Creative Expression for Entrepreneurs: 3 ways to infuse creativity into your marketing content to attract (and sell to) more of your ideal clients

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In case you haven’t noticed, it’s freaking HARD to get your message out there.

You put up a website.

You write your About page.

You start a Facebook business page.

You join Facebook groups.

You blog.

You tweet.

You insta.

You exhaust yourself trying to share your special blend of magic with the world.

But … it ain’t happening.

You put up the website … they’re not coming.

You wrote your About page … see above.

You started a Facebook business page … thanks for joining, mom!

You joined Facebook groups … what am I allowed to do on Wacky Wednesday?

You blogged … to an audience of one (yourself).

You tweeted … only to get offers from people wanting to sell you followers.

You insta’ed … only to find yourself spending more time enjoying others’ promotions than creating your own.

SHIT.

Here’s the problem.

That rigamarole? The one that consumes our days as we try to grow a business?

Hundreds … thousands … tens of thousands … millions (!) … of people just like you are participating in exactly the same dance.

They’re putting up websites, writing About pages, jumping on Facebook, hitting up all of the other social media sites.

It’s a marketing frenzy out there, with everyone trying to sell to everyone else.

It’s time to STOP.

Pull back.

Go deep.

How about spending a few days on competitive research?

Find out what others like you are doing, saying, pushing, publishing.

If you take even five minutes to do this, you’ll discover something both sad and amazing.

You’ll discover that EVERYONE IS SAYING THE SAME, FREAKING THING!

And that’s where creative expression comes in.

Creative expression is a way for you to differentiate yourself from all of the others out there doing exactly what you do, saying exactly (or almost exactly) what you say.

How does a prospect know which of you is really “the best?” How to choose when everyone, it seems, offers the same thing?

Differentiation, baby!

Differentiation attracts.

People notice what stands out.

Here are three practical ways to infuse your content with creative expression to differentiate and attract more of your ideal clients.

1. Express yourself differently by breaking expected patterns.

Fill in the ends of these sentences:

• All that glitters ____________________.
• Only time _________________________.
• He’s as old as ______________________.
• Every cloud has a __________________.

Your mind likely knows the end of each of those cliches.

If you were to come across those sentence fragments while reading, your mind would quickly skim right over the ending because it knows what to expect.

• All that glitters is not gold.
• Only time will tell.
• He’s as old as dirt. Or maybe, he’s as old as the hills.
• Every cloud has a silver lining.

The pattern interrupt technique is to give the brain something it DOESN’T expect.

It’s to lead the reader’s mind one way, and then to go somewhere they weren’t expecting.

• That’s as American as … a juicy filet mignon.
• That’s as American as … a clown-filled Yugo.
• Writing is easy. Simply sit down at the computer, open your veins, and bleed.
• Yes, I’m ready for the beach. I have my sunglasses, towel, and portable air conditioner.
• Food sex.
• A pastrami on rye is the best medicine.
• I have 4,281 cares in the world.
• It was a curse in disguise.

Not only might readers think you’re clever (or sarcastic), they’ll also notice you because you are being, in some way, different.

2. Express yourself differently with annotated graphics.

Here’s the thing.

Your readers are smart.

They’re also busy.

VERY BUSY.

In fact, imagine that your ideal reader is a theoretical physicist.

You’d agree she’s very smart, right?

Yep. She’s smart. She’s busy. And she’s there on your website or blog because she wants to know what you have to offer.

Here’s what she finds in one of your blog posts, along with 2,000 words of supporting text.

She looks at the graphic. And then back at the text.

And then back at the graphic.

And back at the text…

To the graphic…

Text…

Graphic…

Text…

She glances at her watch, feels a little frustrated.

She doesn’t want to have to read your stuff over and over again to try to understand.

Now, she COULD, if she wanted, read the content three or four times, drawing her own diagrams to try to figure out what you’re trying to say.

But she doesn’t want to do that. She doesn’t have TIME.

She’s counting on YOU, the author, to do the hard work of simplifying the complex, of making the information she needs easy to consume.

Annotated graphics are a great way to do that — and thus to differentiate yourself.

This single picture with annotations on it communicates the same thing as the previous picture plus its associated 2,000 words of dense text:

Which would you rather learn from?

Which do you think differentiates you in the eyes of your busy, smart readers?

(By the way, both images are from my time working as a development editor for a technical publish house. The first image is what the author submitted, along with two pages of dense text that supported it. The second image show what would be possible if the author put more effort into simplifying and considering his reader.)

3. Express yourself differently by sharing your emotions.

If you’ve been online for five minutes, you’ll have heard that people buy from people they “know, like, and trust.”

It’s the truth, which is why you hear it so often.

What you don’t hear often is HOW to get people to know, like, and trust you … HOW to infuse your content with know, like, and trust.

(I wrote a piece on that for the Content Marketing Institute, called “How to infuse know, like, and trust into your content.” Check it out if you’d like to go a bit deeper.)

One way to express yourself differently while infusing your content with know, like, and trust is to share your emotions.

I’m not talking about crying a river or dumping your rage on the stage you hold with your audience. I’m talking about sharing emotions related to your business strategically, on purpose.

You may or may not need a little journaling to get there.

For instance, ask yourself — and answer — these questions:

• How do you feel when someone you know you can help decides not to hire you? Sad? Disappointed? Why? Can you write about it?
• How do you feel when you complete a project and deliver the results you promised — and more? Happy? Content? Why?
• How do you feel when a client gushes and tells you how wonderful you are? Exhilarated? Proud? Why?

The point of this exercise is to get at emotions, content, you can use to differentiate yourself with creative expressions that help prospects to know, like, and trust you.

Sharing emotions, and using the other two techniques I outlined in this post, can do that for you.

Hey, want more ideas like this?!?

Did you like this post? Then you will likely enjoy my upcoming, free five-day challenge, the Express Yourself Marketing Challenge.

Over five days, learn new ways to express yourself so you can differentiate, stand out, and attract more of your ideal clients.

It’ll be five days of fun, learning, and, more important, DOING.

Check it out and register here: www.ineedcopy.com/express.

I’d love to see you there!

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