Finding Your Brand Voice

You’ve probably heard it at least once if not hundreds of times: “People buy from those they feel as if they know, like, and trust.” You know it’s true because it’s true for you. But it’s also true because the data marketers collect proves the idea that the KLT principle is the way to build a successful business with happy and satisfied fans for customers.

Think about your own purchasing and how you make a choice to buy or not to buy. You probably have a few brands at the top of your mind that you really trust over others, and you've probably even willing to pay a little more for because you trust them so fully. It’s the same with your customers. They might pay more just because it’s you. Because they know you, like you, and trust you.

The know-like-trust principle comes into play every single day for every single person looking to buy anything. The choice of whether to use a debit or credit card to make a purchase without fear of information being stolen or the product being worthless is always in the buyer’s mind until they know they can trust you.

To demonstrate that you are someone they want to know that they can like and trust takes time. It’s a process that can start with a blog post and end with a customer care call where you solve a problem related to your product or service and anything that happens in between. You can do a lot to help your audience know you, grow to like you, and ultimately trust you by the content you publish. The brand that you create, the voice you speak with, the products you develop, and how you deal with all of that while putting the customer at the center as the main character in your story. In the following pages, you’ll learn about the know-like-trust principle and how it can help guide you to creating more engaging, more effective, and more worthy content for your audience and customers at all stages of their buying journey. First, let’s learn more about the KLT Principle, then we’ll talk more about how you can use this knowledge to create a better brand story that can’t help but elicit all the good feelings the KLT principle seeks to bring about.

No matter what type of business you have, understanding the know-like-trust principle is essential to your survival. The know-like-trust principle is truly the foundation that allows you to set yourself apart from everyone else while enabling you to market your business and grow your audience joyfully, with your customers always at the top of your mind.

The “KLT Principle” starts with getting known so that you can then use your information and content and actions to encourage your audience to like you. Once you are liked, you can start working on the trust factor of the principle by always doing what you say you will, being consistent, and living up to your promises to your customers.

Help Your Audience Get to Know You

Aside from your audience realizing you exist by seeing your name or logo, your audience also needs to feel as if they know enough about you to be willing to build a relationship.

For example, think of someone you like to follow. What do you know about them that makes you want to know them more

Are they philanthropic, do they do something you admire, do they have kids, or do something that helps you relate to them?

That’s the kind of stuff you want to share with your audience so that they feel as if they know you. However, you don’t have to tell a long story about your Yoga practice to make it count. You only need to mention that you were doing Yoga when the idea hit for them to feel as if they relate.

When people feel like they can relate to you, due to something you normally do, it makes it easier to get to know each other. They may never really meet you in person but if they feel like they know who you are, who your brand represents, and your character, they’re going to want to keep getting to know you more.

Consider what you can share with your audience that helps them get to know you better. If you really want your audience to know you, then you’re going to have to actively share information with them that you want them to know that will help the relationship grow.

You can find opportunities to share in your “about” information. All the information that shares your experience, any accolades earned, causes you’re involved in, and more can all help shape what your audience knows about you and inform whether they want to know more.

There are many more places and ways to share this type of information, aside from just your “about” pages. The truth is, any type of content you create, especially any content that can be termed “why” content - content that gives your audience insight into what you and your business stand for, what your values are, shows your personality, and how you came to your work - is going to help form the relationship

For example, if you have a hobby that you genuinely like, there is no reason you cannot share that sometimes with your audience even if it’s not directly related. For example, if you’re a Virtual Assistant who provides services to Life Coaches - who also happens to love Yoga - sharing your Yoga-inspired images or the thoughts that cross your mind in Yoga class can bring your audience just a little bit closer to that actual “know” factor you’re looking for.

Show Your Audience That You Are Likeable

Once your audience relates to you by wanting to get to know you more at this stage, they may start following you on social media, they may have signed up for your email list, or they may have even purchased a low-cost product. Now you can start showing them through your content that you are also likable.

Once people deem you likable, it’s not long before the trust follows, but you may need to spend a lot of time helping them get to know you while showing them that you are likable at the same time. There are many ways to do it, all of which involve using the right type of content to deliver the messages you want them to have.

To be likable, you must be appealing to your audience. This requires that you know exactly who they are and what their values are, what their fears are, and what their needs are so that you can deliver the right information using the right terms and the right personality that they are attracted to.

You may even need to learn the terms they like to use to express themselves and use them, too. Nothing is worse for understanding that not speaking the same language. This is not about jargon here either. This is about speaking to your audience in a way that makes them feel comfortable.

The “like” factor of the KLT principle is super important because this is where your branding comes into play. Branding is all about how your customers feel when they see your brand, think of your products or services, or are dealing with your website. Knowing how they feel about it is crucial.

Do they feel happy, excited, motivated, or something else when they are dealing with any of your online real estate, content, or products? Your content, information, and products should be designed to perform in a way that makes your audience feel the way you want them to feel. These feelings will eventually lead to the most essential factor, which is trust. Because if they don’t trust you, they won’t patronize you.

Demonstrate Trust Through Your Content and Actions

Once your audience starts trusting you, they’re going to become true fans of yours. Once they are true fans, they’ll start talking about you to others and will even defend you, should the need arise. That’s because trust breeds loyalty.

Trust is a potent component of the KLT Principle that cannot be ignored. Once you are trusted, that’s when your sales will take off, and you will know for sure that you have a good business concept that can continue for years to come. Let’s look at ways you can demonstrate your trustworthiness via your content and actions.

• Differentiate Yourself – Use your content to stand out from the crowd. A good way to do this is to study your competition to find out what they are doing. Then, fill in the blanks with what they are missing so that you can stand out. Show them how you are different in everything you do.

• Develop a Curiosity Mindset – You need to know everything you can know about your audience and what makes them tick. Plus, you need to know about your competition and about your own products and services. Be curious, study, learn, and implement what you learn.

• Know Your Point – When you create any piece of content, know the point of the content. What is your specific and measurable goal for the content? Do you want to get people to sign up for your email list, to buy something you are recommending, to learn something? What do you want them to take from the content? If you can write down what you expect them to get from the content first, it’ll be easier to create it.

• Understand Your Why – Everyone has variations on their “why” story. Your why may be unique, or it may be something everyone resonates with. Either way, knowing your “why” and being able to tell your story about your why is a great way to build the trust factor with your audience.

• Develop Your Own Brand Voice – This might seem like a strange thing. You may wonder how a brand can have a voice, but it’s important that your business feels welcoming and attractive to your audience. You do that by being clear about who you are and who they are.

• Stand for Something – If you really want to stand out, find something for your business to stand for. It might be standing for a concept like less work but more money or standing for something more specific to your business or the causes you care for.

• Tell Stories – Share as many stories as you can while relating them to your business and your audience. For example, tell the story of how you founded your business and why. Tell the stories of success that others have experienced due to your program or product.

• Be a Resource – Sometimes you cannot help everyone with your product or service, but you know people who can. The best thing to do when this happens is to simply be a resource to them. Give options and tell them about other people who can help them.

• Focus on Building Community – The other thing you can do to really get your audience’s attention is to focus on building a community of like-minded individuals that use your products or services.

• Spread the Accolades – Be generous with your mentions of other people’s success. Be openly thankful for your contractors who assist you. Show thanks and gratitude and let them know how much it means by sharing the accolades publicly. When you are a good person, trust soon follows.

• Show Results – Everyone cares more about results than anything else when they are exploring your services and products. Due to this, you can build trust by sharing success through case studies, interviews, and deep-diving into your successful customers’ experiences.

• Collect Testimonials – Don’t forget to make it part of your system to ask for testimonials from your customers. You can set this up via your email autoresponder system. Give them enough time to enjoy the product then send them a request for a testimonial. You may have to ask for it more than once, but if you put it in the autoresponder, it’s going to make it easy.

• Create Samples – Another way to create trust is to give them a free sample if that is possible with your type of business. If you cannot do samples, you can at least do a demonstration so that they can see what it’s like in the real world.

• Guest Post – If you can guest post or get articles published in places that your audience likes to read and consume information, you can develop trust that way, too. The main reason is that trust increases in numbers. The more they see you, the more they trust you. Especially if others are trusting you, too.

• Become an Authority – You probably won’t be an authority overnight, but you can work on the perception by publishing books, speaking at events, and having a great message to share that is slightly different or delivered in a different way than others.

• Teach What You Know – When you can teach other people what you know, and it works for them too, they will start trusting you more. You can teach your audience straightforward things via your blog or video channel in three to five minutes per blog or video.

• Exceed Expectations – This is probably the simplest way to build trust. If you wow your audience by giving them more than they are expecting, they’ll sing your praises loud and long.

Focusing on the know-like-trust principle is vitally important for the success of your business. If people don’t feel as if they know you, like you, and trust you, they are not going to feel safe to spend any money on your products, services, or programs. Let’s now dig a little deeper into different aspects of using the KLT principle so that you can get an idea of how it all works together.

Ask the Right Questions What Do You Do? – What problem do you solve for your audience? Think about results over the process at this point. What is the deliverable you provide to your audience? Who Do You Do It For? – Ensuring that you talk a lot about who you are doing these things for is essential. They need to see themselves in the story as you tell it. By describing the customer and their feelings, too, you can get closer to your audience. Why Do You Do It? – You do it due to the results that you deliver and the satisfaction of your customers. They are what pushes you to do what you do. It’s imperative that you make them the center of your “why.” Storytelling is a powerful way to connect with your audience and to other people on a human level. It’s always been the way we relate to others and make sense of the world. Stories also help people remember things. Using your story to connect to others is going to be the best thing you ever did for your business, your audience, and yourself. Look at Other Stories One way to ensure that you know how to tell your story is to check out some other stories. The founding of many businesses - from Martha Stewart to Seth Godin - are all fascinating and interesting to learn about. Your business is no different. You may not be Martha Stewart (yet), but you still have a following and an audience that wants to know your story and will believe it’s just as important as anyone who is now famous. Remember they weren’t always famous. Read these stories or watch their stories and interviews throughout time. You can look for many stories on anyone you want via the internet today. It’s interesting to follow an older story of a now successful business owner to see that they had roadblocks and issues too. They overcame them, and now they are where they are now. List Your Audience’s Pain Points As you write the story, remember to focus on the problems that you solve. For example, if you help people learn to get organized, get rid of waste, and create a less toxic life, how did you come to that epiphany? Explain it in full detail as you remember exactly how you felt as you discovered the solution. When you use the pain points as a reference to the solutions you’re creating, that will create a connection to them. They’ll feel the pain point as you discuss it, and relate to it, and bring it to light. Then they will feel the relief as you solve the pain point or offer them the solution you created. Explain Your Mission It can help to write your story if you also know what your mission is. Sometimes writing a mission statement can be the catalyst to helping you tell your story. It’s easy to do in just a few minutes. Just fill in the blanks. It’s the mission of [Name of Business] to provide [Who You Do It For], [What You Do], in order to [The Result or Value]. Example: It’s the mission of Nancy’s Home School Coaching to provide homeschooling mothers creative lesson plans, materials, and engaging strategies in order to make homeschooling more enjoyable, successful, and accessible for everyone. Once you have your mission statement, using that to develop further the story of how you ended up doing what it is that you do is going to really resonate with your audience even more. Tell the Parts That Matter Most As you craft your story, you don’t want to give them all the details. You want to provide them with just enough to pique their interest and build trust with them. If you’re not sure what matters most yet, try writing own three to five key moments in your business that were aha moments for you, then pick just one of those to expand on in a full story. Share an Insight As you work on your story, you may come to some form of insight that you did not know or realize before. Telling the story can almost be therapeutic for many due to this fact. Focusing on an insight that you realized can also be a great way to start or end your story. Connect that all together as you craft it. Telling your story may not end up the way you thought it might since you are going to focus so much on your audience, their feelings, their likes and dislikes over your own as you tell this story that is about you – while being mostly about them.

How Your Brand and Your Story Help You Reach Your Target Audience

Telling your story is only part of the picture, your branding is the other part. How you brand your business tells your audience a lot about you and your business. It’s a way to help them remember who you are and your story. When they see your logo or your name, they should think, “Oh, I remember this” or, “I know them.” Remember, branding is the way you impart certain feelings onto your audience with your products, serves, content, and so forth. It’s not really a color or a logo, but it’s a mood or feeling that you create using all those things together. You create your branding based on how you want the audience and clients to feel when they interact with your brand. You know how to do that because you have studied your audience. You choose everything based on their preferences. Knowing how you want them to feel is an integral part of that job because branding creates awareness. Your brand story tells who you are, what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, how you do it, and where you are headed. As you see, this is not a linear story, and it’s not just one thing; it’s a combination of things that all work together to create the whole story of your business. You will communicate your brand story via a variety of types of content like articles, case studies, data, eBooks, infographics, videos, and so forth. When you look at it this way, you can quickly see that your story is a never-ending story. All you have to do is remember your point as you create every piece of content while thinking about your mission and what you want your audience to think and feel.

To tell your brand story effectively: Pick Your Topic Based on Your Audience – Don’t tell a story because you want to. Don’t pick a color because you want it. Everything you choose, including the topic of your story, should be based on your audience and what they want to know and hear about. Choose the Right Type of Content for Your Audience – Some audiences like getting their information via video, some via written word, and yet others like a combination of both. You should present information to your audience in the format they most like to use. Use Your Brand Voice – We talked about brand voice earlier because it’s important that you know what your brand voice is. Just like you know what your brand’s font is, or brand colors are, you need to know what your brand voice is. Is it light-hearted and entertaining, is it direct and mathematical? Use that voice, not your own. Let go of marketing words and speak as your audience speaks. Word choice and tone are very important. Use Your Visual Branding, Too – Whether it’s fonts, colors, or something else that is visual in nature that you want to share with your audience, take the time to brand it with your branding to ensure that they know who created it. Remember how important colors are in creating a feeling or mood. Get Maximum Exposure – When you share any type of content with your audience, it’s a chance to share your brand voice and brand story with them, too. Ensure you get maximum exposure by asking your audience to share it with everyone and sharing it with everyone yourself. Promoting your own content is an essential way to get your message out there. When you create content, any content, with your audience in mind, it’s going to get more interest. That’s just the way things are. Your audience may feel like they know, like, and trust you, but they still want something specific out of you. If you deviate from what they know, they may leave and find someone else. For this reason, it’s imperative to create different customer personas based on your buyer’s journey so that you can create the right content at the right time and put it in the right place for your audience.

Using Your Brand and Story to Build Trust

The thing to realize is that while we like to say that business is not personal, it is. Business is how you feed your family. Business is how the world turns. Business is what you spend most of your day doing. Your business is how people solve their problems. It is emotional, and there is an art to being able to create the right content for the right audience at the right time to enhance the relationship. Earlier, we briefly mentioned the buyer’s journey and its importance to ensuring that your audience gets the information you want them to understand about you and your brand. The reason this is mentioned is because being visible isn’t enough, you must also demonstrate your ability to engage, relate, and serve your audience over time.

Since it takes both time and proof to build trust, how do you do it? Let’s go over how you can incorporate your brand story, your branding, and all your content into a powerful KLT-generating strategy. Create Your Branding & Brand Story The very first thing you want to do is create your visual branding as well as your story branding. Having this information to pull from at your fingertips is going to help inform a lot of content from here on out. Be Consistent & Follow a Template Take the time to create a template that shows your branding information and how you want everything to appear. Including the voice that

Know Your Audience Inside & Out If you don’t work on studying your audience, it’s going to be hard to keep creating content, products, or services that resonate with them. Remember that even if the demographics don’t change for your audience - their ideas, morals, and values might. Keep informed. Know Your Products Inside & Out It’s a good idea as well to know all your own products plus the products you like to promote, even if you did not create them. Try adding the info for products in a spreadsheet based on the problem they solve to keep them close at hand. Know Your Basic Buyer’s Journey Your buyers may have a unique journey so you will need to draw that out for yourself, but in general, the buyer’s journey looks like this: Awareness, Consideration, Decision. What type of content do you need for each place within the journey? Determine the Types & Forms of Content You Need Using the knowledge about your products, your audience, and their journey, you’ll want to determine what types of content they need to make the choices you want them to make. Know the Topics & Point of Each Piece of Content As you brainstorm the content you want to create, it’s imperative that you know the point of each piece of content as well as the lifecycle of that content. For example, you may post it on your blog, promote it to your email list, and share on social media, but why? What is the goal? Know it. Keep It Simple Remember that most content should follow a very simple idea. You should know the point of the content before you even create it. If you cannot write one sentence about what the content will accomplish, the content doesn’t need to be created. Engage with Responsive Audience Members Remember that there are other types of content aside from that which you create and mass promote. There is also engaging content when you answer a question and engage with audience members. This is highly valuable content that works very well for building the trust factor of the KLT principle. Promote Your Own Content Whether it’s free or not, it’s imperative that you take the time to promote all the content you create. Send a notice to your email list, tell your social media followers, and anyone else you can think of when you have new content to consume. The reason storytelling is so vital to everything you do is that you need a way to hook your audience early by making them the entire point of your existence. Stories that are driven by your brand voice or personality will get more engagement when you make the main character of your customer. Doing this is going to ensure that you have a positive emotional impact on your audience via your brand.

Creating a brand that people trust is so important that it is valued more highly than almost anything by most business owners. This is especially true of smaller sole proprietor, owner-operated businesses because there is less room for error. A big company like Nike can likely ride the wave of consumer discontent and come out fine. But a small business can be destroyed if the public lacks trust.

Keep Being Trustworthy Once you earn their trust, you must keep earning it. It’s never over. Keep being transparent and honest about everything you do. Talk openly about success and failure. The more you do, the more trustworthy you’ll become to your audience. It’s amazing the response you will get if you do make a mistake if you are just open about it. Create or Find More Solutions for Them Once you have a customer, you can make them into a repeat customer by finding other solutions for them based on what you know about them. What’s the next step? Even if you’re not interested in creating another product, affiliate marketing is an excellent option to keep a customer. Look for products that you can promote to anyone who has already bought from you as another stream of income as well to keep your customers in your circle. Engage with Your Customers More The old way of doing business was that the customer bought the item or completed the transaction, and that was it. You hoped they’d come back, but they might not. Now you have a direct connection with them via email, phone, and social media. Use them all to engage more with them and ask them more what they think. You’d be shocked at what a phone call (even if you leave a voice mail) can do for developing the KLT principle. Build a Thriving Community It’s one thing to be a sought-out person or company, but once you build an actual community, the potential is stratospheric. Fans involved in a real community such as in-person meetings, online meetings, or chats via Facebook groups or other forums like Delphiforums.com will develop a more influential relationship. Turn Your Customers into Promoters Do fun things like asking your customer to take pics of them with your product and tag you or host a contest for the most-watched video about what they love about your company, and so forth. The more creative you are in allowing your customers to be part of your branding, the more it’ll work out well for your business. Develop Valuable Content While you don’t have to publish every single day if you don’t want to, creating more valuable content to engage with your audience is always a good thing. Don’t forget to repurpose and reimagine your older content to make it easier. If you have content that is effective now, start there. Find a way to make more content like that. Backup All Claims You Make with Facts One way to build trust is to back up anything you say with facts. They can come from stats, interviews, demonstrations, and more. If you say it, back it up from someone else or with proof. Don’t be boring though, put some personality in your stats by creating interesting memes or graphics. Be Transparent and Show Your Humanity Be clear that being transparent is about business, not your personal life. Don’t get mixed up about your branding story and your business story and your personal life story. They are different. If you make mistakes, be human, and admit to it. People respect that. Once you’ve built trust with people, the best way to keep it is to continue being trustworthy. Don’t forget your customers because a repeat customer is much more valuable than a new one. Remember, you can let your customers help you get the word out by encouraging word-of-mouth recommendations, asking for pictures, and so much more. The key is engagement. If you stay engaged, the possibilities are endless.

Overview

Now that you understand what the KLT Principle is, and how you can incorporate it into your content marketing efforts, what should you do now?

Perfect Your Visual Branding – From the color palette to the fonts you use, the way you perfect is to talk to your audience. Know what they prefer and go with that. What you want really doesn’t matter as much as you may think when it comes to branding.

• Develop Your Brand Voice – Your brand voice is important because you will be creating content (or hiring someone to do it) and you need to know whether your brand voice is sarcastic - like @Wendy’s is on Twitter.

• Study Your Customer’s Journey – The other thing to become aware of to ensure that you can invoke KLT is to study the customer's journey because where you connect with them is as important as how.

• Develop Buyer Personas – Don’t take a shortcut on this, take the time to develop at least one ideal customer buyer persona so that it’s easier to know who you are creating content (or products) for. It’s best to create different personas for each stage of the buying journey.

• Know Your Audience’s Pain Points – You can’t create content or solve a problem if you don’t know what the problem is to start with. Write down three to five of your ideal customer’s pain points to use as a starting point for your branding story as well as a starting point for product and content creation.

• Know Your Products & Services – Whether you created the product or not, the more you know about each product that you promote, and how it can be used, or the benefits of the service, the more likely you can create informative content for your audience.

• Create Content Ideas Based on Your Goals – Another way to approach content creation is to look at your goals. For example, if you want to get your customer who purchased product A to buy service B, that is the goal for the content that you should keep at the top of your mind as you develop the content.

• Map Your Content to Your Buyer’s Journey – The buyer’s journey is what it’s all about to start with. Knowing your buyers’ journey will assist you in mapping the needed content to the journey so that you can fill in all gaps and answer questions.

• Create Opportunities for Engagement – As you develop content, try to create opportunities for engagement. For example, at the end of a blog post, ask for a comment, ask for a share, ask them to tell you why they disagree with you. Create a call to action that creates engagement.

• Map Product Promotions to Your Buyer’s Journey – Another way to use the buyer’s journey is to match products that you want to promote to the stage the buyer is in your funnel. For example, if you sold PLR content to a client, and you know someone who offers an affiliate program for similar content to what they purchased, why not promote it directly to them in an email? (Hint: This can be automated)

• Keep Promoting – As they say in marketing, you should “always be marketing” so when you create a product, answer a question or otherwise develop anything that can be used in multiple places to promote, do so.

Most of all, just keep being who you really are. You don’t need to be someone else to be successful with an online business (or any business). You simply need to understand your business, your audience, and use that knowledge to market to them, keeping the KLT principle in mind every project that you do.

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