TRANSCRIPT: As a solopreneur or freelancer your messaging is the foundation for everything that happens in your business. It can determine the type of clients you attract. The type of projects that come your way, and it can even affect the value prospects will place on you and what you offer.

So I wanted to do a quick rundown of the top 5 messaging mistakes I see out there, and give you some ways to avoid those issues and come out on the other side with the perfect messaging. So let’s hop right in!

1. Making it about you. (and what you think is important)

While we might be referring to this as “YOUR” OR YOUR BUSINESS’s MESSAGE. We should definitely come to terms with the fact that it’s not about you at all! Sometimes when we’re on the inside and /or when it’s our area of expertise there are things that are going to be important to us, but really don’t move the needle with our prospective clients or customers. So this first messaging mistake is here to remind us we all need to take a step back and make sure we make our messaging about them, our customers/clients.

2. Forgetting to make it exciting or stir emotion.

This second messaging mistake really has more to do with persuasion and moving the masses. The sometimes hard reality is that people take action or buy based on emotion. If your messaging is too clinical (might be a good word for it) or if it’s dry, it’s not going to persuade. So remember to make that message exciting or otherwise stir some emotion.

3. Not keeping it simple.

This is also a really big one that happens all the time. We forget to keep it simple. For me this encompasses a few different things. First it includes stuffing it full of buzzwords and industry jargon. And while prospects in your industry might understand the words, buzzwords rarely carry any real meaning. And then another example of not keeping it simple is the whole “too many cooks in the kitchen” angle. Now as a freelancer or solopreneur this should be easier to avoid, because you probably don’t have a boardroom full of people chiming in and feeling the need to get their opinion about what’s important included in the messaging. But it can still happen if you’re overthinking it and sort of overloading your message with too much information. So let’s just avoid all of these situations and KEEP IT SIMPLE.

4. Too Selling focused

This is another one that tends to happen a lot. It makes sense, we’re all eager to sell. And we just did some reading on CTA’s and what not right? But if your messaging is overly focused on the sell, it’s definitely going to come across the wrong way. Maybe a little spammy. A good way to avoid this one here is by focusing on the helping and not the selling.

5.Talking to the wrong audience

And this is probably the most important messaging mistake. Maybe I should’ve listed it as #1. But oh well, we saved the big gun for last.

If our messaging is targeting the completely wrong audience, we’re gonna have some big problems. I mean you don’t want your messaging to be talking to teens if your business is selling adult diapers right? And while that seems obvious you’d be surprised. And there’s another way this one sneaks in though and is probably the more common variation.

It’s not that the messaging is speaking to the wrong audience entirely, but that you’d failed to define the audience at all. Marketing 101 rule. If you’re marketing to everyone you’re marketing to no one. This applies to the heart of your messaging 100%.

Messaging is so crucial to any solopreneur or freelancer.

No one wants to be doing work that they don’t actually want for people who they would’ve preferred to not attract their way.

So hopefully I’ve been able to give you some things to keep in mind when you’re setting your messaging.

Let me know if you’ve seen any other messaging mistakes and good ways to avoid them.

If you can use additional help with perfecting your messaging, I offer a digital-on-demand course that can help you out. To find out more check it out here.