TES 089 - How to Build Engagement with Your Market

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there, Mel Abraham here, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to brand yourself as a market leader and an influencer so you can have more income, more impact and more freedom. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solutions Show. This episode we're gonna talk about how do you engage your audience? I think that we're in a situation in today's world, in today's economy, today's society, where we're starved for engagement. It's not products and services that most of our customers and clients or our team members or even our loved ones are looking for it. They're looking for engagement, they're looking for that presence in there. And those that get this right, those that get this right are going to blow the doors off. Those are the companies that are going to thrive, those are the people that are going to thrive because they're engaging people and creating community. And so in this episode I'm going to talk about my framework called the Engagement elevator and we'll work through that. And I'm going to give you a tool called the Engagement Matrix. And the Engagement Matrix, if you want to download that, just go to melabraham.com session089 and you'll be able to download that action guide. If you're not at your computer, you're running around, you're doing some things, you're at the gym, whatever it is, as long as you're not driving, just be safe, alright? You can text me, text me mylegacy one word to 38470. We'll make sure that we get get you the download link so you can get all the tools, all the value out of this episode that you want. So let's jump in to really understanding how do you engage your market? What are the three pillars to market engagement? As we move forward and you know, we think about this thing and we go, all right, well, why is it even important because.

Listen, if I have a product, if I have a service, if I have something that works, why should I really care about engaging my audience? They're going to come to me because I got that product or service. Not true. The question is, they may come to you. They may come to you even once, they may come to you even twice. But are they going to stay with you? Are they going to become the champions in your world? That's what I want to create. I don't want to create customers, I don't want to create clients. I want to create champions. I want to create the people that are willing to fight for me, the people that are going to rally for me, the people that are going to turn around and scream to the hills to let people know, hey, I did business with Mel. And let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you how my life, my business and my world is different because of him. And so that's the thing that I think we need to think about. How do you do that? How do you do that? Because if we don't get this right, what's going to happen is that we may have a good product, we may have a good service, and it may last for a little bit, but in the end, we're going to feel deserted. We're going to feel like we're on an island and nowhere to go, and no one's there to share it with, and it's unfulfilling and it doesn't feel good, which ultimately leads to feeling ignored. We're not even seen where.

They don't even know we exist. And so one of the challenges is, all right, I got to get myself out there. I got to position myself in a way, whether you're in a product space or in the space that I spent a lot of time working is building the personal brand, the influencer space, the wisdom space, as we call it, or sometimes the expert industry it's called. Again, if you don't get this right, then there's no growth. Because if you're ignored or you're deserted, then how do you grow? I mean, we can create all kinds of stuff in a vacuum, but then it's not a commercially viable option. And what do I mean by that? I mean that you can't make money at it.

So we need to make sure that's a commercially viable option, that's commercially lucrative, so we can grow and. And especially in the expert space, so we can grow and get our message out there. We can create a movement, we create a mission. We can do some things at a far greater rate. The other thing that happens is that when we get this right, all of a sudden, instead of being deserted, there's a crowd, it's populated. I mean, they're coming in and they're going and standing room only. Think about this for a moment. That, that you've got a product or service or the knowledge you have, the expertise you have is at such a high level that people are clamoring for it, that they're lining up for it. Now that's a cool thing. I mean, imagine that for a moment what that would be like. How would that shift your business? What would it do for you to be able to know that there is such a high regard for what you've got, there's such a deep relationship with the people that are in the mix with you that they're going to be standing at the door day in and day out to do that. The other thing that happens when we get this right is that you actually enter into conversations. I think one of the challenges that we have in today's world is that we've allowed this concept of social media and they call it social media. But unfortunately, I think that social media has the tendency and the capacity to desocialize us. In other words, to completely work the opposite, to do things that are not what we thought it was going to do. Here's what I mean by that.

How many times do you hear people talk about, well, I've got 10,000 Facebook followers and I've got.

You know, 5,000 views on my, on my YouTube channel. And I. And I've got, I got, you know, 300 likes on this post.

It's ludicrous because what we're doing is measuring vanity matrix or metrics. I mean.

And I get it, and maybe it feeds your ego, but it's not creating connections. What we've done is we've allowed social media to take connections, relationships, engagement.

And reduce it to what we call contacts. Contacts and connections are not the same thing. Contacts and conversations are not the same thing. Our market, our people, our team, our industries that we're serving are starved from conversations. So give it to them, because those that give it to them are going to thrive. Because you're now all of a sudden, the people on the other side of that conversation are saying, I'm being heard. And that's the key element to it. And if we have conversations now.

It'S a stampede. They're going to be beaten down our door because they feel wanted, they feel heard, they feel Part of a community, they feel part of a team. They feel part of a movement and a mission at a far greater level than just buying something for the sake of using something. So we can deal at the commodity level, where we're satisfying a utility need, we're satisfying something that they need to solve a problem.

That'S at the commodity level. Or we can deal at the community level, where we create a movement, we create a mission, where they feel like they're part of something. You look at something like a TOMS Shoes, where they're giving shoes away to children in other countries. One of my clients that I've worked with does all kinds of community service work. Clif Bar does that and gives their people time off. So they feel that they're serving at a different level. They're serving not only to create a product, but they're on mission.

To make a change, to do things at a different level. And that's what creates the stampede. So that's, that's, that's the keys behind this, is that because if we don't get it right, we now know that we're going to be deserted, we're going to be ignored, and there's going to be no growth. But if we do get this right, we're going to create the stampede. And I want a stampede for you. So if that's really why this is important, what do you need to know to really build this engagement in your marketplace? What are the key principles? And I want you to write these down because these are the key elements that go into building engagement with your marketplace. And the first one is this. Speak to their desires, speak to their aspirations. Understand what it is they're dreaming about. Understand what it is they're thinking about. Understand what, what it is that they're aspiring to. And let's speak to that. Listen, there's a whole host of people out there speaking to the negative, speaking to what's not possible. Why not speak to what is possible? Why not speak to what is the possibility that exists in each and every person's lives and then give them the pathway to make that happen? Okay, so the first thing is this. When you look at your communications, when you look at the dialogues you have, when you look at your marketing, when you look at your posts, when you look at all of that, are you speaking to their aspirations? The second thing is this. Get their commitment. Get them to be committed to something. You know, we live in a time where I think that some people struggle with this. I know growing up we used to say, are you commitment phobic. You know, I didn't get. You know, I didn't get married until later in life. And so people say, well, does he have a problem with commitment? The answer is absolutely not. If you look at my history, if you look at my background, I'm perfectly fine with commitment. I just happened to wait until I found that one person that really floated my soul and that it was working on both sides. And I have been married now almost six years to a beautiful, beautiful, intelligent soul that is my partner in life and everything. And so. But what about your customers? What about your clients? Let's get them to commit to something. Get their commitment to do something. Get their commitment to be something more and know that you're going to. And allow them to know that you're going to nurture them and support them in that journey. I know in a lot of my Facebook groups, that's one of the things that I'm trying to do, is to be there for them, to. To get in there to support and know that, you know, that they're not alone. The third principle is to realize that the decision is simply the catalyst. So often I see folks that are reluctant to make a choice, reluctant to make a decision, and what they do is they feel like, if I make a decision and it's the wrong one, oh, my God, it's the wrong one. Now what?

See, with that kind of thinking, we believe that the single decision sets wheels in motion and feet in concrete so we can't move, maneuver, or adjust. And that's a complete myth. See, the one decision, and the only reason we make decisions is to make a decision to get more feedback so we can make the next decision better. That's it. Think about it this way. Think about a stalled car. If you've ever tried to push a stalled car and get it started, the most difficult thing to do is just the start, is to start pushing that car. And once the car is moving, steering in, and adjusting it and getting it moving in the right direction, it is much, much easier. But if we start and stop, start and stop, that's exhausting. Realize that we simply want them to make a choice. And I'm not concerned about what choice it is, as long as it's an informed choice and it's the right choice for them. Some people ask, you know, well, do we need to sell them into my. Into my programs or sell my product? And the answer is, no, I really don't think so. If we're good at articulating the value that comes out of what, what it is that we do. If we're good at articulating the solutions, the problems that we're solving with the solution that we have, if we're good at articulating who it's for and who it's not for, and we've done that effectively, they'll make the right choice. I don't need to convince them, I don't need to twist the arm, I don't need to cajole them, manipulate them or do any of that. That's the difference between what we call convincing, selling, where we're trying to convince someone, conviction, selling, saying, here's what I have, here's what it can do, here's the salt solutions that it brings, here's how well it works, and I'm here for you. All I want people to do is make a good decision for themselves. And if that means that they're joining me, I love it. If that means that they're not joining me now, I also love it. I want them to make the right choice. And if there's questions and unanswered questions, that's keeping them from making that decision. That's my responsibility to make sure they're answered. So that the decision is simply the catalyst. It's the starting point, it's not the ending point. And very few choices and decisions that we make.

Are inconcrete, are something that you can't move from. So we want to make a decision. So decision is the catalyst in building that. So if that's the case, how do we make this happen? So you now know the principles. Let's look at what I call the engagement elevator framework. In order to do that, what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump to the iPad and we're going to draw this out, we're going to build this together.

So you can understand the dynamics of what goes into what I call the engagement elevator. So let's jump to the iPad real quick and let's build this thing out together.

All right, so this is really about understanding the three pillars of engagement in this process. And it's an interesting dynamic to figure this out and say, all right, there's effectively what we're really trying to do is engage the different aspects of their being, if you will. And I'm not trying to be woohoo here, but I mean it, that we're trying to engage the different aspects of their being. The first is this.

Is their head. This is, this is about engaging their rational thought process.

Okay, now I'll walk Through what I, what I think, the order in which these may play out in once I put these all down. But I want to engage their rational thought process. I want to make sure that part of my communication with them, my engagement with them, brings about and speaks to their logical end, their logical mind. In fact, when I build out content or I teach people in thoughtpreneur Academy how to build out, build out content, I try to make we. I have a tool, a template called the CPT that allows them to understand how to do that and capture their information so they deliver it in this way and hit on all these elements. So the first is to understand the head, which is really speaking to the rational side, which then let's look at the other side of that, which I'm sure you're probably thinking about already. And that's the heart.

This is about incorporating the emotional side.

So one of the things to do, and this is what I would look at, is that a lot of times I'm going to start with the emotional side first. It may be with a story, it may be with a statement, it may be something that just grabs them emotionally first. It's a why statement in a way. And then we'll justify it and, and we'll come over here and speak to some of the logic, the data, the statistics, the information, the how to's in doing that. So we need to make sure that if we're going to engage at a high level, that all of my communication have each of these components. I have the head incorporated, I have the heart incorporated, the rational and the emotional. Then we come in and sometimes people, we'll stop there. But I think there's another place that we need to go and that is recall the hands.

And that's really about behavior.

That's about behavioral. In other words, I need to get them to do something. I need to get them to make a movement, to take an action. If I'm looking to move them to, to change. You've heard me say this before, that entrepreneurs and thoughtpreneurs, no matter what they do, their products, their services, their primary focus is to improve the human condition, to change and shift people's lives for the positive. So in order to do that, you'll start with the thought change. So we start with thinking first. But in order to really get different results, I got to get to action. That means that I need to at some point deal with the behavioral.

To really get them to make a decision to do something and then go do it. Which leads me to this next piece of Understanding this framework and this model of doing that. Because if we're truly going to get into what I call.

Engagement.

We need to think about a couple of things. One, if I'm really dealing with the head and the hands together, in other words, I've given them the logic.

And the action items I need them to take and I've done it effectively. What you're going to do is you're going to get your audience, your marketplace, your people to actually make the decision.

Okay? To actually make the decision.

So. So the key is to really make sure that you understand how you're training them in this process, what you're giving them to make the decision to buy, to make the decision to do, to make the decision to not do, to make a decision. And that's going to be a logical, a logical element coupled with the, the action taken. If I get the head and the heart together, in other words, I'm speaking to the logical side and the emotional side. That's when we incorporate what I call the aspiration.

And that's why it's important to make sure that we're not speaking just to one side or we're not marketing to just one element. I come from, listen, I'm a cpa. I'm a left brain thinker. I come from a world of analysis and data. It's columns and rows and stuff like that. But I learned really quickly working with businesses and entrepreneurs. And I could look at the businesses that thrived, the entrepreneurs that thrived, the creatives that really thrived. They had the left brain side going. But what really drove them was the right brain, the emotional side, the balance between the two, the interplay between the two becomes important. So your communications in engaging people need to balance and intermix between the two. And then when we've incorporated the heart and their behavioral choices are driven less by the logic, it'll still be driven by the logic, the rational mind, that decision that they made, more by the heart. That's when all of a sudden you created a mission. And that's what's really going to drive people. And so when you do this, when you understand this framework and you look at the keys to how you're communicating, how you're doing your, whether it's your Facebook ads or your direct ad or your display ads, whether it's communications, whether it's posts, whether it's videos, what are you doing to make sure that you deal with.

The elements of heart, head.

And hands? Because when you get that right, you're going to get them to make a decision. You're going to get them live into their aspirations and they're going to be driven by a mission. So hopefully that makes sense to you. As we're coming to this, here's the tool that I want to give to you. When you download the action guide, you're going to get access to what's called the engagement matrix. It's going to walk you through a series of questions, a series of effectively six, six elements, six questions. It's about understanding the pre frame. How do you set this up initially.

And then what's the actual conversation look like? Because if we intentionally orchestrate, if we intentionally set up things, then from the beginning, when we communicate in marketing, in posts, in products, in videos, we start to drive them through this engagement elevator and we use the engagement matrix to bring it to life. So do me a favor, download the engagement matrix, download the action guide to really start to build this out and, and start to utilize it. When you go the next time to post something, when you go the next time to write an email, when you go the next time to create marketing, go in there and build it through the engagement matrix, you're going to fill in the blanks. It's a matrix like I said. So there's six boxes in there with six specific questions. I want you to take that topic or that area and I want you to fill it in before you go and do something. So that's it for this, this episode. I hope that you found this of value. Make sure you down the download the action guide. If you're looking for the action guide just go to melabraham.com session089forward/session089 or text me mylegacy one word to 38470. I'll send you the download link. Hopefully you found this of value. I know that when I've taught this live people have freaked out. I mean this really revolutionized the way they communicated, the way they did some things in their posts, in their advertising and in their emails. So get this, understand it, implement it, execute on it. If you found it of value, do me a favor, share this, share these videos, share this knowledge, share it with people. Because I really believe that people are looking for a new paradigm. They're looking for a way to take control of their lives and do things differently and to elevate themselves. And this is one of the keys. And if you've got questions for me or challenges or things that you need help with respect to business, entrepreneurship, the expert space, becoming an influencer, just go to askmelnow.com leave me your question, leave me your comment and let's see if I can get that answered for you so you don't feel isolated, that you don't feel deserted, that you don't feel alone, and that I can become your kind of back pocket mentor in the process and in the in the process, make sure that you subscribed. And not only subscribed, leave me some comments. Let's keep the dialogue going and let's really kind of blow the doors off. I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next episode and in the next episode. Until then, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers, bye. Download, do the work, let's make a difference and I'll see you soon. Cheers, bye.

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