EPISODE 50 · CHECK WHAT YOUR MARKET REMEMBERS
You know what you do, but can other people describe it clearly? Explore how to check your reputation, identify what makes your work distinctive and keep your content aligned.
Your Brand Might Be Sending the Wrong Message
IN THIS EPISODE
You can feel clear about your expertise while the people around you describe your work in several different ways. That gap is useful information because it shows you what your audience has noticed, remembered and repeated. Before writing another explanation of what you do, find out whether your existing message gives people a consistent reason to think of you.
In this episode, you’ll explore how to compare your intended position with your reputation, recognise the audience you serve best and explain the additional value you bring. The conversation also covers outside feedback, reviewing existing content and keeping a clear theme without making every post sound identical.
Ask a few people how they would introduce you to someone who needs your help. Their answers can show whether your message is consistent or whether different parts of your work are competing for attention. Listen for patterns before deciding that a description is wrong simply because it differs from your preferred wording.
The language your audience already uses may also make it easier for them to find and recommend you. A specialist title can be accurate while still being unfamiliar to prospective clients. Look for wording that preserves the meaning of your expertise and helps the people you want to reach recognise when it applies.
A broad description such as leadership consultant tells someone the general area of your work, but it may give them little reason to choose you. Explore the kinds of organisations, people and situations where you are particularly effective. The more clearly you understand that context, the more specific your examples can become.
Then ask what you provide in addition to the expected service. Your approach, experience or combination of skills may address a need that other descriptions overlook. Make that value visible in plain language so someone can understand the difference without having to interpret another collection of general claims.
When you are close to your own work, useful details can feel too ordinary to mention. An interviewer, coach or other thoughtful questioner can ask you to explain the decisions and experiences you usually skip. Those conversations may reveal patterns in the clients you help and the problems you solve well.
Useful feedback also needs enough depth to challenge your first answer. Look for someone who can follow up, return to the subject and help you turn the findings into words you can use. The value comes from clearer decisions and a more accurate message, rather than the length of the document that records the conversation.
Your website, speaker material, books and social posts all give people clues about your focus. Review them together and ask which ideas appear repeatedly. Material that feels related to you may still encourage the audience to remember a different service or topic from the one you want to emphasise.
A simple set of boundaries can help you review new work as well. Write down the audience, problem and central message you want it to support. AI can help flag possible drift when you provide that context, but you still need to judge whether the piece represents your work accurately.
You do not need a new position every time you write a post. Keep the main promise recognisable while using different examples, questions and experiences to explore it. That gives new readers a clear starting point and gives returning readers another useful way to understand what you do.
Practise a brief spoken introduction until you can say it naturally, then check whether the same meaning comes through in your written material. Begin with the place where people most often encounter you, whether that is your website, a presentation or a social profile, and work through the rest in manageable stages.
Ask three people how they would describe your work and who they would recommend you to. Compare their answers with your homepage and speaker introduction, then choose one place where clearer wording would close the gap.
Ask several people how they would describe your work and compare the answers. Repeated language can reveal a clear reputation, while different descriptions may show that your message needs more focus.
Discussed from 01:06
Consider whether the audience recognises the title and uses it to look for help. Aim for wording that is accurate and easy to repeat when someone recommends you.
Discussed from 03:28
Look at the audience, the specific situation you help with and the additional value in your approach. Those details give people more to understand than a general service label.
Discussed from 05:38
A person outside the business can ask follow-up questions and notice patterns you overlook. The findings become useful when they help you explain your strengths and make clearer decisions about your message.
Discussed from 08:45
Review existing material against your intended audience, problem and main idea. Look at what each piece reinforces, including topics that feel related but lead people towards a different understanding of your work.
Discussed from 13:06
Keep the underlying promise clear while changing the examples and questions you explore. A practised introduction can provide a stable meaning that carries through varied content.
Discussed from 20:23
PREFER TO READ?
Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.
Brad Hauck 00:14
You don't get to decide what you're known for. The market does that for you. You can be clear in your own head, confident in your attempt, and proud of the work that you do, but yet still be remembered for something entirely different. Reputation is built from repetition, not by explanation. And most experts never stop to check what they're actually reinforcing. So here's a question that matters. If three different people describe what you do, would they say the same thing, or would each version drift in a different direction? In this episode, we're going to look at the gap between intent and reality, how to order your reputation without awkward conversations, and how some of your content may be quietly working against the positioning you want.
Good morning, Dixie.
Dixie Carlton 00:58
Good morning, Brad. Well, that's quite a lead in. What a lot to think about for everybody today. Yes, the reputation question.
Brad Hauck 01:06
Absolutely. And what you're known for. So that brand clarity thinking, I think, is kind of the key word we're talking about here. We all think that we're known as this person. And then you talk to three different people and they see you three different ways. So that indicates to me that we don't have a really clear message that's uh being over and over again. Get this person because they're really good at leadership, or get this person because they're really good at that.
Dixie Carlton 01:30
And that follows on really well from what we were talking about a week or two back, where identifying what you are actually great at and sticking to your lanes is a really important part of developing that particular thing of your reputation and your brand reputation. So, what do you think people mostly know you about? Are you asked?
Brad Hauck 01:48
Well, that's a good question, isn't it? A question, what I know me for. I think realistically, anything to do with online marketing is probably my key area. Mr. Web Marketing was a phrase that was coined for me very early on, and it's stuck, which it does. So I'm known for SEO and getting websites so that they get traffic. And that applies across your whole business realistically, because you want consistency not only in the market that's on your website, you want it to be reflected in the one sheet that you give out and information you give out to people when you're on stage and in the back of your books and in your ads.
There's that consistency of messaging. So for me, it's that. For you, I'm going to guess it's something to do with books.
Dixie Carlton 02:33
Yes, they don't call me the word witch for nothing. It's all about books and words. And I think for a long time I've been known as that publishing person. And that used to bother me because at times early on in my career as a speaker and author, I wanted to be known more as someone who was involved in marketing. And marketing being the key area of the books and the publishing. It's taken a long time for it to all cement together and for me to be the book marketing and publishing specialist. And I'm confident that's how people think of me now.
Is that's the horse that I ride into battle. I'm not someone who's guilty anymore of having one bum on two horses. But it has taken a while to really think about it and cement it. And I think the critical thing that we're talking about here is how we establish that brand and make it visible, evident, and well understood by people who are looking at us.
Brad Hauck 03:28
Absolutely. And look, you can run away from your brand a bit like you did where you wanted to be more marketing than publishing, even though that you do all of those things. But people have that perception on what you do. And I do this sometimes when I'm working with clients on SEO, they'll talk about, oh, I'm this, I'm a landscape architect, is my favorite example. But most people are looking for a gardener. As time goes on and words change, yes, you might be found for that. But you've got to look at what the market actually uses to describe what you do.
It's a bit like I'll always be Mr. Web Marketing. Even though I do lots of work in AI, for me, it's about getting your message clear, doing your SEO, and creating content ongoing. Very simple, and that's never ever changed. So, you know, you need to accept the names that people give you and embrace them because there's generally a reason why people see you that way. And it's often because it's easy to tell someone else.
Dixie Carlton 04:23
Yes, well, I think that's the critical thing. You can wait for people to help you identify where your strength is in this branding issue. Because if you ask people, or what do you think I do, and they tell you something different, then that's a really clear indication that something's off. But if you personally are struggling with, well, I do sales and marketing, or I do leadership and team development, or I do publishing and marketing. So if you are confused, then your market is probably even more confused. But if you go to them and say, So what do you think I do?
Most people will tell you, and that gives you some really good material to work with. Okay, so you think that I'm someone who specializes in working with teams. Is there a particular kind of business that you would think that I mostly work in? Well, I know that you work a lot with construction and teams that are working in construction, and you know, how to get the plumber talking to the electrician and talking to the architects. Cool. So you work mostly in competence building and communication with teams in construction. That's a really cool niche to own.
How do we make that sound sexy?
Brad Hauck 05:38
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the key thing. You've got to look at this on a multiple levels. The first level is what do you talk about? What are you an expert in? And it might be, as you said, leadership or team building. But then you start to dig down at what makes you unique in that area. And so you're digging down and you're looking at it and you're going, okay, well, what makes me unique is actually I I'm really good at working with construction. And so now you're working at that level, but it might be, say, small construction companies too, not large construction companies.
And that brand clarity that you get as you dig down becomes really important because that's what sets you apart from your competition. And that's what makes you viable, is that you are notably different from everyone else. One of the biggest mistakes I see on people's websites is they all say the same thing. You go to an electrician's website and they say, We do this, and then you go to the next one, they say we do this. They're exactly the same. So, how do you tell them apart? How do you know which one to hire? Because the uniqueness is not there.
Dixie Carlton 06:42
So when I'm working with anyone, whether it's in their publishing or their books, or just even going back to basic marketing, which always applies to speakers in debts, is that I ask the simple question who is the market that you most prefer to serve? Is it these kind of people or these kind of people? Well, if you know who that is, then you can move to the next thing and say, Well, I do this. And then I will ask, yes, but what do you do that is in addition to what your competitor does? So then you get to the point where you can say, for example, going back to our example that we've been using, well, I work as a coach in communication with contractors.
My market is the construction industry, small or large construction industry. I do this, and in addition, well, most people do this, and in addition, we do that. So, for example, most construction company consultants will work on their contract skills, but we also do the communication strategy. So you figure out what is the and we also do part. So, yes, you need to go through a process to get all of this really clear. Work out, well, who are you? What do you think you do? What do you think everybody else thinks you do? Ask them, and then figure out, so we do this, but then our icing on the top of our cake is this as well.
And that's not what our competitors are doing. And when you can get really clear on that, then you have something to talk about when you're doing your marketing. But a lot of people go straight bang into, oh, we'll just get AI to write out what we do, or we think we do construction, or we think we are coaches or consultants in this particular industry or part of construction, for example. When you've got real clarity around the nuts and box of the specialist stuff, then you have something really powerful to write about and position.
Brad Hauck 08:45
Yeah. And one of the hardest things is working out what that is, as you said. How do you do that? I mean, you can ask people, you can interview people. There's lots of things you can do, but what you need to do is actually get someone who's outside of yourself to do it. I think that's the biggest mistake is we sometimes will sit there and try and make those decisions for ourselves. When if you get someone outside of you to ask questions, you'll actually get different response. And I found that lately because I do this brand clarity blueprint now, where I interview people for about an hour about their business.
And we go right back through their business to where they started and all this other stuff. And what comes out of that is completely different to often what they're telling me. But the stories then indicate who they work with best. And all these things come out of that. So you don't want to sit there and try and do this thing on your own. Yes, you can do it, but it's probably not going to be as effective as sitting down and working with someone else outside of your business, even if it's a friend, to get different ideas.
Dixie Carlton 09:49
The problem with working with a friend, and yes, it's really easy when you're in startup mode, for example, to say, well, I'll just have a conversation with my friends and see what my accountant thinks I do, or see what my lawyer has to say, or what my teacher has to say about what I do. You can talk to your friends, but actually working with a specialist coach will get you there faster, and that coach will know exactly what kind of questions to ask to get you to self-identify where your strengths are. I've been coaching for 23 years.
I'm a real fan of working with coaches and mentors too. Not everybody wants to pay the money to do that, but you fast track your whole ability to get where you need to be far more completely if you're working with someone who's a specialist and asking the right questions. Or an interviewer, someone like yourself who's interviewing people and saying, So tell me more about this. And a lot of friends don't like to go deep. You know, that's the drawback of working with someone who's not really well inligned with this whole process is that they don't want to go deep.
Or you'll get off on a tangent to not go back to, but let's come back and drill down to this rather than going wide, let's go deep.
Brad Hauck 11:03
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the questions I ask to do this sort of work are quite in-depth, and they can be confronting sometimes too, which is a little bit of fun. But in the end, you end up with a report of about 50 pages. Whereas you ask questions and you get someone else to ask questions of, you're probably going to get a one sheet of answers, and you're really not getting the depth that you think you should. So definitely bringing in an expert for this sort of stuff is really important. And that's certainly something I've learned along the way.
I remember once I was looking at setting up a training organization, which I did do, and I actually brought in an expert who went out and then interviewed the market to find out whether there was a need for that training. And that was eye-opening to see what the market said. And it's the same when it comes to yourself, bringing it internally. Getting an outside expert really does make a difference. And it can be life-changing when you get that information because suddenly you realize, oh, I am so different than everyone else, but this is how I need to say it.
And here's the stories and here's the examples and things like that. So you're right. Having a coach is super important.
Dixie Carlton 12:12
Yeah. And for anyone who's suddenly terrified at the idea of having to read a 50-page report, you might have a 50-page report that comes out of a very in-depth process.
Brad Hauck 12:22
Yes.
Dixie Carlton 12:23
But someone who is a professional at this will actually give you the nuts and the bolts of what you need to do and what you need to be thinking about and how it all ties together so you can take action without having to figure it out reading a 50-page report. That's just the bottom.
Brad Hauck 12:39
Absolutely. That's just the in-depth part. You then pull out the more compact stuff, the duck's guts, as we call it.
Dixie Carlton 12:44
Yeah, the duck's guts. And honestly, there may not be 50 pages. In most cases, it's more like 10 or 20. Just in case there's anyone out there listening and thinks, well, I couldn't possibly think about a 50-page report. Exactly. You want to get to the duck's nuts and you want to be able to use the material that has come out of that process quickly and effectively.
Brad Hauck 13:06
Absolutely. And the other thing is too, when you're looking at this stuff, you need to go through your existing content that you already have and look at what are you already pushing out? What are you doing that actually contradicts what you're trying to achieve. We always talk about having one message through things, this underlying message that you try and push out. But I see it often in content creation where people will drift off message. And it's very easy to do because you feel like, well, it's in the same ballpark. And so, you know, it's really important you do check that.
Dixie Carlton 13:41
It's very important. And also coming back to the whole concept of refreshing and revising your own content on a regular basis. I mean, you and I both spend a lot of time individually working through and updating our specific marketing strategies, our content, our respective who exactly is reading this, what exactly needs to be fixed now, not what was good three years ago is still okay. It is a constantly evolving process to get that branding really tight and to have people understand what you're doing. And it's really easy now, of course, to put your own material, which I have done frequently lately, put my own material into ChatGPT and see where ChatGPT will tell me that I'm off topic or have gone off on a tent.
This is not clear. Or that if I used these words, that would be more encompassing of what I'm trying to convey. And so ChatGPT can be really valuable in that respect. You know, exactly how you want to refine things, not rebrand, but refine your existing brand, can be achieved really effectively by using tools like ChatGPT.
Brad Hauck 14:52
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I was just running the content of the book that I just launched yesterday through it and then saying, did I get off message here? Go through, review it, look at it. Have I gone off message? Have I gone too far? And so you can ask a question and get a pretty fair idea. And it's the same with your posts and everything else. It will give you that sort of ability to dig into it. And I quite like that because I don't have access to an editor, for example, at the current time to do that sort of thing.
So having a virtual one does make a bit of a difference because you get really close to your content. And it's only when you look back at it, say in six months' time, you go, that was out of the scope where I was trying to aim at there.
Dixie Carlton 15:35
Yeah, and when we're too close to it, we don't see the wood for the trees ourselves. And that's the trap for young players. We have to be mindful even more so than most, because we sit and talk about this stuff. If we're teaching, consulting and coaching on these topics, we put more pressure on ourselves to get it right. But that doesn't mean we're perfect at it.
Brad Hauck 15:58
No, and I think I like to look at frameworks as well to make sure that I try and keep within the guidelines, the what do they call them? Guardrails. That's the word we use in the AI world. Guardrails. So having your checklists and your frameworks that you follow when you're working with people or when you're producing content or when you're preparing a speech, really important. And I haven't seen many people mention this, but I'm seeing it more and more in the AI world where we're creating apps or we're creating content. And in the instructions is actually a set of guardrails that says, you will not do this and you will not access that.
Honestly, it's probably a good place for most humans to be as well. You will not say this and you will not say that. You will do this particular thing. And so maybe we need to write up some guardrails for ourselves as well that we look at and go, okay, did we stay within the guardrails when we're producing this content?
Dixie Carlton 16:54
I mean, I'm sure they become second nature after a while, but well, they do for you and I, because we're doing this all the time and we're doing it for other people. But I think if you're new to it, or if you try and DIY all of your own marketing and just use AI for being that support person or that support aspect, then it's really easy to not necessarily get the objectiveness that you're looking for, or to remember to put the specific guardrails in place. I call it regards and you call it guardrails. But I think when you are developing your AI that you're going to use for your own material, you have to be really clear about what you do want it to behave and what you think those guardrails lines are, where the boundaries fit, and at what point you want something more creative than what you may have thought about.
It's an interesting process to go through, but again, it is an endless, never-ending process. And getting it right matters, and going back to it again and again. And one other thing to remember is that people have an increasingly short tolerance for information. The short attention span is the biggest problem for creatives. And so when you're putting out material that in any way gets people to have to think creatively and they have to stray too far from their own way of interpreting something, you've lost them. You have to keep them on track. You have to impress them immediately, you have to be clear immediately while still being creative, if that's what you need to be.
Brad Hauck 18:30
Definitely need to be focused on one thought, one idea thing. The minute you take that one idea and extrapolate it, you lose people these days. They don't have time to read it. It's that simple. You certainly see that reflected in reels. We flick through them really fast. And it either you read the first screen that comes up and it catches your attention, and then you read the next 20 seconds or whatever it is, or you're gone. Yes. And it's a key thing to think about. So obviously staying on on brand, staying on message is really important, but also making sure your message is short, succinct, and cut through.
You can always lead people somewhere else when they want more information.
Dixie Carlton 19:12
Yes. That's a really good point. Bring them in, make them comfortable, set them in the corner with a cup of tea, and then extend the conversation if that's what you want to do. But you need to get people understanding immediately that when they knock on your door, the door is open, that is the right place that they're supposed to be, that's what they were looking for, and make them welcome.
Brad Hauck 19:35
Yeah, absolutely. And making sure that you think about all these things is so much work. I suppose if we break it down and we look at how we're connecting with people, then we can focus on where we start. Do most people connect to us through our website? Do most people connect to us through Instagram? Or is it on stage? Whichever it is, then we need to start looking at that and then working through that. But trying to do it all at once, of course, kills you.
Dixie Carlton 20:03
And that's probably a whole other conversation that brings us back to the different platforms and different ways and places that our market are hanging out. But yes, it is a big mission. And so working with someone like a coach, either of us is obviously going to help people who are stuck in this area. But also, it it just takes some time and thinking about too.
Brad Hauck 20:23
Yeah. I think one of the things that I hear from people that's really you know difficult sometimes is that how do you keep your brand alignment, your messaging, without repeating yourself over and over? Because obviously, as you tighten down on who you're talking to, I help these people do this in this way, like we were talking about with construction industry before. You want to keep that at the forefront so that's cutting through all the time. But how do you say it in different ways so you're not repeating yourself? Because you obviously think, okay, well, how many people see me who are new, never seen me before, and how many people are seeing me again, but haven't contacted me to work with me?
So there's this real dichotomy sometimes. So it's really important that you've got that underlying message, but trying not to repeat yourself, I think, is where most people fall down and therefore they fall outside their guardrails.
Dixie Carlton 21:22
I think too, though, that if you work out what it is that you want to say, and you practice your pitch, your elevator's pitch statement, what your unique promise is, if you practice the words that you need people to understand quickly and easily about what you do, then it rolls off the tongue, it sounds really confident, and people understand it immediately. For example, and I have practiced this so many times that I work to empower and educate authors and speakers on their journey from pages to stages. And that makes people go, Oh, I love that pages to stages thing.
Oh, that's interesting. So they understand immediately who I work with, what my attitude is around empowering them and educating them. These are the parameters of what I do from pages. To stages. So it's something that I've refined and worked on and I can now deliver very quickly and succinctly. And if I'm stuck in an elevator with someone from one floor to the next floor, I can say it in that amount of time and engage some interest if that person's interested in what I'm talking about. You've got to think about refining and then practicing and using the right words, working with someone who will give you the right words, working on your own isms.
You know, what are the things that you specifically always say that make people remember you, that make them lean forward and say, Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I like the sound of that. Yes, that's a very cool quote. Whose quote is that? Oh, it's my own quote. Well, I really like that quote. So when you stand in your power, you light up dark corners, is one of my quotes. I now say it very easily, very succinctly, and people say, Oh, I like that. But it took a long time to get to the point where I could do that and sound really confident, and maybe even sound like I was quoting Oprah when I sang it.
It's not Oprah's, it's mine. It's something that is a critical part of marketing and understanding your branding that says, I am confident with what I do, I know how to say what I do, I have maxed this out, I have worked the words, I know exactly how to bring this into an eight, nine, ten-word sentence that I don't fall over on now. And part of marketing.
Brad Hauck 23:44
Yeah, look, having that little phrase, the elevator speech, whatever you want to call it, is really important. There's no doubt about that. But also the trick is how do we make sure we bring that through on every piece of content that we produce for our website, for our marketing? And how do we say it without saying the same things every time, other than to say, if you're in construction and you need help, please call me. That's where I think a lot of people get stuck, and that's why they don't produce content because they feel like they're repeating themselves.
And it's not easy when you're trying to produce regular content. So working with someone to look at that or looking for examples. I always go and look on Instagram, for example, and see what other people are doing that I click with straight away and go, okay, well, that worked on me. Is there a formula they've used there? How have they done this? How come they produce content every single day? It all seems different, but I'm still drawn to them for this one reason. If I want to write a book, I'm going to go to Dixie.
So, how do I tie that together? So it's worth going out and looking at other people, and not necessarily, to be honest, the people you would consider experts or whatever in the field. Look at who's getting the followers. Look at who's getting millions of views and see what you can learn from watching them. Because there's people out there who we've never heard of, that we'll never see on a stage, and yet they have massive audiences. So they're doing something right.
Dixie Carlton 25:22
That is so true. That's a great place to bring this to a conclusion, I think. Because now I'm curious to go out there and start just I'm gonna look and see what other people are doing in my space.
Brad Hauck 25:35
Oh, look, it's always interesting to find out what other people are doing because while we're doing one thing, other people are spending hours and hours refining that thing that they do. So a lot to be learned.
Dixie Carlton 25:47
For sure.
Brad Hauck 25:48
Well, if this episode has you thinking about writing a book, but you're not sure how to shape your ideas, structure your thinking, or turn your expertise into something people actually want to read, reach out to Dixie via indiexpertspublishing.com. She'll help you turn what's in your head into a clear, compelling book that builds authority the right way. And if you're doing the work but not getting enough clients, you need to start with your clarity. When your message is clear, everything else works better. And that's where I come in. The bland clarity blueprint helps define what you're really known for.
Then we use SEO and AI-driven content to amplify that message consistently so the right people find you.
Dixie Carlton 26:26
And don't forget to give us a review. Reviews are the big thing that we're looking for on our podcast right now. So please take a moment if you've loved what we've had to say. Just click that review button and give us five stars, of course.
Brad Hauck 26:40
Absolutely. And please share with other speakers and experts so that we can help more people. We'll catch you in the next episode. Thanks, Brad.
YOUR HOSTS
Brad HauckAI & digital marketingAuthor, international speaker and digital marketer helping experts build authority online.
Dixie CarltonPublishing & authorshipAuthor, speaker and publishing expert connecting books, marketing and professional speaking.
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