Build A Brand with Rosie Parsons
Build A Brand with Rosie Parsons
10+ Ways To Stand Out Online You Can Start Doing Today with Anna Rumpold, Apricot Social
You’re always told you have to “stand out online”, “make unique content”, and “add value”, but how can you do that practically…especially when there are 10s or even 100s of people doing what you do? In 22 minutes, Anna Rumpold from Apricot Social shares more than 10 things you can start doing today to begin standing out online tomorrow.
Anna Rumpold is a marketing and messaging coach.
(06:29) “In your niche, there might be 20, 30, 50 people talking about the exact same topics as you, but what is going to stand you out is your approach, your values, and how all of these things come together.” - Anna Rumpold
How to make your content and offer stand out (tune in for the rest of the tips):
- You can never do too much research on your clients. Here are some topics to consider asking them:
- Where they are now vs. where they want to be
- What they feel is missing in their lives
- What’s important to them in their lives
- “When you are really clear on who it is that you want to attract, there's going to be a lot for them to be attracted to you as well.” (00:56)
- Use hooks to grab people’s initial attention toward your content. A hook is anything that makes people stop their scrolling and start looking at you. You can use provocative questions and unusual statements as hooks. Anything polarizing is a hook too.
- Get uber-specific about your message. Everyone is saying generic things, be the person with the sharp perspective.
Links
Anna Rumpold on Instagram (Apricot Social)
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Closing date: 31 January 2023
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10+ Ways To Stand Out Online You Can Start Doing Today with Anna Rumpold from Apricot Social
Rosie Parsons 0:00
Our guest today is marketing coach and mentor Anna Rumpold from Apricot Social, we'll be talking about how to communicate the impact of your offer and the value of what you provide to your clients. All right, great. Well, thanks so much for joining us today. And it's lovely to have you with us. It'd be great if you could start by introducing yourself and what you do.
Anna Rumpold 0:20
Yeah, absolutely. I'm really excited to be here. My name is Anna, my business is called Apricot Social. I'm a marketing coach and mentor, and I help my clients to attract truly aligned clients through a blend of clarity, messaging and marketing.
Rosie Parsons 0:35
Oh, that sounds brilliant. We all want to attract our dream clients, what would you say the first step is to do this?
Anna Rumpold 0:40
Yeah, so the first step is so important, but often missed, but it's actually all about getting crystal clear on the type of client you most want to work with. So thinking about who they are, their personalities, all the things that you look for in that perfect client, because when you're really clear on who it is that you want to attract, it's going to be a lot easier for them to be attracted to you as well.
Rosie Parsons 1:03
Oh, brilliant. And do you have like a particular system that you recommend? Like, how do you do that?
Anna Rumpold 1:09
So I personally recommend going back and actually just thinking about perfect loads that you've worked with in the past, people that you've enjoyed working with, and really write down all of the things about them: their attributes the personality traits, and then try and find some commonalities between them.
Rosie Parsons 1:25
Yeah, that makes sense. Brilliant. And you talked a little bit about messaging. So what is that? And why is it important?
Anna Rumpold 1:31
Yeah. So I was such a big believer that messaging is essential. It's all about how you communicate with your audience. And the two big ones for me are communicating your brand, but also communicating the impact and value of your offer if you're selling.
Rosie Parsons 1:46
Oh, yeah, that's a big one, isn't it? How do we start with that? So like, the value that we're offering good is where do we start with that? How do we work it out? Sometimes for ourselves?
Anna Rumpold 1:56
Yeah. So part of that is probably a little bit of mindset work as well. But then it's really thinking about what's in it for your potential clients really going deep on, you know, how your offer can provide some kind of transformation to them? What they need understanding through that research. And then it's all about putting that into words and communicating that in a way that matters to them.
Rosie Parsons 2:21
Okay, so you saying and putting it into words and things like are you talking about going in? And actually, like, Should we be talking to our ideal clients and finding out as it's quite hard sometimes to kind of put into words, and to sort of understand the difference between the different features, we offer the benefits, it's like it can be quite confusing content.
Anna Rumpold 2:41
Yeah, absolutely. And quite often, we confuse wants versus needs. So quite often, an ideal client might know what they want, but not necessarily what they need. So it's important that we have an understanding of both of those things so that we can appeal to their wants, but we know that we're going to ultimately deliver on their needs. But yeah, absolutely, that research is so important. It's something I talk about a lot. But you know, to truly mirror the language that they're using, which is ultimately going to be the thing that appeals to them. It's important that we understand how they're talking about their wants and needs, what they're saying, and what's important to them. So I really recommend speaking, having as many conversations as possible, whether that's with people who you've worked with in the past people you're currently working with reaching out to new people, that research I think you can never do too much of
Rosie Parsons 3:31
Yeah, definitely. Are there particular questions that you found helpful when asking like past clients, so that we can kind of really hear what language they're using?
Anna Rumpold 3:40
Yeah. So quite often, if you think about the subject and within your niche, if you ask them, if you think about positioning, where they are now versus where they want to be, if you can ask questions around that. So finding out what they're feeling right now, what they feel is perhaps missing, and where they want to be, what that looks like, what's important to them, those, those are quite good things to base your questions around.
Rosie Parsons 4:05
Yeah, that's great. I did a little bit of doing that. Because I'm working on an online course at the moment. And I found this app that was really helpful called otter a I don't know if you use it, but it's just brilliant because it record it for you and transcribe it. And then you can get it like, you don't have to be scribbling notes that you can remember exactly what they said, I found that really helpful. So how do you find out what Oh, is there any other way that we can find out what language these clients use apart from talking to them ourselves? Like how, what if we haven't got our ideal clients already? We're just starting out in business, what are the ways that we can find out what language our dream clients would use?
Anna Rumpold 4:39
So a couple of ways that can be quite helpful, particularly in terms of like that secondary style research, using things like Google Trends can be quite helpful. You can type in a few key words. Oh, I don't I have not heard of Yeah, it can be quite helpful. What it does show you like trending words, trending phrases, things like that. So that that does have good staff and equally, I think Facebook groups can be quite good as well, because you can, you know, search in a search bar on facebook group to find information that's going to be important to you. And the beauty of Facebook groups is that a lot of people use them to ask questions around, perhaps a problem, or something that they want to achieve. So you will quite often be able to pick out the phrases that they're using there. So those are a couple of ways that can be quite good if you don't have any audience yet.
Rosie Parsons 5:24
Oh, that sounds great. And I suppose that would be a good way to kind of even come up with ideas for social media posts and things like that as well, wouldn't it and find out what they're really wanting to know. Yeah, absolutely. Brilliant. So following on from that, yeah. How do people get their brand known? What sort of things should people be sharing on social media?
Anna Rumpold 5:42
Yeah, so in terms of branding, I'm actually a really big believer in sharing your values to stand out and build that brand. So it's important to do that work. The very beginning, as I was talking about earlier, in establishing your brand, who you are, what you're about. And one of the key things that goes into that is understanding your values and how you can communicate those. And it's really interesting, I tell all my clients this because I have a feedback form that I send people after they've worked with me. And I'm always shocked at the amount of people who tell me that the reason why they reached out to me in the first place was because of my values, and that they shared them. So I can't emphasise enough how, yeah, how important sharing your values is in connecting with the right types of people. Because, you know, in your niche, there might be 20 3050 people talking about the exact same topics as you. But you know, what is going to stand you out? Is your approach your values, how all of these things come together, to, you know, make you stand out?
Rosie Parsons 6:44
Oh, amazing. So what were your values then that people sort of really resonated with?
Anna Rumpold 6:48
So one of my key values is about sustainable marketing and not using pushy sleazy sales tactics. So this is why I'm a big believer in attraction marketing, and using that message that is going to attract your ideal clients, but not through fear based tactics. So that's one of my key values. Oh, that's
Rosie Parsons 7:09
really good. So can you elaborate on that a little bit more as to I understand about fear based marketing, like, it's all the sales gonna be off, like, very soon, we're running out of time, kind of thing. What is attraction based marketing, then.
Anna Rumpold 7:22
So attraction marketing is all about using content to draw in your potential clients. So quite often, that looks like sharing a lot of value, rather than just posing the idea that, you know, you must act now. It's really giving them the reasons why they should act now. But also, you know, I really believe in the law of reciprocity, you know, if you give lots of value that is going to draw people in and attract them. And generally, that's how attraction marketing content works.
Rosie Parsons 7:51
Oh, brilliant. So have you got any examples of things that you've shared in that way that have done really well?
Anna Rumpold 7:57
Yeah. So I, I've spent a lot of time sharing quite detailed posts on social media. So Instagram is my main platform, I actually am a big believer in that the How to content still work. So a lot of people say that, you know, it doesn't really position you as an authority. But I actually think that it sparks interest in your ideal client, if they see that on their feed in the Explore page on Instagram, through a hashtag, they're probably going to be drawn in by how to do something that they want to do that they're not currently doing. So if you're specific enough in your message, and you then think about using the right hooks, the right graphics, etc, media, then I think, you know, it can work really well. Some of the posts that I've shared, like that have reached 1000s and 1000s of people.
Rosie Parsons 8:44
Oh, that's great. I was just thinking, so you said about hooks. And I was like, I've heard this word bandied around. And it seems like there's something something I shouldn't be doing. But
Anna Rumpold 8:54
what is a hook? Yeah, good question. Yeah, I think hooks are quite underrated. But it's kind of both things. So if you think about the first line of any kind of caption or content, you do want that to be strong. But if we think about the different social media platforms, and I probably will keep referring to Instagram, I'm a bit biassed, but with Instagram, in order to stand out in a sea of other content, so other graphics videos, you want to have something there that is going to stop the scroll. So if it is something again, I you know, as an example, that how to content has worked very well for me in in increasing my visibility, because there is potential clients who are probably at that current point A and want to be at that current point B. So for example, how to create content that converts that's a very broad example. But you can quite clearly see the A to B. But if you have that hook in your graphic or your video, then that's gonna be quite an easy way to stop the scroll if it's specific to the needs of your ideal client.
Rosie Parsons 9:57
So a hook could be like the question how I have to do something but it or the statement had to do that. We'll start with that.
Anna Rumpold 10:04
Yeah, questions, statements work? Well, sometimes statements that are a little bit polarising can work well, but yeah, they can be sort of positioning quite a lot of different ways you can be quite creative with them.
Rosie Parsons 10:13
Brilliant. So, if there's lots of people talking online, like how I was surprised, again, maybe we've covered this, but I was gonna say, how do we stand out from other people, but you do say that's your values, mainly,
Anna Rumpold 10:26
yes, it's actually kind of getting that nice blend of messaging that is focused on you and your brand, because ultimately, that is going to be the thing that people are attracted to. So thinking about why they're attracted to you, how you can position your brand, you know, how you're going to share those values, how you're going to show your personality, but then the other side of the equation, being really specific to the needs of your ideal client. And I think that's where a lot of people miss the mark, they don't get quite specific enough. And that specific message is going to be the thing that does make you stand out, ultimately.
Rosie Parsons 11:01
And obviously, we're going through a bit of a cost of living crisis at the moment, have you noticed any change in how people are buying at the moment or a slowdown at all? How can we sort of navigate this time?
Anna Rumpold 11:12
Yeah, that's a really good question as well. And I'm a bit of a consumer behaviour nerd, I did my dissertation on consumer behaviour. But I've certainly noticed, and from previous recessions, there, there's always a bit of a shift in consumer behaviour. But I do think as a little bit of reassurance, people tend to adjust where they spend, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to stop spending all together, it might just mean that they spend a little bit longer in the consideration process. So as a result, we probably want to mirror that consideration, process and nurture by focusing on building trust with our audience.
Rosie Parsons 11:50
And that again, would that be sort of like producing content? That's valuable, basically.
Anna Rumpold 11:54
Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well, when it comes to trust building, once our audience is already aware of us, things like storytelling can be really powerful. It's a really absorbed message, it sharing your opinions, particularly when they relate to your values. Both of those types of content can be really good as can sharing, reviews and testimonials.
Rosie Parsons 12:13
Okay, so storytelling, you mentioned there, so what what are you talking about, like things that have happened in your life and things or
Anna Rumpold 12:19
Yeah, so again, always making the story about the ideal client, you know, think there's a well known phrase that make the audience the hero of your story. But you know, you can use stories about yourself or your ideal clients. And again, you can hone in on how either you or your clients got from point A to point B, which is going to be the transformative place. And I think the nice thing about storytelling is that you can go really deep on the emotions, because, you know, nobody can deny somebody's emotions, you can talk about how someone was feeling all of these things. And then now feeling all of these things, which is a little bit harder to do with educational type of content.
Rosie Parsons 12:57
Yeah, that sounds really good. What would you say to people who feel scared about being visible in their business and would prefer to just sort of let their work do the talking,
Anna Rumpold 13:05
I totally get this. Most of my clients are quite introverted. Like, I'm probably a little bit more on the introverted scale myself. But as a result, so many people come to me and say, I don't want to be dancing, or reals, I don't want to be doing all of these things. What I say is that I truly believe that your best marketing content is going to be the content that you most enjoy creating. And that will come through I think there's so much more transparency in in content, messaging and branding than we think. And I think you should always lean into your strengths. For example, you know, if you don't really want to show your face, but you're a good speaker, think about becoming more visible through speaking again, on social media, you can still use images, but when you're adding your voice to it, you know, I think you can really lean into your strengths and don't force yourself to do anything that you don't want to do.
Rosie Parsons 13:57
What do you think people often do wrong when talking about their business online. So think,
Anna Rumpold 14:01
again, it goes into those two areas that are mentioned, communicating your brand, and then also communicating the impact and value of your offer. So in communicating your brand, you really do want to think about what you want your brand to say about you how you're going to communicate your personality, your values, etc. Are there things that we talked about that and then doing that consistently. And then on the other hand, if we think about communicating the impact and value of an offer value, as is, of course subjective, but value is going to be strongly linked to impact and that's going to be the perceived impact. So if your ideal client perceives that they're going to get something huge, it's going to be life changing, it's going to make things easy for them, it's going to make life better for them, then they're probably going to associate the value with that impact in that same way.
Rosie Parsons 14:52
It's all sounds brilliant. The only thing I'm thinking of it can sound a little bit overwhelming as to like, oh, it's it's a lot to do like, do you Have a set right way of planning your content that makes it bit easier.
Anna Rumpold 15:04
Yes. So I use a content framework that I've built. So it kind of gives me quite a lot of prompts. And I have all of my information about my ideal client within this framework. So it does become easier to refer back to those points. I also think about creating content that's designed to attract my ideal client, nurture them and convert them. So I actually create and categorise content in this way. And again, I'm quite process driven. So having these sort of systems in places I think does help with that overwhelm.
Rosie Parsons 15:34
Oh, that's brilliant. So what kind of content then would you be doing for the initial stages that have like attracted them? And what would I say that was attract and nurture and convert? So what types of different content are we talking about for each start of that for each part of their journey? Yeah, so
Anna Rumpold 15:51
if we take Instagram, as an example, going back to what we were saying about hooks, and stopping the scroll, if we think about creating content that's designed to attract somebody who doesn't know you, you've kind of got to think about it, in terms of that content, making sense to a completely cold audience. So you know, going in with your story, going in with something quite personal, probably isn't going to make much sense to somebody who doesn't yet know You. So I always think it's really important to focus on making sure that that content would make sense to a completely cold audience, when you're thinking about becoming visible to
Rosie Parsons 16:27
them. Yeah, it can often feel a bit strange to think about talking to someone you don't know at all. It's got no warmth towards you at all, and coming up with content for them. And sort of at what stage do they go from that into then a warmer audience that's been nurtured? Is it sort of after one piece of content? Or
Anna Rumpold 16:45
does it? It's a really interesting question, actually, because I always say that that can vary so much, which can be a little bit, making it a little bit more unpredictable. But one example that I always use, I remember, somebody who ended up being one of my clients, really lovely lady she wants, liked a post. And then I saw that a few minutes later, she liked another post. And then she followed me. And then she sent me a message. And all of that happened within about 10 minutes. And then after a couple of messages back and forth, she'd signed up to my one to one programme. And that's an example of a really short client journey. But some people might be nurturing for up to a year. So it can be a little bit difficult to gauge that. But I think it makes it important to then always share a combination of content that's designed to attract and drawing those new people, nurture that current audience, and then always be sharing that promotional content as well. So that when they are ready, they're kind of making that decision with more autonomy, which is, again, is quite an important value of
Rosie Parsons 17:44
mine. Oh, brilliant. So yeah, we can't really, it's not like when you do adverts or something and you can retarget a warm audience, is it. So I suppose what you're saying is we need to be producing all three types of content all the time, so that anyone landing on your page where we're getting new people in through free, like the attraction and the how tos, and then they're kind of sticking around, and then over time, they'll get the nurture thing. And then when you do put a post up with a launch or something or an offer, then that sort of Yeah, everybody's ready to go. And, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,
Anna Rumpold 18:19
absolutely. And then you could kind of inject that client journey with other things as well. So for example, having lead magnets, bringing people over to an email list, circulating traffic to other platforms, you know, hosting free webinars, things like that. So there's lots of other ways as well that you can start to build that trust.
Rosie Parsons 18:36
Oh, yeah. So do you do it email lists as well, then, like, what kind of things do you put on your emails?
Anna Rumpold 18:41
Yeah, I send out a weekly email all of those though. I tend to share more stories, more opinions around my values, they're quite conversational. Again, because I know that that audience is a little bit warmer, so they're going to be used to that kind of content.
Rosie Parsons 18:56
And so you wouldn't, would you recommend coming up with something completely new for your newsletter? Or would you just reshare stuff that you've posted already on Instagram?
Anna Rumpold 19:05
Yeah, I love anything that makes things easier and more efficient. I actually tend to start with emails, I love writing email. So I'll tend to write an email, then sometimes maybe get two or three pieces of content, social media out of that email.
Rosie Parsons 19:17
Oh, that's a good way of doing it. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, and then I had a question, which was, is there such a thing as niching down too much? How niche Should we go? And when should we sort of stop? Because obviously, like, we want to be different to everybody else and show our values and things. But like, how nice Should we go?
Anna Rumpold 19:39
I actually love this question. Because I actually think that you can niche as much as you like, but possibly in a different way than what people might have told you before. Because a lot of people talk about getting super specific on attracting professional introverted women between 22 and 24. And, you know, in this specific location and getting really sort of detail orientated around the demographics. I personally believe in niching, by that personality types are really feeding back into what we were saying about thinking about that client that we most want to work with, and thinking about their personalities, the attributes that they have all of those things, and quite often, I go a little bit broader on the demographics, and a lot of my clients have sort of had success as well, we'd go broader on the demographics, but more specific with the personality. And that's quite a big factor around attracting that ideal client.
Rosie Parsons 20:35
Yeah, interesting. So what kind of what kind of person is your ideal client? Then what have you come up with?
Anna Rumpold 20:40
All of my clients have been so lovely. And they tell, although they can be a little bit different have completely different businesses. They're all sort of quite quietly ambitious, they're a little bit more introverted. They're quite considered. They're, they're very friendly and warm. They've all been so so similar.
Rosie Parsons 20:57
Oh, that's great. So that really does help. Yeah, rather than thinking of it as a sort of certain age or certain place. That's great. And have you got any further sort of resources that you can recommend for people who want to kind of look at this messaging and how to convey our value to people?
Anna Rumpold 21:13
Yeah. So I mean, I talk about this quite a lot in my own content. So that might be a place that you might want to head to my Instagram, which is at apricot, social, I do share quite a lot of tips and things around this messaging and conveying your values.
Rosie Parsons 21:27
Great. All right. Well, I'll put all the links up in the shownotes. But that's brilliant. Thank you very much for joining us today. It's been really interesting. And it's given me lots to think about for sure. That's great. Yeah.
Anna Rumpold 21:39
Thank you for inviting me.
Rosie Parsons 21:41
Yeah no worries! And, yeah, we've got a very nice competition in a minute that I'll share with you and has been very kind enough to gift us. So I'll share those details in just a second. So I hope you enjoyed the little chat with Anna. It's certainly given me lots to think about. Anna has given us the chance to let one lucky person win a one to 1 to 1 60 minute coaching and mentoring session on marketing and messaging valued at £150. To win. What you need to do is to subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating and share the podcast on your social media. When you've done that email a screenshot of your share to me at Rosie at Rosie Parsons photography.com with the subject line apricot social competition by the 31st of January 2023.
