How to Promote Yourself Without Destroying Your Premium Brand

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Creative Podcast, episode 396

Welcome to the Six Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place. As a freelancer, have you ever avoided advertising your services because you were scared that it might cheapen your image, or ruin the brand you built, even though you kind of know you need it? Today, I'm going to show you why running ads doesn't damage a strong creative brand, why that fear is so common with some of the most talented creators that I've met and talked to, and how you can advertise without ever diluting your aesthetic, or your reputation, or the perceived value you have, and obviously without hurting your brand. At this point, I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of freelancers who have built their reputations through word of mouth, then they all hit a wall the moment word of mouth wasn't enough anymore. And I'll show you what exactly works for getting leads, getting clients that doesn't kill your brand. And then near the end, I'm going to share a lesson that you can take from luxury brands who sell $300,000 handbags. If you're new here, hi, I'm Brian Hood. Happy New Year. Glad to have you here. This is the Six Figure Creative Podcast. It is a podcast for creative freelancers who want to earn more money from their creative skills without selling their souls. If you want one central place where you as a creative can get business advice from lots of different sources, lots of different industries, lots of different people, and not the boring, homogenous, sterile pool of generic business advice you see out there for freelancers, then you're in the right place. I've been doing this podcast now for over eight years. I just had to do the math with my fingers because I still count on my fingers like a five year old. Over eight years at this point, I'm coming up on my ninth year now. Over that time, I have grown. I have learned things the hard way. I've learned things the easy way. I've worked with a lot of different people. I've hired employees. I've built a team here. And over this time, I've heard a lot of different toxic beliefs that freelancers have. Now, the first thing is the most obvious I want to talk about when it comes to this belief, of protecting your brand, protecting this baby you've built, is that fear of appearing desperate. I'm predominantly talking about paid advertising in this episode, but this pertains to really any sort of marketing that goes outside of what your paradigm is for normal. Every niche has what they're prescribed, one or two ways of getting clients that's acceptable. And pretty much without fail, anything outside of that is considered weird or desperate, or just not how we do things in our industry. And while there are some genuine things that work in some industries that don't work in other industries, that mindset is toxic, it's garbage, get it out of here. So I'm talking about paid advertising because that's the thing that I work with so many freelancers on, because it helps so many freelancers. It's the thing that I think is the fastest path to results for most people. They don't have large networks, aren't in large cities, don't have tons and tons of past clients. And even then, if you have capacity, you can still take on more clients, paid ads still has a place in your business. So that's why I'm talking about it here. And the thing that comes up time and time again is that protecting of the brand. And part of that protection is that fear of appearing desperate. I talked about this last week, episode 395, as a whole episode just talking about that fear of desperation. But when it comes to paid advertising and freelancers' minds, advertising signals that you are hungry for clients. I think the word I used last week was thirsty. And if you're hungry or thirsty for clients, that contradicts the positioning you've cultivated for your brand over the years through word of mouth that you are in high demand, that your time is scarce. And if you are in high demand and your time is scarce and you truly do have a waiting list of people waiting to work with you, this part of this episode is not for you. But most people that have that fear do have availability. They're not in massive high demand. Maybe you have seasons where you're in super high demand, but that is not your default. The people who are actually selective don't rely on appearing selective. The people who are selective are the ones who consistently have more demand that they can fulfill on. And we'll talk about more of this later when we talk about the brand that has like a six year waiting list for their stuff. But even the most high status brands use paid traffic and advertising and other marketing methods of course, to create a controlled demand instead of just relying on word of mouth or luck, which is what most freelancers rely on. They are using it as a tool to raise the demand above the threshold that they can actually reasonably fulfill on. Many luxury brands do. And even outside of luxury, you are trying to balance supply and demand. I've got two things that I want you to remember. Throughout this whole episode, I really want to drive these two points home to you. Advertising or really any sort of marketing does not hurt strong brands. It strengthens those brands by creating more demand. The more demand a brand has, the stronger the brand is. And that is universal to all brands. There are no brands in a capitalistic world where less demand equals a stronger brand. That does not exist. That's the first thing. And advertising can be used to increase the demand so that you are in more demand and you have more need for your services, especially more services than you can possibly fulfill on. And then you are in a wonderful place as a freelancer where you get to say, no, don't want to work with you. No, I will not do it at that price. I do it at this price. You can start to raise your rates. Now you are truly premium because you are truly in demand and you are truly training people away. That is a strong brand and ads can aid in that. The second thing to know about this is ads don't cheapen your brand. Poor messaging cheapens your brand. And so I think that we have all seen, this is why so many freelancers and creatives in general have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to paid advertising, is we've all seen the cringy stuff on the internet when it comes to marketing, especially like 2015, 16, the Tai Lopez of the knowledge. That is merely messaging. You can run paid advertising without cheap messaging. Bad ads can ruin your business. Good ads can help your business. So that said, there's another part of your identity that advertising threatens that needs to be addressed, but for you'll ever really fix this. And that's that identity that you are a creative, you're not a marketer. And running ads for your creative business lumps you in with all those marketers and those business people, all the people that I've spoken with, paid ads fills beneath them. It feels inauthentic to them, to who they are. If you think about paid ads as a strategy for a freelancer, that's probably the attitude that you have, at least at some level, either unconsciously or maybe you consciously think that. Maybe you don't feel like it's beneath you. Maybe you feel like it just isn't for you. But my counter to that is this, the second you decide to sell something for money, anything for money, you have created a requirement for marketing. It is a requirement for marketing. I'll give you an example that is in no way, shape or form, a creative niche, a creative thing, something we can all relate to, you're moving. Now you gotta get rid of a bunch of random s**t that you have to get out of your house so that you can move, make room for the new house, you're purging the old stuff, so you throw some stuff away, you donate some other stuff, but then there's a collection of things that are too valuable to just throw away or just donate, and those things you gotta sell. And now that you need to sell something, that is when the need for marketing raises its head up. And no matter what you sell or how you sell it, marketing is gonna be a part of this equation. And marketing at a basic level just asks a few questions. Who needs this? Why do they need it? What makes it valuable? How can we get in front of them? So let's say you have a treadmill you're trying to sell. Big thing, something you may not want in the next house, you're selling it for whatever reason. Question is, who needs this? Because if you answer that, anyone who walks regularly, especially indoors, why do they need it? Because it's 10 degrees outside in the wintertime, or it's 95 degrees outside in the summertime, and they'd rather get their steps in indoors. What makes it valuable? Well, they can still get their walks in and stay healthy, even though it's too hot or too cold outside. Or they can walk in situations where they couldn't normally walk, like on meetings, on Zoom calls. On top of that, what else makes it valuable? Well, it's literally $1,000 treadmill if you buy it brand new. Then the final question is, how do we get in front of people? There's a bunch of ways you can do that. Your mind's probably going to a few things right now, but an easy solution is just Facebook Marketplace. It's an easy way to sell stuff. It used to be Craigslist. That was the big thing you could easily sell things on. Before that, it was classified, it's on newspapers. But that's the easy way of getting junky you gotta sell in front of people. So what happens now? Remember, this is an example that I want you to just understand, because I will equate it back to you as the creative, the freelancer. But multiple factors will determine how fast that treadmill gets sold and at what price. First, what's the demand for the treadmills? Is it in high demand right now because it's too hot or too cold? Is it in low demand right now because everyone's outside it's spring or fall? The second thing that determines how fast it gets sold, if it gets sold at all and at what price is, how confident are you that you can get what you're asking for? If you listed for $800 and you're like, I don't feel super confident about that, and people start low balling you, you'll probably be pretty willing to drop the price because you weren't confident to begin with. But if you're like, I can get 700 bucks for this. I know I can get 700 bucks for this. This thing's $1,000 every day. I've seen six of these things already sold for $700. You're not going to budge off 700 bucks. So that can be a factor, your confidence in what you're charging. Another factor is how many people are actually reaching out to you? How many inquiries, ah, I'm getting ahead of myself. How many people reach out to you for this treadmill? If there's a lot of people reaching out for this treadmill, can you play people against each other? Can you play scarcity? Can you play an urgency play on there? What's your skill level in negotiation or sales? But what if no one's reaching out? What if there are very few people reaching out for this treadmill? At a certain point, you might have to face reality. Maybe people aren't looking for treadmills right now. Like I said, maybe the weather's perfect. No one's looking for a treadmill. Maybe your price is just way too high for what they get. Or maybe you were just bad at marketing it, positioning it. So you have some options at this point. You can keep dropping the price to get whatever number you can possibly get just to get the hell out of your house because you're desperate. Or you can try other methods. You can take better photos, rewrite the Facebook Marketplace listing to have a better description, take a screenshot of the thing that's $1,000 on Amazon, which is called price anchoring, reach out to friends, see if they need a treadmill, post in local groups, put up signs, promoting a yard sale, have a yard sale. There's a bunch of different things you can try instead of just lowering the price. But let's go back to you, Mr. or Mrs. Creative. You might feel like you are a creative. You are not a marketer. The problem is, if you are selling your creativity as a service, which if you are at this point in this podcast, I got to imagine you sell something for money. It's probably creativity, your creative skills for money, because that's what this podcast is all about. We do have some weird people who are like in other niches that aren't at all creative, and that's fine. I like you people here, too. But you're selling something. So the reality is you are a marketer. You're just a really bad one. You're just a dog marketer, if I'm being honest with you. And the fact that you identify only as a creative means that you have spent all your time, all your effort, all your energy, honing your creative skills. But the second you start to sell anything, the requirement for marketing now exists. And remember, because you don't identify as a marketer in any way, shape or form, you've put no time, effort, energy into honing that skill set. So you are a dog marketer. And if you fail to accept that and fail to improve yourself as a marketer, which paid advertising can be a valuable part of, then you are deciding to face a battle in a war with an arm tied behind your back. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to do that. I do not want to go charging into a battle where my life is on the line, where I have a single arm to fight with and another arm behind my back. I don't want to do that. And until you really understand who needs your services, why do they need your services? What makes you valuable? How can you get in front of those people who need your services? Until you understand all of those things and have great answers for it, become a better marketer, you are at war with one arm behind your back. And if you lose this war, you go out of business. You go to a day job. You go into debt. So go back to the treadmill example. You had the treadmill to sell. You had the thing to sell. Your mind is, oh, I can just start up on Facebook Marketplace. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. And some things are easier to sell than others. And some places have dedicated marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace to sell the things. Just like there is Fiverr for freelancers. There is freelancer.com. There is Upwork, I think. There's other ones out there. They're all like half a billion dollar a year companies because most freelancers don't want to think about this stuff. But most freelancers treat their freelance services like it's a one time thing you're going to sell on Facebook Marketplace one time. But if you're trying to launch a real business and you sell fitness equipment, you're not just listing yourself on Facebook Marketplace and calling it a day. That's not a real business. Maybe you can get some leads from that. Whatever. There might be some strategy there. But you run your business like it's Facebook Marketplace. You decide to sell your services. Who needs your services?