So you love helping people in a way that you are passionate about. It energizes you, and you are excited to get started.

But how do you present yourself? How do you get the word out and in front of people? This is exactly what marketing does.

Marketing is a broad category, and there can be a lot of crunchy details involved. (My nerd side shows when I’m excited about those details.)

Understanding your messaging and planning your marketing strategy properly will directly facilitate the building of your thriving business. This is how you can achieve total freedom while doing what you love.

Let’s back up and address the reason why we got into business in the first place. Odds are good that it wasn't solely for money. Of course, financial success is a significant factor, but it probably wasn’t the only reason. Some common reasons might be to help people, make a difference in the world, and have the freedom to live the life you desire.

I know these were some of mine.

I realized that I needed more autonomy in my life than a traditional job would allow, and achieving any of these goals would require building/having a thriving business.

Now, to have a thriving business, you need a plan for that success. Building the foundations for your business and establishing goals for where you want to be will make you more likely to succeed and help you get there faster. You won't hit a target that you can't see, so it is essential to have a clear vision of where you want to get to.

Without building foundations for your business, there is no clarity, and with no clarity, your messaging and marketing campaigns will be unfocused and all over the place. If your marketing isn't targeting a specific demographic, it will not attract anyone. You must be focused and create a plan with a specific target audience in mind. This requires doing market research to really understand them. Proper research will result in developing a magnetic marketing message that attracts buyers!

Once we know and understand our audience, in order to effectively target them, we must determine exactly what they want and offer it to them. We also must show them that we understand their pain or desire and show them that there is a solution and that we have it for them. This strategy will enable you to attract this ideal audience at the right time and establish a connection with them so they are excited to buy from or work with you.

When it comes to marketing and sales, you really must get your audience to believe a certain thing: "that you have the solution to their problem" This is the belief you are building throughout the entire message. If you can get your potential client to believe this, it will be obvious to them that they must buy from you. To achieve this, we must walk them down the "client path", which is their own version of the "hero’s journey"

Walking your potential client down this journey means taking them from having a symptom of a problem (pain) to identifying that problem, understanding there is a solution to that problem and starting the search for it, finding the solution, logically understanding the steps, getting excited or hopeful about the solution, and becoming a buyer.

Through this process, it is essential to engage both sides of the brain, logical and emotional, so there is no conflict in the purchase process. The right side of the brain is emotional, while the left side of the brain is logical. Humans always buy from our emotions first (excitement and/or hope), and then we validate our purchase through logic. That's why we need a system that engages emotion and logic when selling online.

One of my mentor’s favorite statements about marketing is, "A confused mind does nothing, and a clear mind takes action." So, if you want to ensure that your point is very clear and understandable, you must engage both the right and left sides of the brain. Make sure that the brain has a full understanding, both emotionally and logically, of the point you are trying to get across.

Once the audience and messaging are correct, getting that message to that audience is the next obvious step.

But how do you get it out there? There are so many ways! Free or organic social media posting. Email Campaigns. SMS messaging. Networking groups. Blogging and podcasting (your own or guesting on others), etc.

These are all great and should definitely be utilized together, but let’s not forget my favorite: paid ad campaigns. It is the quickest way to get in front of the most people in your chosen audience because you can choose exactly who you want to see your message. And the choices for targeting them range from location, to age, to interests or pages they follow, to their direct activity on social media like "page admin", and so much more. Having the proper back-end technical setup and knowing the proper targeting techniques is another result of having a proper market research process in place.

If you can get your targeting and messaging right and get it out there properly, then building a thriving business will be an obvious result that will enable you to do more of what you love in life!