🔎 Discover The Truth About Earning Online 💰💻
Just as going into war without a strategic plan will result in defeat, entering the business arena without understanding your target consumers will lead to failure. In this episode, Breanna Gunn, a messaging and funnel specialist, breaks down her method to learn about the target audience and earn online. Market research allows you to gather valuable information about your audience's preferences, needs, and desires. This knowledge enables you to tailor your messaging and marketing efforts to resonate with them effectively. Breanna's approach to market research and messaging offers a smart and effective strategy for understanding and connecting with your target audience. By conducting thorough research, actively engaging with your audience, and using their language, you can create compelling messages that resonate with your consumers and enhance your online business endeavors. Tune in to this episode to learn more and use this smart new strategy Breanna offers!
#impactfulentrepreneurshow #guestinterview #buildingAuthenticity
Breanna offers a gift for you!
It's a 5-Day Get Clients Challenge:
Low Hanging Fruit - who to target
Copy Shortcuts - understanding what to say
How to Sell
https://breannagunn.lpages.co/5daymarketingchallenge/
✅ Connect with Breanna:
https://www.facebook.com/thebreannagunn
✅ Breanna’s free gift for you:
https://breannagunn.lpages.co/5daymarketingchallenge/
✅ Audience Explosion Toolkit - Adrienne’s free gift for you:
https://www.socialsalesmachine.com/audience_explosion_toolkit
✅ Adrienne’s Entrepreneur Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/6.figure.strategy
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🔎 Discover The Truth About Earning Online 💰💻
You are building a business online and you know that you need to do some research into your target audience, what they want, what they need, and where they are getting stuck, so that you can help and serve them better, but you don't want to wait to start signing clients. You need some income now. What to do about this? In this episode, I am breaking down with my good friend Breanna, the exact method that she used to do market research to learn more about her target audience, and at the same time, earn over $80,000 doing that research. It sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Let's break it down. Let's do this.
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I'm here with Breanna Gunn. She is a messaging and funnel specialist working with business owners and entrepreneurs to create messaging and processes that inspire loyalty, momentum, and action that leverage trust, authenticity, and profitability because that's what it's all about. She shared her genius at everything from the Conscious Leader Podcast to CEO Medium to Entrepreneurial Success Podcast and everything in between.
You can find her hanging out at her own magazine. You can go to www.BreannaGunn.com/magazine and see what she's up to over there. I'm so excited to have her here with us. She's going to talk to us about authentically connecting through social media and making money doing it by being a real person, which I love. This is a strategy you need to have. Welcome, Breanna. We are so excited to have you here.
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
For people in the audience who maybe have not met you yet, could you tell us a little bit about you and your story of how you got to where you are in business?
It was a happy accident like most things in business are. I was going to school and getting a pre-law degree and was planning on going to law school. I went to work for an attorney who was fantastic. There’s nothing wrong with that but I realized attorneys didn't do the research. They didn't get the bad guy. They argued the case, but they weren't Perry Mason and it broke my heart. I decided that I wanted to help people in a different way. I went online and that was the end of the story. I never looked back.
A lot of people can relate to that because I can't tell you how many people I talked to when I asked how they got started in business. They are like, “It was an accident.” For me, it was an accident. I fell into it and then I got addicted to it.
It's the addiction that never leaves. As humans, we need to be constantly evolving and changing. If we aren't doing that, we get stagnant, bored, and frustrated. With business and building a business, you don't have the option to get bored. You have to be doing this.
As entrepreneurs, we are a special breed. People who are not like us, we described this thing that we are talking about now and they are like, “What? No. Give me my 9:00 to 5:00 and put me in a cubicle.”
“I want my retention. I want this. What do you mean you don't know how much money you are going to make every single week?” You can see their brain frying as they say it.
There's a certain thrill to not necessarily knowing exactly where the next paycheck is going to come from, but I have never felt more alive than being an entrepreneur as well. It’s fascinating. Tell us a little bit like you are the master of all things, messaging, marketing, getting your message out there, getting your name out there, getting your brand out there, and the right way to connect with people. How did you fall into that particular niche?
I started as a copywriter. I was a copywriter/do-it-all VA. A lot of us start out trying to figure out what we enjoy so we say yes to a lot of projects. We are like, “I don't want to do Infusionsoft. I don't want to build websites.” Our focus is from here, all the way down to what we specialize in. I love words and I love communication, and I'm passionate about building relationships.
That was natural for me to message, market, and all of those pieces. When you are marketing your business, what you are trying to do is build a relationship. You are not trying to sell a product. You are not trying to get your next client. You are trying to build a relationship. If you are looking at it in any other way, you are going to fall on your face a little bit. How many people pass the guy with the spinning sign on the side of the road and go, "He gets some clients and customers in," but most people were probably going to order pizza anyway.
How many people run up to the mall kiosk guy trying to sell stuff and go, “I have been waiting for you. What do you have for me?” No. We avoid that guy.
The guy who is following you with the perfume bottle, “Just let me spray.” You are like, “Please, no.”
None of us want to be that person on social media. At the same time, one of the most common questions I get from clients and people I'm talking to is I need to know what I am supposed to say and how I say it to get people to interact with me, to engage with me, and to pay attention to me. That’s your jam.
You have to talk to the people. You have to have that conversation with a human being. I have a saying that fake people have fake money. If you are in a situation where you have been told to create an avatar like we all were, and you go out and you make up this person and they are a mirror of you or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that a fake person doesn't exist in real life, except in your head and your past.
You know what your pain was. You might not describe it the same way Susie Q over here describes it, Joanie, Phil, or anyone else. Going out into Facebook groups, LinkedIn, or TikTok, having real conversations with people, and finding out what they describe their pain as is the fastest way to accelerate your marketing.
Real people have real money and they have real problems. You are not going to sell a solution if you don't know what the problem is. Nine times out of ten, I'm sure you know this, you think your solution is over here, their problems are over here, and in between is what they think their problem is. They don't realize that to solve their problem, they have to go from here all the way to here. They think they need to go to here. You need to figure out that path for them.
Real people have real money, and they have real problems. And you will not sell a solution if you don't know their problem.
People know what they want, but they almost never know what they need.
It's like dealing with toddlers.
If you try giving them what they need, they are going to be like, “I don't need that. I want this.”
"I want the cupcake, Mom. Not the sandwich." You are like, "That's going to give you a sugar crash. This is going to make you feel better." You end up with the toddler screaming on the floor because they can't have the cupcake. People get frustrated because they are like, "Nobody is buying my program, signing up, registering, and doing this." Did you stop to pay attention to what they want and deliver what they want? If you didn't, they aren't even hearing you. They might as well have earmuffs on. Your message isn't identifying as your ideal client, even though they are.
For those in the audience, this is exactly what they needed to hear. It's hitting them right in the fields and they are realizing, “This is the thing that has been blocking me. This is the area I need to tackle next.” They can feel it in the pit of their stomach. They know they are in the right place now. They are realizing, “I have been trying to put content out there. No one is engaging with me. No one is buying my stuff. I need to do better.” What's the best way to get started with figuring out what their people want? What's what their audience wants?
You need to start talking to people. Not like, “I like your feed.” Those types of comments don't do much. You need to have an actual conversation and the best way to do that is to get them on the phone or better off in Zoom because I talk with my hands. I'm very expressive in that way. On a phone call, you won't see that and you miss part of the communication.
Being able to have that visual and that audio communication, plus you can record the call if you ask politely, then you can watch it back. What you are looking for is the words. One of the questions I always tell everyone to ask on these types of calls is one, don't pitch. Don't sell your stuff. Let them know this is pitch-free. You are just looking to talk to them about why their program might be helpful or why your program might be helpful. The second thing is to ask them, if you could wave a magic wand in the air and solve the thing that's bothering them the most or the pain that they are feeling in their core, what would it look like?
Take those exact words. Rip them out of their mouths and use that in your content because you are going to find that there are a lot of people who feel that way. You will start noticing people commenting like, “I did a reel on Instagram. I know I have to do it, but I don't want to do it because my social media manager keeps telling me I need to make more reels.” I'm like, “I'm on TikTok,” and she's like, “You need to show up on the platform.” I'm like, “I don't want to.” I found that out and I was like, “She's going to kill me, but I'm going to do this anyway,” and I did it. She messaged me and she's like, “Oh my gosh.”
I posted it yesterday. By today, I have a slew of comments from people going, “I feel this way too.” They felt heard because I said the thing that they are thinking in their head, “I don't want to do it. I know I have to. I don't want to.” You have to figure out what those triggers are for your people. What is the thing that they need or have to do, but don't want to do in order to solve the pain that they are in?
Figure out the triggers for your people. Figure out the thing they need or have to do but don't want to do to solve the pain that they're in.
If you can speak to what's in someone's mind, immediately they are going to be like, “They understand me. I was thinking that. I have never even said that to anyone.”
That's the other reason I told people to do an interview and talk to people because when I ask you, “What's your biggest frustration right now around making REITs?” “It's expensive at Michael's.” “Great. What about that is frustrating?” You got to dig deeper because it's like with the toddler analogy. They are not going to tell you what the real problem is initially. They are just going to say they want the cupcake. They aren't going to say, “My stomach hurts. I'm so hungry I didn't eat breakfast,” and go down that road. You have to almost pull it out of people because they are ashamed and embarrassed. They think they should have already gotten to where they need to be going.
There's so much, especially in this culture that we have with entrepreneurs like, “My Lamborghini. My seventh car. My Tahoe vacation.” It's very stifling for people who are not there and who want to be there. You see it. That's why they use it in marketing because it's pain. If you aren't using the Lamborghini that is your person's Lamborghini in your marketing, they are not going to stop and turn their head and look at you and go, “They get me. I can't believe it. Where have you been all my life?” That's the reaction you want. I would rather you have ten of those than thousands of people who scroll past your stuff.
I have seen that trick before too. I love the advice that you are giving, Breanna. If you’re tuning in, she said to rip the words right out of their mouth. Literally, write down what they say and use those exact words. Don't paraphrase them in your own language. Use their words. I have seen people trying to figure out how to talk to network marketers. The network marketer says, “I need more people to talk to,” and the person translates that to, “You need traffic.”
That's not what they said.
“The word traffic means nothing to them. They need more people to talk to.” Those are the words they used. Those are the words you have to use.
I love how you put quotes around that because, in your copy in your content, there are multitudes of types of content you can create. You can do audio or video. If it's written content, you can say, “Have you ever thought, ‘I need to talk to more people?’” That's where you are going to start seeing traction. Is every single post you put up, every single email you send, and every single video you make going to resonate perfectly? No. It's an experiment. You don't give up in the middle. I have been on Instagram since its inception. It's embarrassing, but I have. It has taken this long for me to find clients on Instagram, but I'm now steadily finding about a client a month on Instagram.
You fine-tuned your messaging.
I fine-tuned my messaging to the point that people are not commenting on my posts. They are reaching out to me in DMs because nobody wants to be made to feel small. Don't be the person that says no DMs. Make sure you are accessible. If you don't want to deal with DMs, put your email address right there in the description.
Make it easy for people to contact you because more likely than not, the people that are in the most pain aren't going to admit it because, on the outside, everything looks shiny, happy, and wonderful. If they are like, “This facade is a facade,” then their whole world falls down. We were watching WandaVision with my husband, and I don't know if you have seen that. When they do, they do a magic act. Vision has gum in the works literally in his gears. He's having this issue and he lifts an actual piano. Wanda, who's a witch, turns it into a flat board. She picks it up and takes it off stage. This guy is like, “That was my grandma's piano.”
Earning Online: Make it easy for people to contact you. Because more likely than not, the people in the most pain aren't going to admit it because everything outside looks shiny and happy and wonderful.
All that to say, she took the thing that shouldn't have been able to happen and made it so that people could laugh at it, could poke fun at it, and could feel better about it. You want to temper the pain with the relief and don't hit on the pain so much that you forget that you have the solution. You have the magic pill for them. You have to offer both. I like to tell people it's an 80-20 or 70-30 rule. Eighty percent of the time, you want to talk about solutions, and 20% of the time, you want to talk about pain. Pain-based marketing works, but it also makes people feel awful.
No one wants to comment on your post and be like, “My life is a dumpster fire of a mess.” It feels that a dog sitting in the room where everything is burning and he's like, “Everything is fine.”
Those are your people. Don't pour gasoline in that room. If you are struggling with this and it's okay to mention the pain, but don't make the whole post about the pain. You can do that, but 20% or 30% of the time. If you post 7 days a week, it's simple math, 3 of those 7 posts can be directly attacking the pain and talking about the pain.
You can put the solution there, but it should be heavier on the pain, and then you want the rest of your posts to provide the solution, tips, teach, and establish your expertise. The other thing that you need to be aware of is as you are trying to attract these people to you, they have never met you. They don't know you. Your reputation does not precede you as much as we'd like to think it does. You have to spend some time establishing that authority and demonstrating your solution and demonstrating your expertise so that people feel comfortable reaching out to you when they are in pain and their pants are on fire.
The 80-20 rule is to talk about the solution 80% of the time and talk about the pain 20% of the time.
Some people get what we are saying but they are not sure how to do it. I can tell you from real life, I'm in lots of different Facebook groups. I see lots of people trying to make posts to understand what people need. I see a lot of like, “What's your biggest frustration with XYZ? Who here struggles with XYZ?” It's crickets and no one is commenting. The people are maybe thinking, “I get what you are saying, but I can't even get people to comment on a post. How am I supposed to get them on a Zoom call with me?
There are a couple of things you can do. One simple thing you can do is make it about them. You can truly make it about them and push that. I'm looking for five bakery owners. I'm doing market research. Don't call out their pain. Say who you are trying to talk to. You may discover they are not the people you need. Maybe you think you are targeting moms and it's grandmas who are buying your product. Talking to the moms and you realize their mom is the one that bought the present.
You may not hit the mark right away and that's okay. Another thing that you can do is have a five-day challenge that is delivered to your inbox. It's very simple. It’s a video component but you can do it. If you don't want to go over to Facebook, watch the video. It's fine. You can go to BreannaGunn.com/5daychallenge.
I will deliver a tip a day into your inbox. I will walk you through the process that I use in my business. I teach my clients who pay me thousands of dollars to do market research. It's not sexy. I wish it was but it's necessary. The thing is it can be fun. I have people that I have done market research with that remembered how I asked my questions and how I cared about their answers and how I spent time with them listening. They come back and they want to be clients. They send me clients.
It is a much bigger piece of the puzzle than people want to admit. If you are struggling with this, and this is something that your pants are on fire and you are not sure how to put out the problem, start with a simple challenge. It's free. Put yourself through it. Do the work. Don't do the thing where you sign up and then the emails go to spam. Don't do that. Take action.
When you take action and you don't get the result you want, start from the beginning and try again. As I said, you may not need to talk to moms or grandmas. You may need to talk to landscapers. You may need to talk to arborists. Figuring out who your people are takes a little bit of finessing, but it's a heck of a lot easier if you have a roadmap.
Spoiler alert. What she's describing is the free gift that she has queued up for you. That's waiting there for you. If you are realizing that you need to do some market research and figure out if you are supposed to be using someone else's language and what's coming out of their mouth, you got to talk to them.
I'm an introvert. This is fine. I'm okay. I'm not going to panic, but talking to people stresses me out. It's scary but it's a whole lot scarier to have zeros in your bank account too.
Pick your hard and it's so true. It's one or the other. It's the same thing for the people you are going to be talking to. They have this pain point. They have this problem they are trying to solve. They also get to pick their hard. Are they going to sit with this problem forever or are they going to work with someone like you to solve that problem? How are they going to find you if you don't tell them that you do the thing they need?
Now people know why it's so important to nail your messaging, and how to nail it by talking to people. If you are not sure how to talk to people, you grab the freebie and Breanna is going to teach you how to get those people on Zoom to talk to them. I would love to paint a picture of the future of what's possible when you start doing this and when you implement it. Do you have a success story of your own or of a client you have worked with?
My personal success story, I started out doing market research. I chose LinkedIn as my vehicle because my ideal clients are coaches and consultants. Those are who I work with. I knew that they weren't on Facebook. I thought they were on Instagram, but I couldn't find them. I was like, “LinkedIn is for old people, but I'm old people, so fine. We will do this.” I hopped onto LinkedIn two years ago, and within 60 days I made $80,000 in sales signing one-on-one clients who I got on a market research call with. I did not sell on the call. They reached out to me and said, “I can't stop thinking about the conversation we had. Can we talk about what it would be like to work with you?”
The market research calls turned into clients.
I had a client who hired me. I taught her how to do the LinkedIn method, and then we worked on her messaging across the board. We updated her website and emails as she was doing her market research. We took the conversations she was having. She recorded them and then had them transcribed so we could copy-paste the language. She was able to make back the expense of hiring me within 30 days, signed 4 clients, and is still using the same method. She used LinkedIn and Instagram. She used a different platform than I had used. I have used the same method on Instagram to find clients. People want to talk about themselves, so let them.
Earning Online: People want to talk about themselves, so let them.
Be the person who is kind enough to sit down and let them vent their frustrations because you need to hear the frustration that they have so that you can put the fire out. If you preface it like I do where I'm like this, “I'm not going to sell you on this call unless you ask me to.”
I want to hear what you have going on. I have people who still reach out 2 to 3 years later saying, “I'm ready now.” I talked to 368 business owners. Now not all of them are good fits, but I doubled my revenue from the year before. This works and it's something you should implement in your business on a weekly if not daily basis.
Talk to someone new as often as you can because the pain is always shifting. As we talked about at the beginning of the business, it's like sand. It's always shifting. Things are always changing. If you continue to talk to the people who need you, then you are the language that you are using, the posts that you are posting, the memes you are sharing, and the videos you are making, the content will speak to the right people at the right time.
As you grow as a human, business owner, coach, consultant, hairdresser, or whatever you are, your style is going to change. What you teach is going to change. It's going to evolve and grow. If you do your market research today, it can only last so long. You have to continually refill that bucket so that you know what the words that they are using are and you can stay ahead of the trends and the changes.
I'm hearing that it's a win-win. It's a win for you because you are hearing all of the language around all the pain points they have. You now have tons of specific words and phrases you can use in your content, but it's a win for them because they are getting to vent all that stuff and let it out and get it out, and it feels good.
This is stuff they tell their spouse. We Don't Talk About Bruno is a meme going around because of Encanto. They don't talk about this. This is locked up tight. You have to go through three other doors. It is not front of mind. It is always front of mind for them. They are like, “How was your day?” They don't go, “I had this pain but fine, great, and wonderful.”
“It was fine. It feels good,” with shifty eyes.
If you give them an outlet, they are going to take it. I live in Michigan where it snows all winter long and it was 60 degrees and my kids fought each other to get out the front door first. The thing is the more you talk to people, you may not have to go looking for more people because 9 times out of 10, the people with the pain know other people with the pain.
Earning Online: The more you talk to people, the less you need to look for more because nine times out of ten, the people with the pain know other people with pain.
They will refer people to you if you are solving their problems.
Yes. I have talked to people who were other copywriters or in my very same industry, other marketers that are like, “I don't do the thing you do.” They have turned into great referral partners, but they had this pain with their content because they were too close to it and they needed someone to help them give them some distance so they could see it for what it is.
What I love about this so much is, first of all, it's a powerful strategy. It's something we all should be doing as entrepreneurs. You developed the strategy of smart market research. You figured out that it's a win-win for both you and the person you are talking to, and a lot of them end up becoming clients icing on the cake. Now you have systematized it into your business. You do this on a regular basis to make sure that you continue to stay up on the right language. It sends a flood of clients continually to you as well.
We are not talking about an hour call. We are talking 15 to 20 minutes. I guarantee you that if you stop scrolling on TikTok, you can find fifteen minutes.
I love that so much. Be sure to scoop up your free gift because that's what's going to allow you to try this smart new strategy that you probably haven't used yet and you should. I understand people might be thinking at this point too. “If I implement this, I'm going to have all the right words and phrases to use on social, but how do I get my emails to convert better?” I know that you have a special gift for people who have a VIP ticket. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
I put together a workbook. I had printed copies made when I did a presentation, but it's an actual 24-page workbook that has funnel flows, language, and content for you. This literally will help you write a whole entire email funnel that converts an email sequence, an email, or whatever you want to call it because some people think funnel is a bad word and I get that. If your emails are not converting, if people are not opening them, not reading, and not booking, try this. This is something I give my clients. This is something that is not available anywhere else. The only way to get it is if you have a VIP ticket. I don't know if people can go back and buy a VIP ticket.
They can right now. If they are tuning in now and they don't have it yet, they can still scoop one up.
If you don't have one yet, you can't get this anywhere. This is gold. I even gave you a landing page template on the back so that you have the top of your funnel all the way through the emails including the landing page so you don't have to guess. Did I write your emails for you? No, but I tell you exactly what to put in each email so that you can craft it. If writing scares you, pro tip, make a video or leave yourself audio, get it transcribed, and then edit it from there.
What a great and wonderful tip. What a great gift. Thank you so much for contributing to that. Guys, keep in mind, the only way to get these emails that convert from Breanna is to either be one of her clients or scoop up this VIP ticket. It's a whole lot cheaper, honestly. Scoop up that ticket if you don't have it yet. This is wonderful because I have the feeling if you grab both of her gifts and you implement the market research strategy where real people now make real money, and then you grab these emails that convert into the VIP ticket, this could be the year that your business explodes. It's that simple.
The emails, use those on social. Take the words out of the emails. Repurpose your content. There's so much more that I could go into but don't think that I don't do email marketing. Use this to write social posts. It's okay. Although I have thoughts about not having an email list. You should not have an email list.
That's maybe another strategy for another day.
Don't be afraid of the word email. It's how to apply the language that you are learning from the people you are interviewing into a format that they can digest and consume and go, “I need to hire this person.”
Fantastic and that's so helpful. Regardless of what you are selling, if you have a coaching program, or an online course, even if you are selling network marketing products. Using the right messaging, marketing, and language, 100% is a game-changer in your business. It doesn't matter what you are selling, you need the right language and marketing. Breanna, thank you so much for sharing your genius with us.
Important Links
About Breanna Gunn
Breanna Gunn is a messaging and funnel specialist, working with business owners and entrepreneurs to create messaging and processes that inspire loyalty, momentum, and action that leverages trust, authenticity, and profitability.