Forget being your customer’s hero
How we got stuck on the digital hamster wheel and being the face of our brands
Let me start by saying that I'm not a business coach. I've been in the marketing and entrepreneurship game for over a decade, and I've seen firsthand the ups and downs of the strategies I'm about to critique.
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In the 2010s, we were taught to focus on creating relatable personal brands. I was constantly preaching the importance of sharing personal experiences to connect with your audience and build that “know, like and trust”. But, let me tell you, the burnout was real – for me and countless others.
We trapped ourselves in this perpetual cycle because of the way we trained our audience to see value. While personal branding can accelerate building trust with a cold lead, it often blurs the lines between the individual and the business entity.
All the content was the same:
How I made $X doing Y.
How I did this in that time frame.
I did it, so can you (if you follow my process).
Customers end up gravitating more towards the personality behind the brand rather than the core values and offerings of the business itself.
When social media feeds were chronological, more output created more visibility. Our personal brands stayed front and center because being seen meant getting paid. Plus creating your own content was free(ish).
The explosion of personal branding and social media marketing altered the dynamics of our customer relationships. In the whirlwind of fast cash, instant access, and online influence, “know, like and trust” changed how customers perceive business owners.
(And not even Beyonce is safe. She got critiqued for not featuring herself or her natural hair in the launch of product line Cécred. “Beyonce doesn’t have a personal brand.” I beg to differ, but this is a huge problem that founders of colors encounter way more than white counterparts. Check out my post on Personal Branding for Founders of Color for a deeper dive on this. Ok back to the post.. )
The Psychological Ties of Know Like and Trust
The "know, like, and trust" factor plays a crucial role in establishing and maintaining strong relationships between creators and their audience in the digital realm. Psychologically, this factor taps into several fundamental aspects of human behavior and cognition.
The "know" aspect revolves around familiarity and recognition. When audiences feel like they "know" a creator, they develop a sense of comfort and trust, as familiarity breeds a sense of security. This psychological phenomenon is rooted in the mere exposure effect, which suggests that people tend to develop a preference for things they are exposed to repeatedly. As creators consistently show up and share content, their audience becomes increasingly familiar with them, leading to a sense of connection and trust.
The "like" aspect involves emotional resonance and affinity. When audiences genuinely like a creator, they experience positive emotions such as enjoyment, admiration, or even affection. This emotional connection fosters a sense of loyalty and attachment, as individuals are naturally drawn to sources of positive emotions. From a psychological perspective, this can be attributed to the formation of parasocial relationships, where audiences develop feelings of closeness and intimacy with media personalities, despite the lack of real-life interaction. - That’s how entrepreneurs end up on pedestals they didn’t ask to be on.
Finally, the "trust" aspect is rooted in credibility and reliability. Trust is essential for any relationship to thrive, and the digital landscape is no exception. When audiences trust a creator, they believe in the authenticity and integrity of their content. This trust is built over time through consistent behavior, transparency, and reliability. From a psychological standpoint, trust is closely linked to the concept of social proof, where individuals look to others' behavior and opinions as cues for their own actions. When audiences see others trusting and engaging with a creator, they are more likely to follow suit.
On the other side of the equation, creators also experience dopamine hits from social interactions with their audience. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward, and social interactions trigger its release in the brain. When creators receive positive feedback, engagement, and validation from their audience, it activates the brain's reward system, leading to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. This reinforces the behavior of creating and sharing content, as creators seek to replicate the positive experiences associated with social interactions.
If we are not careful, marketing can very quickly become people pleasing and trauma bonding disguised as interaction.
Revenue became entirely dependent on our ability to keep the content machine running. As the stakes got higher, our marketing got further and further away from being customer-centric and instead we tethered ourself to the algorithm. But guess what happens when your audience’s favorite character no longer shows up to perform? They find a new show to watch.
How We Drifted Away From Customer-Centric Marketing
In the realm of personal branding, lifestyle marketing, and attraction marketing, there's this prevailing mantra that “stories sell.” We're encouraged to employ storytelling frameworks like The Hero's Journey, where we center ourselves as the protagonist of the marketing narrative. This is how we end up with “me-focused” marketing, instead of customer-centric marketing.
By relying solely on life experiences or personal achievements to validate our expertise, we're creating an unsustainable marketing strategy. This "me-focused" approach can end up undermining the value prop of our brand and alienating our audience. Customers aren't looking for another hero to idolize; they're searching for solutions to their problems, guidance on their journey, and a brand they can trust to deliver on its promises. When we make ourselves the hero, we end up creating a power dynamic where our audience become spectators, rather than active participants in their own narrative.
And let’s be real, this oversimplification of how we did it, often lacks nuance. It fails to acknowledge the complexities, advantages, and privileges of our reality.
It's easy to prove you have the best track record when you were the only person in the race.
A Different Approach to Marketing and Personal Branding
Instead of being the hero, I propose a different role: a guide.
This "me-focused" marketing strategy not only undermines the authenticity of our brand but also alienates our audience. Customers aren't looking for another hero to idolize; they're searching for solutions to their problems, guidance on their journey, and a brand they can trust to deliver on its promises.
Pretend your audience has to get through a maze in order to reach their desire on the other side. You tell them all about the times that you got through the maze and what it was like. While it’s helpful to hear your experience, it’s more helpful if you provide a map and get out of the way.
By providing a map with a route to get through the maze, you empower your audience to become the hero of their own story and get to the other side on their terms, not yours. You show them what is possible and use your experience to guide them and accelerate their results - not make your reality something to aspire to.
Heroes center themselves, guides center their customer.
Heroes have to constantly show up to save the day, while guides teach others to save themselves.