’ to ourselves just didn’t sit well with me. It became my personal mission to consult others to align into a flow that made owning a business more fun, profitable, and manageable. This was the moment I realized my core truth for starting FFC.

If you have a moment to journal, ask yourself these four questions;

1. I truly believe..
2. A guiding principle in my business is..
3. With me, you’ll find..
4. My clients deserve to feel..

All of these answers are the reason why people decide to work with you and make your business so uniquely you! Your core values will impact your messaging. Sharing who you are, and the reason you got started, is the reason why people want to purchase from you.

We often glaze over the ‘why’ behind starting a business. However, I highly encourage you sharing these core values over social, and especially your welcome nurture sequence emails. Share these superpowers with your community because they are incredibly personal to your experience and the heart behind your mission!

And lastly, keep in mind that every single great product is filling a void. What are your clients lacking access to and how do you provide the solution? For each of your revenue streams, what does your client experience (literally put yourself in their shoes)? Apply these questions to each of your different revenue streams and share this with your community! If you are a TFSM member check out the training where we go deeper into applying this methodology to each of your revenue streams. 

Part 2: Messaging Your Values

This was an exercise we would often do at Lululemon and it was one of my favorite things to do! Keep out your journal and ask yourself these questions;

• How do you want to come across to your clients..
• How do you want them to feel when they interact with you..
• How do you want them to feel when they are interacting with your marketing..
• What’s your hope for the vibe of your business..

First: Pull out 20 words from the list below to encapsulate your core values!

Secondly: Cut out 10 words that feel repetitive or filler. 

Lastly: Cut out 5 more. Yes, I know this is hard!

These last 5 words are your non-negotiable core identity keywords!

All of these keywords help you define your brand identity. The goal is that you use these words in your marketing such as your newsletters or social posts. You don’t necessarily have to use the words every time but when you are about to share a story on Instagram does the story relate to your keywords? For the next month, try consulting these keywords so it becomes a part of your natural strategy. Keep them on a post-it around your computer or planner to keep them top of mind!

*PSA to members, Check out TFSM ‘Brand Identity’ webinar if you need a refresher on this!

Part 3: Social Content Buckets

In your social media messaging, each post or story should be answering, or alluding to, one of these following questions;

• What is it like to work with you?
• Why are you qualified to teach what you do? 
• What does your client’s life look like after they have implemented your product or service?

There are three social buckets to keep in mind. The first is your superpower so think about who you are. Bucket two is what your experience and your clients experience has been. Bucket three is your product or service. Think of what a 30 second commercial of your actual product in action would look like. 

For social media messaging best practices I recommend you putting yourself in your clients shoes, not your own, when giving tips. Overloading our community with information isn’t addressing our clients’ needs. Keep in mind, they may not even know the basics so take one small piece of information and create content around that! Leading by example is a great way to show your clients how you do what you do behind the scenes. I’ve said this a lot, but if you have a long caption then turn this amazing content into a blog! Check out this recent blog on SEO tips.

Part 4: Always Have a Goal

Take a moment and scroll your Instagram or TikTok page. If you were to look back at each of your posts do they have a clearly defined goal? Meaning, are you offering tips so a client might want to check out your training, promoting an upcoming workshop or series, offering a freebie, etc. If you are having trouble defining the goal of a post I like to add in a PS or a fun fact at the end of the post. This is similar to a CTA but has a different feel since you may not need every post to have a CTA. However, there is still a goal in mind.

For example, if you have a free resource or intro offering you can include this in a post or direct people to your link in bio. Check out my Instagram post where I use a PS example. A few goals could be introducing your team, leading into your opt-in, promotion of a product, suggesting to book classes this week, or directing to a blog post. 

Also, your messaging will change overtime as your business evolves. This is an exercise you may want to do on an annual basis or as you offer new products and services. 

The Friday Society Membership

This is a lot to think about but it’s so necessary for messaging optimization! If this content resonates with you, and you’d like to learn more, I’d love for you to join us over at The Friday Society Membership. Each month we dive deep into a topic like this plus client office hours where you come with all of your questions. There are exclusive perks and discounts to all members so find out more here or shoot me a message!

The Friday Society Podcast episode on Client Communication!

Check out this podcast episode where we touch on Client Communication!