Chapter 01
Before the whole “Box o’ Backstreet Boys” incident went down, I’d been curious about exactly how April had become a superfan of the famous boy band. She told me a story that took us back to when she was only fifteen, just a couple years before I met her.
She had apparently gone through a pretty bad breakup with her boyfriend, the kind where you lock yourself in your room and blast the music really loud, which she did. Lying on her bed, a song popped up on the radio that she’d heard many times before, but this time, it was a much different experience.
She actually paid attention to what they were saying.
Why?
Because they were saying everything she was going through in that moment: the desire to turn back time, asking the person you love to stop playing games with your heart.
The song? You get half credit for guessing (because I basically gave it away): “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” by the Backstreet Boys.
That moment, combined with the song’s message, was April’s moment of activation. The lyrics grabbed her attention. They made her listen, and most importantly, they made her feel like the band knew what she was going through. Those lyrics had kick-started April’s journey down the backstreets of superfandom.
The next time the hit song came on the radio, she would turn up the volume. When she had a chance to go to the store to buy their album, she did. She bought their posters and stuck them on her wall, watched their music videos after school on MTV’s Total Request Live every day, and talked about them nonstop with her friends and family, so much so that her brother caved and bought her tickets to see the group in concert.
And it all started with getting the lyrics right.
Think about it. At the time, the target audience for the Backstreet Boys was teenage girls just like April. Their songs were about what many teenage girls think about and go through: love and heartbreak. And most importantly, the lyrics used the language of that audience; take a phrase like “Quit playing games with my heart,” for example. A little kid doesn’t say stuff like that, and adults are typically less melodramatic. Instead, it’s a line aimed right at the teenage set. Those lyrics (and the band’s many others) are precision crafted to get through to the band’s ideal audience. It’s a winning formula, one proven not just through record sales and platinum albums, but the fact that those teenage girls have now grown up and still sell out concert halls to watch BSB to this day. I know this because April went to see them recently.
Building a strong, successful brand is about solving people’s problems. Step one is to know what those problems are, but step two, so often underrated and overlooked, is knowing exactly how those people describe their problems. The language they use should become the lyrics you use in your brand. Jay Abraham, a businessman and author responsible for developing a lot of direct response marketing strategies in the 1970s that we still use today, once said, “If you can define the problem better than your target customer, they will automatically assume you have the solution.” When a potential customer hears you speak about exactly what they are going through, in a way that they can relate, they’re going to say to themselves, “They get me. They understand.” And that’s a powerful trigger to set yourself apart from the many others who are fighting for this potential customer’s attention. Sing the right lyrics, and you’re going to get people to stick with you. You’re going to activate them.
If you’re trying to build an audience of superfans, what are your lyrics? They’re the words you use to communicate with that audience: the ones in your emails, blog articles, videos, Facebook posts, your keynote addresses, and even the casual conversations you have with people you meet at events or on the street. Using the right lyrics is a powerful signal to your audience that you care about them enough to “speak their language.”
In my own business, speaking the language of my target audience is incredibly important. I always pay careful attention to the language people use in their emails, on Facebook and Instagram, and in person, so that I can use that language myself. Once in a while, I even reach out to ten people on my email list to have an open conversation about what they’re dealing with in their own business and how I could better serve them. Paying attention to what my customers are saying in these different ways gives me incredibly valuable information about what they need, and how they describe those needs—as well as what they don’t need. Then, of course, that information needs to be put into action. There are a lot of ways you can learn the language of your audience. Here are three ways you can do this right now.
Method 1: Find conversations that are already happening online.
People are talking online, right now, about their pains and problems—some of which relate to the solutions you’re creating for them. These conversations are happening on social media and blogs, and in groups and forums, and with a little bit of effort, you can find them and learn from them.
Finding existing conversations online can be a valuable exercise that reveals a lot about your target audience (i.e. the people who are attracted to you and the way you do things) and how they describe what they’re going through. That said, this isn’t the best strategy because you aren’t having direct conversations with that audience. But if you’re just starting out and have no contacts, no audience, no email list, and no relationships with anyone in the space you’re going into, method 1 is a good place to begin.
Groups on Facebook or LinkedIn
Groups on social media channels like Facebook or LinkedIn are amazing tools for conducting research and finding conversations. In the search bar at the top, type in some keywords that you believe your target audience may be using to find each other. For example, if you’re in the homeschooling niche, obviously you’d type in “homeschooling” or “homeschool.” A number of groups (among other results, like pages or people) will appear. Filter out everything but the groups, if possible.
You may have to be a little creative in the keywords you use. Also, think outside your niche. For example, one level beyond “homeschooling” might be something like “education” or “parenting.” I can imagine some interesting discussions related to the pros and cons of homeschooling in groups related to either of those categories, too.
On Facebook, some of these groups are public, which you do not need to join in order to see the discussions. Other groups are closed, which require an admin to approve you first before seeing any of the discussions inside. DO NOT (I repeat: DO NOT) go into these groups to spam your business or share your latest creations. This turns people off, and you’re likely to be banned quickly. Your role, instead, is to find out what people are talking about, and more importantly, how they’re talking about it.
Now, there are going to be a lot of discussions, especially in the more active groups. There’ll be some spam (don’t do it!), random conversations, and lots of questions. To help you narrow down your search for useful discussions, use this quick trick.
In the search bar within the group, usually located in the sidebar, type in the following phrases to help you find the goods. Make sure to include quotation marks to get exact matches:
What’s great is that this method can also be used in forums, blogs and even on Google! You can learn more about this approach in my book Will It Fly?.
Again, this method is a good start, but I want to share two even better ways to find out what people need help with by having actual conversations with them.
Method 2: Describe your biggest challenge related to _______________.
This method is something I learned from Ryan Levesque, who wrote the book Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Method to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy … Create a Mass of Raving Fans … and Take Any Business to the Next Level. Simply ask people about their biggest challenge related to a specific topic, then follow up with them to learn more. If your business involves helping people succeed with their podcasts, maybe it’s asking about the biggest challenges they encounter when finding interview guests for their show. Then, reach out via email or direct message to the people who respond to ask follow-up questions. I think you’ll find people are more than happy to share a lot of valuable details that will help you create and refine products and services to address their pain points.
Although one of my favorite ways to do this is by reaching out to people on my email list, you can definitely use this strategy if you don’t have a big following of active subscribers yet. Simply make your question one of the first things people see when they come across your brand even if they haven’t yet subscribed to your email list or followed you on social media. Post your question on social media where even a casual visitor will see it and have a chance to respond.
As you grow your active audience, you can continue to take advantage of this strategy. I started using it in 2014, and it was game-changing. I sent an email out that included an open-ended survey question: What’s your number one challenge related to building an online business? I received more than 7,000 responses, and I used those lyrics to inform the language in my sales copy, emails, and much more.
That exercise also helped us determine that there were three different groups of people in my audience: people who didn’t have a business yet, people who’d started but hadn’t seen significant results, and people who’d started and achieved good results. This led us to create three separate audience buckets that we talk to in different ways on the website and through email, and influences the products and services we create for them.
Even if you don’t have a huge audience, you can still take advantage of asking open-ended questions like this. For example, you could include a similar question in an email in the autoresponder series people receive after they subscribe to your list. You’ll get a continuous stream of answers as people join, and you can then follow up with them.
When you follow up, ask questions like, What kinds of solutions have you tried so far? If you had a magic wand to solve this challenge, what would things look like for you? I promise you’ll receive a ton of incredibly valuable information you’ll be able to feed directly back into your business.
Method 3: Real-Life Conversations
These days, a simple face-to-face conversation can seem almost . . . revolutionary. This one is simple, and is similar to method 2: Find ten people, and ask them to spend fifteen minutes talking to you about a problem or need they have related to your area of expertise or interest.
Even after growing my own email list to 200,000 people, I still make an effort to have conversations with at least ten new subscribers every single month. I’ll pick ten random people from my email list and send them a quick note asking if they’ll hop on a video call with me for fifteen minutes to talk about what they’re going through and how I can help. It is essential for me to stay connected to who the people in my audience are, how I can help them, and the language they use.
When you’re just starting out, you may not have many fans or email list subscribers, but that’s okay. The beauty of this method is that it’s doable even before you have an email list or many followers. Find people at events like conventions or meetups, or online in Facebook or LinkedIn groups. Invite them to talk to you on a conference call, on the phone, or in person!
One conversation can reveal a lot! When you speak directly with someone, you not only hear their words, but you also feel the emotion that comes along with them, something that’s often lost in the online space. That emotional element allows you to connect more deeply with people and better understand them, which will help you create better content, products, and services for them.
Once you’ve found the people in your target audience and begun learning about their problems—and most importantly, how they talk about those problems—you’ll be setting yourself up to connect with that audience authentically and effectively for as long as you’re in business. Now that you understand the importance of getting the lyrics down, in the next chapter I’ll tell you why you need to start thinking about the “singer” (that’s you), and how you can add your own story, personality, and interests to those lyrics so you can stand out from the crowd even more.