3 Keys to Confident Self-Promotion AND How To Sound Natural Doing It
Have you ever held back from confidently promoting yourself?
Pretty sure we all have…
In life, we’re taught from an early age not to “brag,” so when we grow up to be adults, we often find it hard to talk about ourselves – even when we do achieve some really awesome things that deserve to be talked about!
It can feel like an internal battle that you’re constantly fighting, especially as a business owner.
Because of course when you’re selling your offers, you want people to know how great you are so that they feel confident working with you.
It’s a double edged sword that can feel impossible to navigate, so if you can relate, just know you’re not alone.
But here’s what I ultimately want you to know: self promotion doesn’t have to be slimy.
When you learn how to talk about your accomplishments in a way that’s enticing (versus braggadocious), it can actually be the VERY reason that someone decides to work with you!
So, if you’re ready to feel confident when promoting yourself and your business, you’re in the right place. Keep reading for the 3 keys to doing so naturally!
The 3 Keys To Confident Self Promotion
- Key #1: Start with the problem
If you’re familiar with copywriting at all, you’ve likely been told to hone in on the pain points of your ideal client so that they feel more inclined to buy from you.
But I don’t love this idea of “pain points” because it leads us to focus on how much “pain” we can cause our prospects in order to get them to buy… and that just doesn’t make sense to me!
Here’s a different way to approach this:
🛑 STOP calling them pain points and switch your focus to the actual PROBLEM that your audience is experiencing instead.
When you do this, it’s less about “twisting the knife” so that they feel the pain, but more about making them feel SEEN and HEARD.
To put this into perspective, I want you to think about it like this ⬇️
If you have kids or you’ve ever interacted with kids in some capacity, you know they sometimes have tantrums. In those moments when they start screaming at the top of their lungs, what do you do for them?
You acknowledge the emotion and try to get to the root of their PROBLEM!
For example: “Hey Sally, it looks like you’re feeling really angry right now. Is it because your sister got the seat you wanted at the table? I totally understand how that feels.”
You describe their reality so that they feel seen and heard. Usually when you do this, they are more willing to calm down and listen to what you’re saying.
For this example, notice how you aren’t dwelling on their pain of being angry and upset. Instead, you’re simply addressing their feelings and getting to the root of the PROBLEM.
In marketing, it’s usually taught to keep the pain point front and center, which often causes us to go overboard on describing how awful our audience’s current situation is. But when you do that, it really only makes them feel worse about their situation.
Calling out the pain is fine, but don’t stay there! Instead, quickly move into the real problem they’re facing and describe it better than they can themselves. When you do this, you:
✔️acknowledge their reality
✔️help them realize that someone else gets them,
✔️give them hope for a solution
✔️ AND ultimately build more trust.
- Key #2: Get Attention
Sounds simple I know, but hear me out…
When you’re trying to promote your business ANYWHERE, you’re essentially fighting for someone’s attention and you’re fighting against all kinds of distractions.
Your audience has an inbox flooded with messages trying to get their attention, their social media feeds are busy, and life is moving quickly, which means that in order for you to stand out, you must know how to “stop their scroll” and looking in your direction.
There are a lot of tips and tricks out there for how to successfully get someone’s attention in marketing, but my absolute favorite that works almost everytime is a pattern interrupt.
Patterns are the shortcuts that our brains have for functioning in the world and processing things. When you interrupt a pattern, you essentially do something unexpected.
The reason this works is because our brains are trained to instinctively focus on anything that is new, different, or unexpected.
For example, in everyday life if you saw a lion in our backyard, you’d probablyyyy pay attention to it because it’s not supposed to be there. It’s an evolutionary survival mechanism.
In marketing, this might look like a seemingly unrelated story that you somehow connect to your offer (I call this salesworthy storytelling), an attention getting subject line, a new social media graphic design, etc.
The GOOD NEWS is that now in a world of mediocre content written by AI, the more you can be human, the more you’ll stand out.
- Key #3: Build a Bridge
By now you might be thinking… “Danielle… so far we haven’t actually talked about how to promote ourselves??”
I know, I know… but the truth is, if you do these 2 things effectively, you’ll have your ideal client’s attention, and THEN you can talk about what it is you do and how you will solve their problem.
The NEXT step is an exercise that I do with my clients called the Bridge of Beliefs and it’s super simple.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What does someone need to believe about ME in order to buy?
- What does someone need to believe about my OFFER in order to buy?
- What does someone need to believe about THEMSELVES in order to buy?
When you answer these questions, you can then adjust your messaging and your marketing as a whole in order to hit on all of these points to further speak to your audience and get them locked in and interested in what you’re promoting.
But if you want to take this exercise even further? Do the flipside of this and make a list of any and all beliefs that YOU have right now about yourself, your offer, and your business.
This is where the imposter syndrome starts to creep up… that inner voice that tells you you can’t do it.
Be honest with yourself here and THEN, write down what beliefs YOU NEED TO HAVE about yourself and your offer to sell the heck out of it.
This is what your BEST self would tell you – the reality check!
The quicker you can bring your current beliefs to the surface and grow aware of them, the quicker you can reframe them and grow the natural confidence to promote yourself proudly.
Ready to experience LaunchFlow in your life and business?
These 3 keys just merely scratch the surface for what I work with students on in my LaunchFlow programs so that they can finetune their offers, master their messaging, and ultimately step into confident self promotion without the ick.
Over the last year, I’ve been working with students in the LaunchFlow Accelerator and 3 cohorts later, I’m proud to say that students are confidently stepping into this identity.
While 6 weeks together gets us started on the right foot, this work often takes repetition and refinement, which is why I’ve decided it’s time to offer a little more support…
I can’t spill all of the details quite yet, but just imagine:
⭐️ a year’s worth of support
⭐️ a proven offer concept that sells every time
⭐️ a framework to go from live launching to evergreen in a way that WORKS
⭐️ and MUCH more
If that sounds like something you’re interested in, CLICK HERE to download the free LaunchFlow Roadmap and you’ll be among the first to know when more details are released!